Monday, October 6, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact
NewsTrendsKE
  • Business
    • Deals
  • Op-Eds
  • Sustainability
  • Women in Business
  • Lifestyle
  • Featured
  • Technology
    • Phones
  • Sports
  • World
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
NewsTrendsKE
No Result
View All Result

A wake-up call for businesses – assessing the true cost of major network or application failures

Editor by Editor
6 August 2024
in Op-Eds
Reading Time: 3 mins read
A A
0
Close-up Portrait of Software Engineer Working on Computer, Line of Code Reflecting in Glasses. Developer Working on Innovative e-Commerce Application using Big Data Concept

Close-up Portrait of Software Engineer Working on Computer, Line of Code Reflecting in Glasses. Developer Working on Innovative e-Commerce Application using Big Data Concept

Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on WhatsApp

Just two weeks after a major global IT failure rendered millions of computer systems inaccessible, another ten-hour outage, this time as the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, recently affected users of the same global organisation across multiple regions. Once again, this incident impacted businesses within many sectors, including retail, financial services and utilities, amongst others.

Earlier in July, Africa felt the repercussions of the initial outage, albeit to a lesser degree than in the UK, Europe and the USA. Air travel was disrupted with the cancellation and delay of flights across the continent, leaving planes in many local countries, like Kenya and Nigeria, grounded. The financial sector felt the strain too, with banking platforms inaccessible, credit card and ATM transactions halted, and several stock exchanges, including those in South Africa, Morocco, and Ghana, left unable to transact. African healthcare organisations were also affected, as were telecommunications companies and internet infrastructure providers.

Related posts

Safaricom CEO, KEPSA Chair Headline Summit on Kenyan Asian Community's Economic and Civic Role

Safaricom CEO, KEPSA Chair Headline Summit on Kenyan Asian Community’s Economic and Civic Role

24 September 2025
The Gambia: African Development Fund Approves $19.93 Million Grant to Tackle Fragility and Expand Opportunities for Rural Youth and Women

WAYA 2025 Winners: Top 10 Women Revolutionising Africa’s Agriculture

12 September 2025
Load More

This latest DDoS-attack driven outage once again highlights the severe consequences that the breakdown of a mission-critical application can have on a business, as thousands of outage reports and complaints were logged within a short space of time. But is it possible to actually calculate the cost impact of this type of failure?

Quantifying the potential financial impact of major incidents

NETSCOUT recently released the results of a survey of IT leaders that looked specifically at incidents related to unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platforms, a cloud delivery model that offers a number of communication and collaboration applications and services, such as enterprise messaging, online meetings, team collaboration, video conferencing and telephony.

The survey found that 97 percent of enterprise-level organisations suffered at least one major UCaaS-related outage or incident in 2023. Additionally, most enterprises surveyed (51 percent) had been subjected to at least four incidents, each lasting several hours and negatively affecting 4,000 employees on average. And in 24 percent of cases, resolution took several days.

Beyond the immediate revenue loss, outages in critical communication and collaboration tools can lead to employee downtime, productivity declines and customer service disruptions, causing dissatisfaction and potential churn. Negative publicity related to these incidents can further harm a company’s brand and erode stakeholder trust.

In the type of worst-case scenario outlined above, NETSCOUT’s survey noted that 64 percent of respondents estimated associated losses of at least $10,000 in sales and productivity. For larger enterprises (with an annual revenue of more than $10 billion), 47 percent gauged losses of at least $100,000, with 18 out of 300 respondents reporting losses of at least $1 million.

While large-scale incidents affecting thousands of employees at once may draw more attention, the cumulative impact of day-to-day performance issues – like dropped calls, meeting delays and poor audio/video quality – on productivity and support costs cannot be overlooked.

Proactive risk mitigation strategies

To tackle the challenges posed by network and application failures, organisations must be proactive in carrying out preventive maintenance and routine upgrades to ensure services can operate at optimal efficiency. Regular maintenance checks and updates will help to mitigate the risk of unexpected downtime and its accompanying chaos and performance disruption, in turn, preventing fiscal and reputational losses.

This means that organisations’ IT teams need complete end-to-end visibility into the threats against their network, which would allow them to monitor networks and applications, regardless of where they are hosted or where users access them. Proactive synthetic tests too are essential, ensuring application functionality and simulating real user traffic respectively. These tests help measure the quality of the user experience and get ahead of performance issues before users themselves encounter negative impacts.

Looking ahead, as a way of learning from these recent global IT outages, businesses should consider the use of visibility tools, like NETSCOUT’s ‘Visibility without Borders’ platform, which will allow them to build a detailed repository of information based on previous issues encountered, helping them to deal with future challenges more effectively and efficiently.

Ultimately, the true cost of a major network incident or application failure extends beyond financial losses to encompass many factors, including productivity, customer satisfaction and brand reputation. No company ever plans for these things to happen. However, by implementing proactive measures to mitigate risks, organisations can strengthen their operational resilience and position themselves to bounce back quickly when disaster strikes.

Tags: BusinessITNetwork
Share8Tweet5Send
Previous Post

Ethiopia: Human rights bodies failure to act as justice continues to elude victims of atrocities

Next Post

Kenya Achieves 68% Reduction in Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-Related Deaths and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Infections over the Past Decade

Related Posts

Safaricom CEO, KEPSA Chair Headline Summit on Kenyan Asian Community's Economic and Civic Role
Business

Safaricom CEO, KEPSA Chair Headline Summit on Kenyan Asian Community’s Economic and Civic Role

24 September 2025
The Gambia: African Development Fund Approves $19.93 Million Grant to Tackle Fragility and Expand Opportunities for Rural Youth and Women
Women in Business

WAYA 2025 Winners: Top 10 Women Revolutionising Africa’s Agriculture

12 September 2025
Fintech in Kenya
Business

How Kenyan Startups Are Quietly Building Africa’s Next Fintech Giants

5 August 2025
Aga Khan University Hospital Section Head, Nuclear Radiology, Dr Samuel Nguku and Chair, Department of Radiology, Dr Khalid Makhdomi analyse a scan image for one of the patients who received the Lutetium-177 PSMA therapy
Featured

Top 5 High‑Paying Jobs in Kenya in 2025

23 July 2025
Elizaphan Muraguri
Op-Eds

Why Business Communities and Networking Organizations Must Be in Every Entrepreneur’s Toolkit

20 May 2025
Tala
Featured

Businesses become backbone of the economy, as full-time employment declines

13 March 2025
NSE Leads Private Sector Companies to Ring the Bell for Gender Equality
Women in Business

NSE Leads Private Sector Companies to Ring the Bell for Gender Equality

6 March 2025
Delivery Van
Op-Eds

Optimizing Efficiency: The Power of Tracking and Fleet Management

24 January 2025
Next Post
Kenya Achieves 68% Reduction in Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-Related Deaths and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Infections over the Past Decade

Kenya Achieves 68% Reduction in Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-Related Deaths and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Infections over the Past Decade

TikTok Partners with Kenyan Government to Empower Creators

Kenya’s Creative Economy Bill Moves to National Assembly, Paving Way for Industry Reform

5 October 2025
AfDB and Japan’s JGC Partner to Drive Sustainable Aviation Fuel Development in Africa

AfDB and Japan’s JGC Partner to Drive Sustainable Aviation Fuel Development in Africa

5 October 2025
China Trade

Extended Golden Week Likely To Strain China’s Export Trade, Experts Warn

1 October 2025
xiaomi 17 pro

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max Takes Aim at iPhone 17 Pro Max and Galaxy S25 with Bold Specs and Dual-Screen Design

5 October 2025
Kenya seal

Kenya’s Public Seal Custody Moves from Attorney General to Head of Public Service

21 May 2025
Airtel Mobile Commerce Uganda Limited, Pesapal Partner to Offer More Payment Options

Real-time payments, digital innovation to drive Africa’s payments revenue to $19 Billion by 2029

30 September 2025
NewsTrendsKE

A News Blog For Readers Who Want More

Follow us on social media:

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact

©2025 NewsTrendsKE.

No Result
View All Result
  • Business
    • Deals
  • Op-Eds
  • Sustainability
  • Women in Business
  • Lifestyle
  • Featured
  • Technology
    • Phones
  • Sports
  • World
  • Contact Us

©2025 NewsTrendsKE.