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Q & A Security · September 3, 2026

Why is the $300K/hour figure called a floor and not a ceiling?

$300K/hour is a median across all mid/large enterprises. Regulated industries, high-transaction-volume businesses, and 24/7 physical operations sit above it. Manufacturing shop-floor downtime often clears $1M/hour on its own. Financial services trading platforms clear $5M/hour when a single trading session is disrupted. The published median averages across sectors — the sector you actually operate in almost certainly sits above it.

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Enterprise Downtime Costs $300K/hr — And Why That's a Floor
Cost of downtime is the single most-abused number in security-budget requests. It's also one of the most rigorously measured. ITIC's 2024 survey pins the median mid/large enterprise at over $300K/hour; the top of the industry table clears $5M/hour. Here's how the number is built, why Gartner's $5,600/min baseline still holds up, and how to calculate your own.
Related questions
How do I calculate my own hourly downtime cost? How does Gartner's $5,600/minute figure compare to ITIC's data? What are the main causes of unplanned enterprise downtime? What counts as downtime cost in these reports? What is the current benchmark cost of one hour of downtime?