Traditional network vulnerabilities have a more negative impact on business than most people realise, resulting in significant revenue and job loss, an Avaya study has found.
The survey of mid-to-large companies in the UK, US and Canada found that 82% of those surveyed experienced some type of network downtime caused by IT personnel making errors when configuring changes to the core of the network.
In fact, the survey found that one-fifth of all network downtime in 2013 was caused by core errors. More troubling is the fact that 80% of companies experiencing downtime from core errors in 2013 lost revenue, with the average company losing £83,819 per incident. The financial sector lost an average of £323,509 per incident.
The resulting impact on a career can be significant: a surprising one in five companies fired an IT employee when a network downtime incident occurred. The factor was more dramatic for some industries. Respondents also said that one in three companies in the natural resources, utilities & telecoms sector sacked IT staff due to downtime caused by change errors.
Avaya surveyed 210 IT professionals in large organisations (250+ employees) to understand how much revenue was lost in total as a result of all the downtime incidents caused by core network changes in 2013. The surveys were completed in January 2014 in coordination with Dynamic Markets.
