India to lose $1.4bn in a 24-hr net outage; US & China to be most hit

India would be the sixth impacted country in the world if a Crowdstrike-type internet outage were to last for an hour, according to research data released by CloudZero, and the total cost of such an outage would be around $59.6 million.

The top three nations to be affected by such an outage would be the United States, China and the United Kingdom, while the top three companies affected would be Amazon, Alphabet and Jingdong Mall, the research data said.

DIGITAL INDIA IS SUSCEPTIBLE

An online outage lasting for an entire day, or 24 hours, could lead to losses worth nearly $1.4 billion in India, where around 43 per cent of the 1.3-billion population have been increasingly relying on the net, and a fast-growing digital economy is susceptible to such outages, the data said, noting that there has been a rapid rise in various net-related services in India in recent years, from e-commerce and tele-medicine to netbanking and online education.

US, CHINA, UK FACE BIGGEST THREAT

The top three countries to be affected by such an outage would be the United States, China and the United Kingdom.

In the US, 90.9 per cent people are online, which means an hour’s outage would cost around $459 million and an entire day without the internet would lead to revenue losses worth $11 billion or more.

In China, 70.4 per cent of the nation’s 1.4 billion population uses the net. An hour’s outage would cost around $412 million, and a 24-hour outage would result in losses worth $9.9 billion.

In the UK, 94.8 per cent of the population are online. An hour without the net would cost the country $136 million, and an outage running for 24 hours could lead to losses worth $3.2 billion.

AMAZON, ALPHABET AND OUTAGE SCARE

The top three firms in the world that would be affected by net outage are Amazon, Alphabet and Jingdong Mall.

Amazon has an annual revenue of $574.8 billion and a minute’s outage would cost the company $1.1 million. If the outage lasts for an entire day, the company would lose around $1.6 billion.

Google and YouTube’s parent company Alphabet has an annual revenue of $307.4 billion and a minute’s outage would cost around $5,85,000. An outage lasting for 24 hours could lead to losses worth $842 million.

Jingdong Mall is China’s biggest tech firm with an annual revenue of $152.9 billion. A minute’s outage would cost the company $291,000 while an entire day without the internet would translate to nearly $419 million in losses.

WHAT WAS THE CROWDSTRIKE OUTAGE?

On July 19, software manufactured by the US cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike to protect against online crashes and disruptions ended up taking systems down. This led to a tech outage globally including many places in India, affecting flight services, medical facilities, payment systems and Microsoft services. During the outage, more than 8.5 million devices were affected all over the world.