20+ Business Continuity Statistics for 2026

Business continuity must become the bedrock of organisations across all industries. With inconsistent plans and poor lines of communication, an incident has the potential to disrupt a business at great expense and for a longer period of time than needs be.

In 2026, we need to be more vigilant in creating systems that truly support business continuity programmes. The warning signs are there; you just need to look at the data and statistics.

The Cost of Business Continuity Issues

Continuity issues mean that the business cannot continue as usual, and the cost of downtime will quickly add up. This can extend beyond revenue lost by being unable to serve customers in that specific period of time, but can also include additional costs incurred when service resumes, as demonstrated by these statistics.

• Companies lose an average of $300 million a year to unplanned outages. (Splunk)
• Every minute of downtime costs $15,000. (Splunk)
• In 2024, 54% of data centres lost more than $100,000 to outages. (Uptime Institute)
• 87% of businesses targeted by ransomware have lost revenue, and 92% have faced legal and regulatory consequences. (Cohesity)

The Impact of Downtime

Downtime can have a significant impact on a business at every level. Many organisations are also simply unprepared for downtime of any significance, even if they believe that they are. Strategy and rarely-discussed plans are not enough; as the following statistics show, plans need to be living, reviewed often, and capable of meeting potential threats.

• 42% of organisations have reported a significant disaster, outage or business disruption within the past two years. (DRJ)
• Businesses face an average of 60 downtime and service degradation incidents each year. (Splunk)
• Fewer than 40% of organisations feel very or extremely prepared to deal with a site failure or disaster. (DRJ)
• 63% of ITOps and engineering leaders often or very often experience downtime caused by a third party. (Splunk)
• 46% of ITOps and engineering leaders say downtime caused by public cloud failures creates the greatest financial impact. (Splunk)
• 19% of SMBs admit that their businesses are not adequately prepared to address or prevent unexpected downtime. (Infrascale)
• 46% of business-to-business (B2B) organisations and 25% of business-to-consumer (B2C) have lost customers due to downtime issues. (Infrascale)

• SMBs have described the biggest downtime risks as business disruption (29%), decreased employee productivity (21%), lost revenue (17%), reputation impact (16%), and cost (13%) (Infrascale).
• Software failure (53%) and cybersecurity issues (52%) are two of the most common causes of downtime. (Infrascale)
• 68% of technology leaders worry AI agents will cause downtime through unpredictable behaviour. (Splunk)

Cybersecurity and Business Continuity

With cyber threats becoming an ever more pressing issue for businesses of all sizes, organisations need to have proactive plans to protect their cybersecurity. However, as these statistics reveal, this isn't necessarily the reality.

• While 56% of users say AI reduces downtime risk, multiple technology leaders admit their organisations experience AI-related downtime. (Splunk)
• 71% of SMBs have confidence in their ability to handle a cyber incident, but only 22% have the security posture and means to withstand one. (Devolutions)
• 89% of SMBs with at least 150 employees have security plans, compared to only 47% of businesses with fewer than 50 employees. (CrowdStrike)
• Incident rates are nearly identical for SMBs with security plans (25%) and those without (24%), indicating that plans without execution will not offer real protection. (CrowdStrike)
• 52% of SMBs still manage privileged access manually. (Devolutions)

Disaster Recovery

When disaster strikes, a company must have a plan and resources in place to recover well. However, the aim needs to move from a reactive response to a proactive one, as many businesses are currently underestimating their abilities to recover. These statistics showcase how many organisations are underprepared regarding disaster recovery.

• 70% of organisations have poor disaster recovery capabilities, with 54% likely suffering from "mirages of overconfidence". (Gartner)
• 98% of executives are confident in their organisation's recovery, yet 56% have experienced three or more recovery failures in the past year. (EON)
• 75% of businesses have some type of formal disaster recovery plan or programme, with an additional 16% indicating that they wish to implement such a programme in the next year. (DRJ)
• Only 59% of businesses update their disaster recovery plans annually, with only 35% updating more frequently. (DRJ)
• 80% of cloud teams have experienced at least one recovery failure or delay in the past year. (EON)

It's 2026. Don’t Treat Business Continuity Management Like an Afterthought

A business continuity plan is no longer just the document you outline for a box-ticking exercise, never to be looked at until it is time to update it again. Threats are only becoming ever more complicated and difficult to mitigate.

Businesses of all sizes and across all industries must be prepared. This goes deeper than merely having a strong business continuity plan on paper; it must be a comprehensive set of standards and practices that live and breathe within the company. No matter what incident may come your way, your team needs to know how to act, which procedures to follow, and who should be leading the response.

C2's experts are here to help you. No matter how much support you need, get in touch today to find out more about our professional services and how our experts can support your organisation in creating a proactive business continuity strategy.