What is the cost of a one-hour Internet shutdown on the global economy?

It seems too early to estimate the financial cost caused by the interruption of the Internet on the operations of banks, media companies, and emergency services, and forcing airlines to stop their flights, but according to estimates published by the “Merchant Machine” website, stopping the Internet for an hour causes losses to the global economy of about 1.5 pounds, and the loss is rising. The longer the hours of downtime.

An update from cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike CRWD showed a 3.35% decrease in internet services and caused an outage for millions of Microsoft MSFT users, a 0.71% decrease; On Windows devices around the world.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on Platform According to what was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

According to the Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns Index, which measures the total economic impact of each intentional major Internet outage and social media shutdown around the world when it occurs, the cost of this outage could reach tens of billions of dollars. Internet outages not only violate citizens' digital rights, but also have serious consequences for the global economy.

The index of the total cost of Internet shutdowns from 2019 until this year shows that the financial cost incurred by the global economy from the interruption of Internet service amounted to about 53 billion dollars. It is not yet known how much the cost of this interruption in Internet services will be.

The current technical malfunction has disrupted flights of major airlines, including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines, according to warnings issued by the Federal Aviation Administration. Windows computers and tablets also crashed across a geographic swath extending from the United States to China and Australia, with reports of forced device restarts spreading across social media. Many affected devices were unable to restart, and instead the screens showed blue lines, sometimes called the "blue screen of death."

According to Computer Weekly.com, economic losses resulting from deliberate internet shutdowns by governments reached nearly $24 billion globally in 2022, after 114 major outages in 23 countries. Intentional internet outages affected about 710 million people around the world in 2022, representing a 41% increase year-on-year. For its part, the British Merchant Machine website estimates that a 60-minute blackout in cyberspace would cause the global economy to incur a loss of 1.5 billion pounds.

This number rises to £15 billion after 10 hours and to £37 billion after 24 hours. Last year, 2023, witnessed the longest total period of Internet blockage. But the total economic cost of the internet shutdown fell by 60% to $9.1 billion. Last year saw more than 79,000 hours of internet outage, the highest number in the past five years.

The New Arab