// THREAT DETECTION AND DATA PRIVACY TERM

Downtime

Downtime is the period when a system, service, or network is unavailable and not operational. This can be caused by anything from planned maintenance to a cyberattack or equipment failure.

TECHNICAL DEFINITION

Downtime refers to the duration of service unavailability or system inoperability, a critical business continuity metric often resulting from cyber incidents like ransomware or DDoS attacks, hardware/software failures, or network outages, measured by metrics such as Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).

BACKGROUND

In computer security, a vulnerability is a flaw or weakness in a system's design, implementation, or management that can be exploited by a malicious actor to compromise its security.

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SYNONYMS & ALIASES

  • outage
  • unavailability
  • service interruption
  • system failure
  • inoperability
  • offline period

USAGE NOTE

In incident response, minimizing downtime is a primary objective as every second translates directly to financial and reputational damage.

DEVELOPERS

Organizations developing technology related to Downtime.

  • Cloudflare

    Provides a global network that offers web performance and security services, including advanced, always-on DDoS mitigation designed to protect websites, applications, and networks from attacks that cause downtime.

  • Akamai Technologies

    Operates a content delivery network (CDN) and provides cloud security solutions. Their Prolexic platform is a dedicated DDoS scrubbing service that reroutes traffic to stop attacks before they reach a company's infrastructure, ensuring service availability.

  • Veeam

    Develops backup, disaster recovery, and data management software. Their platform enables organizations to quickly recover data and systems after a disruption, such as a ransomware attack, significantly reducing downtime.

  • CrowdStrike

    A cybersecurity technology company whose Falcon platform provides endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and incident response. By preventing breaches and stopping malware like ransomware, it directly prevents a common cause of system downtime.

  • F5, Inc.

    Specializes in application security and delivery. Their products include load balancers and web application firewalls that manage traffic and defend against attacks to ensure applications remain available, responsive, and secure.

  • Rubrik

    A cloud data management and enterprise backup company focused on cyber resiliency. Their platform provides immutable backups and rapid, large-scale recovery capabilities to minimize downtime in the event of a cyberattack.

  • Zscaler

    A cloud security company that operates a Zero Trust Exchange. By securely connecting users to applications regardless of location, it improves resilience and reduces the attack surface, preventing incidents that could lead to service downtime.

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)

    A major cloud provider offering services designed for high availability and fault tolerance. AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS, preventing downtime from volumetric attacks.

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