// 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
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. In 1995, he was arrested for various computer and communications-related crimes, and spent five years in prison after being convicted of fraud and illegally intercepting communications. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial and sentence were all controversial, as were the associated media coverage, books, and films, with his supporters arguing that his punishment was excessive and that many of the charges against him were fraudulent, and not based on actual losses. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
READ MORE ON WIKIPEDIASYNONYMS & 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.