The average global 5,000 company spends $15 million to recover from a certificate outage Credit: Thinkstock The average global 5,000 company spends about $15 million to recover from the loss of business due to a certificate outage — and faces another $25 million in potential compliance impact.These estimates, based on a Ponemon survey of about 2,400 global respondents, include remediation costs, loss of productivity, lost revenues, and brand image damage.This past April, for example, Instagram forgot to renew its security certificate, causing security warnings to pop up for its website visitors.Also this past spring, smart home company Wink Inc., had to recall its $50 Wink Hubs because of an expired certificate. Even global tech giants are susceptible.Also this spring, Google allowed one of its SSL certificates to expire, causing problems for millions of Gmail users. And, in 2013, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform had a worldwide outage because of an expired SSL certificate.The average organization had two unplanned certificate-related outages over the past two years, according to the survey. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, or 59 percent, said they lost customers to due to unsecured keys and certificates.In addition, the average organization has failed at least one SSL/TLS audit and at least one SSH audit over the past 24 months.When it comes to business continuity costs, the biggest part, or $4.2 million, is brand image damage, followed by $4.1million in lost revenues, and $3.4 million each for lost productivity and remediation expenses. ThinkstockLost business costs included not just the loss of revenues during the outage itself, but also an abnormal turnover of customers and increased customer acquisition costs.For compliance failures, the biggest cost, $7.5 million, is for lost productivity. This is followed by $6.8 million for remediation, $6 million for brand damage, and $5 million for lost revenues. But expired certificates can lead to other, more subtle, problems.“You’re teaching your customers and users to ignore the certificate warnings,” said Gavin Hill, director of product marketing and threat Iintelligence at Venafi, which sponsored the research.It also means that criminals that act fast have a window of opportunity for phishing, he added.“They’re quickly standing up spoofed websites and doing some cookie injections, redirecting folks from an expired site to a spoofed site,” he said. “That’s very possible, absolutely.” According to Ponemon, the risks will only increase with the growth of the Internet of Things.As the Wink Hub outage demonstrates, connected devices can also rely on certificates, as does the growing mobile ecosystem.Companies need to conduct regular audits to locate all the certificates and keys they are using, determine expiration dates, and then put proper policies in place to avoid data breaches, unplanned outages, and failed audits, Venafi recommended. Related content news UK government plans 2,500 new tech recruits by 2025 with focus on cybersecurity New apprenticeships and talent programmes will support recruitment for in-demand roles such as cybersecurity technologists and software developers By Michael Hill Sep 29, 2023 4 mins Education Industry Education Industry Education Industry news UK data regulator orders end to spreadsheet FOI requests after serious data breaches The Information Commissioner’s Office says alternative approaches should be used to publish freedom of information data to mitigate risks to personal information By Michael Hill Sep 29, 2023 3 mins Government Cybercrime Data and Information Security feature Cybersecurity startups to watch for in 2023 These startups are jumping in where most established security vendors have yet to go. By CSO Staff Sep 29, 2023 19 mins CSO and CISO Security news analysis Companies are already feeling the pressure from upcoming US SEC cyber rules New Securities and Exchange Commission cyber incident reporting rules don't kick in until December, but experts say they highlight the need for greater collaboration between CISOs and the C-suite By Cynthia Brumfield Sep 28, 2023 6 mins Regulation Data Breach Financial Services Industry Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe