Industrial Cybersecurity & OT Risk calculator

SCADA Outage Cost Calculator

Use this calculator to estimate business cost from a SCADA or HMI outage. It supports loss scenarios where operator visibility, supervisory control, alarm handling, historian data, or production coordination is impaired.

What this calculator does

  • Estimate SCADA outage cost using outage hours, cost per hour, affected scope, and fixed recovery cost.
  • Use it when evaluating SCADA server, HMI, historian, or operator visibility downtime exposure.
  • The result estimates cost for a SCADA outage scenario.

Formula used

  • Variable SCADA outage cost = SCADA outage hours × operational cost per outage hour × affected SCADA operating scope
  • Total SCADA outage cost = variable SCADA outage cost + fixed SCADA recovery cost

Inputs explained

  • SCADA outage hours: Estimate hours of impaired SCADA, HMI, alarm, historian, or supervisory control function.
  • Operational cost per outage hour: Use production loss, manual operation cost, delayed shipments, overtime, quality risk, or utility impact per hour.
  • Affected SCADA operating scope: Use 100% for a sitewide outage or a lower share for one control room, line, process unit, or facility system.
  • Fixed SCADA recovery cost: Include server recovery, HMI validation, historian checks, alarm review, vendor support, and restart coordination.

How to use the result

  • Use it to justify redundancy, backup servers, alarm continuity, recovery testing, and monitoring coverage.
  • It does not model safety impact and should be reviewed with operations and controls engineering.

Common questions

  • What is the SCADA outage cost calculator for? It estimates operational cost from loss or impairment of SCADA or HMI functions.
  • What information should I enter? Use outage hours, cost per hour, affected scope, and fixed recovery cost.
  • What does the result tell me? The result helps prioritize SCADA resilience and recovery investments.
  • When is the result only an estimate? It is only an estimate when manual operating mode, product mix, restart complexity, or outage scope is uncertain.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.