Ranking The World's Most Critical Industries

This report ranks the top 7 critical industries based on the impact of a disruption in that industry. It also lists the top critical industries in terms of financial impact & identifies 3 emerging industries that are rising in criticality as they grow & evolve.

1. Utilities

Downtime within the Utilities industry has an immediate and broad impact, can create societal disruption, and often ripples across a ton of different industries, paralyzing business and commerce.

2. Mass Transit

Rail transportation’s impact of downtime tends to be immediate and creates societal disorder among commuter’s dependent on rail for basic transportation.

3. Telecommunications

Telecom providers not only prioritize & invest in critical systems to ensure availability, they spend millions in marketing dollars to promote the reliability of their networks to enhance customer confidence.

4. Oil & Gas Production

In Oil & Gas, safety comes first & there is no compromise on it. Specifically, the industry believes in multiple redundancies & continuous power to assure that all systems are online 100% of the time, even in an emergency shutdown situation.

5. Cloud & Colocation Services

Their business model in this industry is directly dependent on availability, so, they have a strong financial incentive to protect their customers from disruption.

6. Defense

The defense industry has high standards for its critical systems as they may be required to support live command & control for battlefield operations. Life & death decisions are made based on the info provided by critical systems.

7. Smart Cities

Smart Cities were rated highly critical based on the financial impact, immediacy of impact, ripple effect, media/public outrage and societal impact of a disruption.