London – 9 July 2026: A new report from the Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) and Parametrix shows that more than 60% of UK companies are dependent on cloud services for critical functions, rising to over 80% for FTSE 100 companies. The high level of cloud dependence means that cloud outages disproportionately affect some of the UK’s most economically important businesses.
The report identifies Amazon Web Services (AWS) eu-west-1 cloud region in Dublin and the AWS us-east-1 cloud region, in Northern Virginia, a critical hub of global cloud infrastructure that supports thousands of businesses and digital services worldwide, as the largest aggregation points where failures could trigger widespread economic disruption. The analysis revealed that a 24-hour outage in these regions could result in estimated revenue losses of £1 billion and £650 million, respectively. These figures only include losses to companies directly using the affected cloud regions, and exclude any downstream impacts on dependent firms and supply chains.
The report analysed cloud usage of UK companies of all sizes and industries and was carried out to support the Cyber Monitoring Centre’s work to assess the financial impact of major cyber events.
Of those using the cloud, 80% of all UK organisations are dependent on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform services. Half of FTSE 100 companies are dependent on UK and Ireland cloud regions, while the other half have exposure to regions outside the UK. Small companies rely more heavily on UK and Ireland cloud regions whereas large companies have a greater distribution across continents.
Among large and FTSE 100 companies, cloud dependency is highest in Health (91%) and Software & IT Services (90%), followed by Finance and Transportation (both 76%). Manufacturing, Retail/Wholesale, and other sectors show lower cloud dependency (57% to 66%), but still represent significant absolute exposure given their economic weight.
Will Mayes, CEO of The Cyber Monitoring Centre explains, “This paper has been developed at an important stage in the UK’s adoption of cloud computing. Nearly 80% of companies in the UK with more than £50 million of revenue are reliant on cloud infrastructure and many of these use the cloud for business critical operations.
“Mapping out cloud data usage provides a valuable starting point for the CMC’s analysis of future cloud failure events. Actual losses would likely end up being significantly higher when accounting for the knock-on impacts to customers of cloud users, and this will be an important element of our analysis if a major cloud outage occurs.
“The findings reveal a UK economy which is increasingly dependent on cloud infrastructure, with exposure concentrated at a small number of critical aggregation points. This concentration creates systemic vulnerabilities that require coordinated action from companies, insurers, regulators, and policymakers to manage effectively. This isn’t about stepping back from the cloud; it’s about recognising that cloud is now part of our critical infrastructure and designing, governing and investing accordingly” Mayes concluded.
Sharon Haran, Chief Commercial Officer, Parametrix, also shares, “Cloud services have become one of the most important layers of critical infrastructure, yet most organisations have only a limited understanding of where their dependencies actually lie. You can’t manage, monitor, or transfer a risk that you haven’t first identified and quantified. We’re proud to partner with the Cyber Monitoring Centre on this analysis, which gives UK businesses a clearer picture of where cloud exposure is concentrated and what a major outage could mean for both individual organisations and the UK economy.”
The report can be downloaded here.
About The Cyber Monitoring Centre
The Cyber Monitoring Centre is a non-profit organisation responsible for analysing and categorising cyber events that impact UK organisations. Events are categorised by an independent technical committee of cyber experts, based on analyses of data from leading data providers. Event categorisations and reports are provided at no cost to interested organisations and individuals to help improve understanding of the impact of cyber events, and stregthen cyber mitigation and response plans.
This white paper represents part of the CMC’s broader effort to build foundational understanding of UK digital dependencies and vulnerabilities, enabling more effective response when major incidents occur.
For more information visit https://cybermonitoringcentre.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn.
About Parametrix
Parametrix, the leading provider of digital infrastructure insurance, protecting organizations against downtime across cloud, AI, SaaS and data center ecosystems. Leveraging a proprietary network of monitoring systems, the company collects and analyzes billions of data points on the performance and availability of critical infrastructure, enabling real-time underwriting and claims automation. Parametrix’s solutions help businesses, data center stakeholders, and (re)insurers to quantify, manage, and transfer the financial risks of downtime with unmatched precision. The company is a Managing General Agent and Lloyd’s Coverholder, with policies backed by major A-rated global insurers, and is headquartered in New York.
Parametrixinsurance.com