Global disruption of application and web access.
€1.5bn estimated financial-services impact
Internal · Decision support
When access stops, business stops.
Siemens infrastructure is redundant. The access decision layer is not.
A single Zscaler control-plane failure puts up to
1 · Today
The hidden single point of failure
Around 80% of Siemens' workforce reaches private applications through Zscaler. Infrastructure is globally redundant — but the access decision layer is centralised.
- All access decisions enforced through one centralised control plane
- A failure of this layer immediately prevents access to private applications
- For public applications a "controlled fail-open" lowers security posture
- No automated fallback exists for private access decisions today
Industry reality
When the lights went out
Disruptions in centralised digital services have repeatedly impacted enterprise access and business operations. This is not theoretical.
Widespread system outages impacted business operations worldwide.
~8.5M users affected
Authentication disruptions prevented users from accessing enterprise applications.
109 reported incidents since May 2022
Database outage caused by parallel system updates uploading the same data.
€581M loss potential in a 15-hour outage
Compliance & DORA
Four pillars of regulatory readiness
BCC supports Siemens' obligations under DORA / GDPR / HIPAA / PCI DSS and NIST along the four pillars regulators measure. Each is reinforced by the same architectural change: removing the single decision dependency.
ICT risk management
Globally distributed cloud with a 99.999% uptime target — the access decision layer becomes redundant, not a single dependency.
Incident reporting
Real-time visibility into access failures and automated failover shortens mean time to detect, contain, and report.
Operational resilience
Continuous access during disruption protects critical business processes from cascading impact.
Third-party risk
Reduces residual reliance on a single vendor's control plane — fewer SLA breaches, less regulatory exposure.
4 · Build your case
The live calculator
Every assumption mirrors the BCC Excel. Edit any input to see the impact recompute in real time, save the scenario under a name you can recognise, and share the URL with colleagues.
Revenue impact
€
Total mitigated impact
11,0 M €
- Revenue
- 7,2 M €
- Compliance
- 691 k €
- Productivity
- 3,1 M €
The solution
From disaster recovery to access resilience
Disruption scenario today
- No predefined, automated fallback for access decisions
- Recovery requires detection, investigation, manual response
- Duration and impact are variable and hard to predict
Business Continuity Cloud — resilient access model
- Independent secondary path for access decisions
- Automated failover; no manual intervention
- Continuous access to critical systems
- Minimal to no disruption to business operations
Access disruptions no longer cause business disruptions.
7 · Decision
Accept the risk, or mitigate it.
Accept the risk
- Access disruption will impact operations
- Recovery timelines are scenario-dependent and hard to predict
- No incremental spend
- Risk remains unmanaged
7,2 M € / hour revenue impact, plus reputational damage and compliance exposure.
Mitigate the risk
- Continuous access during disruption scenarios
- Automated failover; mitigated impact on operations
- Incremental spend, bounded and predictable
- Risk is actively managed by built-in capability
Revenue protection · productivity preservation · reduced IT effort · SLA & compliance penalty avoidance.
Appendix
Sources & assumptions
Every value below is editable in the calculator. Defaults are sourced from the Siemens Annual Report 2025 and the Zscaler-supplied BCC business case calculator.
Further reading
- Zscaler Resilience — solution brief (PDF) Vendor description of ZIA/ZPA Business Continuity modes referenced in Section 5.
- Zscaler Resilience — product overview Product page covering the full resilience portfolio and customer guidance.
| Assumption | Default value | Source / Quelle |
|---|---|---|
| Annual revenue | 78.900.000.000 € | Siemens Annual Report 2025 |
| Zscaler user share | 80 % | ~250k of 318k employees have a Zscaler licence |
| Outage duration | 1 h | Executive lever — adjust to model worst-case duration |
| Average downtime penalty | 100.000 € / h | Industry estimate for downtime penalty exposure |
| Baseline availability | 99,9 % | Pre-ZBC service availability baseline |
| ZBC-enhanced availability | 99,98 % | Post-ZBC enhanced availability |
| Workforce affected | 100 % | Share of licensed workforce affected by outage |
| Employees with Zscaler licence | 250.000 | Siemens total employees with Zscaler licence |
| Avg cost / employee hour | 25 € | Conservative estimate for average Siemens employee cost/hour |
| ZBC productivity mitigation | 50 % | Conservative — employees retain ~50% productivity during failover |
| IT staff handling outage | 300 | IT staff dedicated to manual outage remediation |
| Days to mitigate manually | 7 d | Working days the team spends mitigating a major outage manually |
| Avg cost / IT employee hour | 90 € | Estimate for IT staff incl. leadership involvement |
| ZBC automated failover mitigation | 98 % | Automated failover removes ~98% of manual remediation effort |