Google “cost of an IT outage” or any of its variants. The result will be a cascade of links proclaiming some version of, “According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute.” Like an old family legend passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, industry pundits have been using the figure of $5,600/minute for the average cost of an IT outage since 2014. Cited as gospel, the figure has gone largely unchallenged—though Ponemon Institute is sometimes credited with raising Gartner’s ante to $9,000/minute. Upon closer inspection, it appears that the iconic $5,600/minute figure is an urban legend.