Opinion
Not just cyber: The silent threat to user experience
"Customer trust is today’s most valuable business currency — and it’s often lost long before any breach makes it into a security report," writes Ariel Assaraf, Co-Founder and CEO of Coralogix.
In the business discourse of 2025, “cybersecurity” is still largely associated with external threats — hackers, ransomware, viruses, and data breaches. But the more frequent and often more damaging hits to the bottom line come from a much quieter, less publicized threat: system errors, latency, and service disruptions that directly impact user experience. When a website freezes or an app crashes at a critical moment, customers don’t think of cybersecurity — they simply lose patience, close the tab, and move on. In a world where switching providers is just three clicks away, every minute of downtime is revenue lost — and it doesn't always come back.
One of the most illustrative examples in recent years was the global outage of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram on October 4, 2021. For six hours, the world’s most popular apps vanished, and users immediately sought alternative communication platforms. Telegram added over 70 million new users that day, while Facebook reportedly lost over $60 million in ad revenue and had to explain to investors how a single technical glitch could evaporate that amount of money so quickly.
The takeaway for any boardroom is clear: service continuity is not a “technical” issue — it’s about growth, competitiveness, and brand reputation. CEOs who focus solely on monthly transaction volumes often find themselves blindsided by operational incidents that bring those numbers crashing down. As organizations scale, these failures don’t just hurt direct revenues — they chip away at market confidence, stock value, and the ability to attract top talent seeking stable environments.
The more complex issue is that today’s digital systems — built from microservices, deployed across cloud environments, and tied into multiple operational layers — make it increasingly difficult to detect when and why an issue arises. Without true system observability, problems are only discovered once customers have already felt the impact. What follows is a chain reaction: DevOps teams enter reactive mode, sifting through logs manually, guessing at root causes, and working under pressure from stakeholders — all while the system continues to falter.
When operational calm breaks down, so does an organization’s sense of control. Time to resolution stretches, and technical teams find themselves fighting fires instead of building forward. What might have been an isolated incident quickly becomes a pattern — one that erodes progress, innovation, and long-term user trust.
To mitigate this risk, leading organizations are adopting observability platforms that integrate across the entire operational data stack, offering real-time alerts often before end users notice a problem. This is no longer a back-office decision — it’s a strategic imperative. Just as no marketing campaign runs without ROI tracking, no digital platform can operate effectively without real-time insight into its own stability. When uptime and latency metrics begin to appear in executive meetings alongside revenue, churn, and retention, it becomes clear how short the distance is between a “technical hiccup” and a full-blown business crisis.
This shift reflects a broader evolution: the emergence of digital trust infrastructure. It’s not about protecting the business from hackers — it’s about ensuring consistent performance. And to address this threat seriously, executive leadership — not just DevOps or IT — must recognize it as a strategic concern. Decisions around investing in advanced monitoring, setting uptime targets as part of core KPIs, and tracking response time as part of the customer journey are not operational luxuries — they are integral to building resilient, scalable businesses.
The key message for decision-makers is simple: customer trust is today’s most valuable business currency — and it’s often lost long before any breach makes it into a security report. Those who invest in smart observability aren’t just protecting infrastructure — they’re delivering a seamless experience that retains users and builds competitive advantage that can’t be copied with a click.
The author is the Co-Founder and CEO of Coralogix.
