The diagram below compares potential structural failure due to extreme shearing forces. This is the type of force that would be experienced by a suspension tower. Twisting and other directions are a minor risk, but outside of it simply falling over at the base, shearing is the single largest failure risk that I can think of:
The left design shows the support plates mounted horizontally. For the tower to shear, no actual damage needs to be done to the plates other than a small amount of bending in the sheet metal. Very little force is required to achieve this, especially in smaller gauges. The plates themselves offer very little actual strength to the structure (although they do make convenient steps).
The right design shows the plates mounted horizontally. For the tower to shear, the plates actually need to be fully TORN in half, or have their weld points DESTROYED. It would take easily hundreds of times more force to achieve this than the horizontal mounting.
So if you're building a tower, decide how literal you want your “suicide suspensions” to be!!!
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