A new study by PagerDuty reveals that service disruptions are a pressing concern for IT and business leaders worldwide. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said they expect another major incident within the next year.

The study surveyed senior executives and found a need for incident management strategies to help mitigate the impact of IT outages and maintain customer trust.

Preparedness gaps exist. Eighty-six percent of respondents said in the past there has been an overemphasis on security at the expense of disruption readiness. This imbalance left 83% unprepared for the July global IT outage, exposing vulnerabilities in incident management frameworks. A lack of readiness leads to big challenges, including lost revenue (37%), delayed response times (39%), and disrupted decision-making processes (39%).

While 55% of those surveyed reported adopting an ongoing evaluation mindset, nearly half noted that reliance on manual processes during incidents — seen in 44% of organizations after the July outage — underscores the necessity of modernizing tools and workflows.

Ultimately, these findings stress the need for real-time data tools, effective communication, and cross-department collaboration to minimize the harm of service disruptions.

“The PagerDuty study shows that executives around the globe are shifting their leadership priorities with major incidents in mind, with 100% of those surveyed reporting a heightened focus on preparing for future service disruptions at their companies,” said Eric Johnson (News - Alert), chief information officer at PagerDuty. “CEOs and their boards are now focused on this issue, and with the accelerated pace of AI and other advanced technologies being deployed, companies cannot afford to delay critical technology infrastructure updates.”