Incident response plans were found to have underperformed in response to the recent CrowdStrike outage.

According to a snap poll conducted by Aon, 83% of risk professionals said their organisation had an incident response plan in place, of which 24% said these plans underperformed.

The poll of 500 risk professionals from across the UK and Europe revealed that 62% were directly or indirectly impacted by the global outage.

Some 54% of respondents said they expected the disruption to last 1 to 2 days. The potential knock-on effects of the outage may in fact be realised over a period of months, Aon noted, highlighting the importance of checking the claim period covered in any insurance policies.

Jane Kielty, CEO of Aon UK, said: “The recent global CrowdStrike event underscores the need for preparedness and proactivity that can ensure organisations are in the best position to respond to worst-case scenarios. Every day our clients tell us it’s becoming harder to keep ahead of these events and to make the right decisions if they occur.

“We’ve identified technology as one of four interconnected megatrends driving this complexity and volatility. While technology has created growth opportunities, it has also exposed companies to new and evolving risks. The responses to polling on our webinar highlight the necessity for businesses to adopt proactive strategies to navigate the implications both of this particular incident, but also to be sufficiently guarded against any future disruptions.”

Amongst other findings of Aon’s poll, curiously only 39% of respondents highlighted vulnerability to a data breach or cyber attack.

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