Fewer than one in five businesses say their software testing practices are efficient, new research has found, highlighting the scale of precarity of many companies’ IT systems the in the wake of a string of recent high-profile outages disrupting global infrastructure.

Although 85% of total respondents to a survey commissioned by Leapwork say they have integrated AI apps into tech stacks in the past year, most (68%) have experienced issues with their performance, accuracy, and reliability.

For C-Suites, which accounted for half of the overall survey, this perception is even higher at 73%, compared to 62% for software engineering or technical leads, highlighting the growing need for thorough software testing.

Robert Salesas, CTO of Leapwork, told UKTN: “The CrowdStrike outage serves as a stark reminder of the critical importance of comprehensive software testing and the implementation of progressive release strategies.”

“Insufficient testing can allow critical issues to slip through, leading to widespread disruptions that affect millions of users and compromise business operations.

“The lack of canary releases or phased rollouts prevents organisations from identifying and addressing potential problems on a smaller scale before they escalate. By adopting more rigorous testing protocols and incremental deployment methods, companies can better safeguard against such costly and far-reaching incidents.”

Major banks, media, airports, and businesses, including the London Stock Exchange (LSEG) were severely impacted by a global IT outage stemming from a “defect” in a CrowdStrike update rolled out across Microsoft Windows in July, taking out a large slice of the world’s digital infrastructure and leading to billions of pounds wiped from the market of top tech firms.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz later apologised for the havoc that had been caused by the botched upgrade.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” he told NBC News’ “Today” program.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational,” Kurtz said. “It could be some time for some systems that won’t automatically recover,” he added, but the company “would make sure every customer is fully recovered.”