September 2025 Summaries

Runner Replicas, a new feature in Runbook Automation, enhances the reliability and scalability of automation processes by allowing multiple instances of the same Runner to operate as a distributed and fault-tolerant service. This advancement transforms the automation engine from a single execution point into a resilient and horizontally scalable system, eliminating manual interventions and enabling engineering teams to focus on strategic tasks. Runner Replicas can be deployed across different hosts, ensuring job continuity and performance even if a host fails or demand spikes. They allow for regional distribution, providing geographic affinity and execution resilience without complex scheduling. The feature supports both controlled environments and ephemeral infrastructures, with the flexibility to manually provision replicas or let them scale automatically. By reducing operational overhead and minimizing failure risks, Runner Replicas offer immediate business value and confidence in large-scale automation, ensuring that the automation process itself does not become a point of fragility. Available in Runbook Automation 5.15, Runner Replicas are accessible in both SaaS and self-hosted editions, with setup instructions provided in the technical documentation.

AI-powered automation is transforming incident response by freeing up human teams to focus on high-impact tasks, ultimately improving the experience for stakeholders, SREs, and users during system outages. At a PagerDuty event, industry leaders highlighted the benefits of AI in context-gathering, stakeholder communications, and enhancing user experience. Automation reduces the time SREs spend on manual tasks by quickly providing relevant data, allowing them to resolve issues more efficiently, which reduces mean time to restore (MTTR) and minimizes the financial and reputational impacts of outages. AI also tailors communications for different stakeholders, ensuring everyone receives timely and appropriate updates without overburdening the technical teams. This approach not only enhances the user experience by fostering trust and reducing downtime but also allows organizations to focus more on strategic interactions and personalized customer engagement, thereby strengthening relationships and increasing revenue potential.

PagerDuty's integration into the Glean MCP Directory marks a significant advancement in AI-powered incident management by enabling seamless connectivity between PagerDuty's incident data and any AI tool within an organization's stack through the standardized Model Context Protocol (MCP). This partnership allows organizations to access critical incident information and automate incident management workflows via natural-language commands, directly within their existing work environments such as chat, AI assistants, or custom agents. Over 250 customers have already adopted PagerDuty's local MCP server, with expectations for further growth following the Glean partnership. Key use cases include AI-powered incident search and summarization, automated knowledge capture for post-incident reviews, and AI agents for faster resolution, all aimed at enhancing operational efficiency and allowing teams to focus on more impactful problems. As PagerDuty continues to lead in AI-driven operations, its MCP server is easily accessible through Glean's directory and GitHub, promising to transform incident management in the AI era.

Business leaders' optimism toward AI agents has transformed into widespread enthusiasm, reflected in the 24-point increase in company deployment over six months, according to PagerDuty's research. AI agents are becoming mission-critical in operations, with 75% of companies using more than one agent. Key use cases, such as coding and incident response, highlight AI's role in accelerating development and enhancing crisis management. The report reveals a growing trust in AI outputs, driven by improved quality and governance investments, although leaders acknowledge the need for robust error detection and mitigation procedures. As AI agents integrate into daily operations, organizations face the challenge of managing increased complexity, necessitating skilled personnel to oversee systems and outputs. The rise in AI trust has led to a flywheel effect, where increased deployment fosters further confidence, but organizations must strategically implement AI to build competitive advantages and avoid being outpaced by more tech-savvy competitors.

PagerDuty has collaborated with Beneficial Returns, an impact investment fund, to drive social and environmental progress by providing unrestricted funding and a recoverable grant to support social enterprises addressing poverty and environmental issues. One beneficiary, Ecofiltro, is tackling Guatemala's water crisis by offering affordable, high-quality drinking water solutions to urban and rural families, reducing reliance on bottled water and firewood-dependent boiling methods. With the backing of PagerDuty and Beneficial Returns, Ecofiltro improves community health and financial savings while supporting its network of customers, factory workers, and staff. PagerDuty remains dedicated to aiding mission-driven organizations and encourages exploration of its global impact initiatives via its Impact Hub.

PagerDuty.org is committed to addressing climate change and promoting sustainability through investments in innovative technology solutions and partnerships with organizations focused on climate resilience and disaster response. Among its initiatives is the support for Watch Duty, a nonprofit that provides real-time disaster alerts, which PagerDuty helps scale with its Operations Cloud to enhance emergency response capabilities. Additionally, PagerDuty collaborates with Beneficial Returns to fund social enterprises like Ecofiltro and Estufas Chispa in Guatemala, supporting their efforts to scale low-carbon technologies that provide both environmental and societal benefits. The company also aims to align its operations with science-based climate targets by investing in Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and partnering with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to support the Tribal Renewable Energy Fund, which promotes energy independence and local STEM education for tribal nations. Through these efforts, PagerDuty seeks to empower mission-driven teams and foster long-term systems change for a more equitable and sustainable future.

Modern development tools, CI/CD infrastructure, and AI have accelerated software release cycles, increasing both innovation and complexity, thus heightening the risk of incidents that can harm business operations. AI agents play a crucial role in automating routine incident response tasks such as noise reduction, alert triage, initial diagnostics, and status communication, allowing engineers to focus on complex problems requiring human judgment. However, human expertise remains essential for handling novel incidents, cross-system dependencies, and business-critical situations, where the implications extend beyond technical concerns. To effectively integrate AI into incident response, organizations should develop detailed playbooks that define the scope of AI actions, establish clear escalation paths, and document decision logic and organizational knowledge. This collaborative approach reduces engineer burnout, enhances problem detection, and allows more time for preventive infrastructure work, fostering a more resilient incident response strategy.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, the traditional approach of starting small with pilot projects and gradually scaling up is becoming outdated, as emphasized by Cloudflare CIO Mike Hamilton. Instead, organizations should adopt a more agile five-week strategy to efficiently integrate AI solutions, balancing risk management with speed. This involves a structured process of reviewing past experiments to identify viable projects, conducting focused verification sprints to assess their effectiveness, and scaling successful pilots across the enterprise. The approach emphasizes maintaining robust security measures and human oversight for customer-facing outputs, while also fostering a culture of rapid iteration and learning through real incidents. By capturing and reusing effective workflows, organizations can streamline AI adoption and enhance their operational capabilities.

Choosing the right incident management software is crucial for maintaining operational resilience in increasingly complex IT environments, where customer expectations for continuous service are high. Effective incident management requires integrated platforms that handle the entire incident lifecycle, from detection to resolution and learning, rather than fragmented tools for alerting and on-call management. Comprehensive solutions, such as PagerDuty, provide AI-driven recommendations, autonomous agents, and intelligent orchestrations to proactively improve operational maturity and prevent future issues. These platforms emphasize seamless integration with existing tech stacks, offering extensive pre-built and native interface integrations for enhanced operational value. Advanced incident management tools prioritize enterprise-grade reliability, incorporating AI and automation to reduce noise, accelerate response times, and provide actionable insights. They offer flexible automation to accommodate unique workflows, comprehensive learning and analytics for post-incident analysis, and a proven track record at scale, demonstrated by enterprise customer bases and measurable outcomes. PagerDuty, in particular, distinguishes itself with its robust integration ecosystem, end-to-end incident management capabilities, and transparent value, delivering a significant ROI and reduced downtime for its customers.

AI's rapid advancement offers transformative potential for workplaces, yet many employees still struggle to integrate AI tools into their daily tasks. The challenge lies not in technology but in adapting employee training and adoption strategies, focusing on people rather than tools. Successful organizations prioritize understanding employees' workflow issues and selecting AI solutions tailored to address these challenges, thus fostering trust and usage. Mapping workflows to pinpoint AI opportunities, designing practical and relatable training programs, and fostering broad AI fluency are crucial steps toward effective adoption. Ongoing support systems, such as dedicated experimentation time and peer learning platforms, are essential to maintaining momentum and encouraging continuous growth. By linking AI skill development to professional advancement and measuring capability building alongside productivity, organizations can cultivate a culture of innovation and adaptability, ultimately enhancing efficiency and creativity in tackling complex problems.

PagerDuty was informed in August 2025 about a security breach involving Salesloft's Drift application, which compromised the OAuth integration with Salesforce, affecting some PagerDuty customer support and case management data. While there is no evidence of unauthorized access to the PagerDuty platform itself, the breach exposed customer contact information and sensitive data, including API access tokens, leading PagerDuty to revoke affected API keys and advise customers to rotate their credentials as a precaution. The company is actively investigating the issue, has deactivated the integration between Salesforce and Drift, and is working with security partners to enhance the security of third-party integrations. Despite the breach originating from a third-party service, PagerDuty acknowledges its responsibility in safeguarding customer data and has apologized for the impact on its customers, urging vigilance against possible phishing and social engineering attacks.

PagerDuty was notified in August 2025 by Salesloft about a security breach involving Salesloft’s Drift application, which compromised the OAuth integration flow with Salesforce, leading to unauthorized access to some of PagerDuty's Salesforce data used for customer support and case management. The exposed data primarily consisted of customer contact information, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, and, in some cases, sensitive information like API access tokens. While there is no evidence of unauthorized access to the PagerDuty platform itself, the company has taken proactive measures by revoking affected API keys, contacting impacted customers, and recommending all customers rotate their credentials as a precaution. Additionally, PagerDuty has disabled integrations with Drift, continues to investigate the incident with third-party security partners, and emphasizes vigilance against phishing and social engineering attacks. The company acknowledges its responsibility for third-party tools it utilizes and assures customers that official communications will only come through trusted channels.

Incident Response Automation, as facilitated by the PagerDuty Operations Cloud, is transforming how operations and SRE teams handle incidents by enabling faster, more consistent resolutions through predefined remediation actions. This automation significantly reduces Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) by allowing responders to execute validated workflows directly from various interfaces, such as the PagerDuty Web UI, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and others, thus eliminating the need for manual handovers and minimizing human error. By automating service restarts, infrastructure remediation, and ticket integrations, teams achieve a standardized response process that ensures high-quality outcomes regardless of the responder's experience level. PagerDuty also incorporates safety controls like approval gates, rollback capabilities, and role-based access control to maintain operational safety and accountability. With over 700 integrations, the platform unifies incident management, communication, and automation, reducing context switching and improving response efficiency. The real-world application of these systems has shown measurable business benefits, such as reduced incident duration and improved operational efficiency, as demonstrated by enterprises like a global automotive manufacturer and a Canadian telecom provider. Ultimately, PagerDuty's Incident Response Automation establishes a new standard for digital operations, offering 24/7 coverage without on-call burnout, ensuring compliance, and allowing organizations to focus on delivering superior customer experiences.