On August 14th, 2024, Fastnet, a business broadband and hosting provider, experienced a major outage that affected their VMWare hosting platform. This outage caused a wide-scale service disruption, including web, email, DNS hosting, cPanel services, Virtual Datacentre, and some other services. The situation started around 7-8 pm and continued for several hours, leaving customers in the dark about when their services would be restored.

Fastnet’s service status page was offline, and the ISP replaced the front page of their website with a full-screen notice about the problem. The vendor of their VMWare platform was called in to assist with resolving the issue. Specialist engineers arrived at the affected site and worked as fast as possible to facilitate system recovery of the most essential services. However, despite the ISP stating that their connectivity services were unaffected, broadband customers were advised not to reboot their routers to troubleshoot issues with other services.

The most recent update, posted on August 15th, 2024, at 7:27 am, suggests that Fastnet had to build some sort of new ‘recovery infrastructure’ to resolve the issue. The recovery infrastructure is now available, and engineers are working on data migration to the new environment. Still, there is no ETA for a resolution.

This outage is a wake-up call for insurance executives. It highlights the importance of having a contingency plan in place to deal with unexpected events that can disrupt business operations. Insurance companies need to be prepared for such events and have a plan in place to minimize the impact on their customers.

Parametric insurance is an innovative solution that can help insurance companies deal with unexpected events like the Fastnet outage. With parametric insurance, insurers can turn real-time data into insurance. Using unique real-time data and dynamic risk modeling, insurers can build and operate parametric insurance at scale. This type of insurance pays out when a predefined event occurs, such as a power outage or a cyber attack, without the need for a lengthy claims process.

In conclusion, the Fastnet outage serves as a reminder to insurance executives that they need to be prepared for unexpected events that can disrupt business operations. Parametric insurance is an innovative solution that can help insurers deal with such events and minimize the impact on their customers. With Riskwolf, insurers can develop parametric insurance for a variety of scenarios, ensuring that they are always prepared for the unexpected. To learn more about Riskwolf and how we can help your business, get in touch with us today.