A major outage at Amazon Web Services in the US has sent shockwaves around the globe, with many of the world’s biggest apps and websites – including Snapchat, Ring, Lloyds Banking Group, Roblox, Amazon, Prime Video, Fortnite, Wordle, HMRC, Vodafone, and PlayStation – going tits up.
AWS, which powers large swathes of the Internet, claims the majority of its services are now recovering, insisting: “We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share.”
The issue, which began around 8am in the UK, or midnight pacific time, triggered “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”, although problems at AWS can quickly hit the rest of the Internet, bringing down websites that might have no apparent connection to Amazon itself.
Emarketer senior analyst Gadjo Sevilla commented: “The operational failure, affecting more than 70 AWS services, makes evident just how deeply modern commerce, communication, and entertainment depend on a single cloud backbone.
“Over reliance on single services now threatens more than uptime — it endangers brand reputation and customer trust. Anticipating outages means planning for multi-points of failure, ensuring redundancy while online ecosystems and infrastructure become more interdependent.”
And, with global outages often making companies more vulnerable to hack attacks, cyber security specialist NordVPN is urging businesses and consumers alike to take precautionary measures.
Chief technology officer Marijus Briedis said: “Outages like this highlight a serious issue with how some of the world’s biggest companies often rely on the same digital infrastructure, meaning that when one domino falls, they all do.
“From streaming services to online banking, so much of our digital life depends on just a few cloud providers. While AWS might already have found the technical fault, this still provides a prime opportunity for hackers to look for vulnerabilities while defences may be down for affected companies.
“This is a cybersecurity issue as much as a technical one. True online security isn’t only about keeping hackers out, it’s also about ensuring you can stay connected and protected when systems fail.
“All of the affected companies should be using trusted, encrypted connections, backing up important data, and avoiding reliance on a single provider for their global reach.
Briedis maintains that while there may not be a direct risk to consumers at the moment, in a year when cyberattacks against companies have surged, people should take this as a warning sign to keep their details secure.
He added: “Make sure your passwords are long and unique, store them safely in an encrypted password manager, and enable two-factor authentication.
“In the hours ahead, as AWS works to fix the issue, look out for potential phishing emails or messages that try to deceive you into clicking on malicious links or ask you to urgently change your details to protect your account. These could be attempts to infect your devices with malware or steal your data.”
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