A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has disrupted operations for major companies around the world, underscoring the global reliance on the cloud infrastructure that underpins much of the internet and digital business.
According to Aras Nazarovas, senior security researcher at Cybernews, the disruption was caused by internal DNS failures in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region — one of the cloud provider’s most critical data centre hubs.
“Similar failures have been common causes for major outages in the past, and usually stem from incorrect updated configurations or poor monitoring of expiration timelines for configurations and certificates,” Nazarovas explained.
While there is no indication of a security breach, the outage still qualifies as a cyber incident, given its impact on the availability of services and information. “Failing to keep information or resources available for clients can be classified as a cyber incident, even if there was no malicious intent,” he said.
The outage lasted approximately four hours, affecting a wide range of businesses that depend on AWS for hosting, data storage and application services. The extent of the disruption varied by sector, but analysts warn that such incidents can have serious consequences for critical infrastructure where uptime is essential.
“Similar outages occur almost every year,” Nazarovas noted, adding that this latest incident serves as a reminder of how interconnected software supply chains have become. “A simple issue in a handful of Amazon data centres caused thousands of problems for their clients.”
Experts recommend that organisations prepare for these kinds of disruptions through robust continuity and recovery planning. “In the event of such disruptions, users should immediately seek alternative communication methods — different apps, phone calls, SMS or radio — to coordinate recovery efforts,” said Nazarovas. “It’s good practice to have a Disaster Recovery Plan where alternative communication channels and critical steps have been planned in advance.”
As cloud dependency deepens, the AWS outage serves as a timely warning for organisations to reassess their resilience strategies — ensuring that even the most trusted digital infrastructure isn’t a single point of failure.
