A major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted numerous apps and websites globally, including Snapchat, Amazon's own retail site, and Ring. The incident has reignited concerns about the internet's over-reliance on a small number of cloud providers.
According to Downdetector, over 2,000 companies were affected, with 8.1 million reports of problems worldwide. In the UK, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, and HMRC experienced issues, while Ring users reported doorbell malfunctions. The outage began around 8am UK time and was largely resolved by evening, though some services faced persistent problems.
Experts argue that the incident underscores the need for diversification in cloud computing. Dr Corinne Cath-Speth of Article 19 stated, 'We urgently need diversification in cloud computing. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse, independent journalism and secure communications cannot be dependent on a handful of companies.'
Cori Crider of the Future of Technology Institute added, 'The UK can’t keep leaving its critical infrastructure at the mercy of US tech giants.' Professor Madeline Carr of University College London noted that while large providers offer resources for security, most agree that over-reliance is risky.
The outage originated from AWS's US-East-1 region in Virginia, affecting services worldwide. Amazon confirmed 'increased error rates and latencies' and implemented limits on requests to aid recovery. The incident follows last year's CrowdStrike outage, which was described as the 'largest in history.'
