On October 20th, millions experienced significant internet disruptions due to a fault at Amazon Web Services (AWS), affecting banking apps, government services, and major platforms like Reddit and Snapchat. Reports indicated over 6.5 million incidents globally, predominantly in the US and UK. AWS attributed the outage to a network connectivity issue within its US-EAST-1 region, causing failures across numerous services, including financial institutions like Lloyds and Halifax. This incident raised serious concerns about reliance on a few tech giants for critical infrastructure, prompting UK politicians to question AWS’s status as a “critical third party.” Experts highlighted that the interdependence of AI services and cloud systems could lead to widespread instability if major vendors face outages. While many services have since recovered, the situation underlines the vulnerabilities inherent in the increasing dependence on cloud technology. Companies are now urged to rethink their infrastructure strategies for greater resilience.
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