Major Global Outage Hits Amazon Web Services
On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) — the world’s largest cloud computing provider — experienced a massive outage that rippled across the globe. The incident, centered in its US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region, disrupted hundreds of popular platforms and applications.
According to AWS, customers began reporting “increased error rates and latency” around 3:11 a.m. ET, with most services showing signs of recovery by 6 a.m. ET. The outage temporarily disabled access to platforms such as Snapchat, Alexa, Ring, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Fortnite, among many others. Business and government websites in the UK and Europe, including Lloyds Bank and HM Revenue & Customs, were also affected.
AWS Investigates the Cause
AWS has not yet released a full Post-Event Summary, but early reports suggest the issue may have stemmed from failures within key internal systems in the Northern Virginia region — historically the backbone of many AWS services. The company posted ongoing updates to its Service Health Dashboard, noting that recovery was underway within hours.
The outage highlighted once again how dependent much of the internet remains on a single cloud region. Although AWS operates multiple global data centers, many customers rely heavily on US-East-1, making even localized incidents feel global in scale.
Lessons on Cloud Dependency and Resilience
Technology analysts and cybersecurity experts say the 2025 AWS outage underscores the risks of cloud concentration. With millions of businesses relying on AWS for storage, hosting, and infrastructure, a single regional failure can cause cascading disruptions.
To prevent similar fallout, companies are now being urged to implement multi-region redundancy, disaster-recovery plans, and failover systems that can quickly redirect traffic to unaffected regions. Industry experts also recommend testing backup strategies regularly and investing in observability tools to detect problems early.
Despite the disruption, most AWS services were restored by mid-morning, and Amazon confirmed that its teams were conducting a full review. The company promised a detailed report explaining the incident’s root cause and long-term preventive measures.
More…
- https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c5y8k7k6v1rt
- https://www.fastcompany.com/91425078/aws-outage-amazon-google-concentration
- https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/well-known-internet-sites-hit-amazon-web-services-outage
Hi, I’m Daniel. I’m a big coffee enthusiast who loves traveling and discovering new places. When I’m not on the road, I enjoy spending quality time with my family and planning our next adventure.
