Global internet disruption exposes fragility of cloud reliance

For several hours ealier this week, on Monday, large parts of the global Internet went offline following a major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS),  the cloud computing arm of Amazon that powers much of the world’s online infrastructure. The disruption revealed how deeply dependent modern businesses, governments, and consumers have become on a handful of cloud service providers, and how quickly an unexpected technical failure can ripple across the world.

The scale of the outage and what happened

The outage began at approximately 07:11 GMT and affected more than a thousand online services. Major websites and applications such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, Reddit, and several British government portals, including entertainment and tax services, experienced severe disruptions. Financial institutions, gaming platforms, and communication tools were also hit.

In terms of revenue, AWS dominates the global cloud services market, surpassing major competitors such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Because of its vast customer base, even a brief outage can cause widespread paralysis across sectors, from social media to banking. Experts have since renewed calls for greater diversification in cloud computing to reduce such systemic risks.

The incident originated in one of AWS’s oldest and largest data centres, located in Virginia, USA. The problem began after a technical update to the API of DynamoDB,  a critical AWS database service that stores user data and supports core functions for countless platforms.

The cause

Investigations indicate that a bug introduced during the update affected the Domain Name System (DNS), which acts as the Internet’s directory by converting web domain names into numerical IP addresses. The malfunction prevented applications from locating DynamoDB’s servers, effectively blocking access to the database.

As DynamoDB failed, other AWS services began to cascade into failure. In total, 113 AWS services were disrupted before Amazon engineers isolated the issue. By 10:11 GMT, AWS reported that all systems were operational again, though it warned that some services would take several hours to clear message backlogs.

Impact in India

The effects were particularly noticeable in India’s aviation sector. Several airlines were forced to switch to manual operations after their digital systems went offline, causing hundreds of flight delays and multiple cancellations. The Reserve Bank of India also confirmed that at least ten banks and non-banking financial companies experienced temporary service disruptions, most of which were later resolved.

Platforms affected

According to outage monitoring service Downdetector, dozens of major websites and apps were impacted, including Apple TV, Snapchat, Pinterest, and several gaming services such as Xbox. Communication and productivity platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, Zoom, and Slack also faced temporary downtime.

By Monday afternoon, Amazon confirmed that normal operations had resumed across its cloud infrastructure.

What an outage like this means for a digitally dependent world

An incident of this scale underscores the fragility of a world increasingly reliant on interconnected digital systems. AWS, Microsoft, and Google collectively power much of the global Internet, from financial transactions and communication tools to government services and entertainment platforms. When one of these major cloud providers fails, the consequences extend far beyond technical inconvenience; they expose an economic and operational vulnerability at a planetary scale.

The outage serves as a stark reminder that cloud computing, while efficient and scalable, also concentrates risk. Dependence on a few dominant providers means that a single technical fault or cyber incident can halt essential services for millions. It highlights the urgent need for redundancy, decentralisation, and greater investment in digital resilience, not just among businesses, but also within public infrastructure.

In an era where almost every activity, transaction, and communication depends on online connectivity, outages like this are more than temporary disruptions; they are warning signs of how interdependent, and therefore fragile, the global digital ecosystem has become.