Amazon AWS back to normal after major global outage
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud services provider, announced on Monday afternoon that its infrastructure has returned to normal parameters, after a massive outage that disrupted the work of thousands of companies and applications around the world.
The incident, which occurred on October 20, 2025, caused disruptions for popular services such as Snapchat, Reddit, Venmo, Zoom, Canva, and Duolingo, as well as numerous financial platforms, gaming apps, and even public services.
Root cause: Network issues in AWS data center in Virginia
Amazon explained that the failure was caused by an internal subsystem responsible for monitoring network health within its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service.
This issue affected load balancers, preventing applications from properly accessing AWS databases, such as DynamoDB, used to store critical user data.
The outage was located in the US-EAST-1 data center, located in northern Virginia, a region known for similar incidents in 2020 and 2021.
AWS outage had a global impact on businesses and users
The outage was felt from London to Tokyo, affecting electronic payments, banking apps and communication platforms. In the UK, banks such as Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland, as well as telecoms providers such as Vodafone and BT, reported major problems.
Ookla, which operates the Downdetector platform, announced that over 4 million users have reported difficulties accessing various services.
Experts estimate that the several-hour outage resulted in millions of dollars in losses for companies around the world, especially those dependent on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure.
The vulnerability of the modern digital world
Cybersecurity specialists have once again drawn attention to the fragility of global digital infrastructures.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, said that the increasing reliance on a very small number of cloud providers represents a serious vulnerability for the global economy.
For his part, Professor Ken Birman from Cornell University emphasized that software developers need to implement better fault tolerance measures, including backup solutions on other cloud platforms.
“Companies that try to cut costs and skip protective measures should be the first to be held accountable for failures like this,” Birman explained.
Lessons for the future: redundancy and diversification
The AWS incident highlights the urgent need for companies to diversify their digital infrastructure. Exclusive dependence on a single cloud provider can have catastrophic consequences, not only for companies but also for end users.
Specialists recommend implementing a multi-cloud strategy, combining multiple providers, such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, to prevent such situations.
Although Amazon was able to quickly restore normal operation of AWS, the incident of October 20, 2025 remains a wake-up call for the entire IT industry. In a digitally interconnected world, the continuity of cloud services is no longer just a technical matter, but one essential for the stability of the global economy.
Source: reuters.com
