Amazon says its cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services, is back up and running normally following a widespread outage on Monday that disrupted businesses, gaming networks, and payment systems across the country.
To understand what may have gone wrong and how vulnerable our online systems really are, Local 4 spoke with Matt Loria, CEO of Auxiom, an IT and cybersecurity services company based in Rochester.
“In the simplest terms, more than likely, what happened is that a change was made and an unexpected outcome occurred,” said Loria. “Some sort of mistake was made, maybe it wasn’t tested correctly before that change was made, and it rolled out, and it brought some things down.”
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is one of the largest cloud providers in the world, handling massive amounts of internet traffic for businesses large and small.
Some have raised concerns that a significant portion of the web relies on a single provider.
“What I would say is, thank goodness this was isolated to just their East Coast infrastructure and not their West Coast as well, because then we could have seen even further widespread outage,” said Loria.
Loria said outages like this one reveal just how interconnected and fragile modern digital systems can be.
“I think it’s a little bit more fragile than most people think, in the sense that so many systems are relying upon it,” Loria said. “However, the reason we don’t see so many outages is because they do have cybersecurity and change controls in place that really prevent a lot of this from happening.”
As of now, Loria said, there’s no indication the outage was related to a cyberattack.
“From all reports that we can see so far, it does look like it was not a security-related incident,” Loria said. “Certainly, time will tell if that could be the case and if it’s something different than what they’re stating.”
Loria offered a few reminders for everyday users to protect their data and stay prepared for future disruptions.
“Make sure everything you can back up is backed up, because these things will happen,” he said. “And from a cybersecurity perspective, please use multi-factor authentication, those little tokens or texts you get in addition to your password.”