(Credit: Marques Thomas on Unsplash)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) have returned to normal following an internet blackout yesterday.
More than 1,000 websites and apps were affected by the issue, which has led to Liverpool cyber-security experts urging people to stay alert.
Dr Kellyann Stamp, a lecturer of cyber security, said there will be questions today about possible cyber threats now the system is back online.
She said: “It’s important to make sure that the security of the system is maintained, sometimes it’s not just about getting back online, it’s about if this is going to happen again.
“Are there threat actors now in the system? (If so) people can now gain more access to information than they would have been able to before the outage.”
The issue began in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region in northern Virginia, where a critical fault hit key systems.
Popular platforms including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Amazon’s own shopping and Alexa services, Ring doorbells, and several major UK banks such as Lloyds and Halifax were among those hit by the outage.
Users reported being unable to log in, make payments, or access key functions.
Dr Fares Yousefi, a senior lecturer of cyber security at Liverpool John Moores University, said: “This incident shows just how dependent modern life has become on cloud infrastructure. When one part fails, the whole world feels it.”
He said the outage underlined the risks of centralisation in cloud infrastructure.
“Essentially, one regional failure created a global ripple effect due to the heavy centralisation of cloud infrastructure,” he added.
“Such outages disrupt banking, apps, and online platforms, stopping users from accessing critical services. For businesses, this means lost revenue, operational downtime, and reputational damage, especially if they rely on a single provider,” he added.
He said cloud outages often stem from faults in networking, DNS, or databases issues that can escalate quickly because so many services depend on the same systems.
“Even after the fix, some services take extra time to return to normal,” Dr Yousefi explained.
Find out how people in Liverpool City Centre were affected:
@merseynewslive
Feature image: Marques Thomas on Unsplash.
