AWS Data Centre Disruption Causes Global Service Outages

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is currently facing disruption across core cloud infrastructure, leading to global outages for businesses, government services and everyday users. 

The problems, traced to AWS' North Virginia data centres, affect its DynamoDB and EC2 services – key foundations of Amazon’s cloud computing platform relied upon by thousands of organisations to host applications, store data and manage compute workloads.

“We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region,” AWS confirms in a statement. “This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well.

“During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases.

“Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause.”

AWS disruption hits core data centre services

The root of the issue lies in AWS’ US-EAST-1 region, specifically its Northern Virginia data centre cluster.

The disruption affects core services such as DynamoDB, Amazon’s managed NoSQL database service and EC2, which provides scalable computing power on demand.

These services form the backbone for a vast number of third-party platforms and systems across industries.

When core infrastructure like this fails, it triggers cascading failures across multiple dependent services.

This is what many users are seeing today, with outages impacting applications including Snapchat, Fortnite, Duolingo, Canva, Wordle, Slack, monday.com and Zoom. 

Banking services are also hit, with users locked out of accounts at Lloyds, Barclays and Bank of Scotland, alongside public services like HMRC.

As a critical enabler of cloud services for more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies, AWS plays a central role in enterprise IT operations.

When disruption hits at this level, the impacts stretch well beyond the cloud provider itself.

Outages remain common across cloud platforms

This outage is not an isolated incident.

AWS has a history of major service disruptions that have affected large-scale operations and popular consumer platforms.

In 2012, an AWS failure on Christmas Eve left users unable to stream content on Netflix.

In December 2021, another outage came at the peak of the holiday shopping period, affecting Amazon’s own retail platform and several other enterprise services.

In June 2024, issues with AWS Lambda – the service that lets developers run code without provisioning servers – led to increased error rates across multiple services, once again showing how fragile even the most advanced infrastructure can be.

Cloud rival Microsoft Azure has faced similar challenges. A notable example includes the January 2023 outage that brought down Teams, Outlook and Microsoft 365 due to network issues. Azure also faced a date-handling bug in 2012 linked to leap year miscalculations. In July 2025, Outlook experienced a 19-hour outage affecting millions of users globally.

These incidents show a pattern of vulnerability within hyperscale cloud providers.

With enterprise IT environments deeply integrated into these platforms, any disruption becomes a systemic problem, affecting everything from productivity platforms to compliance-sensitive systems in banking and healthcare.

“When one of the major cloud platforms goes down, it reminds everyone how interconnected modern business systems have become,” says George Foley, Technical Advisor at ESET Ireland, a subsidiary of global software company ESET.

“Even if your own website or app isn’t hosted on AWS, there’s a good chance something you use from your CRM to your payment processor is.

“Outages like this highlight the importance of having resilience plans in place, including backups and alternative routes for essential data and services.”

Financial and operational fallout

The cost of outages like this goes far beyond temporary user frustration.

Internet service disruptions generate billions of dollars in losses each year due to missed revenue, productivity loss and long-term reputational damage.

For mid-sized businesses, just a few minutes of downtime can result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

According to a 2024 survey, 76% of global respondents are running applications on AWS, and 48% of developers use AWS services as part of their workflows. With such a high level of adoption, the question is not whether outages will occur, but how damaging they are when they inevitably do.

Enterprises operating in regulated industries face an added layer of risk.

When cloud services go offline, audit trails may be incomplete and compliance obligations may be compromised. For sectors like finance, telecoms and healthcare, that kind of disruption has serious implications.

AWS' outage highlights the fragility of modern digital infrastructure and reminds data centre operators and cloud architects alike that redundancy, failover planning and multi-region strategies remain critical for continuity.

As digital services continue to rely on a small number of hyperscale platforms, the resilience of those providers becomes central to global operations.