3/2 Update: Amazon Web Services has released details on what caused the outage. The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) team was debugging an issue causing the S3 billing system to progress more slowly than expected. During that process, Amazon stated that “Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended.” Indeed, it was a “typo” that took down many websites for four hours. Nonetheless, in some instances, a typo can be a good thing, like the Bangladesh Bank cyber incident in 2016 in which a hacker’s typo helped stop a billion dollar bank heist. Though that was only after the hacker stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank in a matter of hours. And, in Amazon’s case while the typo was certainly not a good thing, it is certainly a learning experience for all of us, as Amazon stated, “We will do everything we can to learn from this event and use it to improve our availability even further.” For those companies that are exploring cyber insurance, or who already have a cyber insurance policy, this is just another reason why working with an experienced cyber insurance broker who understands these issues is crucial and should not be taken lightly.
Today everything we touch, seems to be interconnected in some way with technology which brings along risks that often can’t be envisioned until they happen. Indeed, it is becoming impossible at times to guess all of the possible risks when introducing new technology, and one can only hope they have done their best to plan for as many as possible. For those risks that are impossible to predict, when they happen, that’s when steps must be taken to minimize the damages and chances of those unknown risks from reoccurring.
Life and business have become technology dependent upon 24/7 uptime. Though for the most part, it is not a guarantee, and it could certainly be argued whether uptime is a right or a privilege, especially when we’re paying out money for that 24/7 technology service.
In addition, whether we consider our 24/7 technology uptime, a right or a privilege, we are dependent upon it, and have turned a blind eye to the fact that things that often stay up, can most certainly go down, and when they go down they can fall hard and take down many things with it. When that happens, we’re at the mercy of the service provider to get things back up and running. In some extreme cases, it can take weeks, and in other cases, hours.
Four hours. That is how long the Amazon Web Services S3 web-based storage service was down. Four hours is not a long time. Though this caused headaches for hundreds of thousands of companies and websites that depend on 24/7 uptime. The 4-hour outage led to service that was either partially or fully broken on websites, apps and devices upon which rely on AWS.
Nonetheless, an AWS outage, regardless of how many minutes, hours, or days involved, causes cascading damages nationwide, and while the side effects during the outage are certainly numerous, the after effects are countless.
Whether you’re a payment processor, like Stripe that relies on AWS for 24/7 uptime, or you’re Hoopla that relies on AWS to host its user viewing infrastructure, bringing the company’s services to a halt when an outage strikes, an outage of any time length is a major issue that affects many, many customers.
While it has not yet been reported on how or why the outage happened, and depending on that how and why, and depending on the cyber insurance coverages in place, cyber insurance could have helped play a key role for many companies, if AWS was down for many more hours.
Depending on the cyber insurance policy, there is more often than not, a minimum waiting period that applies to an outage before coverage applies. In addition, many more companies are choosing to forego having their own internal servers, and infrastructure and are entirely dependent on AWS (or another cloud service provider), and depending on the cyber insurance policy selected, this may or may not be an issue, and may or may not be covered. You will most certainly want to speak with an experienced cyber insurance broker to learn how your company can be covered when your cloud service provider brings your company’s operations to a halt.
For help with your company’s cyber insurance, please complete our cyber insurance quote request form or give us a call at 855.CUT.RISK (288-7475).
Request Your Copy Now