At a Glance
A major AWS outage on 20th October exposed how dependent businesses are on big name cloud providers, and how this can have a dramatic impact on their business operations. In this piece, we break down what happened and how UK organisations can build more resilient operations with the right hosting and recovery strategies.
Understanding the Amazon Web Services Disruption
On 20th of October 2025, a major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the world’s largest cloud providers, caused disruption across thousands of online services worldwide.
The root cause of the problem was Amazon’s DynamoDB cloud database, responsible for powering millions of apps and websites.
Storing data in flexible “key value” and “document” formats, DynamoDB allows websites to log user interactions including shopping baskets, user logins, transactions and even live game scores.
During the AWS outage, DynamoDB itself didn’t lose data, instead, a fault in the DNS (Domain Name System), meant that other systems temporarily couldn’t find where their data was stored, meaning it wasn’t accessible.
Despite the outage, information remained secure inside Amazon’s servers, but affected apps were unable to access user information, causing them to appear offline for several hours.
In this piece, we explore what happened to AWS, what lessons businesses can learn and how a dedicated, managed cloud hosting provider like BlackBox can keep you up and running.
The AWS Outage In Summary
- AWS reported “significant error rates” for requests to DynamoDB in its US-East-1 region.
- The root cause appears to have been a DNS resolution issue for the DynamoDB API endpoint with services unable to locate their data, even though it was safely stored.
- Many apps and websites that rely on AWS infrastructure experienced outages, failures and delays – from games and streaming services to major banks and government portals.
- By late morning, AWS reported that the issue had been “fully mitigated” for most services, though some backlogs and throttling remained.
Amazon Web Services Disruption
The AWS outage highlights how deeply interconnected the digital economy is and how reliant online services are on their cloud provider.
Millions of websites all over the world rely on cloud-based systems to manage customer interactions from online checkout forms and account logins, to data analytics and payment processing. Major outages highlight the importance of a reliable cloud hosting provider and why bigger companies often aren’t better.
Even businesses that don’t use Amazon Web Services directly may have been affected, if they depend on third-party platforms, software or integrations that do. For example, if your CRM or payment gateway is reliant on AWS, you may have been affected by the outage.
When DynamoDB went down, these dependencies may also have been affected, not because your own infrastructure was broken, but because the systems your business depends on were unable to access their data.
The disruption was seen across a broad range of services across the country, including:
- Digital banking platforms experienced delayed transactions.
- Government portals such as HM Revenue & Customs and local authority systems saw periods of inaccessibility.
- Subscription services, ecommerce sites, and mobile apps all suffered temporary downtime, frustrating users and shaking customer confidence.
For many businesses, the October AWS outage is a reminder that hands-off cloud hosting doesn’t automatically mean resilience and instead highlights the growing importance of a managed hosting service.
Working with a hosting partner like Blackbox ensures workloads are spread across multiple environments, whilst also giving access to 24/7 UK-based support, keeping you protected even when global providers experience large-scale outages.
Contact Blackbox Hosting for always online, reliable, UK based managed cloud hosting.
What UK Businesses Should Learn From AWS’ Downtime
1. Diversify Your Vendor Ecosystem
As with the recent Jaguar Land Rover cyber attack, this outage showed how fragile supply chains can be and how overreliance on a single cloud provider can significantly impact business operations.
Recommended Action: Audit where your workloads are hosted. Look for a managed cloud hosting service that includes built-in redundancy, is UK-based and has active monitoring, giving your business continuity even during global outages.
2. Ensure You Have Visibility Into Your Dependencies
Many businesses don’t realise how indirectly dependent on services like DynamoDB they are. Even if your services are hosted elsewhere, third-party APIs, payment systems or CRM tools can rely on AWS infrastructure. When that fails, your customer-facing systems may fail too.
Recommended Action: Map every dependency from web apps and plugins to data pipelines and integrations. Identify where you’re exposed if a provider experiences downtime. Implement continuous monitoring, and where possible, diversify or replicate critical services to alternative vendors or regions.
To strengthen oversight and control over these systems, you can also align your processes with security frameworks such as Cyber Essentials Plus, which helps businesses assess and improve their cybersecurity and operational resilience.
3. Evaluate Your Backup and Recovery Assumptions
This outage proved that “data safe” doesn’t always mean “data accessible.” In this case, DynamoDB didn’t lose information, instead becoming unreachable for several hours. The real challenge was access continuity, not data loss.
Recommended Action: Regularly test your Backup and Disaster Recovery systems, not only for restoring files but for rapid reconnection and failover. Can your business reroute traffic, access a secondary region, or spin up a backup instance automatically?
BlackBox Hosting’s Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions are specifically designed to minimise downtime, ensuring your data and applications are always recoverable, no matter where the fault lies.
4. Make Continuity and Resilience a Board-Level Concern
Infrastructure failures aren’t just an IT issue, they’re a business continuity risk. If your customers can’t access your platform, make payments, or use key services, the financial and reputational impact can be severe.
Recommended Action: Treat continuity and resilience planning as part of your core strategy. Build a response plan that defines roles, escalation points, and decision-makers during an outage. Schedule regular simulations or “disaster days” to rehearse responses.
BlackBox Hosting can work with you to develop continuity frameworks specifically for your organisation, ensuring compliance with standards like Cyber Essentials and giving your leadership confidence in your ability to withstand major disruptions.
How BlackBox Hosting Minimises Downtime
We recognise that resilience and continuity matter just as much as security. Our managed hosting and backup/disaster-recovery services are designed with the following in mind:
- Multi-region architecture and redundancy to avoid single-point failures.
- Immutable backups and automated replication so you’re ready for failover.
- 24/7 UK-based support so you can respond quickly when things go off track.
- Full transparency and planning for your dependency map, so you know where your risks lie.
If your business has been affected by the AWS outage and you’re looking for a reliable, resilient managed hosting provider — speak to our expert team at BlackBox Hosting.
