The widespread outage was a reminder to diversify our online lives wherever possible.
A major Amazon Web Services outage disrupted scores of online platforms on Monday — leaving people around the world unable to access some banks, chatting apps, online food ordering and more.
History shows these kinds of system outages can be short-lived, and are often minor inconveniences — such as placing a lunch order in person or waiting a few hours for a gaming platform to come back online — than long-term problems, but recovery can be a bumpy road. And for people trying to move money, communicate with loved ones or work using impacted services, disruptions are especially stressful.
Consumers may not realize how many platforms they use rely on the same back-end technology. AWS is one of only a handful of major cloud service providers that businesses, governments, universities and other organizations rely on. Monday’s outage is an important reminder of that — and experts stress it’s important to diversify our online lives where we can, or even have some “old school” alternatives to turn to as a backup plan.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one digital basket,” said Lee McKnight, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, noting these kinds of outages aren’t going away anytime soon.
So what, if anything, can you do to prepare for disruptions? Here are a few tips.
