During our crisis communication training courses we tell delegates a crisis can come in many shapes...
“Are you planning on doing a crisis comms blog on the AWS outage?”
That message was the moment a company I had never heard of suddenly became the focus of my attention.
And I’m sure it was a similar position for countless comms and PR teams as a Monday morning of digital disruption caused crisis communication plans to be activated.
AWS – or Amazon Web Services – is a cloud computing giant (and a subsidiary of Amazon, which I have heard of), and it became the name on everyone’s minds as its outage caused havoc.
According to Downdetector, the issue impacted more than 1,000 companies.
Snapchat, Ring doorbells, Uber, Canva, McDonald’s, and Reddit were among the big-name apps and websites that saw thousands of user reports of issues. Even the Amazon shopping platform went down.
Although the issue stemmed from problems at Amazon's massive data centre site in Northern Virginia, UK organisations, including Lloyds bank, National Rail, and HMRC, were widely impacted. And semi-automated offside technology could not be used in last night's Premier League match.
Who knew so much of the internet relies on just one company to work properly?
Amazon said the underlying issue was resolved shortly after midday. But users continued to experience problems, particularly in the US, where financial apps and websites were hit.
The story quickly gained traction and dominated the news agenda:
The crisis is reminiscent of the CrowdStrike one that struck last year.
A fault in the company’s software update linked to Microsoft Windows caused delays at airports, disrupted rail travel, impacted emergency services, prevented people from making GP appointments, and took down payment systems.
It also took several TV stations off air, including Sky News.
And this is one of the crisis comms lessons from this latest outage – systems are increasingly interconnected (a third of the internet reportedly relies on AWS) and fragile.
We are all reliant on the cloud. But mass outages are becoming a growing problem, and that does not just present problems for the techies.
Joe Tidy, the BBC’s cyber correspondent, said: “When one big company has a glitch, much of modern life and business comes to a standstill.”
This means your organisation’s next crisis – and threat to its reputation – could be caused by something completely beyond your control.
Tech glitches might not be your fault, but they could be your next huge problem.
Take Lloyds as an example. Angry customers took to X to complain about being unable to use its internet banking services.
One said: “My thoughts are with everyone left stranded or left hungry due to Halifax/Lloyds not being able to make a simple banking app work.”
Another said: For everyone coming on here looking for assurance that it's not just them - yes, Lloyds is down. App, banking website, the lot.”
In response, the bank said: “You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today. We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We're sorry about this. Please bear with us as we investigate this.”
Lloyds opted to make it clear blame for the outage lay at the hands of AWS. But its reputation was still in the firing line.
When users find they can’t access your service, they don’t really care that it is because your cloud service provider has gone down.
They are frustrated and angry. And, in some cases, panicked.
Handled poorly, those emotions and relationships can take a long time to repair. As we always stress during our crisis communication training, trust takes a long time to build and can be broken in an instant.
What else does this mean for you?
Well, your crisis communications plan must be adapted to include different IT failures.
Consider the ‘what ifs’. What if our services go down? What if we are hacked? What if a third-party supplier failure makes your services unusable?
Part of the planning should involve having holding statements in place that can be easily adapted when a crisis strikes.
And identifying spokespeople who can communicate under pressure and make complex problems understandable. During the AWS outage, the company provided regular updates on its ‘service health’ webpage. But the language used would have only been understood by technical professionals – not ideal for keeping the public up to date and rebuilding trust.
Once this is in place, test your plans – and crisis team – with realistic crisis management testing exercises.
Part of your plan should ensure someone has responsibility for ensuring any scheduled promotional posts or emails do not go out while you are in the firing line. The Guardian reported that yesterday’s widespread disruption did not stop Amazon from sending out an email promoting an upcoming AWS event.
It said: “The company sent an email to AWS customers several hours into the mass outage, reminding them to register for the event intended to solidify the company’s hold on the cloud market.”
Timing is everything.
Storms in the cloud
The AWS story has highlighted again how much we all rely on the cloud.
And that when storms build in the cloud, the ripple effects can quickly cascade and be far reaching.
Crises caused by failing IT are not an ‘if’. They are a ‘when’.
Are you prepared?
Media First are media and communications training specialists with nearly 40 years of experience.
We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
Click here to find out more about our crisis communication training courses and crisis management testing.
