Cloud Outages Highlight the Need for Resilient, Secure Infrastructure Recovery

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Two massive technical outages over the past year underscore the need for cybersecurity teams to consider how to recover safely from disruptions without creating new security risks.

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Oct 19 caused significant disruptions to numerous websites and online services. Error messages splashed across users’ screens as they attempted to access popular sites like Amazon itself, as well as Snapchat and Disney+. The outage lasted two days , but spillover effects sprawled across industries. On Wednesday, the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and the Microsoft 365 service experienced a multi-hour outage due to what Microsoft described as an "an inadvertent configuration change." The Azure outage crippled critical business applications, bringing many organizations to a standstill.

Like last year's CrowdStrike outage , these outages exemplified the blast radius that occurs when one or two vendors dominate a market area and own the infrastructure that everyone else relies on. While both incidents were the result of technical glitches, these extensive disruptions have serious cybersecurity implications for enterprises.

Large enterprises trickling down to small businesses all use AWS to host websites, applications, and databases. The cloud provider offers security tools to help companies bolster identity and access management and data protection.

Even if a company isn't affected directly, providers they use for identity, incident response (IR), or threat detection could be down. The AWS outage affected services which many security and identity management services depend on, including EC2, DynamoDB, and Network Load Balancer.

When a widespread cloud outage like AWS occurs, it doesn't necessarily indicate an active security breach, but it can create vulnerabilities that lead to problems for enterprises, explains Ketaki Borade, senior analyst of infrastructure security at Omdia.

"During the downtime and chaos of restoring services, IT teams can inadvertently leave gaps in monitoring or patching — similar to leaving a window unlocked while rushing out for a trip—that can become potential entry points for threat actors," Borade tells Dark Reading.

Outages create security blind spots and put pressure on enterprises to restore services quickly, which can lead teams to bypass security controls.

Heightened vulnerability surfaces are a real concern for enterprises following outages, agrees Jean-Christophe Gaillard, founder and CEO of Corix Partners. Enterprises may be forced to restart systems in degraded or fallback modes that lack standard security controls. Returning to standard secure configurations can take time, giving attackers an opportunity to strike.

"Emergency patches and configuration changes are often made without proper review or security, potentially leading to misconfigurations or insecure settings that attackers can exploit," Gaillard tells Dark Reading.

Change management breakdowns could also lead to cybersecurity problems. Enterprises may forget to return to standard protocols altogether, which would leave systems and data exposed, adds Gaillard.

But IT teams aren't the only ones who need to remain vigilant during widespread outages. Attackers may view it as the perfect opportunity to conduct phishing campaigns , sending messages that prompt users to "verify credentials" or "restore access," warns Borade.

Incidents like these highlight the risks of relying solely on a single cloud provider, so enterprises need resilient security strategies and contingency plans to stay protected, she recommends.

Resiliency levels play a large role when it comes to the extent of cybersecurity issues enterprises face following prolonged outages, like the one AWS recently suffered. In many cases, like a ransomware attack for example, enterprises need strong backup systems to recover.

In cases like this, it's important to have more comprehensive fallback arrangements, because recovery requires more than effective data backup systems, says Rik Turner, chief analyst at Omdia. Any local or on-premise backup systems should be fully up-to-date with all the necessary patches if they are to take over securely, he explains.

“If an organization has the ability—which I suspect is pretty rare—to fully switch to an alternative cloud provider while an AWS or any other cloud service provider is down, that will need to be both a seamless and a secure switchover process,” Turner says. “Frankly, I can see it being fraught with issues."

Artificial intelligence can help offset mitigation efforts during widespread outages. Wild Moose, an AI-powered site reliability engineering platform, emerged from stealth this week, focusing on addressing cloud outages. During widespread outages, it can be difficult to distinguish cyberattacks from technical failures, which delays appropriate responses, says Yasmin Dunsky, Wild Moose CEO and co-founder. AI is used as part of incident response to uncover the root cause analysis – a vital but difficult assessment for security teams to make.

Wild Moose it can help address security concerns that stem from technical glitches with its rapid root cause analysis. It can extend its analysis to the affected company’s dependents and customers, Dunsky says.

"This helps both the affected company, and its downstream customers understand the scope of the problem and coordinate their response, rather than each organization independently scrambling to diagnose the same root cause,” she says.

Borade sees the benefits of AI to mitigate the impact of highly disruptive outages that lead to cascading effects. AI systems can detect anomalies faster than humans, trigger automated responses, and even suggest remediation steps, she adds.

"That said, it’s worth noting the irony: We’re often using automation to fix issues caused by automation," she says. "It's a bit of a 'Who watches the Watchmen?' scenario, which is why human oversight remains critical."

Features Writer , Dark Reading

Arielle Waldman is a Boston-based features writer for Dark Reading covering all things cybersecurity.

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