SmartCompany: Human Error Causes Amazon Web Services Outage, How to Protect Cloud Systems

Businesses and others rely on cloud computing and experts to save money and time, but also they relinquish control over how their data is handled. And data and software stored with off-site servers are crucial infrastructure for many. “An outage of Amazon Web Services… that led to disruptions for huge numbers of cloud-based businesses and websites was caused a technician inputting an incorrect command,” reports Dominic Powell for SmartCompany. “AWS is one of the biggest providers of cloud-computing services for websites and businesses all over the world.” The outages disrupted numerous websites and firms. A technician attempted to remove a few servers of its S3 Simple Storage Service for maintenance, inadvertently typing the wrong code and removing more servers than expected. Restarting the large servers took time. As noted by physician and former government administrator Donald Berwick, designers of any system must acknowledge that human error is inevitable and plan accordingly. Actions on major systems should include checks and double-checks, and details about any disruptions should be communicated swiftly to users. – YaleGlobal