When the Internet Goes Dark: What Today's Outage Teaches Us About Cybersecurity and Connection

We assume the internet is always on. When it isn’t, our routines, work, entertainment and even communication are disrupted.

Earlier today (20 October 2025), a widespread outage knocked out major apps and services across the globe from streaming, social media and banking.

Snapchat, Fortnite, Roblox, Duolingo, Steam, Disney Plus and many others reported service problems. The root cause? A fault at Amazon Web Services (AWS) affecting key infrastructure such as DynamoDB and EC2 in their north-Virginia region.

From a cybersecurity viewpoint, the incident reminds us: resilience matters — having redundancies, backups and contingency plans is just as important as defending against hackers.

Since today is World Statistics Day, I can’t help but reflect on some numbers: the web as we know it supports billions of users, devices and connections. Each service down affects millions of users. And when you consider the statistical probability of failure (whether human error, misconfiguration or malicious attack), the outage becomes a reminder that digital systems operate at scale, and scale brings risk.

What You Can Do While the Internet Is Down (and Still Keep It Cyber-Smart)

Instead of panicking, here are fun & productive things you can do during downtime — and many of them help your cybersecurity posture.

Offline hygiene check

• Review your passwords. Use a strong passphrase instead of a single word.
• Ensure you’re running the latest version of your device’s OS and apps (once connectivity returns).
• If you have a password manager, check if your "security health" shows reused or weak passwords.

Backup moment

• This outage shows reliance on the cloud. Make sure you have local encrypted backups (USB, external drive) of important files.
• Check that your cloud-backup settings are actually working (you can test when internet is back).

Unplug & reflect

• Use the downtime as a chance to step away from screens. Read a book, take a walk, have a conversation.
• Ask yourself: how much of my life relies on “always-connected”? What would I do if things went offline for an hour, a day, a week?

Talk it out

• Have a quick chat with family or friends: explain what happened (in simple terms) to your children or non-tech-savvy family members.
• Use the outage as a teaching moment about why cybersecurity tools and best practices matter.

This incident is a wake-up call: our digital lives are amazingly connected, but also vulnerable. The outage shows how one infrastructure hiccup cascades across dozens of services you rely on. From a cybersecurity viewpoint, it underscores the need for preparedness, backup, and resilience — not just firewalls and antivirus.