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AWS & F5 - When giants falter

  • Writer: Vincent Pollet
    Vincent Pollet
  • Oct 22, 2025
  • 2 min read

This week, two events that should give us pause for thought:


⚙️ Amazon Web Services (AWS) is experiencing a major outage in its US-East-1 region. As a result, services like Snapchat, Canva, or Capital.fr become partially or totally inaccessible.


🛡️ F5 Networks, a global cybersecurity company, has announced that it has been the victim of a sophisticated cyberattack. The intrusion is believed to be linked to a state-sponsored group. Internal data and source code have reportedly been compromised.


🤔 Why do these two incidents worry me?


🔹 Because we often place almost blind trust in these cloud and security “giants”.

🔹 Because a failure (even without an attack) at AWS is enough to block entire sections of the digital economy.

🔹 Because if a cybersecurity leader gets hacked, the entire downstream ecosystem becomes vulnerable.


These events serve as a reminder of an uncomfortable truth: systemic dependency. When a key player falters, the entire chain trembles.


As an outsourced CIO, here are some key points I often share to be aware of:


Diversify suppliers and architectures: don't put all your eggs in the same datacenter or the same cloud.


Auditing hidden dependencies: which critical technical components depend on a single actor?


Testing business continuity plans: what happens if your main supplier goes down?


Raising awareness among business units: these risks are not “technical”, they are business-related.


Nothing is infallible. Not the infrastructure, not the publishers, not the trust models. These shocks should be seen as a warning sign, not as isolated anomalies.


Being resilient means accepting that even giants can fall — and preparing for it.


📰 Sources:





 
 
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