Case Intel
- Scope expanding beyond tech: What began as an Amazon Web Services infrastructure failure has now penetrated critical financial infrastructure, with Comerica Bank confirming disruptions to consumer and commercial phone lines and online banking services. The outage’s reach extends to courts, airports, and multiple banking institutions, raising questions about the actual severity Amazon has publicly acknowledged.
- Multi-sector impact confirmed: Financial institutions are experiencing service degradations affecting customer access points, while aviation and judicial systems report parallel disruptions tied to the same AWS infrastructure failure.
- Vendor dependency exposure: The incident highlights the concentration risk inherent in cloud infrastructure dependencies, with a single provider’s outage cascading across ostensibly unrelated sectors including banking, transportation, and legal services.
SACRAMENTO, CA – Amazon Web Services is experiencing a nationwide outage that has expanded far beyond its initial reported scope. Comerica Bank issued direct customer notifications confirming that both consumer and commercial telephone banking lines are down, alongside “certain online services.” The bank’s statement explicitly attributes the disruption to AWS infrastructure failures and acknowledges the issue is “impacting multiple companies, not just Comerica.”
The outage has created a multi-sector crisis affecting:
