The world’s largest cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has suffered a major outage that disrupted thousands of organisations, including banks, financial software platforms such as Xero, and social media platforms such as Snapchat.

The outage began around 6 pm AEDT on Monday and stemmed from a malfunction at one of AWS’s data centres in Northern Virginia, United States. Although AWS says it has fixed the underlying problem, some users continue to experience service disruptions.

The incident underscores the vulnerabilities of a world that depends so heavily on “the cloud.” Yet there are ways to reduce these risks.

Cloud computing refers to the on-demand delivery of IT resources — such as computing power, data storage, and applications — via the internet. In simple terms,

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