CISO Guidance

1) Is this information credible?

• Yes, AWS outages are well-documented and have widespread impact on industries reliant on cloud services.

2) How could this be relevant to my org’s assets, vendors, or processes?

• If your organization relies on AWS for critical operations, similar outages could disrupt your business processes.
• Vendors and partners using AWS may also experience disruptions, affecting supply chain and service delivery.

3) What’s the actual technical risk?

• Technical risk includes service downtime, data inaccessibility, and potential data loss if backups are not properly managed.

4) What do we need to do to defend/detect/respond?

• Develop and test a robust incident response plan that includes cloud service outages.
• Consider multi-cloud strategies to mitigate single points of failure.
• Regularly back up critical data and ensure backups are accessible independently of AWS.

5) What’s the potential business/regulatory exposure?

• Business exposure includes financial losses from operational downtime and potential breach of SLAs with clients.
• Regulatory exposure may arise if outages lead to data breaches or non-compliance with data protection laws.

6) Does it reveal a bigger trend?

• Yes, increasing reliance on cloud services highlights the need for robust cloud resilience strategies.

7) What actions or communications are needed now?

• Communicate with stakeholders about the measures being taken to mitigate cloud service risks.
• Review and update business continuity and disaster recovery plans to include cloud service outages.
• Engage with AWS or cloud service providers to understand their outage mitigation strategies.