Why the internet breaking needs to be in your crisis preparedness plan

Outages are communications crises 

What events like this expose is not just a technical weakness, but a communications one. When systems fail, the silence that follows is deafening. Customers don’t want to know why a complex part of a platform goes down, they just want to know when services will resume, with a clear message offering reassurance, clarity and (most importantly) some sort of timeline. 

It’s important to remember that the most damaging part of any outage is rarely the downtime itself. It’s the perception of disorganisation, lack of transparency, or worse, indifference. It’s worth noting the old Watergate line here – “the cover-up is often worse than the crime”.  

In corporate PR, this is the moment your crisis plan either proves its worth or exposes gaps. How quickly can you issue a holding statement? Is your customer care team aligned with your comms team? Are your senior spokespeople visible, credible and clued up? 

History keeps repeating itself 

Ultimately, today’s outage is nothing new, we’ve seen similar situations before: most notably CrowdStrike’s global incident earlier this year that brought down airline and retail systems globally. Each time, the headlines are the same, frustration, finger-pointing, and brand blame. 

The truth is, you can’t prevent every crisis, especially those beyond your own business’s control, but you can control how you respond.  

Building an outage-ready plan 

So what can businesses take from this latest outage? 

• Understand your network of dependency. Your brand might not run on a particular service directly, but your suppliers, CRM systems, or even payment platforms might. Map your exposure. 

• Communicate as early as possible, even when you don’t have all the answers. Acknowledgement and visibility builds credibility; silence creates speculation.  

• Loop in your teams. Everyone, from customer service to leadership should know their role when things go wrong. 

• Be visible and authentic. A simple, empathetic message from a real person does more for reputation than any technical explanation ever could. 

Crises like this prove that reputation doesn’t just hinge on performance, it hinges on perception. Outages, data breaches, cyber incidents: they’re all tests of a company’s ability to respond with transparency, empathy and speed. 

The AWS outage today is just the latest reminder that when the cloud fails, your communication can’t.