When the Internet Breaks: What the Cloudflare, AWS, and CrowdStrike Outages Mean for Small Businesses, and How Information Technology Solutions Protects You

Over the past year and a half, three major technology disruptions: the Cloudflare outage, the AWS regional failure, and the CrowdStrike sensor incident sent shockwaves through global infrastructure. These weren’t obscure, niche events; they affected airlines, hospitals, banks, e-commerce platforms, cloud providers, and productivity tools that businesses rely on every day.

For small and mid-sized businesses, these incidents serve as a wake-up call: your operations are only as resilient as the vendors, infrastructure, and security layers you depend on. Even the biggest, most trusted names in tech can still cause massive downtime with a single update or configuration change.

Below, we break down what these outages mean for small businesses — and how Information Technology Solutions helps you stay protected, operational, and resilient, no matter what happens on the internet’s “back end.”

What These Outages Tell Us About Today’s Business Risks

Cloudflare: When the Internet’s Traffic Cop Stumbles

Cloudflare acts as a gateway for thousands of popular services. When a configuration error forced their network proxies to crash, major platforms went offline. For small businesses, that meant:

• Customer-facing websites becoming unavailable

• SaaS tools timing out or refusing to load

• Email and communication interruptions

• Payment portals and online ordering going silent

Even if your system wasn’t broken, your dependence on Cloudflare-connected services meant you still felt the impact.

AWS: A Single Region Failure With Global Consequences

AWS powers a massive portion of the internet. When their DNS automation broke, major workloads across compute, networking, and identity cascaded into failure.

For small businesses, this translated to:

• Slow or unavailable cloud-hosted applications

• POS outages

• Back-end software unable to authenticate or sync

• VoIP call drops

• Inventory or scheduling systems timing out

Many businesses learned that relying on a single cloud region — or a SaaS provider that relies on one — makes them vulnerable.

CrowdStrike: Security Updates Gone Wrong

CrowdStrike’s faulty sensor update crashed millions of Windows systems, including those used by airlines and hospitals.

Small businesses felt the pain through:

• Workstations stuck in boot loops

• Critical software unable to launch

• Staff blocked from logging in or serving customers

• Costly manual remediation (touching every machine)

• Delayed operations and lost revenue

A single vendor update, rolled out automatically, took down entire environments.

How These Incidents Impact Small Businesses

While large enterprises make the headlines, small businesses often suffer the worst consequences:

• Lost revenue during downtime

• Customer frustration and decreased trust

• Operations grinding to a halt

• Unexpected labor and recovery costs

• No internal IT team to quickly assess and respond

• Limited redundancy and disaster-recovery planning

For businesses that rely on cloud apps, online tools, remote staff, VoIP, or connected systems, a high-level outage can have the same effect as a local power failure — except you have no control and no timeline for repair.

How Information Technology Solutions Helps Protect You

These events highlight the need for a proactive IT partner who plans for the unexpected and ensures your business continues operating when the internet doesn’t.

Here’s how ITS can help shield your business from these types of failures:

Redundancy & Resilience Architecture

We can design your environment so that single points of failure don’t take you down. This would include:

• Multi-region and multi-cloud strategies for key services

• Backup DNS providers or failover routes

• Redundant communication channels (VoIP + cellular fallback)

• Local caching for critical apps

• Offline-capable systems for key workflows

If an outage hits one layer, we make sure another layer is ready to take over.

Vendor Risk Management & Monitoring

We can track the health of your critical vendors — AWS, Microsoft, Cloudflare, security platforms — and respond the moment an incident begins.

We provide:

• Real-time outage notifications

• Rapid workarounds for affected systems

• Communication with vendors for status updates

• Temporary service rerouting where possible

You don’t have to guess what’s happening or wait hours to understand the impact.

Managed Updates & Controlled Rollouts

The CrowdStrike incident proved that automatic updates can be dangerous.

Information Technology Solutions can ensure:

• Staged update deployment (test → limited → full environment)

• Update validation before rollout

• Safe rollback options

• On-demand postponement of non-critical updates

Your systems stay secure — without being exposed to untested vendor mistakes.

Backup, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Even if a cloud provider goes offline, your business shouldn’t.

We can implement:

• Automated cloud & on-prem backups

• Offline access to critical data

• Failover environments

• Documented recovery plans

• Regular disaster-recovery testing

You always know: if something breaks, we can bring it back.

24/7 Support & Rapid Incident Response

When the internet has a bad day, you shouldn’t have to handle it alone.

We can provide:

• Around-the-clock monitoring

• Immediate remediation

• Workstation recovery (for incidents like CrowdStrike)

• Communication with staff and leadership

• Provide stable temporary workflows

• Support through the entire outage lifecycle

Our team handles the crisis — so you can stay focused on your business.

Turning Chaos Into Confidence

Cloudflare. AWS. CrowdStrike.

Three huge vendors, three different types of failure, one lesson:

Outages will happen — but downtime doesn’t have to.

With the right planning, architecture, and support, your business can operate smoothly even when the tech giants stumble.

ITS helps you future-proof your business with resilience-focused IT strategies designed for a world where outages are inevitable, but damage doesn’t have to be.

Call us today to discuss your options.