Loss estimate for AWS outage between $38m and $581m

CyberCube has estimated that losses for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage will range from £28.5m ($38m) to £436m ($581m).

The outage last week caused global turmoil among thousands of sites, including some of the web’s most popular apps like Snapchat and Reddit.

CyberCube said the event is expected to have a loss ratio impact for cyber insurers in the low to mid-single digits, with the cyber analytics firm feeling the incident presents the potential for only moderate insurance impact.

”Although the event could play out in a variety of ways, CyberCube sees most potential outcomes clustering toward the lower end of the quoted range, with the higher end of the range allowing headroom for information that could emerge beyond what is known today,” the firm said.

Security Incident Report

The estimates were made in a second Security Incident Report (SIR).

In the latest SIR, CyberCube’s analysis shows that the outage is likely to have affected over 2,000 large organisations and nearly 70,000 organisations in total.

The analysis is based on Portfolio Manager Version six, which was released earlier this year. It allows users to assess potential impacts from cloud service disruptions across portfolios.

The SIR states: “In terms of industry effects, we see those that depend on high availability being the most affected, including technology and financial services firms.

”While the majority of AWS’s US-East-1 customers sit in the US, the effects were certainly felt by companies domiciled in the UK, Europe and elsewhere, given the critical role that US-East-1 plays in AWS’s entire cloud infrastructure.

“Moreover, we expect AWS will act to reimburse companies for downtime and to avoid lawsuits. In light of the short duration of the event, companies may decide it is not worth the hassle to claim. These considerations would point more in the direction of our low estimate.