"When internet services platform Cloudflare suffered an outage in November, it took a big chunk of the online world down with it. Major platforms like ChatGPT, X, and Canva became unreachable. So did digital services offered by countless banks, retailers, and many other businesses. During the six-hour meltdown, as many as 2.4 billion users could have felt the impact. Software outages like this have always been and always will be part of online life."
"The fundamental missing ingredient is something simple but easily overlooked: resilience testing. In a nutshell, resilience testing is all about pressure testing your software, before issues happen. It ensures that systems keep working-or quickly bounce back-when things go wrong. Think of resilience testing as a small safety step to prevent big problems. The annual median cost of a high-impact IT outage is about $76 million. Businesses can also suffer reputational damage, lose customers, and get hit with regulatory penalties."
A major Cloudflare outage rendered key platforms and countless business services unreachable, potentially affecting billions. Modern systems are highly interconnected, causing single failures to cascade broadly, with AI increasing potential impact. Many organizations remain unprotected against inevitable outages, effectively operating without a safety net. Resilience testing, also known as chaos engineering, involves pressure-testing software to ensure systems continue operating or rapidly recover when failures occur. High-impact IT outages carry a median annual cost around $76 million, plus reputational harm, customer loss, and regulatory penalties. Complexity and perceived messiness deter some companies from conducting resilience tests despite high stakes.
Read at Fast Company
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