Monday’s AWS outage brought down some of the world’s biggest platforms – from banks and apps to global tech companies.

The issue, traced to a DNS fault in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region, has now been resolved. But for many businesses, the real fallout is only just starting: lost revenue, missed SLAs, and frustrated customers are just the beginning.

What’s worse is many won’t see a penny from their insurance.

Tech businesses rely heavily on third-party vendors, which makes getting cyber cover right absolutely critical. Cyber insurance isn’t the same as professional indemnity (PI). PI protects against claims made against you. Cyber, on the other hand, is reactive – it kicks in when a system failure or security event actually happens.

But here’s the catch: if your wording isn’t right, your policy might not respond at all.

Some policies exclude outages caused by third-party providers altogether. Others have waiting periods of 8, 12 or even 24 hours meaning shorter outages like Monday’s slip straight through the cracks.

Not every policy is built the same. To properly protect your business, cover for third-party system failures needs to be structured with realistic waiting periods and your key vendors clearly listed.

Our advice: don’t wait for the next outage to find out your cover doesn’t work. Talk to us about making sure your cyber policy performs when it matters most.