Why have websites been crashing worldwide?

Recently, the BBC reported that the websites of British Airways, HSBC Bank, UPS going and other major international players had gone down due to a global outage of services (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57929544). Visitors received notification of DNS (Domain Name System) errors, described by the BBC as a process that "turns the human-readable web addresses we use, such as bbc.com, into addresses that point to a computer server somewhere online."

What this means is that the www.bbc.co.uk website address is in fact resolving to a computer IP address and DNS is what makes the address we type in our web browser of www.bbc.co.uk to point to that IP address and therefore display the BBC website. It is just one of many elements which makes up the successful hosting of a website including Server integrity, Firewalls, DDoS protect, backups, resilience and redundancy.

At a time when maintaining a permanent online presence has never been more important, these DNS error failures in maintaining connectivity are disastrous. There have been significant vulnerabilities recorded too. The BBC cites an incident last month when "cloud computing provider Fastly had an interrupted service which took down a large number of high-profile websites around the world, including many international newspapers and government websites. In that case, it later emerged that a settings change by one customer had inadvertently affected the entire infrastructure."

A blog by VPN Pro describes a range of reasons why errors can occur on DNS servers, including malicious DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks and outlines fixes that can be undertaken to restore services (see https://vpnpro.com/web/what-is-a-dns-error-and-what-causes-it/).

However, if you require any advice and assistance on ensuring how the online presence of your business will be maintained, BBI Brandboost's Website Support team will be there to help you. Please take a look at our Managed Hosting services for further details or use our contact form to get in touch.