On Tuesday 18th November 2025, a major outage at Cloudflare — one of the world’s biggest internet infrastructure providers — disrupted large parts of the internet. Services including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, and major government and transport systems experienced downtime or intermittent failures.
While outages at this scale don’t happen often, when they do, they highlight how interconnected today’s digital services really are. Even if your systems weren’t directly using Cloudflare, some of the tools you rely on might have been.
As an IT services provider, we want to unpack what happened, why it matters, and what steps organisations can take to build stronger digital resilience.
What happened?
Cloudflare reported a sudden spike in unusual traffic that triggered internal service degradation across its global network. This resulted in widespread 500-errors (“internal server error”) and outages for thousands of websites and applications that rely on Cloudflare for services including:
- Content delivery (CDN)
- Web application firewall (WAF)
- DNS resolution
- DDoS protection
- Traffic routing and optimisation
Although early speculation pointed to the possibility of a cyber-attack, experts now believe it was an internal network issue rather than a targeted malicious incident. Cloudflare quickly implemented a fix, but some platforms continued to see elevated error rates as global systems recovered.
Why this matters to businesses
1. We all rely on the same infrastructure
Cloudflare supports an estimated 20%+ of the websites and applications globally. That means a small number of providers underpin a very large portion of the internet.
When one layer fails, the ripple effect can be enormous.
2. You can be indirectly affected
Even if your organisation wasn’t using Cloudflare, any SaaS platform or vendor that does could have been impacted — CRM systems, communication tools, helpdesks, finance software, and more.
Indirect dependency is one of today’s biggest operational risks.
3. Centralised infrastructure brings hidden vulnerabilities
Cloud providers, CDNs, and security platforms give businesses huge value — but their centralisation means a single failure can affect millions. This outage is a powerful reminder not to assume “everything in the cloud just works”.
4. Incident response and communication are critical
When a major provider goes down, IT teams need rapid insight into:
- What’s failing
- Whether the issue is internal or upstream
- How to communicate clearly with staff, customers, and stakeholders
A well-prepared response can prevent confusion, downtime, and loss of trust.
What your organisation can learn from this
Map your third-party dependencies
You should know not only which vendors you use, but who they use. Understanding your upstream providers is essential for risk management and business continuity.
- Build for Resilience
- Where possible, you should consider:
- Redundant DNS providers
- Multi-region hosting or failover
- CDN alternatives or fallback routing
- Service degradation strategies instead of full outages
Not every business needs full multi-vendor redundancy — but every business should understand where single points of failure exist.
Monitor your supply chain
Monitoring shouldn’t stop at your own servers. Keep an eye on major vendors and cloud platforms so you can identify root causes quickly when outages occur.
Have a communication plan
When platforms fail, even if it’s beyond your control, your customers and staff need clear, timely updates. Proactive communication always beats silence.
How we support our clients during events like this
As part of our IT support and managed services, we:
- Monitor upstream provider status
- Assess and mitigate service dependency risks
- Design resilient infrastructure for critical operations
- Provide clear, honest communication during incidents
- Help clients build continuity strategies specific to their sector
Events like the Cloudflare outage are a reminder that even the biggest providers can experience disruptions — but with the right planning, businesses can stay informed, resilient, and operational.