When Amazon Web Services (AWS) went dark early Monday, October 20, 2025, Rutgers University felt the tremor across its digital campus.
At roughly 7:00 AM Eastern Time, the cloud giant’s infrastructure faltered, prompting a cascade of errors in everything from the Canvas learning platform to Zoom meetings. The university’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) in New Brunswick, New Jersey, issued its first alert at 8:15 AM, warning that “numerous services worldwide” were offline.
Timeline of the outage and Rutgers’ response
Here’s how the day unfolded:
- 7:00 AM ET – AWS systems in multiple availability zones begin experiencing failure, triggering error spikes across dependent applications.
- 8:15 AM ET – Rutgers OIT posts a “Monitoring” alert, citing Canvas, Zoom, and Grammarly as the first visibly affected tools.
- 10:45 AM ET – An “Update” adds Kaltura, Smartsheet, Adobe Creative Cloud, Cisco Secure Endpoint, and ArcGIS to the growing list.
- 1:20 PM ET – The OIT reiterates the same suite of services, noting that some systems may still be impacted.
- 2:30 PM ET – AWS signals that “the issues are resolving,” yet Rutgers warns that full restoration is not yet confirmed.
- 3:00 PM ET – The outage remains ongoing; the OIT advises students and staff to contact the local help desk for assistance.
The university’s communication was consistent, quoting OIT statements without naming individual staff. Each update directed users to the official AWS Health Dashboard and the Instructure status page for Canvas-specific details.
Services hit hard on campus
Canvas, the backbone of course delivery, displayed persistent error messages, blocking student submissions and instructor grading. Meanwhile, Zoom videoconferences dropped mid‑session, leaving remote lectures in limbo. The Kaltura video library, a go‑to for recorded lectures, refused to load, and Smartsheet project boards froze, stalling collaborative work.
Creative teams felt Adobe Creative Cloud wobble, meaning graphic designers could not access Photoshop or Premiere. Security teams reported that Cisco Secure Endpoint was unable to push critical updates, raising a brief concern over vulnerability exposure. Geographic analysts using ArcGIS noted data layers failing to render, and students relying on Grammarly for writing assistance saw the extension blink out.
Why this matters: Campus reliance on the cloud
Rutgers, with roughly 71,000 students across three New Jersey campuses, has migrated most of its academic and administrative software to cloud providers. The AWS outage underscores a growing vulnerability: a single vendor’s hiccup can cripple teaching, research, and even security.
“Universities are now as dependent on cloud uptime as they once were on campus power,” says Dr. Maya Patel, a cloud‑infrastructure analyst at Gartner. “When a provider like AWS experiences a multi‑zone failure, the ripple effect isn’t limited to a single business unit—it hits every service that’s been lifted into the cloud.”
The incident also revives memories of the December 7, 2021 AWS blackout that halted Netflix and several startup services for six hours. While the 2025 event appears more educational‑focused, the lesson remains: diversification and on‑prem fallback plans are essential.
Industry reaction and expert commentary
Industry watchers took note. The Register pointed out that AWS’s “still investigating” stance is typical for multi‑region incidents, but urged customers to scrutinize their incident‑response playbooks.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, confirmed that their own status page showed “major degradation” and that they were working with AWS to restore service.
Cyber‑security firms warned that prolonged outages could tempt threat actors to exploit the brief window where endpoint protection is weakened. Though no breach was reported, the risk lingered as Cisco Secure Endpoint struggled to push patches.
Looking ahead: What Rutgers and other institutions can do
For now, the OIT keeps a live feed of the AWS dashboard and has instructed staff to prepare contingency communications for future disruptions. Some colleges are already drafting “cloud‑outage playbooks” that include:
- Pre‑configured local mirrors of critical LMS data.
- Alternate video‑conferencing licenses (e.g., Microsoft Teams) ready to flip on.
- Periodic drills simulating cloud failures to test response times.
The broader tech community watches closely. If AWS stabilizes by the end of the day, the episode might be a blip; if not, we could see a push for multi‑cloud strategies, where institutions spread workloads across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to hedge against single‑point failures.
Key facts
- Date & time: October 20, 2025, starting ~7:00 AM ET.
- Primary cause: Multi‑zone AWS infrastructure failure.
- Impacted services at Rutgers: Canvas, Zoom, Grammarly, Kaltura, Smartsheet, Adobe Creative Cloud, Cisco Secure Endpoint, ArcGIS.
- University size: ~71,000 students across New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden campuses.
- Response channel: Rutgers OIT alerts, AWS Health Dashboard, Instructure status page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the outage affect Rutgers students?
Students experienced login failures on Canvas, missed Zoom class sessions, and couldn't access Grammarly for assignments. Faculty reported delayed grading and broken video links in Kaltura, forcing many courses to switch to email or phone updates until services recover.
What steps is Rutgers taking to prevent future disruptions?
The Office of Information Technology is drafting a multi‑cloud contingency plan, creating local backups of LMS data, and conducting regular outage drills. They also advise departments to identify secondary communication tools that can be activated instantly.
Why did AWS’s outage have such a broad impact?
AWS hosts the core infrastructure for a suite of third‑party SaaS tools used by Rutgers. When several availability zones went down simultaneously, any service relying on those zones—whether a video platform or a security endpoint—experienced connectivity loss.
Is this the first major AWS outage?
No. AWS suffered a notable six‑hour blackout on December 7, 2021 that affected streaming services and e‑commerce sites. The October 2025 incident is the latest reminder that even the world’s largest cloud provider can face multi‑region failures.
Where can users get real‑time updates?
Rutgers users should monitor the AWS Health Dashboard for service status and the Instructure status page for Canvas-specific notices. The university’s OIT also posts alerts on its internal portal.
1 Comments
The AWS blackout on October 20th feels like a modern reminder that even the most powerful tech giants are not immune to failure.
/p>It forces us to question how much of our educational infrastructure we have willingly handed over to a single, opaque corporation.
When a cloud provider hiccups, the ripple effect spreads through lecture halls, research labs, and even the simple act of submitting an essay.
Students who once trusted the seamlessness of Canvas now stare at error screens that feel like digital roadblocks.
Faculty scramble, turning to email chains and phone calls, resurrecting communication methods we thought were obsolete.
The incident also exposes the fragility of security tools like Cisco Secure Endpoint that rely on constant connectivity to push critical patches.
In a world where data sovereignty and privacy are increasingly regulated, relying on a monolithic vendor can become a compliance nightmare.
The post‑pandemic shift toward cloud‑first strategies was supposed to bring agility, yet agility now seems synonymous with vulnerability.
Multi‑cloud architectures are praised in theory, but the operational overhead and cost can deter institutions from diversifying.
Still, the cost of an outage-lost instructional time, delayed research, and potential security gaps-may outweigh the expense of redundancy.
Rutgers’ response, with timely alerts and a clear escalation path, exemplifies good crisis communication that other campuses could emulate.
However, the lack of a visible on‑prem fallback for critical services raises the question of whether the university truly prepared for worst‑case scenarios.
As educators, we must balance the allure of cutting‑edge tools with the pragmatic need for reliability and student access.
Perhaps this event will catalyze a broader conversation about hybrid deployments, where core LMS data lives both in the cloud and on local servers.
Ultimately, the lesson is clear: technology should serve education, not dictate its rhythm, and we must remain vigilant custodians of that principle.