Picture this: your service goes down. Customers can’t access your platform, transactions stall, and your team scrambles to fix a problem that shouldn’t have happened. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario—it’s real and it’s what many businesses dealt with in 2024. Small configuration mistakes led to significant outages.
Our digital world brings amazing opportunities, yet it also comes with new risks. Configuration changes have always posed a risk of service outages, but as more elements of our digital landscape rely on code, mistakes have become more common. In 2024, we learned that even minor misconfigurations can disrupt operations, erode user trust, and create long-term problems for businesses.
Digital resilience is no longer just a good idea; it’s essential. By looking at the major outages from last year and understanding their root causes, companies can take meaningful steps towards building more reliable systems and protecting their digital experiences.
Let’s talk about what led to these outages. Two trends stood out in 2024: continuous improvement and delivery (CI/CD), and the rapid deployment of modern applications and cloud services.
CI/CD has revolutionized software development, allowing teams to make quick updates often. But this speed has a downside—there’s less time for thorough testing. Plus, the code’s constantly changing, making its behavior unpredictable.
Then there’s the shift towards deploying modern applications, which are often distributed. These applications consist of many interconnected parts, often developed by different teams, and can run on both owned and third-party infrastructures. Sometimes, a team makes a change in their area without fully grasping how it might affect the rest of the system.
These unintended misconfigurations can lead to problems, even if the change was minor. So, what does this look like in real life for organizations?
Take 2024, a bad year for outages. In networking, misconfigurations of routing policies happened repeatedly. For example, a service provider mistakenly placed themselves in a traffic path, causing severe connectivity issues. One instance in October impacted multiple telecom providers due to a faulty configuration in OVHcloud services.
In the cloud realm, issues became all too common. In January, an incorrect configuration triggered problems with Azure Resource Manager that lasted seven hours. In July, another configuration change affected backend connections, disrupting significant services like Microsoft 365. Salesforce faced a similar issue later in the year when an outdated configuration file locked users out of the platform.
Misconfigurations also surfaced within applications. In July, a CrowdStrike configuration error caused system crashes worldwide. ChatGPT experienced temporary issues due to configuration changes aimed at enhancing user experience. Even Square had troubles when a new feature conflicted with Android devices, disrupting payment processing.
Throughout 2024, configuration mishaps not only degraded user experiences but disrupted services entirely. These incidents highlighted critical lessons we shouldn’t ignore in 2025.
For product managers and operations teams, continuous improvement is crucial, but they also need to prioritize user experience. Automation and assurance technologies can assist in this area. By comparing ongoing patterns against known issues, these tools provide valuable insights that can help spot problems early. In cases of misconfiguration, this can mean the difference between a quick fix and a drawn-out troubleshooting nightmare.
Successfully implementing configuration changes on the first try is vital. It signals that an organization has the right data and insights to evaluate the potential impact throughout the entire delivery process.
Whether due to misconfigurations or other issues, the outages of 2024 offer valuable lessons. Reducing disruptions will be key to building digital resilience in 2025.