Amazon cloud storage failure causes widespread disruption

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon's cloud-computing service, Amazon Web Services, is experiencing an outage in its eastern U.S. region, causing unprecedented and widespread problems for thousands of websites and apps.

Amazon is the largest provider of cloud computing services in the U.S. Beginning around midday on the East Coast, one region of its "S3" service based in Virginia began to experience what Amazon, on its service site, called "increased error rates."

In a statement, Amazon said as of 4 p.m. E.T. it was still experiencing "high error rates" that were "impacting various AWS services."

"We are working hard at repairing S3, believe we understand root cause, and are working on implementing what we believe will remediate the issue," the company said.

Amazon's Simple Storage Service, or S3, stores files and data for companies on remote servers. It's used for everything from building websites and apps to storing images, customer data and customer transactions.

"Anything you can think about storing in the most cost-effective way possible," is how Rich Mogull, CEO of data security firm Securosis, puts it.