IET reacts to major Cloudflare outage disrupting global digital services

Experts warn of growing vulnerabilities in interconnected systems and call for urgent resilience measures following widespread disruption.

A major outage at Cloudflare, a global provider of internet performance and security infrastructure on 18 November 2025, has caused widespread disruption across digital services worldwide. Cloudflare underpins a significant proportion of the internet, managing traffic routing, security filtering, and content delivery for millions of websites and applications.

Early reports suggest the outage was triggered by an unexpected surge in network traffic, which led to cascading failures across several of Cloudflare’s systems. The incident has impacted numerous platforms that rely on Cloudflare’s infrastructure.

Professor Ian Corden, IET Fellow and Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, commented:

“Today’s incident highlights yet again how deeply interconnected and vulnerable our digital ecosystem has become. Cloudflare plays a central role in keeping much of the internet running smoothly, so when a service of this scale experiences a fault, the resulting impact is immediate and widespread.

We are seeing a clear example of mass disruption at a time when global dependence on digital services is rising. Both national governments and private enterprises must recognise the critical importance of resilience and security in an increasingly complex world with significant geopolitical tensions. Technology is fast becoming an axis for economic growth and national security, and it must be treated with the strategic priority it deserves.”

Rimesh Patel, IET member and cyber security consultant, added:

“This outage underscores the urgent need for digital resilience through diversified architectures, multi-vendor strategies, and robust contingency planning. As digital ecosystems grow more interconnected, organisations must design systems that can withstand the failure of any single provider. Independence from dominant infrastructure players is essential for maintaining trust, security, and continuity in an increasingly fragile digital landscape.

The UK’s newly introduced Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, published on 12 November 2025, provides a proactive framework for building this trust layer and strengthening long-term resilience—something all vendors and critical suppliers must prioritise.”

 
ENDS

Notes to Editor

About the IET

• We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community to engineer a better world.     
• We are a diverse home for engineering and technology intelligence throughout the world. This breadth and depth means we are uniquely placed to help the sector progress society.     
• We want to build the profile of engineering and technology to change outdated perceptions and tackle the skills gap. This includes encouraging more women to become engineers and growing the number of engineering apprentices.    
• Interview opportunities are available with our spokespeople from a range of engineering and technology disciplines including cyber-security, energy, engineering skills, innovation, manufacturing, technology, transport and diversity in engineering.    
• For more information, visit www.theiet.org.    
• Follow the IET on LinkedIn and Instagram via @TheIET / @InstitutionofEngineeringandTechnology.    

Media enquiries to:

Rebecca Gillick
External Communications & PR Lead
E: rgillick@theiet.org