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Comment by stunt | Hacker News Reader

> "The company also has implemented new service update restrictions at some data centers this week, reflecting the growing concern for a potential cyber attack or volatility in its service in the coming days." https://outline.com/P3tAMN

Pure speculation, but I wonder if they're also trying to protect themselves against insider threats as well with this move.

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A deploy freeze is meant to stop production from potentially needing to be rolled back when bugs are introduced at a time engineers are away (holidays) or fighting other fires (earnings calls, DDOS, Prime Day, etc).

You don't want engineers breaking things when you've got something else distracting you.

I know that's standard practice. But, none of those are happening right now. So it was a bit surprising.

Blocked days are done pre-emptively. Consider: many changes aren't instant. They can take hours to complete. What if things start to happen when you're half way through?

Simpler to just stop making big changes that aren't 100% required to happen just in case. If it can't wait, approvals from someone senior who agrees it can't wait suffices.

(Source and bias note: AMZN for 8 years).

Maybe they are also short staffed due to Covid?

Insider threats are an issue for every business. But AWS has robust policies in place to avoid this.

Even routine code pushes and changes to production infrastructure typically need a second-person review, among other things.

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