What are reliable ways to track major outages and security incidents?

Most major cloud and software providers publish RSS or Atom feeds for their status pages, even when the feed link is not obvious. Adding the status feeds for the services you actually depend on to a feed reader is a good way to hear about incidents directly from the source. For security updates, the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog also offers a relatively high-signal feed.

For general technology news, sites like Slashdot and Ozzu may be worth checking, although the amount and timeliness of coverage can vary. They are probably better as supplementary sources than as the primary way to learn about an active outage or security incident.

Status pages are often more useful than news sites because they are updated while an incident is still happening. I follow the status pages and changelogs for the providers I rely on, then use a feed reader or a change-detection tool to monitor them. Broader security tracking can be supplemented with CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

A custom RSS reader can help if you want alerts organized by category or topic. The main challenge is choosing trustworthy sources to feed into it, so I would start with official provider status pages, established security organizations, and authoritative vulnerability advisories rather than general social media.