Microsoft restores most services after global outage

Most Microsoft 365 services have returned to operation following a widespread disruption that halted the company’s cloud infrastructure, including Outlook. The incident impacted businesses, government institutions, and tens of millions of users in over 70 nations.

Outage caused by technical glitch

Microsoft apologized for the extensive failure affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, which lasted approximately 24 hours and denied millions access to their accounts. The firm confirmed the malfunction stemmed from a technical issue with network updates rather than a cyberattack.

In a post on X, the company noted "encouraging signs of recovery" for servers that stopped responding on Thursday. A separate statement expressed deep regret for the disruptions and promised a subsequent report detailing the incident's causes.

The problem originated during a previous capacity update process but manifested after a recent change was implemented. Microsoft stated it addressed the root cause and continues restoring service for clients and regions still experiencing issues.

Global impact on governments and firms

This event ranks among Microsoft's most significant outages recently, despite not being linked to malicious activity. Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, told Politico on Friday that restoring service was "extremely difficult." He described the situation as appearing to be a "catastrophic failure in internal software."

Florian Drukenmueller, a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization, told journalists on Friday that his ministry expects the German economy to be significantly affected by the interruption.

Politico reported that many central European Union institutions managed to continue operations throughout the outage. In Washington, however, Congress staff were unable to use Outlook on Thursday, disrupting work at the Capitol during a busy period preceding the end of the current legislative session.

Congressional scrutiny and security warnings

Andrew Garbarino, the Republican representative from New York who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told Politico he is seeking further information about the outage from Microsoft and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). He emphasized the need to understand how to make these systems more resilient.

Garbarino noted that the disruption felt by citizens, businesses, and government agencies highlights the risks of excessive reliance on a limited number of service providers for critical infrastructure. It remains unclear if other congressional committees overseeing cybersecurity will take action.

The UK National Cyber Security Centre issued a warning on Friday regarding potential fraud attempts linked to the outage. The center cautioned against increased calls or communications impersonating tech support offices or Microsoft itself.

CISA typically collaborates with companies facing nationwide disruptions. A CISA spokesperson declined to comment, while White House representatives did not respond to requests for statements.

Widespread operational disruptions

Traders in Singapore, Indian brokerage firms, and officials in Tokyo reported service problems on Friday. Japanese government institutions faced significant chaos; the Ministry of Finance stated it could not receive emails for most of the day. Several ministries resorted to posting paper notices to inform journalists of daily agendas due to email failures.

Australian Reserve Bank employees were also affected when Outlook went down across various departments, though core operations continued normally. In New Zealand, immigration officials temporarily suspended processing all visa applications because of the outage.

Down Detector, a website monitoring internet service failures, recorded around 200,000 reports of Outlook issues by 6:00 PM GMT on Thursday. This figure represented more than 2,000 times the usual rate, according to Bloomberg.

The fallout extended to other technology firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as government systems in Singapore and Japan, Australian intelligence agencies, and communication networks at the Philippine Supreme Court.

Workhorse Group, a manufacturer of trucks and buses, postponed its financial results announcement due to the outage. School districts, universities, and hospitals warned of potential restrictions on communication services.

PVH Corp., owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, announced via internal emails and securities filings on Thursday that it intends to cut approximately 4% of its global workforce.

Users in more than 70 countries reported difficulties accessing Microsoft products, per Down Detector. Disruptions reached services for tech sector workers, including cybersecurity software, file-sharing platforms, and system management tools. These are sold alongside core productivity apps like Word and Excel within the Microsoft 365 package.

Although Microsoft initially claimed progress in restoring services, it later admitted repair efforts did not proceed as expected and that multiple issues remained under investigation. A US executive denied any link to a cybersecurity incident.

The company explained that an underlying process on affected servers experienced pressure exceeding capacity, causing them to stop responding and reducing operational throughput. Microsoft is working to identify the source of the sudden data traffic increase, stating it has no information indicating malicious activity caused the failure.