Microsoft service outage disrupts businesses and governments worldwide

A widespread Microsoft outage that began Thursday disrupted users across Asia and the United States, leaving businesses and some government agencies struggling with service interruptions for hours. In an update Friday, the company said the problem affected numerous Microsoft 365 products connected to Exchange Online and its email services. Users reported difficulties with Outlook, Teams and the artificial intelligence assistant Copilot.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, said it was testing different approaches to establish the cause and bring affected servers back online. The company said it had found no indication of malicious activity and was prioritizing a full recovery. More than 130,000 users reported Outlook access problems on Downdetector earlier Thursday, though the number of new reports subsequently declined from that peak.

The company's updates on X showed that recovery efforts were encountering setbacks. After initially reporting that service health and functionality had been restored, Microsoft later expanded its list of affected services and said work was continuing. In its latest post, the company said changes intended to improve service were not producing the expected results.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Friday that he had discussed the disruption with Microsoft's leading executive in Australia and the national cybersecurity coordinator. Speaking to reporters in Sydney, Burke said Microsoft did not believe it was facing a cyberattack and had compared the incident to the 2024 CrowdStrike outage, suggesting an update had gone wrong.

The July 2024 incident was attributed by Texas cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to a bug in an update that sent bad data to millions of customer computers. That disruption grounded flights, interrupted television broadcasts and affected banks, hospitals and retailers. Microsoft's investigation into the current outage was still underway as it attempted to restore its infrastructure.

Businesses reported interruptions to both scheduled events and routine communications. US industrial technology company Workhorse Group Inc. postponed its quarterly earnings conference call. In Hong Kong, aluminum company operator Danny Lau said his firm's Outlook accounts could not receive updates from customers in the United States. A prolonged disruption could affect production schedules, he said.

Two Indian airlines reported email difficulties while saying their flight operations remained unaffected. Air India temporarily redirected its email services so customer inquiries could continue reaching the company. IndiGo said interruptions to email support had affected its ability to receive customer questions, but its other support channels remained available.

Government services were also affected across Asia. Singapore's Government Technology Agency said government email was down and that it was working with Microsoft on a resolution. The Supreme Court of the Philippines said some operations, including email responses, had been disrupted. Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage had affected government IT infrastructure and that officials were closely monitoring developments.

The disruption also reached artificial intelligence services connected to Microsoft's software. OpenAI and Anthropic separately reported problems connecting with Microsoft 365 tools, illustrating how interruptions can spread to other platforms that rely on access to the company's services.