Microsoft's global outage: access problems in 70 countries

Microsoft has apologized for a global service outage that disrupted millions of users and lasted more than 22 hours. The company said the problem was not related to cyber or AI/agents, but was introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade. According to the report, Teams, Outlook and AI assistant Copilot became inaccessible in at least 70 countries.

Governments, businesses and personal users were affected. In the UK, NHS England staff faced disruption, but the cyber minister said 999 calls and front-line NHS 111 services were not affected. In Canada, hospitals and rail passengers were impacted, while court services and government offices in the US were also disrupted. A South African winemaker said communication with exporters came to a standstill, unable to process orders to Europe. In London, a group said they left the office because if emails weren't working "it was time to go to the pub."

Microsoft said it is working to restore services gradually due to the "scale of demand." In its latest update, the company said it is "still draining queued messages and rebalancing traffic" and does not know when a full recovery will be complete. The article highlights that the outage shows a "lack of resilience" in the UK's digital infrastructure. Chi Onwurah, chair of the House of Commons science and technology committee, said the incident shows the dangers such dependency poses to the country's security, economy and public services.

The outage raises questions about how much we rely on a handful of tech firms. Flora Hamilton, executive director of the Small Business Charter, said it is a "stark reminder" of how much firms "rely on digital systems." According to the report, for many small and medium-sized enterprises, access to email is fundamental to everything from communicating with customers and suppliers to generating income.