Microsoft apologises as global outage disrupts services in 74 countries

Microsoft has apologized for a global outage that disrupted services such as Outlook, Teams, and Copilot across 74 countries and territories. The disruption, which began on Thursday, affected users throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, impacting businesses, schools, courts, governments, law enforcement, and healthcare services. The Korea Times reports that the outage also delayed corporate earnings reports and left schools struggling to communicate.

The company has ruled out malicious cyber or AI activity as the cause. According to Wired, Microsoft hinted the issue was related to cascading server failures within multiple data centers that strained remaining infrastructure by shifting too much load onto operational machines. SABC News reports that Microsoft blamed server problems, while Wired noted the company was testing a configuration change to address servers failing automated health checks.

Microsoft reported seeing broad recovery, stability, and sustained improvements in service availability as of Friday. While many core systems remained running, SABC News noted that trading and administrative work slowed for various institutions.

Brief written by urgent.news from Punch, The Korea Times, Wired, SABC News, Euro Weekly News — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.