Microsoft outage leaves courts and Whitehall in the dark
A global Microsoft outage that knocked out Outlook, Teams, and Copilot has paralysed the UK government and courts system, forcing officials to scramble for contingency plans. Following the outage, questions linger about the judgments due to be handed down Friday morning. Civil court judgments are usually handed down remotely via email before appearing on the [...]
A global Microsoft outage has left the UK government, courts system and businesses in the dark for nearly 17 hours. The outage affected Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, paralyzing the government's email system used by departments such as HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). Civil court judgments were delayed, with some expected to be handed down on Friday morning, potentially until Monday.
Police forces reported disruption, with the Metropolitan Police advising the public to call 101 for non-emergency matters or 999 in emergencies. NHS services were also impacted, with problems accessing Rapid Health, an online consultation platform. The outage highlighted the reliance on US tech giants for critical infrastructure, with experts warning of the dangers of such dependency.
Microsoft stated it was working on recovering its frontend servers and implementing further traffic optimisation actions to improve service stability while warning services could become unresponsive again. The government acknowledged robust contingency plans were in place to minimise disruption.
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