Microsoft's Global Outage May Be Worse Than Amazon's Or Crowdstrike's, Expert Says

An extensive global outage affecting numerous Microsoft 365 services has been ongoing since midday Thursday, according to Ars Technica. The disruption began on Thursday and has since impacted various Microsoft email, cloud, and AI services, causing widespread inconvenience for users relying on these platforms. Microsoft has documented the list of affected services and is taking measures to safeguard customers from email loss during the extended disruptions.

Recovery actions are ongoing as of early Friday morning, with Microsoft aiming to stabilize recovered infrastructure, complete mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reduce delayed email queues and backlogs. To help preserve delayed mail during this event, Microsoft has extended email timeout to 48 hours. Former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, has stated that this outage may be worse than some other major tech outages like Amazon Web Services and CrowdStrike.

Businesses, hospitals, police departments, schools, as well as government bodies in Japan, the Philippines, and the US, were all affected by the outage. The disruption has caused issues such as doctors unable to send patients important updates on medication changes, financial institutions blocked from making bank transfers, and the Supreme Court in the Philippines facing legal work setbacks.

Microsoft has estimated that the total number of paid Microsoft 365 commercial subscriptions exceeds 450 million, but it is unclear how many users were affected by the current outage.