Portugal government, schools and health services hit by global Microsoft outage

Portugal faced significant disruptions to its government, educational and healthcare services on Thursday after a global Microsoft outage. Several Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, were affected, impacting various bodies under the Ministry of Health. The Shared Services of the Ministry of Health confirmed the nationwide failure at Microsoft was disrupting their operations and stated they were working closely with Microsoft to restore services as quickly as possible.

Several Portuguese ministers reportedly lost access to their email services during the outage. However, they managed to keep their work on track using WhatsApp and Signal messaging apps. The government's secretary-general confirmed that the disruption affected various IT tools that support government activities, but normal functioning was assured through alternative secure means.

Schools in Portugal also felt the impact of the Microsoft outage. The president of the Association of Directors of Grouped and Public Schools, Filinto Lima, mentioned that the failure was disrupting communication between parents, teachers, and pupils as they were unable to access institutional emails or the Teams platform. Teachers post homework and assignments on Teams, which was now inaccessible.

Microsoft has been providing regular updates on the situation, reporting encouraging progress in recovering their services. They ruled out any involvement of malicious activity, attributing the outage to a configuration update that caused server overload. However, they have not provided an estimated timeframe for restoring the infrastructure.