Microsoft says services fully restored after global outage hits governments

Microsoft has declared its services fully restored globally after a major outage that severely impacted governments, businesses, and public services worldwide. The technology company stated it had completed efforts to address the root cause of the incident and brought service back to all impacted customers and regions. The outage, which began on Thursday, disrupted a wide array of operations, affecting governments in countries like Japan, Singapore, and Australia, as well as healthcare services, businesses, airlines, and banks.

Hospitals in the UK resorted to paper records, ambulance services faced significant disruptions, and the court system experienced delays with juries sent home early or prisoners not being sent to court. In the US, school districts directed parents to contact schools via phone or online apps, while House of Representatives staffers lost a day of work due to the outage.

In Australia, many reliant on Microsoft 365 services, including councils, courts, and schools, could not access their inboxes, and the federal police and Asio were also affected. Across Europe, government agencies in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France reported issues, with French municipalities instructing citizens to use the phone instead of emailing.

In Japan, government email services went down, and staff resorted to text messaging. Shipping firm Sagawa Express could not accept online reservations, and Taisho, a major pharmaceutical company, had to handle orders by phone. Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air experienced disruptions to their email support services, and Taiwanese security firms, life insurers, and investment trust companies reported fund management service disruptions.

Downdetector reported outage complaints from over 70 countries and territories, with approximately 430 million people using Microsoft 365 apps. Microsoft apologized for the disruptions, attributing the outage to an issue during a previous network capacity upgrade following a recent network change. The company emphasized that the incident was not related to cyberattacks or artificial intelligence agents.

Experts noted that the widespread outage highlighted the risks of overreliance on a few tech providers and the need for greater resilience in IT ecosystems.