{
  "id": 19810220,
  "title": "Microsoft’s latest email outage turned into a full blown global cloud crisis",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsofts-latest-email-outage-turned-into-a-full-blown-global-cloud",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-13T13:15:20.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechCrunch",
    "slug": "techcrunch",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/13/microsoft-latest-email-outage-turned-into-a-full-blown-global-cloud-crisis/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Microsoft is experiencing a widespread cloud crisis following a day-long outage that crippled much of its systems. The issue, which began on Thursday, initially targeted the U.S. and the Americas but soon spread globally. What started as an email and video conferencing problem escalated into a full-blown meltdown, impacting crucial cloud services for both consumer and business email, files, and documents. The outage also disabled Copilot AI tools, Defender security software, and prevented administrators from accessing internal Intune dashboards and features. Reports suggest some users faced difficulties accessing cloud-based Windows computers.\n\nMicrosoft remains unclear on the cause of the outage, stating only that \"a large number of servers were unexpectedly unavailable.\" The company is actively investigating the cause. The incident disrupted a diverse range of industries, including TechCrunch's email. As of Friday morning on the U.S. east coast, Microsoft's Outlook service showed signs of recovery, with emails trickling back in after approximately 18 hours of downtime. Engineers struggled to identify the root cause behind the failure of servers in Microsoft's data centers.\n\nDespite Microsoft's assurance of no evidence indicating malicious activity in its Friday update, the company may face scrutiny for its slow response to the incident. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to answer questions regarding the company's capability to detect malicious activity or its ability to investigate the incident. The last significant service disruption for Microsoft occurred in September, when a prolonged outage targeted its cloud services, which Microsoft attributed to a \"core authentication configuration\" issue.",
  "summary": "Microsoft's day-long outage began with Outlook and Teams, and ended up taking much of the company's cloud services offline. Microsoft says it's gradually restoring service.",
  "key_points": [
    "Microsoft's cloud outage began Thursday, initially affecting U.S. and Americas",
    "Crisis expanded globally, crippling email, files, Copilot AI, Defender",
    "Recovery showed signs Friday morning, but root cause still unknown"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}