Microsoft apologizes for global outage that cut off Outlook email for millions

Microsoft issued an apology Friday for a widespread service disruption that started Thursday and cut off Outlook email and other tools for users on several continents. The company blamed a technical problem rather than a cyberattack, Gray News stations WIS and WABI reported.

According to WKOW, problem reports on the tracking site Downdetector jumped sharply around 1 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, as upward of 100,000 users lost service nearly simultaneously. The station said hundreds of millions of people in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region had trouble reaching their email, including users at schools, hospitals and prisons.

Gray News did not give a total, saying Microsoft had not disclosed how many users were hit. It pointed out that Microsoft reported earlier this year having upward of 450 million paid commercial subscriptions to Microsoft 365. The outlet said police crime reporting, court operations, business communications and AI tools were all disrupted.

Accounts of the cause varied between outlets. WKOW said Microsoft pointed to several servers becoming unavailable without warning and reported finding no sign of malicious activity. In a Friday social media post cited by Gray News, Microsoft traced the problem to an earlier expansion of network capacity, saying the flaw emerged after a later change to the network. The company said the root problem had been corrected and that service was coming back for the customers and regions still affected in phases, with stability checked at each step. Microsoft acknowledged this method took more time but said it produced a steadier recovery.

By Friday, Microsoft said it was observing wide recovery across its services, according to Gray News. WKOW reported the company warned that some trouble, including late-arriving messages, might persist.

WKOW also reported that a hospital system in Canada directed patients who needed a specific clinic or department to phone its main number instead.

In North Dakota, the city of West Fargo told Valley News Live that its staff could not exchange email during the outage, though city services carried on as usual. Teams kept working, the city said, so employees could still talk with one another and answer public calls routed through Teams-based phones. Employees working outdoors, patrolling or handling emergencies saw no impact, and the police department said Outlook plays only a minor role in officers' routine duties.

Sam Sabin, a cybersecurity reporter for Axios, told WKOW the disruption was unusual. "The scale and the length of time is pretty peculiar for an outage like this," Sabin said.

ABC News contributor Steve Hill said companies should take note. "This should be a wakeup call for western businesses," Hill said, according to WKOW.

Compiled by True News from reporting by WKOW, Valley News Live, WIS and WABI. Each outlet's original story is linked below.

Originally published by True News: https://truenews.bagleyenterprises.net/stories/1058