Microsoft Outage Knocks Out Email for Businesses, Police, and Hospitals

Microsoft is still scrambling to fully restore services as a massive outage stretched into its second day, disrupting operations at governments, hospitals, and businesses around the world. The tech giant said in a post on X Friday morning that service availability is improving, but some users may still be affected. “Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as recovery continues,” the company said. As of Friday morning, Microsoft’s status page still showed “service degradation” for both business and consumer versions of Microsoft 365. The company warned that users may be unable to access several Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook and Teams. Microsoft said it has found no evidence that malicious activity was at fault and is continuing to investigate the underlying cause of the outage. The problems began around noon on Thursday. In subsequent updates, Microsoft said it found that a large number of servers had unexpectedly become unavailable, “straining the remaining infrastructure.” Microsoft subsequently determined that a process responsible for establishing secure connections was becoming overwhelmed, causing servers to stop responding. The company has since rolled out a patch to improve server stability, but has not established the underlying cause of the problem. “We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Copilot, Agents and Platform, said in an emailed statement to Gizmodo. “We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages had on those who depend on us. Our teams are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward.” Meanwhile, the outage has disrupted all sorts of organizations, from major businesses to government agencies. Shipping giant Maersk warned customers that their emails and notifications could be delayed or disrupted. Electric-truck maker Workhorse Group postponed its scheduled third-quarter earnings report and investor call to next week because of disruptions from the outage. The outage also reportedly delayed some difficult conversations at PVH Corp., the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. Bloomberg reports that the company announced Thursday that it was cutting about 4% of its global workforce. However, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that some conversations with affected employees in Asia scheduled for Friday morning did not take place because of the outage, leaving workers uncertain about their futures. Over in Japan, government ministries were forced to post paper notices to notify journalists of their schedules. Some National Health Service hospitals in the United Kingdom reported email disruptions. Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said its services were operating and procedures were continuing as scheduled. However, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that some procedures elsewhere had to be rescheduled. Back in the U.S., the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Thursday night that the outage was disrupting its email and other communication platforms. Meanwhile, Colorado’s Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office warned that the outage was affecting online bond payments for people held at its detention facility and must now be paid in person. The City of Austin also reported that employees were unable to send or receive emails Thursday, while other local governments issued similar notices. Several colleges, including Stanford University and George Mason University, also reported disruptions.