A widespread Microsoft glitch continues to cause grey hairs for millions of users as the outage enters its second day.
Microsoft services used by scores of individuals, industries and governments continue to grapple today after the global outage struck yesterday evening.
It led to a surge of issue reports to the monitoring website Downdetector as people struggled to access apps like Outlook email and Teams.
All eyes are on Microsoft to find a solution that sticks after the tech giant reported it had tried several options but ‘change is not taking as expected’ before more hopeful signs of recovery this morning.
Scroll down for a roundup of the situation and what caused the meltdown.
What Microsoft services are affected?
Dozens of Microsoft 365 apps continue to report issues, according to the tech giant’s own status website.
Here are the affected MS 365 consumer apps:
- Outlook.com
The company warned that users ‘may also see issues in other Microsoft 365 services.’
Some users might have been able to access files, while others continue to have trouble sending or receiving Outlook emails.
Companies relying on the MS 365 Business or Enterprise suite face issues with multiple elements, including SharePoint Online, Apps Admin Center, Microsoft Planner, and MS Education, among others.
What is the knock-on effect on people?
The meltdown is felt far and wide, with UK police forces and NHS GP surgeries saying some online services might be affected.
The Metropolitan Police website said some online form submissions may be affected ‘due to a global Microsoft service issue.’
Some local councils, schools and NHS GP surgeries have also been affected.
NHS told patients in a text message alert that surgeries are unable to access Rapid Health, the GPs’ online consultation platform.
National Rail warned passengers who use Outlook that they might struggle to receive tickets and email journey notifications due to the outage.
Meanwhile, the UK government has said that it has ‘robust contingency plans in place to minimise disruption.’
Several airlines have said they are seeing issues with email support and communications, CNN reports.
This includes IndiGo, Akasa Air and CemAir, although the flights are thought to be unaffected.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Anthropic are also reporting issues linked to services that rely on Microsoft.
Have you been affected by the Microsoft outage?
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Yes, it's made my day more difficult
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A little bit, but I can manage
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Not at all, I don't really use MS services
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What caused the outage?
Microsoft bosses have denied that a cyber attack caused the meltdown.
Instead, it appeared to pin the issue on servers that became ‘unexpectedly unavailable,’ causing an ‘elevated load.’
This, in turn, has ‘strained’ the infrastructure, it said.
Experts have hinted that the issue could have stemmed from an internal issue like a troubled software update.
What have experts said?
Beverley Griffiths, senior lecturer in security and resilience at Buckinghamshire New University, said that the situation offered ‘room for exploitation’ for cyber criminals.
This could include phishing emails and messages pretending to be from official Microsoft support asking users to reset their password.
She told : ‘It is something that all of us need to be alert to. Cyber criminals are now in our daily life and we need to make sure that we’re getting our official information from correct sources and that we’re checking our emails.
‘We need to make sure we are checking those things out, and Microsoft has said that don’t reset your password.
‘Listen to the official advice, and don’t accept those emails.
‘But we have to on, a daily basis, within work and in our personal lives, to make sure we are checking everything that we get because cyber criminals will exploit these situations.’
Resilience planning and education are key to preparedness for situations like this, she said, adding that it was positive to see organisations finding a way to communicate about the issue to customers.
‘We need to prepare ourselves, but we also need to ask questions like what if this happens, what can I do either for my work, for my customers, or for myself and my family,’ Griffiths added.
When will the issue be resolved?
Microsoft engineers have yet to find the ultimate fix, although service stability saw a boost.
The Asia-Pacific region’s recovery is said to have been completed.
The company said in its latest update this morning: ‘We’re seeing positive results for server stability after applying an upstream authentication/routing configuration component patch to a portion of our infrastructure.
‘We’ll continue to monitor its progress and are working to expand it to servers supporting active regions coming online.
‘As of now, we are not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident.
‘We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution.
‘Once mitigated, we will provide full details of the root cause, defence-in-depth repair items, and more within a post-incident Report.’
While the situation is dire for MS users, it has led to a wave of memes online.
One person joked: ‘The Microsoft outage has officially brought back the oldest IT solution: Turn it off. Turn it on. If that fails, hit it harder.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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