Microsoft experienced an outage on Tuesday, October 20th which caused major disruption to its Microsoft 365 service. It affected Teams, Exchange Online, and Outlook users and caused difficulty related to email sending and receiving, authenticating, maintaining connection to the service, and general network access issues.
The outage affected users worldwide with most heavily impacted regions being the United States, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. Many users reported they were unable to access the service at all while others experienced intermittent outages.
Microsoft had already taken steps to restore the service by Tuesday afternoon, stating that all services had been restored. It is unclear what caused the outage initially, though Microsoft stated that it was likely due to a server maintenance that was in progress. It is also likely that the outage was related to a software update or other updates to the system.
Users in affected areas were encouraged to check their connection status, wait for Microsoft’s updates on the situation, install any available software updates, and use the Microsoft 365 Troubleshooting Tool to help diagnose the issue.
Overall, Microsoft responded quickly to the issue and restored the services quickly, but it is unclear if it was an issue related to a server maintenance that was in progress or whether it was connected to Microsoft's cloud services. As such, Microsoft customers should remain vigilant in installing any software updates and keep up-to-date on any developments in regards to the Microsoft 365 services.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Wed, 25 Jan 2023 09:12:03 +0000