Microsoft reported an outage and issues with authentication for its cloud services, which affected users’ access to multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Office 365 and Teams, worldwide.
Users who were logged into an existing 365 session were not affected, and were still able to continue using the service.
The developer of Windows and Office software said that a recent update to the service was likely the cause of the outage, and would be rolling back the change to mitigate the impact.
However, Microsoft later put out a statement on Twitter, saying that they are not ‘observing an increase in successful connections’ after rolling back the change.
The company later took to ‘rerouting traffic to alternate infrastructure to improve the user experience’.
The outage has disrupted operations across schools and offices using Microsoft services. And while it is not immediately clear, 911 emergency call systems in several states in the US may have been affected due to the outage.
911 services are down in the City of Tucson. If you need to make an emergency call, dial 520-372-8011. We will let you know when 911 is back online. pic.twitter.com/aDfAIX3yDU
— Tucson Police Dept (@Tucson_Police) September 28, 2020
DEVELOPING: Massive ransomware cyber-hack crippling ‘United Health Services’ [massive US hospital chain] as 911 call centers and Microsoft services are down nationwide.
— SV News 🚨 (@SVNewsAlerts) September 29, 2020
In its latest status update, Microsoft reported that services are restored for most users, except for a small subset of customers in North America who were still unable to access services. A number of users went to Twitter to voice their frustrations.
Welcome to 2020…Microsoft is down. No email. No Teams. No campus phones. We are in a communication blackout. Did I mention I still use one oral exam scheduled tonight…in Teams. 🤦♀️ — Shannon Servoss (she/hers) (@Dr_Servoss) September 28, 2020
In the midst of the pandemic, services like Teams have been vital for people to continue to work from home. In April, Microsoft reported 75 million daily active users on Teams as a result of more people working from home.
Last week, Google’s services also went down across parts of Asia and the USA, as a pool of servers that route traffic to application backends crashed, and users on that particular pool experienced the outage
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