Microsoft outage: company reports clear progress as no cyberattack signs emerge

In brief

• Microsoft reports clear improvement after a worldwide outage affecting Outlook, Teams and Copilot.
• Email queues have been greatly reduced, though some users may still see access problems or delays.
• The BSI and Microsoft see no evidence of a cyberattack; German officials expect a large impact on businesses.

Recovery under way in most regions

Microsoft reported on Friday that its services are getting noticeably better after a global outage that started on Thursday night (IT-Störungen: Microsoft sieht "deutliche Verbesserung" der Lage – tagesschau.de) (Microsoft meldet Erfolge bei Behebung seiner Serverprobleme – DER SPIEGEL). The company said the largest improvements were in North America, with steady progress across much of Europe and encouraging signs of recovery in the Asia-Pacific region. Repair work on parts of the affected infrastructure has been completed, and traffic is being restored step by step. Email queues have been substantially reduced, though some users may still face access problems or delayed message delivery.

Affected services

The disruption hit Outlook, the Teams collaboration app and the Copilot AI assistant (Weltweite Störung bei Microsoft – IT-Experte mahnt zu mehr digitaler Unabhängigkeit – MDR). Cloud services under the Microsoft 365 package were also affected, including administration tools and third-party interfaces (Was über den Ausfall von Microsoft-Diensten bekannt ist – tagesschau.de). Teams users had trouble with meeting scheduling and calendar links.

No sign of a cyberattack

The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) said there were no indications of a cyberattack, and Microsoft said it had seen no signs of malicious activity (Microsoft: BSI betrachtet Ausfall als großes Problem für die Wirtschaft – DER SPIEGEL). The company initially attributed the failure to high load on its systems.

Impact in Germany

A spokesperson for the federal digital ministry said the BSI was in contact with Microsoft and expected a very large effect on the German economy. The ministry called for redundancy and alternative systems so that organisations can keep working if a provider fails. Several federal authorities reported no major outages (Informationstechnik - Microsoft-Panne: Digitalministerium rechnet mit erheblichen Auswirkungen auf Unternehmen – Deutschlandfunk). The state government of Brandenburg reported only minor restrictions. Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa and Frankfurt Airport initially said they were not affected.

Wider reach

Downdetector data cited by Deutschlandfunk suggested the disruption spread worldwide within an hour and affected Microsoft services in 74 countries and regions (Weltweite Störung - Microsoft sieht bislang keine Anzeichen für Cyberangriff – Deutschlandfunk). In England, the health service body had to fall back on other systems or paper records to keep basic care and appointments running.

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