- Australians began reporting issues with Microsoft 365 just before 5am AEST, with reports peaking at 9.22am with over 5,500 reports.
- Microsoft's global 365 outage may take time to fix, as servers returning to service become unresponsive again once traffic returns.
- Microsoft is limiting traffic to affected servers and rolling back software configurations to diagnose and resolve the issue.
- Australian federal police and security services were affected, with officials confirming the outage impacted their systems.
- Australian home affairs minister Tony Burke stated Microsoft believes the outage was caused by an update issue, not a cyber event, similar to the CrowdStrike incident.
- The outage affected email systems in Australian government services, schools, and courts.
- Users reported ongoing issues with sending, receiving, and opening emails, with some saying the service had been down for hours.
Microsoft's global outage of its 365 services has disrupted email access for government agencies, schools, and businesses, with nearly 130,000 users reporting issues. The outage began around 5 AM AEST and peaked at 9:22 AM with over 5,500 reports of problems.
Affected organizations include Australia's federal police and various courts in South Australia and Victoria. Tony Burke, Australia's federal home affairs minister, stated that Microsoft believes the outage was triggered by an update issue, not a cyber event. He noted that the impact was primarily on email systems, similar to past incidents like CrowdStrike.
Microsoft is currently limiting traffic to affected servers and rolling back to earlier software configurations to mitigate the issue. The company acknowledged that some servers became unresponsive again as traffic returned, complicating recovery efforts. As of 2:10 PM, some services began to recover, but Microsoft warned that the situation remains unstable.
Users reported being unable to send or receive emails, with Microsoft's status page confirming widespread issues across its productivity software suite. The company is analyzing diagnostic data to determine the cause of the disruptions and has begun redistributing connection traffic to balance the load.
As the situation develops, Microsoft continues to explore solutions to restore full service, but the timeline for resolution remains uncertain.
“Australian home affairs minister Tony Burke said Microsoft believes the outage was sparked by an update issue, not a cyber event, similar to the CrowdStrike incident. Reports peaked at 9.22am with over 5,500 complaints, and Australia's federal police and security services confirmed their systems were affected.”
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