Microsoft outage disrupts global operations, companies impacted

On Friday, many companies worldwide experienced a paralysis of their operations due to an outage affecting some services offered by Microsoft. The tech giant in the United States announced it had taken "mitigation steps" to address the issue, which caused global disruptions.

Disruptions on July 19, 2024, included the grounding of airlines, suspension of train services, telecommunications problems, and stock market interruptions. Many companies, from Australia to the United States, reported outages in the last few hours. Europe was not spared either, with numerous incidents reported there as well.

According to information provided by Reuters, which cited a British government source, the global IT outage is not being treated as a cybersecurity-related issue.

The office of Australian Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness stated that "there is no information suggesting this is a cybersecurity-related incident".

Microsoft Services Admin Center issued a statement informing users that they may experience issues accessing various applications and services, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Fabric, and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. The company assured us it is taking remedial action to address the issue.

Microsoft identified the preliminary cause of the problem as a configuration change on Azure, a cloud platform. This change reportedly caused a "disruption in communication between storage and compute resources, resulting in connectivity outages impacting subordinate Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections."

Media reports suggest that issues in the Australian network may have been linked to a software update from CrowdStrike, which aims to protect against cyberattacks.