Sept 13 V7N- Microsoft's cloud-based productivity software suite, including popular applications like Word, Excel, and Teams, experienced a significant outage that impacted thousands of users. According to the tech giant, the issue was caused by a change within a third-party internet service provider's (ISP) "managed-environment," which resulted in an impact on connectivity to Microsoft services.

The outage came nearly two months after a separate incident where a faulty software update from cybersecurity services provider CrowdStrike affected nearly 8.5 million Windows devices, crippling operations across various industries. In the latest incident, Microsoft's Azure cloud platform reported that it was investigating customer reports of potential issues connecting Microsoft's services from AT&T networks. An AT&T spokesperson confirmed that they had experienced a "brief disruption" in connecting to some Microsoft services, but the issue has since been resolved.

The impact of the outage was widespread, with Downdetector reporting more than 90,000 user reports within the United States for Microsoft 365, as well as elevated cases for Azure, Teams, Xbox, Bing, and the Microsoft Store. Incident reports for Microsoft 365 peaked at over 23,000 earlier in the day before falling to around 800 as of 10:28 A.M. ET. Microsoft has since confirmed that the issue impacting connectivity to their services has been mitigated, and the services have recovered.

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