All the major organisations impacted by the Microsoft outage - The Independent
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A major global Microsoft outage has left millions of people around the world without access to emails and other key digital services.
The Microsoft 365 issues have affected users of Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, 365 and Copilot AI, as well as multiple connected services.
Microsoft said the issue affects “Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region”, with some experts warning it could rank among the most economically damaging technology outages in history.
It is the second breakdown of Microsoft’s 365 services this year, leading to concerns that repeated failures could cause clients to question its reliability.
Here’s a full round-up of all the major organisations, corporations and sectors impacted by the Microsoft outage.
Government departments in Australia, Japan, Singapore and the United States all reported being affected by the disruption.
The US House of Representatives said that it was working directly with Microsoft engineers to restore email and workspace access.
In Australia, the federal agencies impacted included the country’s intelligence agency ASIO, as well as the Australian Federal Police.
Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki confirmed that parts of the government’s IT infrastructure had been hit by the outage, while government agencies in Singapore reported service disruptions on Friday morning.
The UK’s NHS said on Friday that some patients may struggle to get medications due to the Microsoft outage.
A spokesperson for the National Pharmacy Association said the outage “affects a pharmacy’s ability to communicate with GP practices and some patients”.
The NHS has also said that staff emails are also down across multiple regions, though patient appointments should be able to continue as planned.
Anthropic and OpenAI both suffered issues because their services are integrated with Microsoft’s systems.
Claude creator Anthropic reported elevated errors and slow responses on requests for Claude for Outlook, which affects mail, calendar and search tools.
OpenAI reported similar problems, saying that it was working to resolve the issues.
“We’re investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors where new connections may be broken, and tools are not working as expected,” the ChatGPT creator said in a status report.
Several schools and universities have reported disruption as a result of cloud-based administration services going down.
In the UK, the University of Manchester advised staff to use telephone calls and text messages for urgent communications, and to save any important work directly to their computers rather than the cloud.
Teachers at an Australian university expressed frustration at the impact the outages were having on their classes.
Ali Yavari, an associate professor at Swinburne University of Technology, also warned that the “consequences can outlast the outage itself” due to the measures taken to continue working.
“Out of frustration or urgency, employees may turn to personal email accounts, unmanaged devices or unapproved messaging and file-sharing services to keep working,” Professor Yavari told local outlet ABC News.
He added that this could potentially lead to future data losses or privacy breaches.
