Businesses suffering a loss from Microsoft outage could have grounds for insurance claim, lawyer says

Detailed summary

While the economic impact of the global Microsoft outage could be in the billions, a lawyer says businesses may have a chance to get their money back through insurance.

While the economic impact of the global Microsoft outage could be in the billions, a lawyer says businesses may have a chance to get their money back through insurance.

The outage affected Microsoft 365, a cloud-based subscription service popular for applications like Outlook, Copilot, and Teams. On Saturday morning, the company confirmed the technical problems were finally easing.

Barrister John Gibbered, who specialises in insurance law, said businesses whose insurance policies include "business interruption" could well have a claim with their insurer.

"Business interruption is when an unexpected or unforeseen occurs which prevents a business from carrying out its normal activities.

"Those claims are rarer and harder to establish, but in theory, such a claim would be possible."

Gobbard said moving forward, businesses should be reading terms and conditions thoroughly, and weighing up the damage an outage could cause.

"This is the lesson from today, that businesses need to check they have good system and processes in place to ensure that their businesses can continue even when events like this occur."

He said businesses could set up alternative contact pathways - like using personal email addresses.

However, switching communication was not easily done, Johnson said, and sending sensitive data through personal email addresses would be problematic.

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