Microsoft 'deeply sorry' for global outage as it reports broad recovery

Detailed summary

Experts say the event is a "stark reminder" of how heavily the world relies on a small group of big tech providers.

Microsoft has said it is "deeply sorry" for the service outage to its products, including Outlook and Teams, which has caused disruption around the world.

Services were broadly recovering by Friday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after issues began. Microsoft said it was making "encouraging progress", but added it does not know when services will fully recover.

The outage hit more than 70 countries, disrupting everything from business operations to government services and personal users. More than 430 million people use the affected products worldwide.

Microsoft said it was a technical issue introduced during a "network capacity upgrade" and not related to cyber or artificial intelligence agents.

Experts said the event was a "stark reminder" of how heavily businesses and vital services rely on a small group of big tech providers.

Users began reporting they were having trouble accessing Microsoft 365 products on Thursday.

By Friday, the far-reaching issue was affecting institutions from the Japanese government and the Philippines Supreme Court to the Australian spy agency, and trains, hospitals and courts in North America.

In the UK, some parts of the NHS, including GPs and hospitals, were affected, as were some schools and police forces.

UK cyber minister Liz Lloyd said the incident had "limited" impact on critical frontline services such as 999 calls, and there had been no disruption to the transport network.

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