Technology Desk – Microsoft Services Down: Many important online services of Microsoft suddenly came to a standstill across the world. Due to this, tasks like sending emails, holding online meetings and saving files on the cloud were affected. According to the website DownDetector, more than 1.40 lakh complaints of problems in Microsoft Outlook were registered.
The effect of this technical glitch was seen in 74 countries. This not only stopped the work of companies and offices, but also affected the functioning of schools, hospitals and government. According to Microsoft, the reason for this is a bad software update, and not any cyber attack.
Let us understand in 8 questions and answers what was affected by this failure of Microsoft and what was the reason behind it.
- Which Microsoft services were affected?
Many of Microsoft's online services were affected simultaneously. These include platforms used in everyday work.
Had trouble sending and receiving emails on Microsoft Outlook. At the same time, online meetings and chats on Microsoft Teams were affected. Apart from this, there were problems in services like file sharing on SharePoint Online, AI tool of Microsoft Copilot 365, Planner and Exchange Online.
Cyber security related services like Microsoft Defender were also included in the affected services.
- How many people complained about the closure of Microsoft services?
According to DownDetector, this outage started at around 9:45 pm Indian time on Thursday night. The technical glitch continued for at least 8 hours.
Within about an hour of the fault starting, its impact reached 74 countries of the world. At around 11:30 pm on Thursday night, complaints related to Outlook reached 1.40 lakh. This was about 2,000 times more than the normal level.
- What was the impact on common people and essential services?
Many important works came to a halt due to the closure of Microsoft services. Some doctors in hospitals were not able to provide online advice to patients. Online classes in schools were affected.
Additionally, many companies faced problems processing orders for goods. The work of offices dependent on email and online meetings was also affected.
- What was the impact of Microsoft outage in India?
According to Downdetector, complaints in India reached a peak of 2,157 at around 11:42 pm on November 12. The next day i.e. on November 13, at around 9 am, around 1,960 users reported the problem.
Indian users mainly faced problems in opening the Outlook app, sending and receiving emails and logging into the account. Some users also complained of problems running Teams and Copilot.
- Why did Microsoft's services stop? Was it a cyber attack?
According to Microsoft, the cause of this outage was a bad or incorrectly executed software update. The company has not described it as an incident of cyber attack or hacking.
This situation is similar to the CrowdStrike incident that took place in July 2024. Even at that time, computer systems around the world were affected due to a bad software update.
However, the technical reason for both the incidents has not been claimed to be the same.
- Why did it take so long for Microsoft's services to get fixed?
Microsoft said that the initial changes made to fix the problem did not work as expected. Therefore the company was testing other methods.
The company's effort was to reconnect as many users as possible to the platform without putting too much pressure on the system. For this reason it took more time to normalize services.
- How many people use Microsoft 365 around the world?
Microsoft 365 is used by more than 43 crore people worldwide. This includes subscription-based services like Outlook and Teams.
According to data from tracking platforms, around 30 to 40 lakh companies depend on Microsoft 365 for their daily operations.
Apart from this, according to the company, more than 90% of the world's top Fortune 500 companies use its AI chatbot Copilot.
- How serious did tech experts consider this outage?
According to Australian cyber security expert Troy Hunt, the impact of this flaw will be huge and will not be limited to Microsoft users only.
He told that apart from stopping the work of offices, giving information about appointments, verification through OTP or email during online shopping, creating new accounts and accessing old online services can also be affected.
The reason for this is that many other websites and digital platforms also depend on email and Microsoft services. In such a situation, a malfunction in a big platform can also affect other services related to it.