Microsoft announced the restoration of services after a global outage — what is happening in Ukraine
Kyiv • UNN
Microsoft restored consumer services after an outage that affected more than 70 countries and impacted 430 million users. Corporate systems are still being monitored.
Microsoft said that its consumer services were fully restored at 16:10 UTC on Friday (18:10 Kyiv time), while some sustained recovery of Microsoft 365 business services was also observed. UNN reports this, citing Reuters.
Details
The technology giant said it was "monitoring emails that accumulated during the incident" before considering the issue with its business services resolved.
"Given the serious consequences of this incident, we will continue monitoring for an extended period to ensure that no additional mitigation measures are required," Microsoft said in an update on its services status page.
Update
The outage, as the BBC notes, affected more than 70 countries, disrupting everything from business operations to government services and private users. More than 430 million people worldwide use the affected products.
Microsoft said this was a technical issue that arose during a "network capacity upgrade" and was not related to cyber agents or artificial intelligence agents.
Experts said the event was a "stark reminder" of how heavily businesses and vital services depend on a small group of major technology providers.
Users began reporting problems accessing Microsoft 365 products on Thursday, November 12.
By Friday, November 13, the widespread problem had affected institutions ranging from the government of Japan and the Supreme Court of the Philippines to Australia's intelligence service, as well as trains, hospitals and courts in North America. In the United Kingdom, some National Health Service (NHS) units, including clinics and hospitals, were affected, as were some schools and police departments.
In Canada, the national rail network said passengers might not receive email updates about their journeys, while hospitals across the country also encountered email problems.
In the United States, staff members of the U.S. House of Representatives told Politico that the outage slowed the legislature's work for an entire day, as all processes are carried out through Microsoft Outlook.
The Singapore government acknowledged that some of its systems were affected, while in India the outage disrupted the work of many people on Friday.
In Turkey, advisers and officials participating in the COP31 climate summit in Antalya were frustrated by their inability to access Outlook.
Small businesses and private individuals were also affected.
Situation in Ukraine
According to the Downdetector monitoring service, the Microsoft 365 outage also affected Ukrainian users.
Over the past 24 hours, since 10:11 on November 13, the number of reports of problems with its operation began to decline and by the morning of November 14 had reached 1–3 such reports.
Most reports of problems over the past 24 hours concerned login (34%), the app (31%), and the website (23%).