A major Microsoft outage has disrupted city governments across the United States and thrown millions of workers into confusion as essential systems powered by the company’s technology stopped functioning.
The disruption began on Thursday and spread to 74 countries and territories within hours. Customers lost access to email, while systems used by banks, government agencies and courts also went offline.
Routine workplace tools were affected too, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams meetings, cloud storage and file-synchronization services.
In Colorado, the outage forced the Arapahoe County Detention Facility to halt online inmate releases, even for people who had successfully posted bond.
The facility said the Microsoft outage was “affecting online bond payments.” Those payments depend on Outlook email notifications confirming that the money has been received, meaning inmates had to post bond in person before they could be released.
With millions of customers affected across multiple industries, Microsoft has been working urgently to restore its services.
By Friday morning, Microsoft said it was seeing “encouraging recovery progress” and that traffic was “being gradually restored.” Some users also reported on social media that emails were beginning to appear in their inboxes again.
A massive Microsoft outage has paralyzed city governments across the US and sparked chaos as everyday systems relying on the tech have seized up
Microsoft said early testing indicated that an “elevated load” on its infrastructure had contributed to the outage, although investigators were still working to determine the “root cause” of the failure.
The technology company said the incident was not the result of a cybersecurity breach or cyberattack. It added that a “full post-incident report” would be released later.
Millions of employees across a wide range of industries saw their working days disrupted, with the scale of the failure expected to place it among the largest technology outages ever recorded.
City and federal agencies experienced restricted operations for more than a day. The House of Representatives said it had sent engineers to assist Microsoft with restoring systems used by Congress.
Local governments around the country were also unable to handle routine business. Officials in Baltimore County said staff could not even contact their departments.
Employees also reported outages affecting government operations in Jacksonville, Florida, and Austin, Texas.
As workers waited for services to return, officials warned that scammers could exploit the confusion by targeting users desperate to regain access to their email accounts.
Banks and university IT departments cautioned customers and staff about fraudulent password-reset emails, text messages demanding account verification and fake support requests seeking passwords or security codes.
Microsoft says it is investigating the ‘root cause’ of the outage. Pictured: CEO Satya Nadella
SEE ALSO: JonBenet Ramsey Investigators Retest Evidence With New Technology, Police Chief Says
In Colorado, the disruption meant the Arapahoe County Detention Facility was forced to stop releasing inmates from the jail via their online system, even if they were able to post bond
Old Dominion University in Virginia urged employees and students to remain alert for suspicious login prompts. It also advised them not to repeatedly reset their passwords, explaining that sign-in errors were linked to Microsoft’s outage.
Scammers may also pose as Microsoft employees or company help-desk workers, claiming they can restore Outlook access if victims install software or grant remote access to their computers.
Requests for payment are another warning sign. Fraudsters may demand gift cards, wire transfers, cryptocurrency or money sent through payment apps to unlock an account.
Microsoft says it does not make unsolicited calls about problems with a user’s device. Genuine Microsoft error messages also do not provide a telephone number for customers to call.
Anyone who receives an unexpected support request should contact their IT department using a verified, trusted method before taking any action.
The risk may continue after services are restored, as criminals could keep impersonating technical-support staff once the immediate outage has passed.
Microsoft said early tests showed an ‘elevated load’ on its infrastructure was a factor to the outage, leaving millions without access to everyday working systems
Financial experts warned that the outage could inflict “astronomical” losses on financial markets if services were not restored quickly.
Samuel Mather-Holgate, managing director at Mather and Murray Financial, said: “This could become one of the most economically damaging technology outages in history.
“When Microsoft goes down, the world doesn’t just lose its emails — huge parts of the global economy effectively grind to a halt.
“It’s a terrifying demonstration of how fragile our modern economy has become. And next time, it could be even worse.”
The first reports of service failures emerged around midday Eastern Time on Thursday. Within hours, the outage had spread to more than 70 countries.
The disruption appeared especially widespread across the Americas. Microsoft initially confirmed that it was investigating problems affecting people trying to access their email accounts.
The company later said the outage affected several services, including Teams, OneDrive, Copilot and Microsoft 365.
The incident came only days after Outlook users were urged to update their software following the discovery that hackers were exploiting a security flaw capable of exposing information used to verify their identities.
Microsoft said it had found no evidence linking the outage to a cyberattack.
