What caused the global Microsoft outage? Outlook and teams down for millions

Billions of Outlook users around the world have been unable to send or receive emails. It might even be you after a Microsoft outage that began early yesterday afternoon. All right, Outlook isn't the only Microsoft service that's not working, but we may start seeing some signs of progress. Jessica Formoso, taking a look at it. You checking your email this morning, Jessica? I did check my email this morning, and it wasn't working, and this continues to be a widespread Microsoft outage. But I have to tell you that we are starting to get our emails back here, So that means things are ...are turning around for Microsoft. At the height of the outage Thursday, nearly 130,000 users reported problems accessing Outlook alone, although the number of people affected is much, much higher as the outage hit software used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. This all started just after 1 in the afternoon. People were left unable to access their e-mails, send messages, or get work done because the outage didn't only affect Microsoft's e-mail service, But also Microsoft 365. Microsoft said it was investigating disruptions caused by servers becoming unavailable and overloaded, placing the blame on a cluster of servers' unexpectedly failed automated health checks. We spoke with Ian Marlowe, a cybersecurity expert who explains what went wrong. The reports from Microsoft is just basically there are updates that they have to have from their servers. There are things that applied. Unfortunately, in many servers, they just stopped reacting, stopped working. And what Microsoft is saying is that they had to load balance. It just means move people onto other servers. And that just continued to bring things down. And its most recent post, Microsoft says they've made additional progress towards recovery, and we're seeing that now. The company said recovery actions are ongoing and progress is being made in phases. Now, they did say that this was no cyber attack and that there is no timeline right now as to when this problem will be completely resolved. But, Dan and Tashani, we are starting to get our emails, which is a good sign. Yes, and it's also a good sign that it wasn't a cyber attack. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Jessica.