Tech expert answers questions about Microsoft outage

As we come back in the newsroom, if you work anywhere and have to deal with emails, you probably know that it has been a nightmare over the last about 22 hours, about two o'clock on Thursday. So yesterday, just about 22 hours ago. Pretty much everyone lost access to their Outlook because there was a massive outage involving the email system and also Microsoft and some of their other items that they have under their Microsoft 365 umbrella. So Kim Leffler is tracking the latest from our newsroom and joins us now with the very latest. Kim, I think we're starting to hear that things are starting to rebound and get better. I know my emails are starting to come back in. Can you give us the very latest? Yeah, Tyler, you know, it's been a real headache for so many workers over the last, as you mentioned, over 20 hours now. But here at Fox 5, we also were affected. And this morning, right around 7 a.m. or so, we started to see the emails start coming in. So we are just one of many that are getting their emails restored. But still, Microsoft says some people may still have some issues throughout the day. Now, here is what we know. Among the services that have been affected, they include Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Microsoft says the problems link to servers unexpectedly going offline, putting additional strain on the remaining systems. And it's not because more people are using the services. The company says some of its servers are becoming overwhelmed, and even after being restarted, some are shutting down again. Engineers have been working to restore service. Late Thursday night, Microsoft reported partial recovery in some regions. We also know this was affecting people all across the world. Not just here in the U.S. Microsoft did post on X this morning that services are being gradually restored, so certainly a lot of progress being made from when we were first reporting on this around 5 a.m. this morning. Again, many people do have their emails back, but of course, we're going to be monitoring this, and we will keep you updated. Tyler. Kim, I really appreciate the update. And thank you so much. And as you come back in the newsroom, so obviously you want to continue talking about this. So if you have any questions that you want to maybe get answers to about how this could have happened, go ahead and scan the QR code on your screen. We're going to be talking to an expert right now about how all of this could happen and what exactly is going on. So joining us now is Ian Marlowe, president of Fitech Consultants. Ian, thanks so much for being here this morning. Good morning. Good morning. I mean, this is kind of bizarre. I mean, in the last couple of years, we've had a couple of different instances. I know here in Atlanta, Delta, they had the crowd strike. Obviously, it wasn't just Delta who was affected by this. We've had a lot of different issues where big key systems have just gone down across the board involving big tech companies. Do we know exactly what caused all of this and why it's taking so long to rebound? Well, you know, what caused this from what's being reported from Microsoft, you know, as was said earlier, is some overwhelming of systems. What does that mean? The likelihood here is, you know, Microsoft releases a lot of updates and patches weekly on Tuesdays. You know, my expectation is that there were a series of, you know, updates or things or applications that were being done to the servers, and those servers completely went offline. When they went offline. What should happen, it should redistribute the infrastructure so people can continue to work. As that happens, so many servers went offline. It cascaded to the point that the entire system and various services just completely stopped. Once those machines went off, they weren't communicating with their complementary other software, such as SharePoint or Microsoft Teams, etc. And as that windfall, that tidal wave occurs, You know, remediation begins around two o'clock yesterday. Microsoft said they stopped applying patches to various systems. They were freezing everything and then moving to getting everything back online. And we can see that. It took a serious amount of time. There were some aspects of the system, such as Microsoft Teams, that did start to come up around 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon. But email and that related flow really did not start until this morning again. So we can tell that basically restarting those machines, rolling them back, reapplying whatever they needed to to get it back to a workable version of the operating system, and then rolling that back out. Is what we're seeing now, and we expect that it is going to take at least for the remainder of today, if not longer, for services globally to be restored. I mean, obviously, we know that employees might like this. Employers might hate this, especially since the last half of the workday yesterday was completely interrupted, especially if email is your key form of communication. And if you use any of the 365 staff teams, you said four o'clock started coming back up. That's a vital communication tool for a lot of different companies. I want to put this up. So a viewer just sent us a question. And I think this is a question a lot of people are probably asking. So Viral in Atlanta said, do we think the outage was a cyber attack or possibly another rogue AI? And obviously you. You said that this seems to be some sort of technology issue within Microsoft, but obviously Microsoft is a company that has to protect their reputation. Is there a chance what they're saying might not actually be what it is and it could be something related to a cyber attack or rogue AI? Well, you know, the answer is, is there always a possibility? You know, we have to listen to Microsoft as an organization. Generally, when they've had outages, they have websites that are dedicated to that. They have been communicating from the moment that it occurred. And there's a lot more information that's outlined on the various services that went down and came up. So based upon what they're sharing. It does not look like that that is in all the likelihood, but we have to see as it develops and they determine what the root cause is and come to everyone and explain not only what the cause is, but what they're going to do in the future to make sure that something like this can be prevented. It falls under business continuity. It's something they know that as an organization, and I expect that to come forward in the coming days. Because no one wants to lose access to the things that they use for work, especially the employers who want their employees to be able to do the work they need to do. Is there a reasonable backup plan that employers can have in place to be able to maybe have continuity of working going on if they do rely on so many of Microsoft's 365 products? The answer to that is yes. But what's interesting, until something like this happens, many people and organizations don't value the capability of those business continuity pieces of software. So there are ways for you to back up the information that you have within the Microsoft stack that gives you access to that. I mean, I definitely see a lot of people What that looks like going forward, I will tell you what we did see is a dramatic increase in the use of cellular communication, FaceTime, Zoom, Slack, different chat platforms, communication, Facebook Messenger. As people were getting into this and realizing that the outage was gonna be passed, about that two hour mark is people kind of back off and say, wait, I'll wait for it. But once it was still down. We saw volumes of clients and other businesses say, we need to continue. We need to communicate. What are the alternatives? From an IT standpoint, we actually already have the capability set with our clients to directly communicate that to them within minutes, including the updates that are. pop-ups through agents and their computers. So, you know, as a company, we were set up to do that. I know, you know, it's something that needs to continue to be considered so that that communication is there. And I think that's the real next question is every company has to come up with its value proposition. And a 22-hour outage is very different than a two-hour outage. 100%. I mean, we saw what a couple years ago with CrowdStrike, Delta was trying to recover for five days or something to be able to get back on track after what was maybe only a matter of hours. So in this situation for Outlook and the Microsoft 365 product, definitely crippling leading into a weekend. And a lot of people are talking about it. And what you mentioned, people started switching to phones. We have someone coming up later on in the 11 o'clock We're talking to a doctor about prostate cancer and I had to reach out to to the communications person via phone so that I could actually set up the interview. So Ian, I really appreciate your time in breaking all this down for us and I appreciate you being here. Our pleasure. Have a great day.