Global Microsoft outage disrupts schools, hospitals, and police worldwide

A global Microsoft outage lasting over 21 hours disrupted email, chat, and video conferencing services for millions of users worldwide, affecting schools, hospitals, police, and government agencies. The company stated the incident was not caused by a cyberattack. The problems began around 18:00 GMT on November 12, with a sharp rise in complaints about Microsoft 365 services like Outlook and Teams. Microsoft identified the issue as a configuration update error that overloaded servers, and services began recovering around 11:20 GMT on Friday, though some users still faced interruptions. Microsoft engineers worked to stabilize systems by limiting traffic and restoring previous configurations. Experts noted that determining the exact cause could take weeks, as large-scale failures often result from complex interactions between systems.