Microsoft apologizes for global outage affecting 74 countries

Microsoft apologized for a global outage affecting 74 countries, confirming a "broad recovery" of services and attributing the disruption to a technical issue unrelated to cyber or AI activity. The outage disrupted health care services, delayed corporate earnings reports, and affected schools, airlines, and immigration processing. Microsoft ruled out malicious activity, stating the incident stemmed from a network capacity upgrade issue that surfaced after a recent network change. Reports of problems began declining by Friday morning, with Microsoft saying it had addressed the underlying issue and was restoring service to remaining customers. The disruption also exposed user dependence on Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot and Outlook.