Microsoft outage hits Outlook, Teams, and Copilot across 74 countries

Microsoft is experiencing a global outage affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot since Thursday evening, with disruption reports coming from 74 countries. The company has not yet identified the cause but sees no evidence of a cyberattack. The outage began when many servers failed an automatic functional check, overloading remaining servers that had to take over their work. Affected organizations include Australia's federal police and intelligence service, Swiss luxury group Richemont, and SRF. Microsoft has not disclosed how many businesses, authorities, and individuals are impacted. The disruption is ongoing, and experts recommend companies have emergency plans and backups for when critical IT services fail simultaneously.