Global disruptions as Microsoft outage paralyzes critical services
8:42 AM EDT, July 19, 2024
On Friday, many companies around the world faced operational paralysis due to an outage affecting Microsoft's services. The U.S.-based tech giant announced it had taken "mitigation steps" to address the issue, which caused global disruptions.
Disruptions on July 19, 2024, included the grounding of airlines, suspension of train services, telecommunications problems, and stock market interruptions. Many companies, from Australia to the United States, reported outages in the last few hours. Europe was not spared either, with numerous incidents reported there as well.
Global tech outage
According to information provided by Reuters, citing a British government source, the global IT outage is not being treated as a cybersecurity-related issue.
The office of Australian Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness stated that "there is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident."
Microsoft Services Admin Center issued a statement informing users that they may experience issues accessing various applications and services, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Fabric, and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. The company assured us it is taking remedial action to address the issue.
Microsoft identified the preliminary cause of the problem as a configuration change on Azure, its cloud platform. This change reportedly disrupted communication between storage and compute resources, resulting in connectivity outages impacting subordinate Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections.
Media reports suggest that issues in the Australian network may have been linked to a software update from CrowdStrike, which aims to protect against cyberattacks.
