Microsoft’s services restored after being stalled for a day: The company said – it was not a cyber attack, it was a technical glitch; Outlook-Teams and Copilot were affected

After being out of action for more than a day, all the major services of Microsoft including Outlook, Teams and Copilot have now been restored.

The company issued a statement on social media platform X on November 13 and apologized to customers and partners for this outage.

Microsoft said that this problem was not caused by any cyber attack or AI agent, but due to a technical glitch related to network capacity upgrade.

The company apologized, said- customer trust is most important for us

Microsoft said it regrets the inconvenience caused to customers and partners due to this problem. The company acknowledges that the trust that customers place in their services comes with a great responsibility and they take it very seriously.

The root cause of this problem has been fixed. However, work is underway to fully normalize services for the few customers and areas that are still affected.

The ‘Microsoft 365 Status’ account, which gave continuous updates during the outage, has also reposted this statement of the company.

How the problem started: There was a technical glitch during the network upgrade.

Microsoft disclosed the cause of this outage for the first time, saying that it was caused by a flaw during an earlier ‘Network Capacity Upgrade’.

This old technical problem came to the fore after another recent network change, affecting the entire system.

The company has rejected any external attack. Microsoft said, ‘This was a technical issue, which has nothing to do with cyber attacks or AI/agents.’

Why did it take so much time for recovery: Services were restored in a phased manner

In initial updates to the outage, Microsoft said automated health checks on affected machines were failing and the secure-connection process was overloaded.

Initial efforts were made such as restarting servers and re-routing traffic, but these provided little improvement which did not last long.

The company said that in view of the huge demand for services, they restored the services in a phased manner instead of starting everything at once.

The stability of the system was checked at every phase. The company acknowledged that this process took longer for recovery, but was necessary for a permanent and stable solution.

Complete details of outage: The problem started on November 12

This technical problem started on November 12. This outage had a direct impact on ‘Exchange Online’. Along with this, services of Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, SharePoint Online and Defender XDR were affected.

At the peak of the problem, nearly 1,30,000 complaints were filed for Outlook alone, according to data from DownDetector, a platform that tracks outages. Apart from this, more than 47,000 problem reports related to Microsoft 365 were revealed.

What next: Detailed report will be released after completion of the review

Microsoft has said that this entire incident is being reviewed. After the review is completed, the company will issue a complete ‘post-incident report’, so that such technical glitches can be avoided in future.

What is ‘downdetector’?

It is an online platform that provides real-time information about the outages of major websites, apps and internet services around the world. When there is a problem with any app, users go to this platform and file a report, which shows how big the problem is.

What is ‘Post-Incident Report’?

Big tech companies release this report after any major technical failure. It explains in detail when the malfunction started, what was the real technical reason behind it, what steps were taken to fix it and what changes have been made to the system to prevent it in future.

Also read this news related to Microsoft…

Microsoft system stalled, Australian intelligence service-police affected: Government systems in Japan, banking in Hong Kong, courts in Philippines and Indian airlines affected.

Technical glitches at Microsoft have affected the functioning of big companies and government institutions around the world. There were problems in the functioning of banking services in Hong Kong and intelligence and police services in Australia.

Here, the functioning of the government system in Japan and the courts in the Philippines was affected. The functioning of schools and hospitals came to a standstill at many places. Read the full news…