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Microsoft has ruled out any malicious cyber or artificial intelligence activity behind a massive global outage that crippled public services and businesses across 74 countries.
Apologising on Friday, the tech giant announced a “broad recovery” for Outlook email and its Microsoft 365 suite.
“We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI/agents,” the company stated on X while continuing to restore full connectivity after the disruption began on Thursday.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services.
This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions.
Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.
We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) November 13, 2026
Network Change
In a follow-up update, Microsoft explained that a recent network change triggered a flaw introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade, knocking out services across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa before Downdetector reports began declining around 0900 GMT on Friday.
The hours-long blackout disrupted health care operations, delayed corporate earnings reports, and hindered school communications worldwide.
In the United Kingdom, GMB union public services head Rachel Harrison warned that the failure had a “serious impact” on the National Health Service, leaving emergency call handlers “unable to refer patient details in the normal way” and creating a massive backlog.
Meanwhile, Immigration New Zealand halted all visa application processing, Indian carriers IndiGo and Akasa Air alerted passengers to disrupted email support, and Japanese Economy, Trade, and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa cautioned of a “significant impact” given the vast number of people relying on Microsoft tools.
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In London’s financial district, workers noted how heavily daily operations depend on Outlook and Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot.
“I think one of the biggest things is Copilot not working,” said 26-year-old auditor Yashmit Sharma, while bank risk manager Sheera urged companies to prepare better for sudden tech failures: “Anything can happen: you wake up, and Outlook is not working, and it’s the main communication we use for our global team.”
In Australia, Australian Computer Society CEO Prins Ralston called for a national review of sovereign IT risk to protect small businesses lacking workarounds, warning that critical national systems “won’t simply fall over without notice.”
