On Thursday, mass Microsoft outages were reported, with users across the globe experiencing disruptions to Outlook and Teams. AP News reports more than 130,000 users experienced issues yesterday. The total number of affected users is unclear, as Microsoft reports more than 450 million subscribers to its service. 

While the outage numbers are declining, many are still unable to access applications. 

Although Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna stated the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, some have still raised concerns about this incident, saying it emphasizes the risks of widespread dependence on individual organizations. 

Heath Renfrow, Co-Founder and Chief Information Security Officer at Fenix24, comments, “Based on Microsoft’s preliminary disclosures, this appears to be an infrastructure availability failure rather than a malicious cyberattack. Microsoft has described servers becoming unavailable, increased pressure on remaining infrastructure, and processes responsible for establishing secure connections becoming overwhelmed. A recent network configuration change is also under investigation, although the definitive root cause has not been established. What concerns me most is not necessarily the initial failure, but the cascading impact across services and geographic regions. When infrastructure designed for high availability begins failing in a correlated manner, traditional redundancy can become ineffective.”

Microsoft reported “marginal success” in restoring systems early this morning. By that time, CNN reports that municipalities, airlines and other organizations had already experienced considerable disruption to services and operations as a result of the outage. 

At 7:09 a.m. ET, Microsoft shared an X post saying it is “seeing encouraging recovery progress,” a statement later repeated at 10:39 a.m. ET in the same thread. Some users have criticized the communication from Microsoft, saying the language used in these posts is at times vague or highly technical, leading to greater confusion for users. 

As of a recent update, Microsoft states that email accessibility is “approaching normal levels.” 

How Should Organizations Handle Outages? 

Outages can bring confusion and chaos.

Renfrow explains how security leaders can guide their organizations toward handling the situation successfully, stating, “During an outage, the immediate priority should be maintaining essential operations rather than waiting passively for the provider to restore services. Organizations should identify which critical business functions are impaired, activate predefined communication alternatives, and implement approved workarounds that do not introduce additional security risks.”

Once an organization has made it through the worst of the outage, there is still long-term work to be done. 

Renfrow says, “Longer term, this is exactly why understanding technology dependencies and recoverability matters. My focus is helping organizations identify what must be restored or maintained first, what those operations depend on, and what could prevent recovery. The goal is not necessarily to eliminate every single point of failure, since that is often economically impractical. The goal is to understand where those dependencies exist, reduce their impact, and establish a credible, tested path to operational continuity.” 

As the situation with Microsoft continues to unfold, many organizations are considering the significance of their dependency on such services — and how they can continue business in the event those services are disrupted yet again. 

“Cyber resilience is not exclusively about surviving a ransomware attack,” asserts Renfrow. “It’s about surviving the loss of technology your business depends on, regardless of whether the cause is a cyberattack, human error, infrastructure failure, or a third-party outage. Your business does not care why its technology is unavailable. It cares how quickly it can operate again.”