A massive disruption affected Microsoft 365 services worldwide, disrupting operations for major enterprises, airlines, and public sectors.
Timeline & Timezones:
• Onset: The incident began on November 13, 2026, at approximately 04:17 PKT (11:17 UTC).
• Resolution: Microsoft confirmed broad stability and recovery by 16:09 PKT (12:09 UTC) the same day.
Root Cause: Microsoft identified that an earlier network capacity upgrade, following a recent network configuration change, overloaded the processes handling secure connections on email servers. This triggered automated health checks to fail, causing servers to go offline.
Impacted Scope:
• Severity: Primary disruptions hit Microsoft 365, specifically Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot 365, and Defender XDR.
• Affected Integrations: Global airlines (IndiGo, Air India, Akasa Air), UK's NHS, and government agencies in Japan and Australia faced workflow delays.
• Unaffected: AWS and Google Cloud remained unaffected. Cloudflare resolved a separate, minor issue unrelated to Microsoft.
Official Sources:
• Microsoft Service Health Status: https://lnkd.in/d4yvYt6z?
• The Guardian Coverage: The Guardian
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Written by:
Muhammad Abdul Waris Shaikh
Head of Technical (ICT)
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warisshaikh/
