Microsoft services experienced a widespread global technical disruption extending to Friday, November 13, 2026, causing outages in email and professional communication systems for companies, government agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare providers across several continents, in one of the most significant outages faced by the company this year.
The glitch affected Outlook, Teams, Exchange Online, and certain functions of the Copilot AI assistant, leading to difficulties in sending and receiving emails, managing appointments, and organizing virtual meetings, forcing a number of organizations to resort to alternative communication methods to ensure business continuity.
The disruption began on Thursday, November 12, before its effects extended into Friday for more than twelve hours, amid reports of issues accessing digital services from dozens of countries and regions around the world.
Microsoft announced that the glitch was linked to operational infrastructure issues on servers supporting Exchange Online services, confirming that preliminary investigations revealed no signs of malicious cyber activity behind the outage.
The company explained that its technical teams began implementing gradual fixes to restore stability, after it was discovered that some servers that were restarted faced new difficulties once traffic returned to them.
The repercussions extended to government institutions in Australia, Japan, the United States, and Europe. Some services belonging to the British National Health Service (NHS) and the London Metropolitan Police were also affected, with institutions resorting to paper records and traditional communication methods to compensate for the email outage.
In the economic sector, financial firms and institutions announced delays in some communications and administrative operations, while some entities were forced to adjust the timing of their financial results announcements or use fax machines to confirm specific transactions.
Indian airlines also recorded difficulties in electronic customer support services, while connectivity services for some artificial intelligence companies were affected due to their reliance on Microsoft's digital infrastructure.
This outage has reignited the issue of increasing reliance on a limited number of global companies to provide communication, storage, and cloud computing services, especially in institutions whose operating systems rely almost entirely on a single technical provider.
According to preliminary estimates cited by Reuters from an expert at the institution
Morningstar DBRS
Morningstar DBRS
, global insured losses could range between $300 and $500 million, which are analytical estimates and not a final financial toll announced by Microsoft.
Despite the gradual improvement in services, the incident highlights the importance of developing business continuity plans, backup communication systems, and technical risk distribution, allowing institutions to continue their core activities when widespread failures occur in digital infrastructure.
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to react!