# Microsoft's global cloud crisis spreads from email to security tools

> A cascading software issue knocked out Outlook, Teams, and security services worldwide, leaving millions without access for 18 hours.
- Title: Microsoft's global cloud crisis spreads from email to…
- Summary: A cascading software issue knocked out Outlook, Teams, and security services worldwide, leaving millions without access for 18 hours.
- Keywords: microsoft, outlook, teams, cloud outage, email outage, copilot, defender, intune, TechCrunch
- Source: TechCrunch — https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/13/microsoft-latest-email-outage-turned-into-a-full-blown-global-cloud-crisis
- Author: Zack Whittaker
- Published: 2026-11-13T13:15:20+00:00
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: microsoft, outlook, teams, cloud outage, email outage, copilot, defender, intune, technology, startups
## Outage starts in Americas, spreads globally
Microsoft's systems were hit by a cascading software issue starting Thursday. Problems initially flagged as affecting U.S. and Americas services quickly spread worldwide as engineers struggled to recover downed servers.
## Email, Teams, and security tools all went down
The outage began with Outlook email and Teams video conferencing, then expanded to cloud services for consumer and business email, files, and documents.
## Microsoft blames large number of unavailable servers
Microsoft said the outage involved a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable but has not disclosed the root cause.The company said it continues to investigate.

> a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable
## Recovery begins after 18 hours of downtime
As of Friday morning on the U.S.east coast, Outlook email had begun to recover and some emails were trickling in.
## Microsoft rules out malicious activity
Microsoft said in its latest status update on Friday that there was no evidence of malicious activity associated with the incident.

> no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident
## Second major outage in three months
The last major incident affecting Microsoft services was in September, when a days-long outage hit Microsoft's cloud services. Microsoft blamed a core authentication configuration issue that prevented users from accessing the service.
## Key takeaway

Microsoft suffered an 18-hour outage starting Thursday that spread from email and video conferencing to cloud services, security tools and administrator dashboards across the globe.