From the Guardian · · 2m
Microsoft outage sends Australia back to phone calls
A global Microsoft 365 outage knocked out Outlook and Teams across Australian government, schools and hospitals on Friday, forcing services to switch to paper and phones.
In brief
A global Microsoft 365 outage knocked out Outlook and Teams across Australian government, schools and hospitals on Friday, forcing services to switch to paper and phones. A Microsoft 365 outage disrupted Australian government services, schools and hospitals on Friday, forcing them to revert to phone calls and paper…
Microsoft 365 goes down across Australia
Australians began reporting issues with Microsoft 365, which includes Outlook and Teams, just before five am AEST on Friday. Problems peaked at nine twenty-two am with more than five thousand five hundred reports.
Microsoft blames configuration change
Microsoft said it had no indication of a cyber-attack and suggested the issue could be related to a configuration change to its servers that was causing some to become overloaded and taken offline.
Government and spy agencies affected
Service NSW encouraged customers to delay visits to service centres.Federal home affairs minister Tony Burke appeared with Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett and Asio director general Mike Burgess, who said their systems were affected.
Hospitals forced back to paper scripts
The Australian Medical Association said some hospitals and health clinics experienced clerical issues. Facilities returned to using paper for scripts because authentication to prescribing software requires multifactor verification through Microsoft-supported email.
Schools and courts go offline
Schoolbytes, a cloud-based administration platform used by schools in New South Wales, was temporarily unable to access emails. Courts in South Australia and Victoria reported the outage was affecting their email systems.
Workers resort to talking to each other
On social media, a Brisbane-based person posted: "It's all SMS and phone calls today. Looks like we will have to talk to people while Microsoft sort out their email issues."
“Looks like we'll have to talk to people”
Cybercriminals may exploit the chaos
The National Cyber Security Coordinator warned cybercriminals often seek to take advantage of uncertainty around disruptions with scam emails, texts, calls or social media messages.
Expert explains cascading server failure
Mark Gregory, associate professor at RMIT University, said the outage appeared to affect the network layer.
The essence
A Microsoft 365 outage disrupted Australian government services, schools and hospitals on Friday, forcing them to revert to phone calls and paper systems.
