Microsoft rules out cyberattack as company battles global outage

Microsoft has ruled out malicious activity as the cause of a global outage that disrupted Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services on Friday, November 13, 2026, leaving businesses, government agencies, and millions of users without access for several hours.

Microsoft attributed the disruption to an “elevated load” on parts of its infrastructure and said it was making progress towards restoring normal service.

The outage affected users in at least 74 countries and territories, disrupting access to Outlook email, Microsoft Teams, Copilot, and other Microsoft 365 services.

The disruption also had wider implications, with airlines in India warning that customer enquiries could be delayed, while New Zealand said the outage temporarily halted the processing of visa applications. Japanese authorities also cautioned that the disruption could have broader effects.

In an update issued around 0730 GMT, Microsoft said it had begun seeing improvements after deploying a software patch.

“We’re seeing positive results for server stability,” the technology giant said, adding that it was working to extend the fix to servers supporting regions that were gradually coming back online.

The company also dismissed speculation that the outage was caused by a cyberattack.

“We’re not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident,” it said.

Despite the progress, Microsoft acknowledged that restoring services had proved more difficult than anticipated.

Earlier, the company said it had monitored the changes introduced to improve service delivery but found they were “not taking as expected,” without indicating when full service would be restored.

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The outage spread rapidly within an hour, affecting users across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, according to outage-tracking platform Downdetector.

Microsoft initially said it was investigating reports of service disruption in the Americas before confirming that the incident had affected Microsoft 365 connectivity for users globally.

The company said part of its infrastructure experienced unusually high demand across multiple regions, resulting in widespread connectivity problems.

Microsoft wrote on X: “We’ve determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors.

“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.”

Downdetector also recorded thousands of reports of service disruptions affecting Microsoft Teams and the artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot, during the outage.