Microsoft outage: Services begin to return online after 24-hour disruption affecting 74 countries

Microsoft services are gradually coming back online following a nearly 24-hour global outage that affected at least 74 countries.

The outage disrupted Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and other platforms, leaving millions of users worldwide unable to access them.

On Thursday, the US tech giant confirmed that it was unable to resolve the outage.

However, on Friday, the services began coming back online, according to Fox News.

Microsoft said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack. Instead, it attributed the disruption to overwhelmed servers responsible for establishing secure connections, which were unable to process requests.

Reacting to the outage, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom wrote on X:

"The Court is aware of the global outage affecting Microsoft systems. The Court is currently not receiving emails, but the Portal and contact forms are still functioning as normal. Parties and members of the public may not receive email notifications."

Content Analyst at RightLine News, Eric Daugherty, also wrote on X:

"Microsoft is STILL suffering a GLOBAL outage for nearly 24 hours straight; people can't log on, and GOVERNMENTS are being impacted

"74 nations' governments, businesses and schools can't get into Outlook."

Although there is no exact figure on the amount businesses have lost due to the outage, analysts have estimated that the losses could run into billions of dollars.

Microsoft outage: Services begin to return online after 24-hour disruption affecting 74 countries