The cause of Microsoft’s global cloud services outage revealed

On Tuesday July 30, users worldwide experienced disruptions with Microsoft services connected to the company’s Azure cloud platform.

According to initial reports, the outage mainly involved Microsoft 365 products, but eventually problems also surfaced with the Admin Center, Intune, Entra, and Power Platform services.

Since then, details have slowly come to light about the extent and cause of the disruption. It was apparently a DDoS attack on the company, according to Microsoft’s mitigation statement.

The outage lasted almost the entire day

Users of Microsoft 365 services reported issues with access and degraded performance, some completely unable to use the services in question. The disruption lasted about eight hours and was resolved towards the afternoon with a temporary workaround.

We now know that there was an attack on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform that attempted to overload the system.

Microsoft’s security measures successfully withstood the attack, but an error in the configuration caused the company’s own system to overload access to Azure. As a result, Azure services were unavailable or only accessible to a limited extent.

Microsoft was only able to give the all-clear in the evening. All services should now be working properly again and the fault reports are now back to normal levels. According to the current Azure status, Microsoft intends to publish a complete analysis of the situation soon.

Blow after blow for Microsoft

Earlier this month, a faulty CrowdStrike update caused a worldwide outage of IT systems, prompting Microsoft to release a USB hotfix tool despite not really being the cause of the problem.

Also this month, users experienced boot loop issues with a Windows 10 update and a BitLocker recovery issue with a Windows 11 update, adding further stress to the company’s recent image.

Frustrations with problems related to Microsoft products are adding up. Not the best month for Microsoft, who has high hopes for Azure even though the company’s latest quarterly reports show that it has not generated the desired growth.