On July 30, users around the globe faced significant disruptions with Microsoft services tied to the Azure cloud platform. Initially, the issues affected Microsoft 365 products, but soon extended to the Admin Center, Intune, Entra, and Power Platform services.
Recent updates reveal that the root cause was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack targeting Microsoft’s infrastructure. The attack aimed to overwhelm the system, and although Microsoft’s security protocols managed to mitigate it, a configuration error led to further overloads within their own systems. This caused widespread unavailability or limited access to Azure services.
The outage persisted for nearly eight hours, during which Microsoft 365 users experienced access issues and degraded performance. The disruption was resolved with a temporary workaround by the afternoon, and Microsoft declared the all-clear by evening. Services are now back to normal, with a complete analysis of the incident expected to be released soon.
This incident adds to a series of recent challenges for Microsoft. Earlier this month, a problematic CrowdStrike update caused a global IT systems outage, and issues with Windows 10 and 11 updates have further complicated matters. Despite high hopes for Azure, the company’s recent quarterly reports show less than expected growth, adding to the company’s current difficulties.
