Microsoft Outage Hits Met Police Email Access

A global Microsoft service outage on the evening of Thursday, November 12, caused widespread connectivity issues, impacting users across multiple regions including the UK. The disruption affected key services such as Microsoft Teams and Outlook, leading to difficulties for organisations including the Metropolitan Police, NHS, schools, and local councils.

Impact on Metropolitan Police

The Metropolitan Police Service reported that officers and staff were unable to access their emails via Outlook. The force stated that some online crime form submissions may also have been affected. In response to potential delays for non-emergency reports, the Met advised the public to call 101 if their crime report was time-sensitive but not an emergency. However, the police service assured the public that their ability to respond to 999 and 101 calls remained unaffected. Business continuity plans were in place to manage the disruption.

Microsoft acknowledged the issues, stating that a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load. The company announced it was working to redistribute traffic and had paused deployments while restarting affected servers. Users attempting to find updates on Microsoft's service status page reported that the page itself was experiencing loading problems.

Expert Concerns

Professor Awais Rashid, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Bristol, commented on the outage. He expressed concern that Microsoft did not appear to fully understand the underlying cause of the problem. Professor Rashid highlighted the critical role of cloud services in daily organisational operations and the importance of their resilience, stating that the capability to ensure effective operation and mitigate such issues is paramount.

Microsoft later reported 'early signs of stabilisation' on its Microsoft 365 status page, indicating that service capacity was gradually returning to normal levels as traffic was carefully reintroduced. The company stated it was working with urgency to resolve the issue.