When the internet communications go BOOM
At approximately 6:30am on November 13, 2026, worldwide blackouts started affecting major internet based communications.
Business owners and Staff members arrive to work and find their emails and phone systems are not working. They try to call their tech teams, but find they cannot get through on the phone, and frustration builds.
Meanwhile, System Administrators worldwide scramble to set up reliable information communication channels between themselves as the incident investigation and responce gets underway. All the while, their usual support lines get crushed under the weight of a worldwide IT catastrophe.
Outage Timeline & Information
We will provide updates as we become aware of them below.
6:00am - Outage Reports begin to roll in globally
The independant service health reporting website DownDetector starts recieving reports of outages.
6:54am - Microsoft Acknowledgement
Microsoft posts its initial acknowledgment on Microsoft 365 Status on X, confirming an active investigation under incident ID EX1550543.
Microsoft’s normal service health system is inaccessable.
7:15 AM - Downdetector Reports surpass 130,000 reports
Incident reports surpass 130,000 on Downdetector, with impacts ranging from Outlook alongside Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot 365, and Microsoft Defender XDR
7:45 AM - Microsoft begins restarting critical infrastructure
Microsoft updates its Microsoft 365 Service Health Status page, reporting that affected infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions and that engineers are restarting nodes and preparing to redirect traffic
8:00 AM to 8:30 AM - Microsoft beings redistributing connection traffic
Microsoft confirms via Microsoft 365 Status on X that it has begun redistributing connection traffic across its global infrastructure to balance the load and restore capacity
9:00 AM - Microsoft communicates its next major update window to be 11:00AM
Microsoft's service status page lists its next scheduled update window for the ongoing recovery progress as 11:00am NZ time
9:30 AM - Microsoft begins bypassing systems to find the root cause
Microsoft begin bypassing systems suspected as contributing, while no root cause is yet clear.
Microsoft engineers note unexplained elevated processor usage on affected servers.
10:00 AM - Microsoft expands scope of affected services
Microsoft confirms impacted services include Defender XDR, Data Loss Prevention systems, Communication Compliance, and Data Classification services.
10:30 AM - Microsoft servers become unresponsive during change validation
Affected services become unresponsive when engineers attempt to validate targetted changes, preventing them from confirming if the changes are effective in resolving the issues.
Microsoft Engineers set up an automated recovery process to continually detect and restart servers as they become unresponsive, and apply this approach to additional affected portions of the global infrastructure
10:45 AM - Microsoft expands scope of affected services
Microsoft confirms impacted services now include not just email but critical security, device management, infomation security, and compliance systems.
- Exchange Online
- Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft Copilot 365
- Microsoft Defender XDR
- Microsoft Planner
- Microsoft To Do
- Microsoft Intune
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365
- Microsoft Purview; Authorization, Auto Labelling, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Communication Compliance, and Data Classification are impacted.
- Power BI
11:00 AM - Alternative Server Health Check Validation Succeeds
Microsoft reports that an alternative health check method on a subset of servers allowed them to successfully return to service, and are now applying that change more broadly.
Services remain broadly impacted at this time as affected services are rebooted.
Microsoft Engineers continue to investigate a small number of configuration updates as potential contributors to the issue.
11:10 AM - Microsoft expands scope of affected services
Microsoft confirms impacted services now include Office 365 Apps Administation.
11:15 AM - Microsoft provides an official update on the recovery efforts
“We’re continuing to pursue all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief. Our investigation has found that a core process on the affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, which causes the servers to stop responding and contributes to the capacity loss.”
- Microsoft
11:20 AM - Microsoft fully cuts off portions of its service infrastructure
To validate a potential recovery approach, Microsoft starts fully isolating portions of its service infrastructure and starts gradually reintroducing traffic to confirm if services remain stable.
Microsoft continues to analyze traffic patterns across the entire service infrastructure and evaluating whether isolating traffic within each region may allow affected regions to recover independently.