ROME – After almost 24 hours of downtime, something is moving on Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams. At least in part. The Redmond giant announces "positive results for server stability" following the wave of disruptions that have affected users around the world. In a new update on the page dedicated to the status of Microsoft 365 products (Business or Enterprise), the company founded by Bill Gates explains that it has put a patch ("the application of a patch") to the system for "authentication and routing". And to be committed to "monitoring the situation".
The size of the fault doesn't help. “We are working to extend the intervention to the servers that support the geographic areas being restored,” reads the company note, which reiterates that it does not believe that the interruption is caused by a hacker attack. "We are currently not aware of any malicious activity that caused this incident. We will continue to manage the situation with the utmost urgency and priority until it is fully resolved. Once the problem is resolved, we will provide comprehensive details on the underlying cause, the defense measures taken and other relevant aspects in a post-incident report", they still say from the United States.
According to Downdetector, a platform that monitors online disruptions, the outage spread globally within an hour starting late afternoon on Thursday 12 November, affecting Microsoft products in 74 countries. The problem has affected users in the Americas and in some areas of Europe, Asia and Africa, and New Zealand is also among the affected countries. "We have found that some of the infrastructure is under heavy load in several regions; this is likely contributing to connectivity errors," the engineers said. That through the executive vice-president, Charles Lamanna, they had ruled out that there was the hand of a hacker behind the stop of the platforms. "There is no indication that it is the result of malicious activity or related to a cyber attack," Lamma said.
Meanwhile, the disruptions also affect governments, including Palazzo Chigi, causing email congestion and the consequent difficulty of internal and external communication. There are also problems at the Ministry of Culture, where according to what LaPresse has learned in recent days some accounts have also been hacked with the scam of the fake boss who needs help. MiC employees received an email from IT Security warning of emails apparently from colleagues in the ministry, but not attributable to real accounts.
The expert: “Risks from the concentration of digital services”
"What is most worrying is what is emerging in terms of global technological dependence on a small number of large providers, whose infrastructures now support a significant part of the daily activities of companies, public administrations and organizations in every sector", Pierluigi Paganini, a cyber security expert, tells Ansa. Also worrying is the "hybrid war context" in which Microsoft's downturn comes.
"At the moment - adds Paganini - we have no news of direct impacts on the operations of essential services, but we cannot exclude that what is happening is at least slowing down processes and activities, to the point, in some cases, of interrupting them. The problem, in fact, does not only concern the unavailability of a single service, but the possible propagation of the inefficiencies towards all the organizations that depend on it, including those that provide fundamental services".
A "systemic risk" emerges, according to the expert. The point is one: "The concentration of digital services, cloud platforms and collaboration tools in the hands of a few operators creates common points of dependence, the malfunction of which can have consequences on an international scale. It is an issue that must also be addressed in terms of resilience and digital sovereignty. It does not necessarily mean giving up on large providers, but avoiding that a technical or operational problem at a single operator can put entire economic chains and public services in difficulty".
The recipe for reversing the trend involves "strategies of operational continuity, redundancy, diversification of suppliers and the concrete ability to guarantee alternative services when the main infrastructure is not available.
