A global Microsoft 365 outage has disrupted email and other online services for several hours, affecting numerous businesses, local councils and Tasmanian government services.
The Department of Premier and Cabinet issued an alert on Friday warning that the outage could affect access to government services, including email.
People with urgent matters can call Service Tasmania’s government directory switchboard on 1300 135 513 or contact individual agencies through their websites or social media pages.
Microsoft said the outage was affecting features that rely on Exchange Online and email services.
These include Outlook, calendar and meeting scheduling in Teams, Planner, To Do and Copilot.
The list of affected services on Microsoft’s website has grown significantly throughout the morning.
The company said messaging and online meetings in Teams remained largely functional, while files stored directly in SharePoint Online could still be accessed.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said he did not believe the outage was caused by a cyber security incident.
Burke was briefed by national cyber security coordinator Michelle McGuinness and Microsoft on Friday morning.
“They do not believe they are dealing with a cyber event,” he said.
Microsoft said its investigation had found “a process on the affected servers responsible for establishing secure connections becomes overwhelmed, causing the servers to stop processing requests”.
The company is testing a fix on a small number of servers before rolling it out more widely.
It has also started reversing a recent network configuration change that “correlates with the start of impact”.
Microsoft has not said when services are expected to be fully restored.
