Following the widespread disruption caused by an extensive service outage, Microsoft has issued an apology while clarifying the cause of the global blackout. In an official statement, the company made clear that the incident was not related to a cyberattack, artificial intelligence systems, or AI agents, but was instead the result of a technical failure within its network infrastructure.
Microsoft: What caused the global service outage
According to Microsoft’s statement, the incident was triggered by an issue that originated during a previous network capacity upgrade and was subsequently exposed following a recent change to the network configuration. The company confirmed that it has addressed the root cause of the problem and is continuing its efforts to restore access for the remaining customers and regions still experiencing disruptions.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously,” the company stated.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions. Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration. We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) November 13, 2026
Gradual restoration of services
Microsoft reports that broad recovery and stabilization of its services is now underway. However, the return to normal operations was carried out gradually, as the company chose to validate system stability at each stage before proceeding with the restoration of larger volumes of services.
According to Microsoft, this process took longer than expected, but was deemed necessary given the scale of demand and the need to prevent further failures during the recovery phase.
Finally, Microsoft has committed to publishing a full technical post-incident report once its internal review is complete. The report is expected to include detailed information about the initial technical failure, how the outage unfolded, and the measures that will be taken to reduce the risk of a similar incident occurring in the future.
