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The interruption of Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services hampered work communications and access to tools used by companies and public bodies in Brazil and other countries between Thursday (12/11) and Friday (13/11).
With the service failure, the Federal Supreme Court (STF) suspended the counting of deadlines for cases being processed at the Court on the two days.
The decision, signed by the president of the court, minister Edson Fachin, responds to a request from the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) due to instability. The count will resume on Monday (16/11).
Microsoft did not disclose the exact number of people affected, but its tools have around 430 million users.
Tens of thousands of people in more than 70 countries have reported problems through the Downdetector platform — a number that is probably well below reality.
Reports of interruptions in activities and businesses appeared in several countries.
In South Africa, wine producer Peter Pentz told the BBC that the failure had paralyzed order processing, shipping and even some production work. Communication with partners in Europe was also interrupted, in preparation for the end of year festivities.
The NHS, the body responsible for the public health service in England, states that the outage is "inevitably" affecting the work of teams, but consultations can continue; schools have asked parents to contact them by phone; US federal government and justice systems also report problems.
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According to Reuters, Danish Maersk, which operates in maritime cargo transport, warned customers of delays in emails and updates.
Can companies be compensated for losses?
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Microsoft shares fell 0.2% in early US trading.
In the opinion of Mitchell Labiak, BBC business reporter, the discreet reaction suggests that investors did not expect major financial consequences for the company.
According to Labiak, two issues weigh on this assessment: whether Microsoft will have to pay compensation for the failure and whether there will be mass cancellations of subscriptions. For the reporter, the small fluctuation indicates that the majority of operators did not bet on any of these scenarios.
In the international press, analyzes published after the outage indicate that recovering financial losses beyond subscription credits can be a challenge for companies.
American business website Quartz highlighted that Microsoft's commercial contracts do not provide for cash refunds and exclude free or home accounts.
According to the publication, any credits only apply to the proportional portion of the specific service that failed and do not cover broader operational losses.
The specialized magazine Insurance Business said that even the activation of cyber insurance faces obstacles in this type of episode: most policies require the occurrence of an attack or security breach to release compensation, which Microsoft denies having happened.
Specialized website Windows Latest examined Microsoft's contractual rules and stated that affected business customers can request credits for the unavailable service, subject to the terms of the agreement.
In Canada, the Consumer Law Group announced on its official website the opening of a preliminary investigation to evaluate a possible class action in the country on behalf of companies and users affected by the crash of Outlook and Teams.
In Brazil, a clause that limits compensation to credits for the service can be questioned by small businesses protected by the Consumer Protection Code, assesses Gustavo Kloh, professor at FGV Direito Rio. For companies, this protection depends on demonstrating vulnerability towards the supplier.
For large companies, such as banks, the professor believes that the conditions of the business contract prevail.
This means that a company may have suffered losses greater than the subscription value and still find a limit in the contract for what it can recover.
Company denies cyber attack
A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters that the problems were focused on Exchange Online, the service that manages Microsoft 365 mailboxes.
The company claims the outage was caused by a "technical issue unrelated to cyberattacks, artificial intelligence or AI agents."
In a statement sent to the BBC, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company "deeply regrets" the inconvenience and takes its responsibilities "extremely seriously."
The statement explains: "The incident originated from an issue that occurred during a previous expansion of network capacity, which manifested itself following a recent change to the network.
"We have resolved the issue that led to the incident and continue to restore service to customers and regions that are still without access."
The company says it is gradually restoring services due to "volume of demand" and will release a full report on the incident once it completes its analysis, the spokesperson adds.
Among the issues, users may not be able to view certain files or details in their calendar applications, Microsoft said. Copilot (the company's artificial intelligence service) may also experience failures.
"We know our customers depend on our services to perform important tasks every day, and we regret the impact of these outages," said Charles Lamanna, executive vice president of Copilot, Agents and Platform at Microsoft.
According to him, the company's teams are analyzing what happened and how to avoid similar problems in the future.
According to Joe Tidy, BBC cybersecurity correspondent, the chances of the outage being caused by some type of cyber attack are low, judging by the history of similar incidents.
This assessment, however, could change, highlights Tidy.
According to the correspondent, the priority at this moment is to restore access for millions of people, and not to identify the source of the problem. Therefore, the investigation into what caused the interruption can wait.
Tidy notes that none of the major outages in recent years have been caused by a malicious cyber attack. Banal technical failures, human errors or expired software certificates are often to blame.
He cites a recurring joke among technology professionals: "It's always the DNS", a reference to the Domain Name System, which often presents problems. There are even t-shirts with the phrase.
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