Microsoft experiencing new wave of outages weeks after global IT failure

In a post on X, Cambridge Water said some of its services were down this afternoon.

"Due to worldwide issues with Microsoft Azure, a problem with our website is affecting several services including MyAccount and PayNow," said the water company.

Microsoft said it is investigating reports of user problems, saying: "We are investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally.

The company then announced it implemented a fix that seemed to be solving the problem, saying there was "improvement in service availability" and it was "continuing to monitor to ensure full recovery".

The service status website still showed global issues, however.

Thousands of problems were reported by users on DownDetector, a website that monitors issues with IT services.

Other sites, including creative portfolio site Fabrik and medical employment site Thalamus, said they were experiencing issues as their services run on Microsoft Azure.

The incident comes less than two weeks after a major IT outage knocked global infrastructure including transport and healthcare services offline because a flawed software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected Microsoft devices.

"While Microsoft's services are comprehensive and widely trusted," said James Neilson from infrastructure protection company OPSWAT, "incidents like these serve as a reminder of potential disruptions. It's crucial to proactively mitigate such risks through strategic diversification.

"The Bank of England has notably raised concerns about this issue, emphasising the need for financial service providers to balance their cloud portfolios across multiple vendors," he said.

After thousands of flights were cancelled globally, the US airline Delta is reportedly planning to seek compensation from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft.

Delta has been one of the slowest airlines to recover from the outage and has cancelled more than 6,000 flights in the wake of the outage, leaving hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded.

After the news, CrowdStrike's shares dropped by more than 8% on Tuesday.

-SKY NEWS