Thousands of Irish workers sat down at their desks this morning and found their inboxes still frozen. A massive global Microsoft outage that began on Thursday afternoon has knocked out Outlook email for businesses, councils and even the HSE – and has run on into a second day.
So is your Outlook actually safe? Has someone broken in? And why are security experts warning that the real danger could arrive after the fix? Here’s what we know, what Microsoft has said, and the simple steps that will keep your account out of the hands of scammers.
What happened to Outlook?
The trouble started at 4.17pm Irish time on Thursday, 12 November, when Microsoft opened an incident on Exchange Online – the service that runs work and school mailboxes behind Outlook. Users could not reach their mailboxes on the web, the desktop app or their phones.
By around 6pm, outage-tracking site Downdetector was showing a sharp spike in complaints from Ireland and the UK. In the US alone, reports about Outlook peaked at around 130,000, according to RTÉ News.
It wasn’t just email. Microsoft’s own list of services that “may be impacted” included Teams, SharePoint, Copilot, Planner, To Do, Intune and – crucially – Microsoft Defender for Office 365, the security tool many companies rely on to catch dodgy emails.
Who has been hit in Ireland?
The Health Service Executive confirmed it has been affected, with emails not being transmitted and “intermittent problems” with video calls, though it said services had not been impacted so far, The Irish Times reported.
Cork City Council said a number of its services, including email, were down, and that its IT team was putting temporary fixes in place while it waited on Microsoft.
For small businesses here in the west – the B&Bs, tour operators, solicitors and shops that run on a Microsoft 365 account – it has meant a morning of missed bookings, unanswered quotes and a lot of phone calls.
Was it a cyber attack?
No – at least, not according to Microsoft. The company said it was not aware of any “malicious activity” behind the disruption, and that it had found no evidence of a cyber attack.
Instead, Microsoft says a number of its servers became “unexpectedly unavailable”, piling pressure on the rest of the system. It stressed that the problem was not caused by a surge in traffic. The Irish Times reported that a configuration update appears to have left servers overloaded and knocked offline.
Why has the fix taken so long?
Microsoft has been unusually frank that things have not gone to plan. Overnight it admitted its attempts to restore service were “not taking as expected”. Servers it brought back online kept locking up again as soon as traffic started flowing back to them.
By early Friday, Teams chats and meetings were largely back, and Microsoft said it was seeing “positive results” for server stability. But as of its 7.25am update, Exchange Online was still listed as degraded, with no time given for a full recovery. Microsoft says it is prioritising delayed emails and will publish a full report once everything is restored.
So is your Outlook account safe?
Here’s the reassuring part. Based on what Microsoft has said, this was a breakdown, not a break-in. There is no suggestion that passwords were stolen or that anyone has been reading your emails. Your mailbox is still there – it just couldn’t be reached.
It’s also worth knowing that the incident centres on Exchange Online, which runs work and school accounts. Microsoft hasn’t flagged personal Outlook.com or Hotmail accounts as part of it, Irish tech site Goosed.ie notes.
The real danger: scammers love an outage
The bigger risk comes next. Security experts warn that big outages are a gift to fraudsters, because millions of people are suddenly expecting emails from Microsoft about their accounts. After past outages, researchers at security firm McAfee observed scam campaigns springing up within hours.
The typical trick is a fake email or text telling you to “verify”, “restore” or “recover” your Microsoft account after the outage, with a link to a convincing copy of the Microsoft login page. Type your password in and the crooks have it.
There’s an extra reason to be careful this week. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 – which scans links and flags suspicious messages for many businesses – was itself on the list of affected services. That means some dodgy emails may have slipped through the net while it was down.
How to protect yourself: 7 simple steps
- Don’t click “fix your account” links. Microsoft is fixing this on its end. You don’t need to do anything to your account.
- Don’t reset your password, reinstall Outlook or reboot your router. None of it will help with this outage.
- Check the sender’s real address, not just the display name. Fraudsters often pose as trusted brands.
- Log in by typing the address yourself – never through a link in an email or text.
- Keep multi-factor authentication switched on. It remains one of the best defences against account takeover.
- Follow up anything important sent since Thursday afternoon with a phone call, as you can’t be sure it arrived.
- Use only official channels for updates: Microsoft’s service status page or your own IT team.
Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre advises reporting phishing scams to An Garda Síochána and using your email provider’s “report phishing” button. You can read its quick guide to phishing, and the Gardaí have advice on fraud and scams. If you think you’ve already handed over a password, change it straight away from a device you trust and tell your bank if any payment details were involved.
What happens next?
Microsoft says it is still restoring servers and working through the backlog of delayed emails. Expect a flood of messages to land at once when your inbox comes back – and give each one a second look before you click anything.
This is also not the first time. It’s one of several Exchange Online disruptions this year, and it has raised fresh questions about how much of Irish life now hangs on a single company’s servers. As with the power-cut warnings this winter, the lesson is the same: have a backup plan before you need one.
We’ll update this story as Microsoft restores service. For more, see our Tech section, and read our warnings on the *21* phone code scam and fake giveaway scams targeting Ireland.
Sources: RTÉ News, The Irish Times, National Cyber Security Centre.
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