What caused the global Microsoft outage?
- July 20, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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What caused the global Microsoft outage?
Sub: Sci
Sec: Awareness it and computer
Context:
- A major outage in Microsoft’s cloud services on Friday (July 19) has hit businesses across the world, from airlines and financial services to media groups and healthcare.
More on News?
- It was reported that on late Thursday several users in the Central US region experienced issues with Azure services and its Microsoft 365 suite of apps.
- The list of services impacted by the outage includes Microsoft Defender, Intune, Teams, PowerBI, Fabric, OneNote, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Windows 365, Viva Engage, Microsoft Purview, and the Microsoft 365 admin center.
What caused the outage?
- Microsoft has revealed that the outage which prevented users from accessing several Microsoft 365 apps was due to a ‘Configuration change’.
- According to Microsoft’s Service Health Status page, the configuration change in a section of their Azure backend workloads was causing interruption between storage and compute resources.
- This rendered several apps from Microsoft 365 apps unusable.
- Another potential reason cited by the news report is a wrong software update from the cybersecurity company called Crowdstrike which produces anti-virus software.
- Fault in the “Falcon sensor” used by US-based cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike caused System crash with blue screen of death (BSOD) errors. impacting many organizations and services worldwide, including banks, airlines, airports, TV stations, and hospitals.
What is ‘Configuration change’?
- Configuration change control is a set of processes and approval stages required to change a configuration object’s attributes and to re baseline them.
- All proposed configuration changes must maintain or enhance the level of system security and shall not, in any way, degrade existing levels of system security safeguards.
What is the Blue screen of death?
- The blue screen of death is a critical error screen displayed by Microsoft Windows.
- It indicates a system crash, in which the operating system reaches a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely.
- BSoDs can be caused by poorly written device drivers or malfunctioning hardware, such as faulty memory, power supply issues, overheating of components, or hardware running beyond its specification limits.