Microsoft outage disrupts NHS hospitals, GP surgeries, schools and police across UK
Microsoft said on Friday morning that it was seeing early signs of stabilisation after a global outage disrupted email and other services across the United Kingdom, including NHS hospitals, family doctor surgeries, schools and police forces.
The problems began late on Thursday afternoon. Thousands of people worldwide reported that they were unable to send and receive emails through Outlook, Microsoft's email program, according to The Guardian.
NHS sources said the health service was experiencing widespread and serious disruption. Staff reported that they could not access the email and IT systems they use to deliver care. The National Health Service is the publicly funded health system in England, and general practitioners, or GPs, are the family doctors who run local surgeries.
The disruption reached pharmacies too. The National Pharmacy Association said the problems included access to NHS email systems, which it linked to national issues with Microsoft. That affected pharmacies' ability to communicate with GP practices, and pharmacies reported a significant effect on how long patients waited for their medicines.
Several police forces said their systems had been affected. These were the Metropolitan Police, Northampton, Hertfordshire, South Wales, Dyfed-Powys and Dorset forces. Schools and universities reported that they could not access email. Access to Microsoft products used by MPs, the elected members of Parliament, was also down.
UK government engineers were working with Microsoft to assess the impact of the outage. The Welsh government said it was putting contingency plans, or temporary backup arrangements, in place.
Charles Lamanna, an executive vice-president at Microsoft, said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber-attack, meaning a deliberate hacking attempt. The Guardian reported his remarks.
Microsoft's public status page reported service degradation affecting Microsoft 365, the company's suite of office and cloud software, for both business and enterprise customers and for consumer users. The page said users might be unable to connect to several Microsoft 365 services. Microsoft said it had posted outage information there because administrators might be unable to reach the admin centre, where service health information is normally found.
