Thousands of Microsoft users faced hours of disruption last night after the firm’s online Azure platform began having issues. The gremlins began at around 4pm GMT, leaving numerous services, including Outlook, Minecraft, Xbox and Microsoft’s Store, with login and access problems. Microsoft confirmed that its Azure cloud compute platform had suffered “degradation of some services”, which had a knock-on effect for many of the firm’s other systems.

“Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, we began experiencing DNS issues resulting in availability degradation of some services,” Microsoft confirmed in an update. 

Thankfully, things appear to be back to normal this morning with no reports of any issues across Microsoft’s suite of applications.

However, that doesn’t mean users should let their guard down.

In fact, one cybersecurity expert is urging all users to be extra ‘vigilant’ at this time, as it could give scammers the perfect opportunity to release fake updates.

“Microsoft outage shows just how quickly the digital world can grind to a halt,” explained Graeme Stewart, head of public sector at Check Point Software.

“When one of the major cloud providers experiences an issue, it doesn’t just affect one company; it ripples across sectors, services, and even countries.

“While this appears to be a configuration fault rather than a cyber attack, incidents like this highlight how fragile our online infrastructure really is.

“For individuals, it is important to be vigilant. Outages are often exploited by scammers sending fake updates or security messages.”

If you use any of Microsoft’s services, it’s a good time to pay attention if your email inbox gets flooded with messages suggesting an upgrade is needed or files have to be downloaded to boost security. Cyber thieves are constantly on the lookout for new ways to steal data and hack accounts, and now could be a prime time to get scammed.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform created by the US technology giant. The online service offers a comprehensive range of cloud-based tools and that enable individuals and organisations to build, deploy, and manage applications through Microsoft’s global network of data centres. When it goes down, the knock-on effect can be huge for businesses across the world.