Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Australia’s Spy Agency and Federal Police: What We Know So Far

Microsoft 365 stopped working for users across Australia before dawn on Friday, and the outage reached further than most office inboxes. Australia's spy agency and the federal police were both caught up in the disruption, alongside government services and medical workers in New South Wales. Microsoft says the trouble began at about 5:15am AEDT, and the company says it has no indication that a cyber attack caused it.

What went down on Friday morning

Users around the world were unable to reach Microsoft services for hours on Friday, 13 November 2026, according to Reuters. Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams were among the services affected. Microsoft named Exchange Online, its email service, as the main casualty, and listed Teams and SharePoint as affected too.

The timing made the outage hard to miss. It began before the working day started in Australia, at about 5:15am in Sydney and Melbourne, which was 4:15am in Queensland. People who opened their laptops to check email found their mailboxes would not load, and staff who rely on Teams for morning meetings found the app would not connect. In New South Wales, the ABC reported disruption to government services and medical workers, who depend on the same tools to run clinics and offices.

The spy agency and the police confirm they were hit

The outage stood out because of who it touched. At a news conference on Friday, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess, and the Australian Federal Police commissioner, Krissy Barrett, both confirmed their organisations had been affected.

ASIO is Australia's domestic security intelligence agency, and the federal police run national investigations and protect government figures. Both use Microsoft tools for everyday work, just like other large employers. Their confirmation showed the outage was not limited to small businesses or home users. It reached into the parts of government that handle sensitive work.

Canberra pulls a lever for priority fixes

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters the government had activated an agreement to make sure Australia gets priority as Microsoft restores services. The agreement comes from formal cyber security arrangements Australia has signed with Microsoft, and Burke said the first of those agreements was with Microsoft itself.

"That agreement has in fact been activated today to make sure that we get appropriate prioritisation of Australian interests in this," Burke said at the news conference.

Not a cyber attack, Microsoft says

One question came up straight away: was this an attack? Burke said Microsoft had told him it did not believe the outage was caused by a cyber attack. The company has said the same thing in its own updates, reporting no indication of malicious activity behind the failure.

That distinction matters. A cyber attack would raise questions about who got in and what they took. A technical fault raises different questions, about what broke inside Microsoft's own systems and why it took hours to fix. Microsoft has not yet said what the fault was, so the full explanation is still to come.

The third big outage this year

For Australian businesses, the frustrating part is that this has happened before. According to Australian IT firm JTIT, which tracked the outages, this is the third major Microsoft 365 outage of 2026, and Exchange Online has failed in all three. The first came on 22 January, when the service was down for nine to ten hours. The second came on 31 August, when an outage ran for days and Microsoft traced it to a core authentication setting. The third began before dawn on Friday.

Three large failures in ten months is a pattern, not a one-off, and it is the reason many small businesses are now asking what their backup plan looks like. Microsoft runs millions of mailboxes on shared systems, so one fault can cut off a large share of customers at once. That scale is part of the appeal of cloud email: a small business gets the same infrastructure as a large company. It is also the risk. When the shared system fails, there is no local server in the office to fall back on, and everyone waits together.

What to do if your email is still down

If your mailbox has not come back yet, the practical steps are simple. First, check Microsoft's service status page from a phone or a second connection, so you know whether the problem is yours or theirs. Second, tell your team and your clients through another channel, such as a phone call or a messaging app, so nobody is left guessing. Third, keep the files you need for today available offline, because SharePoint and OneDrive can be affected by the same outage.

Keep a printed list of key phone numbers, because a contacts list stored in Outlook is no use when Outlook is down. Once the service is back, take ten minutes to write down what worked and what did not. Microsoft has not given a time for a full explanation of what went wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Microsoft services were affected by the outage?

Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams were the main services users could not reach, according to Reuters. Microsoft named Exchange Online, its email service, as the main casualty, and listed Teams and SharePoint as affected too. Users in Australia and around the world were unable to access the services for hours.

Was the Microsoft 365 outage caused by a cyber attack?

No, according to Microsoft and the Australian government. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft told him it did not believe the outage was caused by a cyber attack, and the company has said it has no indication of malicious activity. Microsoft has not yet published a root cause for the failure.

How long did the Microsoft 365 outage last in Australia?

The trouble began at about 5:15am AEDT on Friday, 13 November 2026, and users were still unable to access services for hours after that. Microsoft said it had restored some servers by mid-morning. This was the third major Microsoft 365 outage of 2026, after outages in January and August.