A global multi-factor authentication outage has resulted in Microsoft hosted customers across the globe, being locked out of their accounts. If you are one of them, then sit tight, it’s nothing that you did, and the situation will be resolved shortly.
Today, Microsoft’s cloud-based multi-factor authentication service suffered a breakdown. As a result, users who had activated a second layer of authentication to secure their accounts found themselves unable to log on.
The second layer in question generally takes the form of a text message, a push notification smartphones, or a hardware key. However thanks to the breakdown, users found themselves unable to generate the code to be used in this second layer.
A notice on Office 365’s service health page has confirmed the outage.
Title: Unable to sign in to Microsoft 365 services
User impact: Affected users may be unable to sign in using Multi-Factor Authorization (MFA).
More info: Users may also be unable to carry out self-service password resets. Current status: We’re continuing to investigate data to understand why users are no longer receiving prompts via the app.
Scope of impact: Impact may be experienced by users accessing Office 365 services via Multi-Factor Authentication.
Microsoft has currently deployed a hotfix to get the service up and running. However, it is still struggling to understand why this issue may have occurred. The company is currently going over its diagnostic logs to understand the root of the issue.
Meanwhile, this event could affect microsoft’s business. I seriously doubt that enterprise users whose employees are unable to log on to their systems, or e-mails because of this outage are going to be very happy. Cloud-based services have to provide uninterrupted up-time, that’s part of what customers get charged for, and Microsoft’s outage has already gone on for almost a day. Definitely not good for business.
