Oops! Microsoft gets 'black eye' from Teams outage
.png)
Microsoft Teams users were unable to access the collaboration app for more than two hours Monday due to an expired authentication certificate. The outage is something of an embarrassment for Microsoft which is looking to compete with popular rival Slack in the workplace collaboration market.
According to Microsoft, Teams had more than 20 million daily active users as of November.
“This is definitely a black eye for Microsoft, especially when it has touted its reliability in the wake of some high-profile Slack outages in the last couple of years,” said Irwin Lazar, vice president and Service Director at Nemertes Research.
“It is surprising that Microsoft didn't renew its certificate, and it shows that as Teams rapidly grows they will have to ensure they are addressing operational issues to prevent further downtime.”
Indeed, the prompt reaction to the outage is an indication of the growing importance of Teams as more and more office workers rely on team messaging tools.
“There is nothing like taking a service down to illustrate its popularity and importance. However, this is not a best practice we recommend,” Larry Cannell, a research director at Gartner, dryly noted.
An SSL certificate enables a secure connection between a web browser or app and a server, and is required for HTTPS-enabled sites. It helps protect users against security risks such as man-in-the-middle attacks by allowing data to be encrypted. When a certificate expires, the server can’t be identified and information cannot be sent. That was the case with Teams on Monday.
“Let’s hope that Microsoft learned their lesson from this fiasco and will put in place modifications to their processes and other types of changes to prevent it from happening again,” said Cannell.
Reports of issues began at around 8:50 a.m. ET, according to the Downdetector website. At 9:19 a.m. Microsoft tweeted out confirmation from its Microsoft 365 Status account that it was investigating the outage. By then, some users were no longer able to access the application.
About an hour later Microsoft announced that it had identified the problem as an expired authentication certificate that had not been renewed. It subsequently tweeted that the fix was initiated at 11:19 a.m. and confirmed at 4 p.m. it had “successfully deployed” the solution. Most users appear were able to access Teams by midday however.
Microsoft did not issue an apology to users from the account.
The outage led to other Teams users venting even more frustrations on Twitter.
source arnnet
Industry: Unified Communications

Latest Jobs
-
- Outside IR 35 CONTRACT SC CLEARED Cyber Security Operations Analyst SPLUNK ES- UK REMOTE- £500 a day.
- N/A
- 500
-
6 month contract Outside IR35 Operational Cyber Security Analyst. Hands on Splunk Security Enterprise and Security clearance is required As is someone that holds SC clearance. SOC and Vulnerability management experience. Vulnerability Analysis / Management - Tenable
-
- SailPoint Consultant
- Sweden
- Upto €80,000
-
SailPoint Consultant is need for this rapidly expanding global business, The business is currently in the middle of a SailPoint Deployment, they require an experienced Consultant who is able to help them on this Journey You will be responsible for helping to configure and deploy SailPoint as well as on board applications onto the platform You will also work with the business to understand workflow and process to help align the way the business works to ensure that the business gets the most from the deployment We are looking for an experienced SailPoint consultant who has experience with both Deployment and BAU work and is interested in joining a business which is at the start of an interesting IAM Journey
-
- SOC Manager Security Operations. SIEM, Threat / Vulnerability, IR, SOC Service- Exclusive
- United Kingdom
- 90,000+
-
SOC Manager- SIEM, Threat / Vulnerability, Incident response. Exclusive Project. Management and on growth growth of Security Operations Centre capability. Managing and maturing the team, technical services line and fronting client engagements where needed. An in-depth technical background is essential, experience across SOC SIEM/ Threat Hunting (IR) tools, processes, techniques, operational is a MUST. The role will include, but not limited to; evolving the technical process, building operational capability, managing and hiring team, involved at a high level overviewing policy/playbooks, fine turning of the go-to-market collateral etc.
-
- Contact 12 month- Security Operations- Tanium Engineer / Analyst.
- United Kingdom
- Dependent on experience
-
Security Operations engineer / Analyst with Tanium for a 12 month contract. Experience configuring using, managing, supporting troubleshooting Tanium's suite of end point solutions is essential. The opportunity is due to a client expanding its international capability to a follow the sun model. To be involved in spinning up a European capability. Based in the UK. English essential and ideally being fluent in French.