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The technical failure that struck the services of the American company Microsoft, on Thursday, November 12, 2026, and its impact lasted for more than 24 hours, raised questions about the dependence of individuals, companies, and government institutions in many countries of the world on digital services managed by a limited group of giant technology companies, and the risks that may result from such dependence.
The malfunction caused disruption to the email services “Outlook”, the meeting and communication platform “Teams”, and the artificial intelligence-powered assistant “Copilot”, in addition to other services related to the “Microsoft 365” package.
According to the Down Detector website, which specializes in monitoring disruptions in digital services, reports of problems with Microsoft services were received from users in more than 70 countries within one hour of the start of the holiday.
The site recorded about 130,000 reports of problems with the Outlook service within the United States alone at the peak of the outage, a number that reflects the number of reports recorded, and not necessarily the total number of affected users.
Reuters news agency quoted the same website as recording more than 7.4 million reports of problems with Microsoft services worldwide, with the rate of reports reaching about 20,000 reports per minute at the peak.
Services began to gradually recover about 20 hours after the malfunction began to be reported.
Microsoft announced, on Saturday, November 14, the full restoration of its services, after addressing the basic technical problem and restoring service to all affected customers and regions.
The company explained that the problem resulted from a technical defect related to a previous update to increase the capacity of its network, the effect of which appeared after a new change was made in the network, stressing that the malfunction was not caused by a cyber attack or by artificial intelligence systems or digital agents.
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Microsoft apologized to its customers for the damage and disruption caused by the malfunction.
The effects of the holidays extend to government institutions and public services
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The repercussions of the disruption were not limited to the inability to send emails or hold meetings over the Internet for individuals and private companies, but rather extended to government institutions in several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia, as well as companies, financial institutions, and airlines.
In the United States, the repercussions of the holiday included governmental, legislative, judicial and security institutions, including offices in the US House of Representatives, federal courts, police agencies and local government departments.
In Britain, the National Health Service (NHS) announced that some of its email services were affected, confirming the activation of emergency plans to ensure the continuation of basic services and patient safety.
In Scotland, the body responsible for managing courts and judicial bodies indicated that the holiday caused disruptions in communications with entities associated with the litigation and justice system, which led to the delay of some court sessions.
The Arab countries were not immune from the repercussions of the disruption that struck Microsoft services, as local press reports reported that users, companies, and educational institutions in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Egypt were affected, as a result of the disruption of e-mail services, virtual meetings, and file sharing.
The digital services market is concentrated in the hands of limited companies
The technical failure has brought to light the issue of the concentration of the digital services market in the hands of a limited number of companies, most notably Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
These companies provide the digital infrastructure that government institutions and private companies rely on to store data, run applications, and manage communications and daily operations.
This incident comes at a time when governments, institutions and individuals are increasingly relying on cloud services, coinciding with the expansion of the use of artificial intelligence applications and digital systems to manage business and public services.
Despite the speed, efficiency, and cost reduction provided by these technologies, their cessation may lead to the disruption of activities that are not directly related to the technology sector, but which have become primarily dependent on its services.
Following Microsoft's failure, experts in technology and cybersecurity called on companies and government institutions to re-evaluate their reliance on a single digital services provider, and to develop contingency plans that would allow their business to continue in the event of major systems failure.
The malfunction that affected Microsoft services was not the first incident that revealed the extent of vital sectors’ dependence on digital systems, as the world witnessed during the past years technical malfunctions that caused disruption to air traffic and the disruption of health, banking, and government services.
In the same context, the National Cyber Security Center in Britain recommends enhancing the ability of digital systems to cope with failures, by distributing services to multiple data centers or different geographical regions, and ensuring that there are backup mechanisms that allow data to be restored when necessary.
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