Australia's spy agency, federal police hit by Microsoft outage

By Staff Writer on Nov 13, 2026 3:49PM
Australia's spy agency, federal police hit by Microsoft outage

Australia's spy agency ⁠and ⁠federal police were among organisations caught up in an outage of Microsoft programmes on Friday, with ‌the government triggering an ‌agreement ‌to ensure priority restoration ‌of services.

• Users ⁠worldwide have been unable to access services for hours, including Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams

• At a ​news conference, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Mike Burgess and ⁠Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett confirmed their organisations have been affected

• Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft told him it did not believe the outage was caused by a cyber attack

• ​The government has activated ⁠an agreement to ensure ⁠Australia gets prioritised in restoring services, Burke said

• "There is ​good security work that is ‌done with ⁠Microsoft as a business and when it came to the formal cyber agreements which ‌I've signed on behalf of Australia, the first of those was with Microsoft," Burke said at the ​news conference

• "That agreement has in fact been activated today to make sure that we ‌get appropriate ⁠prioritisation of ​Australian interests in this"

(Reporting by Christine Chen in ​Sydney; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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