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

SYDNEY, Nov 13 : 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"