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

SYDNEY: Australia's spy agency and federal police were among organisations caught up in an outage of Microsoft programmes on Friday (Nov 13), 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".