Microsoft outages hits bunch of services including Xbox and Azure

Last Tuesday, Microsoft and several other cloud based services experienced outages since afternoon, according to several reports. Xbox Live, OneDrive, Outlook, Skype, Azure, and the Windows Store were some of the services which faced the issue when their users tried to log into their accounts.

The outages which took place yesterday majorly affected the east cost of the US and also some parts of northern Europe. Some users vented out their frustration on social media like twitter and facebook.

This is not the first time Microsoft has faced an outage this month, as a similar kind of outage, rocked the Microsoft camp earlier this month. Interestingly, before the company gave an explanation about the cause of outage that took place a couple of weeks ago, another one has ruffled the Microsoft base.

Although this attack is not considered to be a Mirai like attack, experts predict that the outage may be due to the deployment of new software.

“ We' re aware that some users are having difficulties logging in to some services. Our engineers are working to fully resolve this as soon as possible,” said Microsoft’ s spokesperson.

Microsoft Azure status history cited a recent deployment as one potential root cause, adding that its engineers rolled back the deployment to help mitigate the issue.

Also, Microsoft addressed the issue on social media and assured its users that its members are actively working to alleviate the issue.

FAQ
Q
What types of data can Azure Information Protection classify and protect?
A
Azure Information Protection can classify and protect email messages and documents, whether they are located on-premises or in the cloud. These documents include Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents, text-based files, and image files. For a list of the document types supported, see the list of file types supported in the admin guide.

Azure Information Protection cannot classify and protect structured data such as database files, calendar items, PowerBI reports, Yammer posts, Sway content, and OneNote notebooks.
Q
Do you need to be a global admin to configure Azure Information Protection, or can I delegate to other administrators?
A
Global administrators for an Office 365 tenant or Azure AD tenant can obviously run all administrative tasks for Azure Information Protection. However, if you want to assign administrative permissions to other users, you have the following options:

Information Protection Administrator: This Azure Active Directory administrator role lets an administrator configure all aspects of Azure Information Protection but not other services. An administrator with this role can activate and deactivate the Azure Rights Management protection service, configure protection settings and labels, and configure the Azure Information Protection policy. In addition, an administrator with this role can run all the PowerShell cmdlets for the Azure Information Protection client and from the AADRM module.

To assign a user to this administrative role, see Assign a user to administrator roles in Azure Active Directory.

Security Administrator: This Azure Active Directory administrator role lets an administrator configure all aspects of Azure Information Protection in the Azure portal, in addition to configuring some aspects of other Azure services. An administrator with this role cannot run any of the PowerShell cmdlets from the AADRM module.
Q
What is the role of identity management for Azure Information Protection?
A
A user must have a valid user name and password to access content that is protected by Azure Information Protection. To read more about how Azure Information Protection helps to secure your data, see The role of Azure Information Protection in securing data.
Q
What's the difference between Azure Information Protection and Azure Rights Management?
A
Azure Information Protection provides classification, labeling, and protection for an organization's documents and emails. The protection technology uses the Azure Rights Management service; now a component of Azure Information Protection.