Microsoft 365 is experiencing a multi-factor authentication (MFA) outage that blocks users from accessing multiple Microsoft 365 services such as Office 365 and Azure according to user reports.
"Users may not receive authentication requests via phone call, SMS or within their authenticator app," says Microsoft on the Microsoft 365 Service health status page. "This issue could potentially affect any of your users if they are routed through the affected infrastructure."
Microsoft 365 is a software offering that bundles the Windows 10, Office 365, and EMS (short for Enterprise Mobility + Security) products, and provides customers with a secure online productivity platform.
Since Microsoft 365 is an online platform, it also comes with its downsides, one of them being that issues affecting one of the services offered as a cloud product will be experienced by most if not all customers.
Microsoft 365 users from U.S. affected the most
According to the online service outage detection website Downdetector, this Microsoft 365 authentication outage incident is affecting mostly users from the U.S. as seen in the real-time outage map below.
"Admins who are unable to access the admin center can find updates on the MFA outage MO193431 through https://status.office.com," tweeted the official Microsoft Twitter account which delivers updates on Microsoft 365 service incidents.
"We've confirmed that multiple Microsoft 365 services are impacted by the MFA outage. We're reviewing system logs to identify the source of the problem. We'll continue to post updates via MO193431 and on http://status.office.com."
Microsoft is currently analyzing the authentication logs in an attempt to isolate the cause behind the Microsoft 365 authentication outage affecting users for the past two hours.
MFA outage impacts Office 365 and Azure users
While Microsoft says that only the admin center is currently affected by this issue, user reports say that Office 365 and Azure users are impacted, while others say that "ALL MFA users are unable to sign in to ANY Microsoft 365 services."
As a workaround for admins that cannot log in because of this outage, according to Office 365 MVP Brian Reid, they can sign in where MFA does not apply (a trusted network or a compliant device for instance), "and disable MFA for all users for duration of outage."
Next, they should create emergency access accounts "for emergency or 'break glass' scenarios where normal administrative accounts can't be used" to "prevent being accidentally locked out of your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) organization" as recommended by Microsoft in this Azure AD support document.
Update October 18, 13:37 EDT: Microsoft 365 authentication is up again for most impacted users according to a new update from Microsoft:
We've confirmed via telemetry and reports from some of the affected customers that service has recovered for a majority of impacted users. We're continuing to investigate log data to better understand what caused this issue and to validate which recovery measures we took restored service functionality. Additionally, our telemetry indicates that this issue was specific to users located in the North America region.
Update October 18, 14:41 EDT: "We've taken multiple actions to mitigate impact and are working to validate service restoration," Microsoft says in a new update. "In parallel, we're continuing to review system logs and service telemetry to better understand the underlying root cause."
Update October 18, 14:52 EDT: An update on the Azure status history page acknowledges the Azure MFA outage reported by users and says that the root cause behind the outage issues is still under investigation. Mitigation actions will be provided in a root cause analysis (RCA) that will be issued at a later date.
Microsoft states that the Azure MFA outage has been resolved as its engineers "took corrective action to fully mitigate the incident."
Update October 19: "Our services remain healthy, and we've confirmed via continuous service monitoring that all of the previously affected scenarios are working as expected," says Microsoft. "Additionally, we're progressing through our investigation to isolate the underlying problem."
Our service telemetry shows that the incident is largely mitigated and we’re continuing our investigation in order to identify what caused the problem. We'll continue to post updates via MO193431 and on https://t.co/AEUj8uAGXl.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) October 19, 2019
Update October 21: Microsoft confirms the issues have been fully mitigated:
Comments
tdarby - 4 years ago
Hence the reason we dropped Azure back when they had the Texas data center debacle. This is becoming a common night mare for them.