Thousands of administrators in North America are encountering significant disruptions in accessing the Microsoft 365 admin center, as highlighted by the company’s service health updates. The issue, identified as MO1230320, has caused a degradation in the core functionalities of the Microsoft 365 suite, impacting essential tasks such as user provisioning, security setup, and compliance checks.
Extent of the Service Disruption
First reported at 8:20 PM GMT+5:30 (10:50 AM ET), the outage has left many enterprise users unable to log in or carry out administrative duties. The problem predominantly affects the North American region, with telemetry data pointing to sporadic failures in authentication and API calls. Users experience HTTP 5xx errors, extended loading times, and session timeouts when trying to access admin.microsoft.com.
Ongoing Investigation and Updates
Microsoft’s latest update at 9:18 PM GMT+5:30 indicates that efforts are ongoing to analyze telemetry data related to admin center access to identify the root cause. Although a follow-up was anticipated by 8:48 PM GMT+5:30, the timeline has experienced delays due to the complexity of the diagnostics. Preliminary indications suggest backend scaling issues within the Azure Active Directory (AAD) integration or increased API traffic straining regional data centers.
Impact on Business Operations
The disruption extends beyond the admin center, affecting services like Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams governance, and Intune device management. Routine operations such as bulk user license assignments are stalled, potentially jeopardizing compliance with regulations like GDPR or HIPAA. Small to medium-sized businesses, particularly those reliant on delegated admin roles, express significant frustration as workarounds demand advanced scripting expertise.
Microsoft advises using Microsoft Graph API endpoints for critical tasks or reverting to older portals like the classic Exchange admin center. Administrators are encouraged to monitor the admin center’s service health page and activate proactive alerts via the Microsoft 365 admin mobile app.
Historically, similar outages have been attributed to issues such as certificate rotations, DDoS mitigation errors, or misconfigured load balancers within Azure’s global framework. As the investigation continues, Microsoft urges users to submit diagnostic data using the ‘Run tests’ feature in the admin center. Stay updated by following us on Google News, LinkedIn, and X for daily cybersecurity news.
