Microsoft outages: “Digital brain death for many companies!”

Interview IT expert on Microsoft disruptions “For many companies, this was digital brain death” As of: November 13th, 2026 • 1:28 p.m

And suddenly Outlook and Teams were gone - in uncertain times, more digital sovereignty is needed, says IT security expert Kipker in an interview with tagesschau24. Less dependence on Microsoft is possible.

tagesschau24: Companies and governments around the world are affected, we at tagesschau are also dealing with it. Are companies becoming too dependent on individual software providers?

Kipker: You can certainly see it that way. We actually had the warning shot two years ago with the Crowdstrike incidents. At that time it involved a faulty software update, which caused operating systems in PCs to be paralyzed millions of times and got caught in a restart loop.

Not much was done back then. Most companies simply accepted this.

Now we see a similar incident two and a half years later with similar effects. Millions of businesses are affected. Millions in damage have already been incurred - and we should actually be thinking now at the latest: How can we become more independent of a single company that covers our entire digital infrastructure?

For many companies this morning it was digital brain death: communication was no longer possible and you no longer had access to calendars. Many started the day flying blind.

A widespread outage of Microsoft services, including Outlook, is causing disruptions worldwide. more

tagesschau24: Is it possible to reduce this dependency at all? What resources are there?

Kipker: When it comes to cloud infrastructure, we have a lot of providers - including digitally sovereign ones - from Germany and the European Union. Microsoft always talks about a data limit, meaning that the data is stored securely on site. You have to ask yourself how such server failures, which initially occurred in the United States and South America, can ultimately paralyze the global infrastructure.

What we need in the area of ​​digital sovereignty is a gradual approach. We won't be able to go from zero to a hundred, but we first have to think about: What are the critical services that we need every day, and where can we become a little more independent and fall back on other solutions if a provider fails.

As we have seen today, if emails no longer work, the entire digital life and also working life collapses from one second to the next.

Who is affected by the Microsoft disruptions and what reasons are suspected - an overview. more

tagesschau24: You have already said that the disruptions at Microsoft affect the company's cloud service or cloud service applications. Are cloud services generally too unreliable or too vulnerable? And should we rely on local solutions again?

Kipker: I don't think that can be implemented easily. Microsoft itself says in its terms of use that it gives a 99.9 percent guarantee that the whole thing will work. That means what we saw today is the 0.1 percent. But the 0.1 percent is already enough - and we will no longer be able to get out of the cloud. But we have to think about not making ourselves dependent on a single cloud.

Just a few years ago, for example, the state of Lower Saxony said when it came to IT procurement that they were pioneers in using Microsoft Teams. They justified this by saying that IT is unplugged. I don't think we can afford that anymore because IT off the grid means: I get the service, I get the service, I pay for it - but I'm not interested in what happens in the background.

In times of an uncertain geopolitical transatlantic relationship, from cyber attacks on large corporations, data protection concerns, concerns about digital sovereignty to export control restrictions, I believe that this is no longer the method of choice that we can use in these uncertain times.

tagesschau24: It is said that Microsoft is not assuming a cyber attack. What can criminals planning a cyberattack learn from this disruption?

Kipker: You can clearly learn from this that if you hit a very central service, it will also paralyze the infrastructure in many other places. In the past, cyber criminals have often attacked individual companies or individuals. They are now increasingly switching to this digital supply chain.

A few years ago there was the cyber attack on Berlin Airport, which is critical infrastructure. The airport itself was not attacked, but a luggage and passenger handling service provider was. This led to various airports across Europe no longer functioning properly.

This means that as a cyber attacker you have to identify this one critical point in the digital supply chain on which many companies depend. And if you paralyze it or perhaps tap data flows from it, then you are able to cause much, much greater damage than if you had to pick out and compromise every single company.

This topic in the program: tagesschau 24 | News | 11/13/26 | 11:00 a.m