On Friday, Microsoft confirmed that several of its users had been locked out of their services because of an unknown glitch in its multi-factor authentication solution.
The outage affected Azure and Microsoft 365 users in North America. Microsoft stated that several users may not be receiving authentication requests via phone calls, text messages or within Microsoft’s authentication app.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service enabling developers to build, test and manage applications.
Several FinTech and RegTech companies use the solution as part of their offering. For instance, the challenger bank revverbank, the cybersecurity firms Circadence and Expel, the RegTech company Wolters Kluwer and unified analytics platform Databricks all use Microsoft Azure in one way or another.
In an update from Microsoft, the company acknowledged the impact the outage might have on companies, writing, “We are aware of how critical this is to your business and security. We are actively investigating the issue as our absolute top priority and working for the fastest possible resolution.
As of Friday, the company stated that the issue was solved, but that its engineers would continue to look into what caused the issue to begin with.
This is not the first time Microsoft has had problems with its multi-factor authentication solutions. In November 2018, the Redmond-based business suffered several similar outages.
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