SARS warns taxpayers as global Microsoft outage disrupts South African businesses

Cape Town – The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has warned taxpayers and traders of disruptions linked to a global Microsoft outage that has affected access to Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications, disrupting communication and business operations across South Africa.

In a notice issued on Friday, November 13, SARS confirmed that it was engaging Microsoft to address the disruption and cautioned users that its effects could interfere with access to the company’s services.

“Please be advised that Microsoft is experiencing a global service outage, which may affect access to Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications,” SARS said.

“Our technical teams are engaging directly with Microsoft to address the disruption. Further updates will be communicated as information becomes available.”

Major South African businesses

According to MyBroadband, the disruption has affected several major South African businesses, including fintech company Lesaka Technologies and insurance provider Momentum Group.

Medical aid provider BestMed and some residential estates also notified customers that their email communication systems had been affected.

The outage has left some businesses unable to communicate with clients and employees through their usual channels, forcing them to turn to alternatives such as WhatsApp and Google services.

A MyBroadband reader described the impact, saying: “It is just a matter of not being able to communicate via normal channels, and obviously anything important from clients won’t be received until everything is working again.”

BusinessTech reported that the outage began on Thursday, November 12, and continued into Friday, affecting Microsoft’s cloud-based services at both consumer and enterprise levels.

Problems and service interruptions

Microsoft traced the disruption to overloaded servers that were struggling to process requests, resulting in connectivity problems and service interruptions.

“Our investigation has found that a core process on the affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, which causes the servers to stop responding and contributes to the capacity loss,” Microsoft said.

The company added that it was not aware of any malicious activity causing the incident, dismissing concerns that the disruption was the result of a cyberattack.

Meanwhile, SABC News reported that Microsoft’s recovery efforts involved restarting affected servers, redirecting traffic and deploying technical fixes to restore services.

In its latest update, Microsoft said there were signs of improvement, although normal service capacity had not yet been restored.

Impacted infrastructure

“Recovery efforts are ongoing across impacted infrastructure. We are seeing early signs of stabilisation, but service capacity has not yet returned to normal levels,” the company said, according to MyBroadband.

Microsoft said it was also extending email timeout windows to 48 hours to help protect delayed messages while recovery work continued.

The South African reported that although Outlook and email services were among the worst affected, other Microsoft applications and features relying on Exchange Online had also experienced problems.

SARS apologised for the inconvenience caused to taxpayers and traders, saying further updates would be provided as more information became available.

The disruption has once again highlighted the dependence of businesses and public institutions on cloud-based technology for everyday communication and operations.