How Microsoft outage affected Long Island businesses, towns and schools

A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted email communications at businesses and municipal offices across Long Island on Thursday, with one of the most significant consequences being a delayed vote on a proposed Amazon warehouse in Massapequa.

The outage, which affected Microsoft 365 services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot, lasted into early Friday.

While some businesses struggled to communicate with customers, municipalities temporarily lost access to email and some town employees had trouble accessing systems that required security codes sent by email. But most government offices, schools and healthcare institutions reported little or no interruption to essential services.

Microsoft outage delays Amazon vote

The Town of Oyster Bay Planning Advisory Board postponed a vote on whether to recommend approval of a proposed Amazon warehouse at the Sunrise Mall site after some residents' emailed comments could not be received by town officials.

The board delayed its decision until Dec. 10 following a three-hour public hearing Thursday at which most speakers opposed the proposed 24-hour facility, citing concerns about traffic, noise and pollution.

'It just killed all communication'

James Coco, president of the family-run, Holtsville-based metalwork company Coco Architectural Grilles & Metalcraft, said he returned from a job site visit to find that Outlook was down.

Much of Coco's business is conducted over email, and the outage prevented him from communicating with existing and potential customers. His email was back online Friday morning, and the outage was more of an annoyance than a significant disruption to his business, Coco said.

"It just killed all communication for the rest of the day," Coco said. "It just stopped every request from coming in or interaction with existing customers, or whoever was trying to email us, and prevented us from being able to send out any quotes at all."

Nicholas Mortati, the president of Smithtown-based Blue Sea Educational Consulting, said the outage had no significant impact on his business, but companies he works with, including his payroll provider, informed him they experienced delays in receiving emails.

Kerri Engblom, founder of Opal Operations, a small business consulting firm that provides bookkeeping and management services, said her business was unaffected by the outage. But an Arizona-based client had to use a backup system to access files that were unavailable through Outlook, slightly delaying a project.

"My advice is don't have your whole entire operation in one basket," Engblom said. "Have some redundancies."

The outage affected Melville-based healthcare distributor Henry Schein's business, according to a statement from spokesperson Tim Vassilakos, but also gave the company an opportunity to put its backup systems into use.

"While this situation created some challenges, we initiated our business continuity processes and backup alert systems," Vassilakos wrote to Newsday in an email. "This helped us to maintain daily operations using tools and channels that were unaffected."

Towns turn to phones, backup systems

Glen Cove lost access to email services during Thursday's Microsoft Outlook outage, a city official said.

"No critical city functions, permitting services, or other online portals were affected, and there is no backlog as a result," Roni Jenkins, a city spokeswoman, said in an email.

Microsoft Teams remained online for city staff, so they could communicate throughout the disruption, Jenkins said.

The city issued a public alert advising residents to contact City Hall by phone while the outage was in effect.

Brian Nevin, an Oyster Bay spokesman, said that town's outages were limited to email disruptions. Other town services remained online, he said.

Southampton Town's email services were disrupted starting around 1 p.m. Thursday, prompting officials to use a backup mass-notification system to alert employees and nearly 8,000 residents, town Emergency Management Administrator Ryan Murphy said.

The outage also complicated access to systems that sent authentication codes by email, though staff were able to use a mobile app to send emergency notifications, Murphy said.

While town employees continued working Thursday, undelivered and accumulated emails left them with a backlog Friday morning, he said.

"It didn’t cripple us. It didn’t stop us as the town from functioning and doing the things that we needed to do," Murphy said.

Riverhead Town employees also turned to phone calls after email problems surfaced around 1 p.m. Thursday, town Information Technology Director Henry Kreymborg said.

Kreymborg said he initially feared a townwide problem or cybersecurity incident before checking Downdetector, a website that tracks user reports of service disruptions, and realizing the outage was widespread.

He described the disruption as an inconvenience, with no major impacts to Town Hall functions, but said employees were catching up on delayed communications Friday.

Southold Town reported no disruptions because it uses a local server rather than Microsoft's cloud-based Exchange service, Supervisor Al Krupski said.

On Shelter Island, Town Clerk Shelby Mundy said internal emails appeared to be working Friday morning, though she was unsure whether messages from outside the town were getting through. She said the disruption had limited impact because it was a relatively quiet week.

Schools, hospitals report few disruptions

A Suffolk County spokesman said the outage did not impact county operations.

Long Island's higher education institutions, including Stony Brook University, Adelphi, Hofstra, Molloy, SUNY Old Westbury, Farmingdale State College, Nassau Community College and Suffolk County Community College, all reported no major disruptions beyond delays in receiving emails.

Kings Park schools also experienced a temporary email disruption Thursday afternoon, Superintendent Timothy Eagan said. Services were restored by Friday morning, and delayed messages were sent.

"The outage was really not a big deal," Eagan said in an email.

Stony Brook Medicine, which operates three hospitals in Suffolk County, said it experienced email delays but no disruption to patient care.

"While we experienced email delays, all hospital operations are normal with no disruption to patient care," the health system said in a statement.

Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in Oceanside also reported email disruptions but said patient care and overall hospital operations were unaffected.

Northwell Health also said its patients were unaffected by the outage.

"At this time, Northwell Health has no known impacts on patient care related to the Outlook outages," a Northwell spokesman said.