Microsoft, a giant in the cloud computing industry, faced a significant outage when an SSL certificate expired, affecting its Azure storage cloud and other online services. The outage, which began on a Friday afternoon and lasted for up to 24 hours for some users, impacted as many as 52 different Microsoft services, including Xbox Live.
The company, known for investing over $15 billion in its cloud computing infrastructure, experienced a global outage of encrypted storage traffic due to the expired SSL certificate. While HTTP traffic remained unaffected, HTTPS traffic was interrupted, affecting various Windows Azure services that rely on storage.
In response to the outage, Steven Martin, the general manager of Windows Azure Business & Operations, assured affected customers that credits would be provided in accordance with the service level agreement. The credits would be reflected on future invoices, acknowledging the inconvenience caused by the outage.
This incident marked the second time in a year that Microsoft had to issue service credits due to SSL certificate-related issues. In an earlier event on February 29, a “Leap Year Bug” caused a date-related error with a security certificate, leading to Azure customers facing difficulties managing their applications and some North American users experiencing service disruptions for approximately 8 hours.
The outage shed light on the critical role SSL certificates play in ensuring the security and reliability of online services, emphasizing the need for robust protocols and proactive measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. Microsoft’s swift response and commitment to compensating affected customers demonstrate its dedication to maintaining high standards in cloud service delivery despite occasional technical challenges.
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