Australia’s spy agency and federal police were among the organisations affected by a widespread outage of Microsoft programmes, prompting the government to activate an agreement with the company for priority restoration of services.

The disruption reached both intelligence and law enforcement bodies. The agreement provides a mechanism for prioritising service recovery, although its activation does not establish that the affected services have been restored.

The cause and duration of the outage, the particular programmes affected and the extent of any disruption to the agencies’ work remain unspecified.