On August 10, 2022, at ~8:44AM EST, Microsoft communicated via tweet (@MSFT365status) that they were investigating an issue where some users in the EMEA region were unable to connect to some Microsoft 365 services.
For IT pros or system admins, additional information could be found under SI MO411804 in the admin center.
Reports indicated the service issues was due to a Cisco Meraki firewall Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDR) false positive blocking Microsoft 365 connections with "Microsoft Windows IIS denial-of-service attempt" alerts. According to a Cisco Meraki employee, "We would like to make you aware of a vulnerability reported by Microsoft CVE-2022-35748 , triggering SNORT rule 1-60381".
The employee also stated, "Our recommendation at this time is to follow Microsoft's guidance and ensure that your Servers, OS and software are up to date with the latest security patches."
Over an hour later, Microsoft provide another update that traffic is being blocked across multiple regions.
Later that day, Microsoft provided temporary solutions around disabling snort rule 1-60381.
An hour after that update, Microsoft alerted users that the third party disabled the affected rule.
The Importance of Office 365 Monitoring
In a cloud-world, outages are bound to happen. While Microsoft is responsible for restoring service during outages, IT needs to take ownership of their environment and user experience. It is crucial to have greater visibility into business impacts during a service outage the moment it happens.
ENow’s Office 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution enables IT Pros to pinpoint the exact services effected and root cause of the issues an organization is experiencing during a service outage by providing:
- The ability to monitor networks and entire environments in one place with ENow’s OneLook dashboard which makes identifying a problem fast and easy without having to scramble through Twitter and the Service Health Dashboard looking for answers.
- A full picture of all services and subset of services affected during an outage with ENow’s remote probes which covers several Office 365 apps and other cloud-based collaboration services.
Identify the scope of Office 365 service outage impacts and restore workplace productivity with ENow’s Office 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution. Access your free 14-day trial today!
