What the Microsoft Outlook outage reveals about risks, limitations and gaps in communication

He added that no single service provider can give complete assurance of uninterrupted uptime, and that organisations needed to consider what would happen if the disruption lasted more than a day.

Mr Nicky Choo, vice-president and general manager for Asia-Pacific at cybersecurity firm Mimecast, said the implications go beyond employees being unable to send emails or join online meetings.

Technology underpins many day-to-day business processes, including collaboration between colleagues and communication with customers, he said.

“If you’re unable to access digital services in one way or another … there is a huge and tremendous business impact,” he said.

Prof Boh said businesses should instead identify their critical dependencies and make sure there are redundancies for functions that have to keep operating during an outage.

She also warned that such dependencies could become more significant as artificial intelligence takes on more business processes.

Today, a technology outage may stop employees from accessing information or communicating by email, she said. As agentic AI increasingly automates workflows, similar disruptions could eventually halt entire processes.

She added that if employees were not trained to take over such workflows during disruptions, organisations could face greater impact, particularly as workers risk losing the skills and organisational knowledge needed to step in when technology fails.