Welcome to this week’s briefing. It has been a busy few days for anyone who relies on Microsoft — a cloud outage midweek, a record-sized batch of security fixes, and a support deadline creeping closer — plus a fresh warning from UK police about ransomware hitting smaller firms hardest. Here is what happened and, more importantly, what to do about it.
On Thursday 23 July, Microsoft 365 suffered a significant outage. Users reported being unable to reach SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive and Excel online, and some administrators could not even open the admin centre to see what was going on. Microsoft traced the problem to a network configuration change made during maintenance and restored services later the same day. The disruption was felt most heavily in North America, but it is the latest in a string of Microsoft cloud incidents over the past year.
What this means for your business: even the biggest cloud providers have bad days, so it pays to have a simple continuity plan. Agree a backup way for staff to reach each other (a phone tree or WhatsApp group works fine), keep an independent backup of your Microsoft 365 data, and know where to check service status so you are not left guessing. If your team would be stuck the moment Teams goes quiet, that is worth fixing before the next incident.
Microsoft’s monthly security update on 14 July was its largest ever, fixing around 570 vulnerabilities across Windows, Office and its server products, including 59 rated critical. Three were “zero-days” — flaws attackers knew about before the fix existed. Two of them, affecting SharePoint Server and Active Directory Federation Services, were already being actively exploited, and a third affecting BitLocker had been publicly disclosed.
What this means for your business: make sure this month’s updates are actually installed, not just downloaded and waiting for a restart. Most small businesses on Windows PCs with automatic updates will be covered once machines reboot. If you still run your own on-premises servers — particularly SharePoint or Exchange — treat patching as urgent, or ask whoever manages your IT to confirm in writing that it has been done.
Microsoft has confirmed that support for Windows 11 version 24H2 (Home and Pro) and for Office 2021 ends on 13 October 2026. After that date, neither will receive security fixes. To move people along, Microsoft is now automatically upgrading unmanaged PCs to version 25H2 — but devices managed by a business IT setup are excluded, which means the timing is your responsibility. A related deadline has already passed: SQL Server 2016 and SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 reached end of support on 14 July.
What this means for your business: check which Windows version your machines are running (Settings, then System, then About) and plan the move to 25H2 on your own schedule rather than being caught by the deadline. If you bought Office 2021 outright, start budgeting now for the switch to Microsoft 365, so it is a planned upgrade rather than an emergency one in October.
A new national police campaign is urging UK businesses not to pay ransoms, after figures showed 323 UK organisations reported ransomware attacks in the year to March 2026 — more than 26 every month. Over half of those attacks hit small and medium-sized businesses, whose reported losses climbed roughly 50% year on year to around £270,000. Police believe the true numbers are far higher, because many firms never report an attack. The advice from police and the National Cyber Security Centre is blunt: paying offers no guarantee you will get your data back, and it funds the next attack.
What this means for your business: the single best defence is a backup the attackers cannot reach — kept offline or immutable, and tested regularly so you know it actually restores. Add multi-factor authentication on every account, keep systems updated, and make sure staff know how to spot a suspicious email. If the worst happens, report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 rather than paying up.
Need a hand with any of this? Talk to Structured Business Solutions on 0141 739 5105 or email hello@structuredbusiness.co.uk.
