In a statement posted on X, the company said it was witnessing encouraging progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across an increasing number of affected Microsoft 365 environments.

"We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure," Microsoft said.

However, the company cautioned that some users might continue to experience intermittent disruptions as recovery operations progress.

"Some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue. We’re focused on recovery for the remaining affected environments while prioritizing email queue and backlog reduction," the statement added.

Microsoft also said that the extended 48-hour email timeout window would remain in place to protect delayed messages while delivery services catch up.

The company directed users to refer to incident update MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin centre for more detailed information. Users unable to access the admin centre can also check the official service status website at https://status.cloud.microsoft.

Meanwhile, a Microsoft executive has ruled out indications of a cybersecurity breach or malicious activity behind the latest disruption.

Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said in a post on X that the company regretted the disruption caused to customers and was working to resolve the issue.

"We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue. We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity," Lamanna said.