Microsoft MFA Down – 504 Gateway Timeout Errors Disrupting MFA Access for U.S. Users

Microsoft is currently addressing a significant service degradation impacting Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) within the Microsoft 365 suite. Users in North America have reported 504 gateway timeout errors when attempting to authenticate into MFA-protected services.

The incident, identified under issue ID MO1237461 , began at approximately 8:22 PM IST (2:52 PM UTC) on Thu, Feb 23, 2026, and is under active investigation.

Users are encountering 504 Gateway Timeout responses when completing MFA challenges, blocking access to Microsoft 365 applications, portals, and any services relying on MFA in their authentication flow.

The issue appears to be due to an upstream server within Microsoft's authentication infrastructure failing to respond in time, resulting in a timeout error at the gateway layer.

Microsoft has confirmed the incident on its service health dashboard as a service degradation, indicating that some users might still authenticate intermittently based on request routing.

Affected users are effectively locked out of their accounts and associated productivity tools due to the inability to pass MFA verification.

The issue primarily affects U.S.-based organizations and enterprise customers, with potential impacts on corporate email, Teams collaboration, SharePoint, and any third-party integrations using Microsoft Entra ID for federated authentication.

Conditional Access policies enforcing MFA compliance are also likely impacted, possibly affecting device logins, VPN authentication, and access to cloud-hosted business applications using Entra ID as their identity provider.

In a service update at 9:27 PM IST, Microsoft indicated it is reviewing Microsoft Entra logs and network telemetry signals to identify the root cause of the issue. Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory, is crucial to Microsoft's identity and access management platform, suggesting the issue may involve an authentication gateway, load balancer, or backend processing component.

Microsoft has issued two prior status updates during the incident at 8:23 PM and 8:56 PM IST, but no estimated resolution time has been provided.

For security-conscious organizations, the MFA downtime presents an operational challenge. Disabling MFA to regain access introduces identity risks, while enforcement leaves users locked out of critical systems.

IT administrators are advised to monitor the Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard under incident ID MO1237461 for real-time updates and consider temporary policy adjustments based on business continuity needs.

The company’s public status page shows all services as operational, but detailed incident information is available to tenants via the admin center.

Monitor the Service Health dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center for updates on MO1237461. Attempt signing in from different networks, devices, or browsers, or temporarily disable MFA prompts where policies permit (not recommended for production accounts). Contact Microsoft Support if business-critical access is blocked.

Microsoft’s official @MSFT365Status account on X has started sharing updates, and users are advised to monitor their tenant’s service health dashboard for the latest information, as detailed incident details are usually shared there first.

Based on reporting by Cyber Security News.