ATLANTA — An Atlanta-based cybersecurity expert is weighing in after a worldwide Microsoft outage left millions of users unable to access Outlook email and other services for several hours.

Microsoft says it has no indication that the outage was caused by malicious activity, but computer and cybersecurity expert Greg Evans says the disruption highlights vulnerabilities that hackers may be watching closely.

“To a hacker, this is like watching the playoffs,” Evans said.

Evans says hackers are particularly interested in how long it takes Microsoft to restore its services following a major outage.

“There’s little hackers in their moms basement who are sponsored hackers by other countries, who are watching exactly. They found a vulnerability in Microsoft,” Evans said.

According to Evans, the outage affected 74 countries worldwide, including the Philippines, where he says the country’s Supreme Court was unable to send emails or conduct business.

While Microsoft maintains there is no indication of malicious activity, Evans raised concerns about how hackers could respond to the disruption.

“I do think they would say so, and they’ll probably end up trying to blame it on Iran or Russia or China,” Evans said.

Evans says there is little users can do to prepare for widespread outages, but he recommends having more than one email account, including an account with a provider outside Microsoft, such as Google.

“You can forward your mail to the other email account at the same time,” Evans said.

Microsoft is recovering from the outage, which disrupted access to its services for several hours.

WSB Radio’s Ashley Simmons & Cheryl Castro contributed to this story.