A company-wide systems outage affecting hundreds of users was reportedly caused by an employee searching for an available electrical socket.

Engineers initially suspected a networking failure, hardware malfunction or sophisticated cyberattack after several critical systems suddenly became unavailable.

The investigation changed direction when a technician discovered an unplugged power cable beside a fully charged mobile phone.

The employee responsible said the socket "looked unused."

IT has since introduced additional warning labels throughout the server room reading DO NOT UNPLUG, replacing the previous labels which apparently lacked sufficient emotional intensity.

No data was lost.

Several IT employees did, however, lose something less recoverable.