Threat matrix for storage services

The move to cloud is happening faster than ever before and organizations are increasing their dependency on cloud storage services. In fact, Microsoft Azure Storage services are one of the most popular services in the cloud. Companies need effective threat protection and mitigation strategies and...

The biggest challenges—and important role—of application security

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Tanya Janca, Founder of We Hack Purple...

Announcing the general availability of Azure Defender for IoT

As businesses increasingly rely on connected devices to optimize their operations, the number of IoT and Operational Technology OT endpoints is growing dramatically—industry analysts have estimated that CISOs will soon be responsible for an attack surface multiple times larger than just a few yea...

EDR in block mode stops IcedID cold

We are happy to announce the general availability of endpoint detection and response EDR in block mode in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. EDR in block mode turns EDR detections into real-time blocking of malicious behaviors, malware, and artifacts. It uses Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s...

Protecting Android clipboard content from unintended exposure

Considering mobile users often use the clipboard to copy and paste sensitive information, like passwords or payment information, clipboard contents can be an attractive target for cyberattacks. Leveraging clipboards can enable attackers to collect target information and exfiltrate useful data...

5 ways to connect with Microsoft Security at Identiverse 2022

Identiverse is where the industry gathers to discuss all things identity. The 2022 conference will take place June 21 to 24 in Denver, Colorado, and I’m absolutely thrilled that Microsoft will be there. At Identiverse, we’ll share how we help customers secure access in a hybrid, multicloud, and...

How to manage a side-by-side transition from your traditional SIEM to Azure Sentinel

With every week bringing new headlines about crippling cyberattacks, and with organizations growing increasingly distributed, security teams are constantly asked to do more with less. Moving to cloud-native security information and event management SIEM can help security teams analyze data with t...

Zero Trust Adoption Report: How does your organization compare?

From the wide adoption of cloud-based services to the proliferation of mobile devices. From the emergence of advanced new cyberthreats to the recent sudden shift to remote work. The last decade has been full of disruptions that have required organizations to adapt and accelerate their security...

How to protect your CAD data files with MIP and HALOCAD

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. Computer-aided design CAD files are used by design professionals in the manufacturing, engineering, architecture, surveying, and construction industries. These highly valuable files...

Finalists announced in second annual Microsoft Security 20/20 awards

2020 was a transformational year. Seemingly overnight, COVID-19 reshaped our perspective on work, home life, and security. Setting up home offices and powering through online presentations in our pajama bottoms with cameos by pets and children, our industry rose to the challenge. All that...

Microsoft open sources CodeQL queries used to hunt for Solorigate activity

A key aspect of the Solorigate attack is the supply chain compromise that allowed the attacker to modify binaries in SolarWinds’ Orion product. These modified binaries were distributed via previously legitimate update channels and allowed the attacker to remotely perform malicious activities, suc...

Go inside the new Azure Defender for IoT including CyberX

In 2020, the move toward digital transformation and Industry 4.0 took on new urgency with manufacturing and other critical infrastructure sectors under pressure to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. But the cybersecurity model for operational technology OT was already shown to be...

Windows Defender ATP machine learning: Detecting new and unusual breach activity

Microsoft has been investing heavily in next-generation security technologies. These technologies use our ability to consolidate large sets of data and build intelligent systems that learn from that data. These machine learning ML systems flag and surface threats that would otherwise remain...

PLATINUM continues to evolve, find ways to maintain invisibility

Back in April 2016, we released the paper PLATINUM: Targeted attacks in South and Southeast Asia, where we detailed the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the PLATINUM activity group. We described a group that was well-resourced and quickly adopted advanced techniques, such as hot patching to...

Flax Typhoon using legitimate software to quietly access Taiwanese organizations

Summary Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Flax Typhoon, based in China, that is targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the likely intention of performing espionage. Flax Typhoon gains and maintains long-term access to Taiwanese organizations networks with...

The art and science behind Microsoft threat hunting: Part 1

At Microsoft, we define threat hunting as the practice of actively looking for cyberthreats that have covertly or not so covertly penetrated an environment. This involves looking beyond the known alerts or malicious threats to discover new potential threats and vulnerabilities. Why do incident...

SimuLand: Understand adversary tradecraft and improve detection strategies

At Microsoft, we continuously collaborate with customers and the InfoSec community to learn more about the latest adversary tradecraft so that we can improve our detection strategies across all our security services. Even though those detections are already built into our products, and protecting...

Evolving beyond password complexity as an identity strategy

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Pwned,...

Why operational resilience will be key in 2021, and how this impacts cybersecurity

The lessons we have learned during the past 12 months have demonstrated that the ability to respond to and bounce back from adversity in general, can impact the short-and long-term success of any organization. It can even dictate the leaders and laggards in any industry. When we take into...

How businesses are gaining integrated data protection with Microsoft Purview

Currently, our interconnected world is creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day.1 Every purchase made, every email sent, every contract signed: all of it gets shared, accessed, and stored. We take it on faith that organizations are doing all this safely; however, data loss is becoming a...

New “Prestige” ransomware impacts organizations in Ukraine and Poland

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC has identified evidence of a novel ransomware campaign targeting organizations in the transportation and related logistics industries in Ukraine and Poland utilizing a previously unidentified ransomware payload. We observed this new ransomware, which...

Combat attacks with security solutions from Trustwave and Microsoft

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. In 2021, cyberattacks and instances of ransomware demands against companies, agencies, and institutions have dominated the headlines. These kinds of attacks are on the rise and often...

Attack AI systems in Machine Learning Evasion Competition

Today, we are launching MLSEC.IO, an educational Machine Learning Security Evasion Competition MLSEC for the AI and security communities to exercise their muscle to attack critical AI systems in a realistic setting. Hosted and sponsored by Microsoft, alongside NVIDIA, CUJO AI, VM-Ray, and MRG...

Microsoft listed as a Representative Vendor in 2020 Gartner Market Guide for Insider Risk Management Solutions

While organizations have long prioritized external cybersecurity risks, many have not paid enough attention to the risks posed by trusted insiders in their organizations. This is a mistake. Insiders often already have access to sensitive data, and the risks, whether malicious or inadvertent, can...

The federal Zero Trust strategy and Microsoft’s deployment guidance for all

You’d be forgiven for missing the White House announcement on federal Zero Trust strategy on January 26, 2022.1 After all, on that day alone a Supreme Court Justice announced his intention to retire, the Federal Reserve announced its plan to raise interest rates, and the State Department was busy...

Forcepoint and Microsoft: Risk-based access control for the remote workforce

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligence Security Association MISA guest blog series. Learn more about MISA here. Adopting cloud-based services as part of an organization’s digital transformation strategy is no longer optional, its a necessity. Last year, only 18 percent of the...

5 ways to secure identity and access for 2024

The security landscape is changing fast. In 2023, we saw a record-high 30 billion attempted password attacks per month, a 35% increase in demand for cybersecurity experts, and a 23% annual rise in cases processed by the Microsoft Security Response Center and Security Operations Center teams.1 Thi...

Analysis of Storm-0558 techniques for unauthorized email access

Executive summary On July 11, 2023, Microsoft published two blogs detailing a malicious campaign by a threat actor tracked as Storm-0558 that targeted customer email that weve detected and mitigated: Microsoft Security Response Center and Microsoft on the Issues. As we continue our investigation...

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked number one in market share in the IDC Worldwide Corporate Endpoint Security Market Shares report, 2022

Microsoft security researchers tracked a 130.4 percent increase in organizations that have encountered ransomware over the last year. Endpoints are an important attack vector and ensuring that organizations have modern endpoint security as part of a broader extended detection and response strateg...

Destructive malware targeting Ukrainian organizations

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC has identified evidence of a destructive malware operation targeting multiple organizations in Ukraine. This malware first appeared on victim systems in Ukraine on January 13, 2022. Microsoft is aware of the ongoing geopolitical events in Ukraine and...

Join us at InfoSec Jupyterthon 2021

We’re excited to invite our community of infosec analysts and engineers to the second annual InfoSec Jupyterthon taking place on December 2-3, 2021. This is an online event organized by our friends in the Open Threat Research Forge, together with folks from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Cente...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Cybersecurity challenged to meet diversity goals

Organizations often know they need to identify and address their cybersecurity blind spots. They also know the technology exists to help them do that. However, they don’t often understand how to communicate this need within their organization to justify the expense, nor do they know how to share...

Center for Threat-Informed Defense teams up with Microsoft, partners to build the ATT&CK® for Containers matrix

The MITRE ATT&CK® for Containers matrix was published today, establishing an industry knowledge base of attack techniques associated with containerization and related technologies that are increasingly more ubiquitous in the current computing landscape. Microsoft is happy to have contributed and...

Surface expands its Secured-core portfolio with the new Surface Laptop 4 powered by AMD Ryzen™ Mobile Processors

As operating systems are becoming more secure and resistant to compromise, advanced vectors like firmware, kernel and hardware direct memory access DMA have emerged as new favored targets for threat actors. Recent trends indicate a substantial growth in the number of hardware and firmware exploit...

Microsoft unifies SIEM and XDR to help stop advanced attacks

For all of us in security, the last twelve months have been an incredible series of challenges—from balancing remote work with family priorities, to helping build resilient businesses, and protecting against the latest attacks. 2020 showed us that while we have made great progress, there is still...

IoT security: how Microsoft protects Azure Datacenters

Azure Sphere first entered the IoT Security market in 2018 with a clear mission—to empower every organization on the planet to connect and create secure and trustworthy IoT devices. Security is the foundation for durable innovation and business resilience. Every industry investing in IoT must...

Improved scripts in .lnk files now deliver Kovter in addition to Locky

Cybercriminals are using a combination of improved script and well-maintained download sites to attempt installing Locky and Kovter on more computers. A few months ago, we reported an email campaign distributing .lnk files with a malicious script that delivered Locky ransomware. Opening the...

Announcing Microsoft Secure Future Initiative to advance security engineering

Today Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President Brad Smith shared insight on the global cybersecurity landscape and introduced our Secure Future Initiative. These engineering advances anticipate future cyberthreats, such as increasing digital attacks on identity systems. They also address how we will...

Accessibility and usability for all in Azure Sentinel

As a father of a child on the Autism spectrum who relies completely on digital media for his learning, I fully appreciate the impact that digital accessibility can have on people with disabilities. Designing with accessibility in mind greatly expands the impact of Microsoft solutions. What many...

How to secure your hybrid work world with a Zero Trust approach

We are operating in the most complex cybersecurity landscape we’ve ever seen. Sophisticated and determined attackers are the norm. And we all are preparing for the next great disruption—hybrid work. Security has never been more important, and as I shared in another Security blog today, it’s clear...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Cybersecurity has become a pillar of the business

In a famous two-part episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians. During a pivotal scene, a Cardassian interrogator shows Picard four bright lights and demands that he “see” five lights. Picard resists, culminating with him shouting, “There...

The dynamic duo: How to build a red and blue team to strengthen your cybersecurity, Part 1

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the first post of our new Voice of the Community blog series, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Jake Williams, Founder of...

Terranova Security Gone Phishing Tournament reveals continued weak spot in cybersecurity

The Terranova Security annual Gone Phishing Tournament wrapped up in October 2020, spanning 98 countries and industries including healthcare, consumer goods, transport, energy, IT, finance, education, manufacturing, and more. Using templates created from actual phishing attacks created by Microso...

Protect your SQL Server on-premises, in Azure, and in multicloud

Azure Defender for SQL is now generally available for use with SQL Server on premises, in multicloud deployments on Amazon Web Services AWS, and Google Cloud Platform GCP, and in virtual machines on Azure. Azure Defender for SQL constantly monitors your SQL Server for known vulnerabilities and...

Protecting customers from being intimidated into making an unnecessary purchase

There has been an increase in free versions of programs that purport to scan computers for various errors, and then use alarming, coercive messages to scare customers into buying a premium version of the same program. The paid version of these programs, usually called cleaner or optimizer...

MSRT September 2016 release feature: Prifou

As part of our ongoing effort to provide better malware protection, the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool MSRT release this September includes detections for: BrowserModifier:Win32/Prifou TrojanClicker:Win32/NightClick Trojan:Win32/Suweezy Trojan:Win32/Xadupi This blog discusses...

New Microsoft Incident Response guides help security teams analyze suspicious activity

Today Microsoft Incident Response are proud to introduce two one-page guides to help security teams investigate suspicious activity in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra. These guides contain the artifacts that Microsoft Incident Response hunts for and uses daily to provide our customers with...

Microsoft Secure: Explore innovations transforming the future of security

Building a more secure future requires an end-to-end approach. There is no question that technology plays an essential role, but security will always be human-centered. That’s what Microsoft Secure is all about. It’s about sharing knowledge, best practices, and technology innovations that empower...

Anatomy of a DDoS amplification attack

Amplification attacks are one of the most common distributed denial of service DDoS attack vectors. These attacks are typically categorized as flooding or volumetric attacks, where the attacker succeeds in generating more traffic than the target can process, resulting in exhausting its resources...

Protect your business from password sprays with Microsoft DART recommendations

Over the past year, the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART, along with Microsoft’s threat intelligence teams, have observed an uptick in the use of password sprays as an attack vector. This threat is a moving target with techniques and tools always changing, and Microsoft continues to fin...