How Microsoft Purview and Priva help simplify data protection

At Microsoft Security, we understand how challenging it is to protect your most important asset, your data, in today’s threat landscape. You’re faced with evolving challenges—from empowering employees for greater productivity to eliminating gaps in your infrastructure—all while trying to protect...

Using Python to unearth a goldmine of threat intelligence from leaked chat logs

Dealing with a great amount of data can be time consuming, thus using Python can be very powerful to help analysts sort information and extract the most relevant data for their investigation. The open-source tools library, MSTICPy, for example, is a Python tool dedicated to threat intelligence. I...

Detecting and preventing privilege escalation attacks leveraging Kerberos relaying (KrbRelayUp)

On April 24, 2022, a privilege escalation hacking tool, KrbRelayUp, was publicly disclosed on GitHub by security researcher Mor Davidovich. KrbRelayUp is a wrapper that can streamline the use of some features in Rubeus, KrbRelay, SCMUACBypass, PowerMad/SharpMad, Whisker, and ADCSPwn tools in...

Microsoft launches Defender for Business to help protect small and medium businesses

Happy National Small Business Week1 in the United States! Small and medium businesses SMBs are the bedrock of our economy, representing 90 percent of businesses and more than 50 percent of employment worldwide.2 As we celebrate their innovation and contributions this week, it’s important to...

Franken-phish: TodayZoo built from other phishing kits

A phishing kit built using pieces of code copied from other kits, some available for sale through publicly accessible scam sellers or are reused and repackaged by other kit resellers, provides rich insight into the state of the economy that drives phishing and email threats today. We uncovered th...

A guide to combatting human-operated ransomware: Part 1

This blog is part one of a two-part series focused on how Microsoft DART helps customers with human-operated ransomware. For more guidance on human-operated ransomware and how to defend against these extortion-based attacks, refer to our human-operated ransomware docs page. Microsoft’s Detection...

Get free DMARC visibility with Valimail Authenticate and Microsoft Office 365

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. Phishing and email spoofing not only erode brand trust but also leave recipients vulnerable to financial loss and serious invasions of privacy. These tactics have been around for...

Trend-spotting email techniques: How modern phishing emails hide in plain sight

With the massive volume of emails sent each day, coupled with the many methods that attackers use to blend in, identifying the unusual and malicious is more challenging than ever. An obscure Unicode character in a few emails is innocuous enough, but when a pattern of emails containing this obscur...

How Microsoft Security empowers partners to build customer trust

As I reflect on my first year at Microsoft, it was both challenging and exceptional: from my remote onboarding in the middle of a pandemic to dramatic changes in the cyber landscape, to Microsoft’s critical role as a frontline responder in some of the most sophisticated cyberattacks in history an...

Strategies, tools, and frameworks for building an effective threat intelligence team

How to think about building a threat intelligence program 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...

Microsoft brings advanced hardware security to Server and Edge with Secured-core

A cursory look at recent headlines reveals two clear trends. First, organizations around the world are embracing digital transformation using technologies across cloud and edge computing to better serve their customers and thrive in fast-paced environments. Second, attackers are constantly...

4 ways Microsoft is delivering security for all in a Zero Trust world

If there’s one thing the dawning of 2021 has shown, it’s that security isn’t getting any easier. Recent high-profile breach activity has underscored the growing sophistication of today’s threat actors and the complexity of managing business risk in an increasingly connected world. It’s a struggle...

Securing Azure datacenters with continuous IoT/OT monitoring

Figure 1: Industrial cooling system for datacenters. As more intelligent devices and machinery become connected to the internet, Operational Technology OT and the Internet of Things IoT have become part of your enterprise network infrastructure—and a growing security risk. With every new factory...

Privacy breaches: Using Microsoft 365 Advanced Audit and Advanced eDiscovery to minimize impact

GDPR, HIPAA, GLBA, all 50 U.S. States, and many countries have privacy breach reporting requirements. If an organization experiences a breach of customer or employee personal information, they must report it within the required time frame. The size and scope of this reporting effort can be massiv...

MSRT August 2016 release adds Neobar detection

As part of our ongoing effort to provide better malware protection, the August 2016 release of the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool MSRT includes detections for BrowserModifier: Win32/Neobar, unwanted software, and Win32/Rovnix, a trojan malware family. This blog discusses...

Forrester names Microsoft Intune a Leader in the 2023 Forrester Wave™ for Unified Endpoint Management

Maintaining a secure and optimized digital environment allows new ideas to flourish wherever they occur. In the modern workplace, where devices and locations are no longer fixed, Microsoft Intune eases the task of managing and protecting the endpoints of businesses everywhere. It helps secure...

HTML smuggling surges: Highly evasive loader technique increasingly used in banking malware, targeted attacks

HTML smuggling, a highly evasive malware delivery technique that leverages legitimate HTML5 and JavaScript features, is increasingly used in email campaigns that deploy banking malware, remote access Trojans RATs, and other payloads related to targeted attacks. Notably, this technique was observe...

How to apply a Zero Trust approach to your IoT solutions

For many, 2020 was a year of survival as they rapidly transformed their businesses in response to a new normal. From enabling new remote and hybrid work models to implementing new technology to help optimize operations, the last year has seen a significant uptick in the proliferation and role of...

Why threat protection is critical to your Zero Trust security strategy

The corporate network perimeter has been completely redefined. Many IT leaders are adopting a Zero Trust security model where identities play a critical role in helping act as the foundation of their modern cybersecurity strategy. As a result, cybercriminals have shifted their focus and identitie...

Modernizing your network security strategy

From the global pandemic to recent cyberattacks, our world has faced many challenges during the past 12 months. Some of these challenges we can’t change. However, I’m pleased about the ones we can, and are changing across the cybersecurity landscape. For example, to facilitate remote work and...

CISO Stressbusters: 7 tips for weathering the cybersecurity storms

An essential requirement of being a Chief Information Security Officer CISO is stakeholder management. In many organizations, security is still seen as a support function; meaning, any share of the budget you receive may be viewed jealously by other departments. Bringing change to an organization...

Now you see me: Exposing fileless malware

Attackers are determined to circumvent security defenses using increasingly sophisticated techniques. Fileless malware boosts the stealth and effectiveness of an attack, and two of last years major ransomware outbreaks Petya and WannaCry used fileless techniques as part of their kill chains. The...

Tax-themed phishing and malware attacks proliferate during the tax filing season

Tax-themed scams and social engineering attacks are as certain as death or tax itself. Every year we see these attacks, and 2017 is no different. These attacks circulate year-round as cybercriminals take advantage of the different country and region tax schedules, but they peak in the months...

Double-click me not: Malicious proxy settings in OLE Embedded Script

Attackers have been using social engineering to avoid the increasing costs of exploitation due to the significant hardening and exploit mitigations investments in Windows. Tricking a user into running a malicious file or malware can be cheaper for an attacker than building an exploit which works ...

Microsoft shifts to a comprehensive SaaS security solution

Software as a service SaaS apps are ubiquitous, hybrid work is the new normal, and protecting them and the important data they store is a big challenge for organizations. Today, 59 percent of security professionals find the SaaS sprawl challenging to manage1 and have identified cloud...

Microsoft Security reaches another milestone—Comprehensive, customer-centric solutions drive results

Yesterday, we shared some exciting news about the momentum we’re seeing in the security industry. Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella announced that Microsoft Security has surpassed USD20 billion in revenue. I’m grateful to all our customers and partners who have been on this journey...

How Microsoft Security partners are helping customers do more with less

There has never been a greater demand for specialized cybersecurity expertise—or a greater opportunity for our partners to support our customers with new services and solutions. Over the last year, the permanent shift to hybrid work has empowered businesses to be remote and mobile. Increased...

Measure the effectiveness of your Microsoft security with AttackIQ

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. To improve an organization’s cybersecurity readiness, you need to test that your detection and prevention technologies work as intended and that your security program is performing a...

Mitigate OT security threats with these best practices

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 Chris Sistrunk, Technical Manager in...

Collaborative innovation on display in Microsoft’s insider risk management strategy

The disrupted work environment, in which enterprises were forced to find new ways to enable their workforce to work remotely, changed the landscape for operations as well as security. One of the top areas of concern is managing insider risks, a complex undertaking even before the pandemic, and ev...

A breakthrough year for passwordless technology

As 2020 draws to a close, most of us are looking forward to putting this year in the rearview mirror. Since we depend even more on getting online for everything in our lives, we’re more than ready to be done with passwords. Passwords are a hassle to use, and they present security risks for users...

Gartner names Microsoft a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers

The past few months have changed the way we work in many ways, working from home, social distancing, and remote operations have all had impacts on our previously known ways of life. At Microsoft, we have been working hard to assist our customers adjust to this rapidly changing and evolving work...

How artificial intelligence stopped an Emotet outbreak

At 12:46 a.m. local time on February 3, a Windows 7 Pro customer in North Carolina became the first would-be victim of a new malware attack campaign for Trojan:Win32/Emotet. In the next 30 minutes, the campaign tried to attack over a thousand potential victims, all of whom were instantly and...

Microsoft announces the 2023 Microsoft Security Excellence Awards winners

In a world that’s constantly changing and challenging us, we believe that nothing can stop us when we work together. That’s the spirit of collaboration we celebrated on April 24, 2023, at the fourth annual Microsoft Security Excellence Awards. These awards recognize outstanding contributions from...

Leverage cloud-powered security with Microsoft Defender for IoT

Traditionally, operational technology OT and IT have occupied separate sides of enterprise security. But with digital transformation and the advent of Industry 4.0, the old, siloed approach is showing its age.1 The rise of manufacturing execution systems has enabled more “smart factories” to...

DEV-0139 launches targeted attacks against the cryptocurrency industry

Over the past several years, the cryptocurrency market has considerably expanded, gaining the interest of investors and threat actors. Cryptocurrency itself has been used by cybercriminals for their operations, notably for ransom payment in ransomware attacks, but we have also observed threat...

New Secured-core servers are now available from the Microsoft ecosystem to help secure your infrastructure

In the current pandemic-driven remote work environments, security has become increasingly important. Earlier this year, Colonial Pipeline, one of the leading suppliers of fuel on the East Coast of the United States, was hit by a ransomware attack.1 This caused a massive disruption of the fuel...

MVP Health Care secures member portal access with Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C

Hello! I’m Sue Bohn, Microsoft Vice President of Program Management for Identity and Network Access. In today’s Voice of the Customer blog post, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer David Swits of MVP Health Care shares how Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C helped th...

Practical tips on how to use application security testing and testing standards

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 Daniel Cuthbert, Global Head of Security...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Learn how to stop misinformation threats from nation-state bad actors

Information has long been wielded as an instrument of national power and influence. In today’s digital world, misinformation can also be just as powerful. On a special episode of Afternoon Cyber Tea with Ann Johnson, Sandra Joyce, Executive Vice President and Head of Mandiant Intelligence at...

How to prepare for CMMC compliance as a defense industrial base supplier using the Microsoft cloud

In 2020, the US Department of Defense DoD began the phased rollout of a new framework for protecting their supply chain, known as the defense industrial base DIB. This new Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification1 CMMC system requires regular audits that will bolster the security of the DIB,...

Microsoft delivers comprehensive solution to battle rise in consent phishing emails

Microsoft threat analysts are tracking a continued increase in consent phishing emails, also called illicit consent grants, that abuse OAuth request links in an attempt to trick recipients into granting attacker-owned apps permissions to access sensitive data. This blog offers a look into the...

The critical role of Zero Trust in securing our world

We are operating in the most complex cybersecurity landscape that we’ve ever seen. While our current ability to detect and respond to attacks has matured incredibly quickly in recent years, bad actors haven’t been standing still. Large-scale attacks like those pursued by Nobelium1 and Hafnium,...

Starting your journey to become quantum-safe

There’s no doubt we are living through a time of rapid technological change. Advances in ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence transform nearly every aspect of work and life. As the world moves forward with new advancements and distributed technologies, so too does the need to understand...

Top insights and best practices from the new Microsoft Data Security Index report

A whopping 74 percent of organizations recently surveyed experienced at least one data security incident with their business data exposed in the previous year. That’s just one of our interesting insights from Microsoft’s new Data Security Index: Trends, insights, and strategies to secure data...

Gain real-time identity protection with Microsoft and Recorded Future

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. You’ve implemented multifactor authentication for access to your enterprise network. But what if multifactor authentication isn’t as foolproof as you’re hoping? Are you comfortable...

Defenders beware: A case for post-ransomware investigations

Ransomware is one of the most pervasive threats that Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART responds to today. The groups behind these attacks continue to add sophistication to their tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs as most network security postures increase. In this blog, we detail a...

Implementing a Zero Trust strategy after compromise recovery

What changes after compromise recovery? After a successful compromise recovery effort, you are back in control. Likely, you gave your team a round of applause and took a sigh of relief. Now what? Is everything going back to as it was in the past? Absolutely not! A compromise recovery engagement i...

Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting proactively hunts threats

Today, we announced the general availability of Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting to support organizations and their cybersecurity employees with proactive threat hunting. Defender Experts for Hunting was created for customers who have a robust security operations center but want Microsoft t...

How Microsoft Purview and Priva support the partner ecosystem

Today, many enterprise organizations are multicloud and multiplatform. Critical enterprise data is located across clouds and platforms, requiring security and compliance no matter where it lives. To solve the complexity that comes with these environments, organizations have invested in multiple...