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...

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...

Zero Trust: 7 adoption strategies from security leaders

Microsoft considers Zero Trust an essential component of any organization’s security plan. We have partnered with Cloud Security Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that promotes cloud computing best practices, to bring together executive security leaders to discuss and share insights about...

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...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Evaluating individual and organizational cyber risk in a pandemic

Cybersecurity professionals find themselves in high demand as organizations worldwide continue to grapple with how to secure millions of remote workers. James Turner is an industry analyst at CISO Lens and served as an adjudicator from 2017 to 2019 for the Australian government’s cyber war games:...

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...

Traditional perimeter-based network defense is obsolete—transform to a Zero Trust model

Digital transformation has made the traditional perimeter-based network defense obsolete. Your employees and partners expect to be able to collaborate and access organizational resources from anywhere, on virtually any device, without impacting their productivity. Customers expect personalized...

Microsoft is awarded Zscaler’s Technology Partner of the Year for 2019

Last week at Zscaler’s user conference, Zenith Live, Microsoft received Zscaler’s Technology Partner of the Year Award in the Impact category. The award was given to Microsoft for the depth and breadth of integrations we’ve collaborated with Zscaler on and the positive feedback received from...

Driving data security is a shared responsibility, here’s how you can protect yourself

You're driving a long, dark road on a rainy night. If you're driving 20 miles over the speed limit and you don't step on the brakes when the car in front of you comes to a sudden stop, is it your fault or your car manufacturers fault if you rear-end the car that is in front of you? When we drive,...

Partnerships power the future of better security

This post is authored by Jeremy Dallman, Principal Program Manager. Our goal in building the Microsoft Graph Security API is to enable customers to share insights and take action across security solutions to improve protection and speed response. By creating a connected security ecosystem,...

How a national cybersecurity agency can help avoid a national cybersecurity quagmire

This last October we saw more countries than ever participate in initiatives to raise cybersecurity awareness. What was once largely a US approach has evolved into events and initiatives around the world by governments, civil society groups, and private sector partners. This increased breadth and...

Crypto Clipper uses Tor and worm-like propagation for persistence and control

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. References 4. Learn more Microsoft Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Defender Experts identified a Windows-based cryptocurrency clipper that has affected users since February of 2026. Clipper malware relies on...

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...

Malicious IIS extensions quietly open persistent backdoors into servers

Attackers are increasingly leveraging Internet Information Services IIS extensions as covert backdoors into servers, which hide deep in target environments and provide a durable persistence mechanism for attackers. While prior research has been published on specific incidents and variants, little...

The evolution of a matrix: How ATT&CK for Containers was built

Note: The content of this post is being released jointly with the Center for Threat-Informed Defense. It is co-authored with Chris Ante and Matthew Bajzek. The Center post can be found here. As containers become a major part of many organizations’ IT workloads, it becomes crucial to consider the...

Meet critical infrastructure security compliance requirements with Microsoft 365

Critical infrastructure operators face a hostile cyber threat environment and a complex compliance landscape. Every operator of an industrial control system also operates an IT network to service its productivity needs. A supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA system operator of a power...

Investigating a unique “form” of email delivery for IcedID malware

Microsoft threat analysts have been tracking activity where contact forms published on websites are abused to deliver malicious links to enterprises using emails with fake legal threats. The emails instruct recipients to click a link to review supposed evidence behind their allegations, but are...

XLM + AMSI: New runtime defense against Excel 4.0 macro malware

We have recently expanded the integration of Antimalware Scan Interface AMSI with Office 365 to include the runtime scanning of Excel 4.0 XLM macros, to help antivirus solutions tackle the increase in attacks that use malicious XLM macros. This integration, an example of the many security feature...

Becoming resilient by understanding cybersecurity risks: Part 3—a security pro’s perspective

In part two of this blog series on aligning security with business objectives and risk, we explored the importance of thinking and acting holistically, using the example of human-operated ransomware, which threatens every organization in every industry. As we exited 2020, the Solorigate attack...

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...

Protecting your organization against password spray attacks

When hackers plan an attack, they often engage in a numbers game. They can invest significant time pursing a single, high-value target—someone in the C-suite for example and do “spear phishing.” Or if they just need low-level access to gain a foothold in an organization or do reconnaissance, they...

Security guidance for remote desktop adoption

As the volume of remote workers quickly increased over the past two to three months, the IT teams in many companies scrambled to figure out how their infrastructures and technologies would be able to handle the increase in remote connections. Many companies were forced to enhance their capabiliti...

Microsoft identity acronyms—what do they mean and how do they relate to each other?

As a security advisor working with one to three Chief Information Security Officers CISOs each week, the topic of identity comes up often. These are smart people who have often been in industry for decades. They have their own vocabulary of acronyms that only security professionals know such as...

NERC CIP compliance in Azure

When I did my first North American Electric Reliability Corporation—Critical Infrastructure Protection NERC CIP compliance project it was 2009. NERC CIP was at version 3. It was the first mandatory cybersecurity standard that the utility I was working for had to meet. As it does today, the Bulk...

New privacy assessments now included in Microsoft Compliance Score

Keeping up with rapidly changing regulatory requirements has become one of the biggest challenge’s organizations face today. Just as companies finished preparing for the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR, California’s privacy regulation—California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA—went into effect ...

Identity enhancements to support the more than 1 million active third-party applications on our platform

This week at //build 2019, we’re announcing several enhancements to our identity platform for developers. These enhancements are designed to support the more than one million active third-party applications using our identity platform each month and include: Our work to unify the Microsoft identi...

Building on experience: a framework for cybersecurity policy

Each year, more and more governments are developing policies to address security challenges presented by an increasingly digitized world. And to support those efforts, Im excited today to announce the release of Microsofts new Cybersecurity Policy Framework, a resource for policymakers that...

Defense at AI speed: Microsoft’s new multi-model agentic security system tops leading industry benchmark

In this article 1. AI-powered vulnerability discovery at hyper-scale 2. Codename: MDASH—Microsoft Security’s new multi-model agentic scanning harness 3. Using codename MDASH for security research 4. The 5.12.2026 Patch Tuesday cohort 5. Two deep dives 1. CVE-2026-33827—Remote unauthenticated UAF ...

Cross‑tenant helpdesk impersonation to data exfiltration: A human-operated intrusion playbook

In this article 1. Risk to enterprise environments 2. Attack chain overview 1. Stage 1: Initial contact via Teams T1566.003 Spearphishing via Service 2. Stage 2: Remote assistance foothold 3. Stage 3: Interactive reconnaissance and access validation 4. Stage 4: Payload placement and trusted...

Secure your healthcare devices with Microsoft Defender for IoT and HCL’s CARE

It wasn’t long ago that medical devices were isolated and unconnected, but the rise of IoT has brought real computing power to the network edge. Today, medical devices are transforming into interconnected, smart assistants with decision-making capabilities. Any device in a medical setting must be...

A closer look at Qakbot’s latest building blocks (and how to knock them down)

Multiple Qakbot campaigns that are active at any given time prove that the decade-old malware continues to be many attackers’ tool of choice, a customizable chameleon that adapts to suit the needs of the multiple threat actor groups that utilize it. Since emerging in 2007 as a banking Trojan,...

Microsoft finds new NETGEAR firmware vulnerabilities that could lead to identity theft and full system compromise

The continuous improvement of security solutions has forced attackers to explore alternative ways to compromise systems. The rising number of firmware attacks and ransomware attacks via VPN devices and other internet-facing systems are examples of attacks initiated outside and below the operating...

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...

Trickbot disrupted

As announced today, Microsoft took action against the Trickbot botnet, disrupting one of the world’s most persistent malware operations. Microsoft worked with telecommunications providers around the world to disrupt key Trickbot infrastructure. As a result, operators will no longer be able to use...

Rethinking IoT/OT Security to Mitigate Cyberthreats

We live in an exciting time. We’re in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution—first steam, followed by electricity, then computers, and, now, the Internet of Things. A few years ago, IoT seemed like a futuristic concept that was on the distant horizon. The idea that your fridge would be...

CISO Stressbusters: Post #2: 4 tips for getting the first 6 months right as a new CISO

In your first six months in a new Chief Information Security Officer CISO role, you will often be tasked with building a security program. For some of us this is the most exciting part of the job, but it can also be stressful. You’re probably working under a deadline. Plus, it can be difficult to...

Cybersecurity best practices to implement highly secured devices

Almost three years ago, we published The Seven Properties of Highly Secured Devices, which introduced a new standard for IoT security and argued, based on an analysis of best-in-class devices, that seven properties must be present on every standalone device that connects to the internet in order ...

Open-sourcing new COVID-19 threat intelligence

A global threat requires a global response. While the world faces the common threat of COVID-19, defenders are working overtime to protect users all over the globe from cybercriminals using COVID-19 as a lure to mount attacks. As a security intelligence community, we are stronger when we share...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Building operational resilience in a digital world

Operational resiliency is a topic of rising importance in the security community. Unplanned events, much like the one we are facing today, are reminders of how organizations can be prepared to respond to a cyberattack. Ian Coldwater and I explored a variety of options in my episode of Afternoon...

Azure Security Benchmark—90 security and compliance best practices for your workloads in Azure

The Azure security team is pleased to announce that the Azure Security Benchmark v1 ASB is now available. ASB is a collection of over 90 security best practices recommendations you can employ to increase the overall security and compliance of all your workloads in Azure. The ASB controls are base...

IoT security will set innovation free: Azure Sphere general availability scheduled for February 2020

Today, at the IoT Solutions World Congress, we announced that Azure Sphere will be generally available in February of 2020. General availability will mark our readiness to fulfill our security promise at scale, and to put the power of Microsoft’s expertise to work for our customers every day—by...

DART: the Microsoft cybersecurity team we hope you never meet

If you spent 270 days away from home, not on vacation, you’d want it to be for a good reason. When boarding a plane, sometimes having been pulled out of bed to leave family for weeks on end, I know it’s because one of our customers is in need. It means there is a security compromise and they may ...

CISO series: Lessons learned—4 priorities to achieve the largest security improvements

In my past life as CISO, Ive worked for small companies, state governments, and large enterprises, and one thing that has been true at all of them is that there is an infinite number of security initiatives in each organization you could implement, yet the resources to accomplish those tasks are...

How Office 365 learned to reel in phish

Today's post was coauthored by Debraj Ghosh, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Jason Rogers, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft. We recently reported how we measure catch rates of malicious emails for Office 365 Exchange Online Protection EOP available with any Office 365 subscripti...

AI brands as bait: How threat actors are using the AI hype in social engineering

In this article 1. ChatGPT-themed lure leads to phishing kit collecting credit card data 2. Claude-themed phishing campaign collected credentials and access tokens 3. "Awesome AI Windows Plugin” malvertising deploys Vidar stealer 4. Fake DeepSeek V4 installers on GitHub delivered Vidar Stealer 5...

Sharing the first SimuLand dataset to expedite research and learn about adversary tradecraft

Last month, we introduced the SimuLand project to help security researchers around the world deploy lab environments to reproduce well-known attack scenarios, actively test detections, and learn more about the underlying behavior and implementation of adversary techniques. Since the release of th...

Hart and Microsoft announce partnership to incorporate ElectionGuard

On Thursday, June 3, 2021, via a joint press release on Microsoft Stories, Hart InterCivic and Microsoft have announced a partnership to incorporate ElectionGuard software developed by Microsoft into Hart’s Verity voting systems. The partnership makes Hart the first major voting machine...

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...

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now supports Windows 10 on Arm devices

Today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint support of Windows 10 on Arm devices is generally available. This expanded support is part of our continued efforts to extend Microsoft Defender for Endpoint capabilities across all the endpoints defenders need to secure. Arm...

New Security Signals study shows firmware attacks on the rise; here’s how Microsoft is working to help eliminate this entire class of threats

Cybersecurity threats are always evolving, and today we’re seeing a new wave of advanced attacks targeting areas of computing that don’t have the protection of the cloud. New data shows that firmware attacks are on the rise, and businesses aren’t paying close enough attention to securing this...