Digital Defense integrates with Microsoft to detect attacks missed by traditional endpoint security

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA guest blog series. You can learn more about MISA here. Cybercriminals have ramped up their initial compromises through phishing and pharming attacks using a variety of tools and tactics that, while numerous, are simple...

Zero Trust: From security option to business imperative overnight

Not long ago when I spoke with customers about Zero Trust, our conversations focused on discussing the principles, defining scope, or sharing our own IT organization’s journey. Zero Trust was something interesting to learn about, and most organizations were very much in the exploratory phase. As...

Stay ahead of multi-cloud attacks with Azure Security Center

The COVID-19 crisis has challenged just about every business on the planet to quickly adapt and transform. With massive workforces now remote, IT administrators and security professionals are under increased pressure to keep these workers connected and productive while combating evolving threats,...

What’s new in Microsoft 365 Compliance and Risk Management

The world has dramatically changed over the past three months. As Satya shared in our recent quarterly earnings, we have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. With that significant amount of rapid change, it’s more important than ever to make sure your business-critical...

4 identity partnerships to help drive better security

At Microsoft, we are committed to driving innovation for our partnerships within the identity ecosystem. Together, we are enabling our customers, who live and work in a heterogenous world, to get secure and remote access to the apps and resources they need. In this blog, we’d like to highlight ho...

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...

Enable remote work while keeping cloud deployments secure

As our customers shift to remote work in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many have asked how to maintain the security posture of their cloud assets. Azure Security Center security controls can help you monitor your security posture as usage of cloud assets increases. These are three common...

Changing the monolith—Part 2: Whose support do you need?

In Changing the monolith—Part 1: Building alliances for a secure culture, I explored how security leaders can build alliances and why a commitment to change must be signaled from the top. But whose support should you recruit in the first place? In Part 2, I address considerations for the...

Microsoft Cloud Security solutions provide comprehensive cross-cloud protection

The infrastructure, data, and apps built and run in the cloud are the foundational building blocks for a modern business. No matter where you are in your cloud journey, you likely utilize every layer of the cloud—from infrastructure as a service IaaS to platform as a service PaaS to software as a...

Understand and improve your security posture with Microsoft 365

I kickstarted 2019 with a “dry,” keto January. And, as so often happens, I found a parallel between my personal life and my chosen industry, cybersecurity. In this case, it was measurement. How do you know if you’re healthy? There are clear indicators when you’re not healthy, such as a sore throa...

Updating your cybersecurity strategy to enable and accelerate digital transformation

This post is authored by Cyril Voisin, Chief Security Advisor, Enterprise Cybersecurity Group. Nowadays every company is becoming a digital company to some extent. Digital transformation changes the way business is done. For example, it puts more control into the hands of employees, who now deman...

New macOS vulnerability, Migraine, could bypass System Integrity Protection

A new vulnerability, which we refer to as “Migraine” for its involvement with macOS migration, could allow an attacker with root access to automatically bypass System Integrity Protection SIP in macOS and perform arbitrary operations on a device. We shared these findings with Apple through...

Beneath the surface: Uncovering the shift in web skimming

Microsoft security researchers recently observed that web skimming campaigns now employ various obfuscation techniques to deliver and hide skimming scripts. It’s a shift from earlier tactics where attackers conspicuously injected malicious scripts into e-commerce platforms and content management...

How Vodafone Global Security Director creates an inclusive and secure workplace

Moving to more flexible remote work policies has caused telecommunications giant Vodafone to rethink cybersecurity and the potential friction to users. Instead of relying on physical security controls in the office, the company has embraced a Zero Trust strategy that requires authenticating...

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...

Resources for accelerating your Zero Trust journey

For many organizations, 2020 was the year that finally saw remote work become a reality on a global scale. As many people begin transitioning back to the office, many organizations are thinking about how they can transition from a remote workforce to a more permanent hybrid workplace. We recently...

Medius’ small IT team supports distributed workforce with Azure Active Directory

In today’s Voice of the Customer blog post, IT Manager Jacob Andersson and IT Systems Architect Fredrik Frööjd of Medius share how Azure Active Directory Azure AD has inspired employees to live by the cloud commitment the company encourages from customers and helped their small team support a...

Siemens USA CISO: 3 essentials to look for in a cloud provider

In the latest episode of my series, The Shiproom, I spoke with Kurt John, Chief Cybersecurity Officer CISO at Siemens USA. Kurt is listed in Security Magazine’s Top 10 most influential cybersecurity leaders, and he also serves on a special cybersecurity committee organized by the...

Deliver productive and seamless user experiences with Azure Active Directory

Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are still working remotely, and our organizations are still adjusting. Top of mind for every IT leader in this current landscape is meeting users’ needs for seamless access to resources while safeguarding the business from cyber threats. The...

Meet the Microsoft Pluton processor – The security chip designed for the future of Windows PCs

The role of the Windows PC and trust in technology are more important than ever as our devices keep us connected and productive across work and life. Windows 10 is the most secure version of Windows ever, built with end-to-end security for protection from the edge to the cloud all the way down to...

Announcing the Zero Trust Deployment Center

Organizations have been digitally transforming at warp speed in response to the way businesses operate and how people work. As a result, digital security teams have been under immense pressure to ensure their environments are resilient and secure. Many have turned to a Zero Trust security model t...

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...

New Forrester study shows customers who deploy Microsoft Azure AD benefit from 123% ROI.

Over the past six months, organizations around the world have accelerated digital transformation efforts to rapidly enable a remote workforce. As more employees than ever access apps via their home networks, the corporate network perimeter has truly disappeared, making identity the control plane...

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 ...

Microsoft Build brings new innovations and capabilities to keep developers and customers secure

As both organizations and developers adapt to the new reality of working and collaborating in a remote environment, it’s more important than ever to ensure that their experiences are secure and trusted. As part of this week’s Build virtual event, we’re introducing new Identity innovation to help...

Defending the power grid against supply chain attacks—Part 2: Securing hardware and software

Artificial intelligence AI and connected devices have fueled digital transformation in the utilities industry. These technological advances promise to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of energy generation, transmission, and distribution. They’ve also created new vulnerabilities...

Empower Firstline Workers with Azure AD and YubiKey passwordless authentication

At the end of February, Microsoft announced the FIDO2 passwordless support for hybrid environments. The integration of FIDO2-based YubiKeys and Azure Active Directory Azure AD is a game changer. It combines the ubiquity of Azure AD, the usability of YubiKey, and the security of both solutions to...

MISA expands with new members and new product additions

Another RSA Conference RSAC and another big year for the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA. MISA was launched at RSAC 2018 with 26 members and a year later we had doubled in size to 53 members. Today, I am excited to share that the association has again doubled in size to 102 member...

Changing the Monolith—Part 4: Quick tech wins for a cloud-first world

You may have heard that identity is the “new” perimeter. Indeed, with the proliferation of phishing attacks over the past few years, one of the best ways to secure data is to ensure that identity—the primary way we access data—can be trusted. How do we secure identity? Start by evaluating how use...

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...

How nation-state attackers like NOBELIUM are changing cybersecurity

This is the first post in a four-part series on the NOBELIUM nation-state cyberattack. Microsoft started telling the industry about this extremely advanced cyberattack in December 2020. The NOBELIUM blog series—which mirrors Microsoft’s four-part video series “Decoding NOBELIUM”—will pull the...

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...

MITRE ATT&CK® mappings released for built-in Azure security controls

The Security Stack Mappings for Azure research project was published today, introducing a library of mappings that link built-in Azure security controls to the MITRE ATT&CK® techniques they mitigate against. Microsoft once again worked with the Center for Threat-Informed Defense and other Center...

International Women’s Day: How to support and grow women in cybersecurity

Today, March 8, we are proud to celebrate International Women’s Day. The United Nations announced this year’s theme as “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” As a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a leader at Microsoft, this is an important time t...

Compliance joins Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA)

Like many of you, I’m thrilled to have my 2020 calendar safely in the recycling pile. During that time though, you too might have noticed how, perhaps unknowingly, you were able to turn some of last year’s lemons into lemonade. Maybe you developed a deeper appreciation for everyday moments and th...

Advice for incident responders on recovery from systemic identity compromises

As Microsoft alongside our industry partners and the security community continues to investigate the extent of the Solorigate attack, our goal is to provide the latest threat intelligence including IOCs and guidance across our products and solutions to help the community fight back against, harde...

Ensuring customers are protected from Solorigate

Microsoft is monitoring a dynamic threat environment surrounding the discovery of a sophisticated attack that included compromised binaries from a legitimate software. These binaries, which are related to the SolarWinds Orion Platform, could be used by attackers to remotely access devices. We hav...

STRONTIUM: Detecting new patterns in credential harvesting

Microsoft has tied STRONTIUM to a newly uncovered pattern of Office365 credential harvesting activity aimed at US and UK organizations directly involved in political elections. Analysts from Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC and Microsoft Identity Security have been tracking this new...

Hello open source security! Managing risk with software composition analysis

When first learning to code many people start with a rudimentary “Hello World” program. Building the program teaches developers the basics of a language as they write the code required to display “Hello World” on a screen. As developers get more skilled, the complexity of the programs they build...

Making Azure Sentinel work for you

Microsoft Azure Sentinel is the first Security Incident and Event Management SIEM solution built into a major public cloud platform that delivers intelligent security analytics across enterprise environments and offers automatic scalability to meet changing needs. This new white paper outlines be...

Secure the software development lifecycle with machine learning

Every day, software developers stare down a long list of features and bugs that need to be addressed. Security professionals try to help by using automated tools to prioritize security bugs, but too often, engineers waste time on false positives or miss a critical security vulnerability that has...

Quick wins—single sign-on (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

With Multi-Factor Authentication MFA and single sign-on SSO being a few of the most effective countermeasures against modern threats, organizations should consider a Cloud Identity as a Service IDaaS, and MFA solution, like Azure Active Directory AD. Here are seven benefits: 1. Azure AD is simple...

Microsoft Threat Protection stops attack sprawl and auto-heals enterprise assets with built-in intelligence and automation

Attackers will cross multiple domains like email, identity, endpoints, and applications to find the point of least resistance. Today’s defense solutions have been designed to protect, detect, and block threats for each domain separately, allowing attackers to exploit the seams and threshold...

Afternoon Cyber Tea—From threat intelligence to chatbots: A look at AI in cybersecurity

I’ve often said our teams should be as diverse as the problems we are trying to solve. Hiring a diverse security team isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also good business. This is a topic I’m very passionate about, so I was delighted to interview Jane Frankland for the second podcast of...

Microsoft and Zscaler help organizations implement the Zero Trust model

While digital transformation is critical to business innovation, delivering security to cloud-first, mobile-first architectures requires rethinking traditional network security solutions. Some businesses have been successful in doing so, while others still remain at risk of very costly breaches...

Microsoft 365 helps governments adopt a Zero Trust security model

For governments to function, the flow of data on a massive scale is required—including sensitive information about critical infrastructure, citizens, and public safety and security. The security of government information systems is subject to constant attempted attacks and in need of a modern...

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 ...

P = NP: Cloud data protection in vulnerable non-production environments

Data is the holy grail of your cloud workloads for attackers. Data breaches are the kind of breaches that make the news. With the recent European Union General Data Protection Regulations GDPR, they will make even bigger headlines. From an enterprise point of view, the most challenging aspect of...

Microsoft offers several mechanisms to protect against ransomware

The start of a new year is the perfect time to reassess your security strategy and tactics especially when looking back at the new levels of ransomwares reach and damage in 2017. Its no secret that ransomware attacks are increasing. In fact, a business is hit with ransomware every 40 seconds. If...

Octo Tempest crosses boundaries to facilitate extortion, encryption, and destruction

Microsoft has been tracking activity related to the financially motivated threat actor Octo Tempest, whose evolving campaigns represent a growing concern for organizations across multiple industries. Octo Tempest leverages broad social engineering campaigns to compromise organizations across the...