Becoming resilient by understanding cybersecurity risks: Part 1

All risks have to be viewed through the lens of the business or organization. While information on cybersecurity risks is plentiful, you can’t prioritize or manage any risk until the impact and likelihood to your organization is understood and quantified. This rule of thumb on who should be...

Microsoft announces cloud innovation to simplify security, compliance, and identity

2020 will be remembered as a year of historic transformation. The pandemic has changed the way businesses operate and people work. One thing that has not changed is our basic human nature and the need to feel safe. Being safe and feeling safe is what allows us to do more, create more, and have...

New data from Microsoft shows how the pandemic is accelerating the digital transformation of cyber-security

The importance of cybersecurity in facilitating productive remote work was a significant catalyst for the two years-worth of digital transformation we observed in the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this era of ubiquitous computing, security solutions don’t just sniff out threats,...

Associate Microsoft and Pradeo to manage and secure Android Enterprise mobile devices

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligence Security Association guest blog series. To learn more about MISA, go here. Want to learn more on how Android Enterprise works with existing mobility management and security solutions? This article will explain how Android Enterprise fits in a...

Preventing data loss and mitigating risk in today’s remote work environment

The shift to remote work over the past few months has increased the need for organizations to re-evaluate their security and risk management practices. With employees accessing corporate data at times on home computers or sharing and collaborating in new ways, organizations could be at greater ri...

Introducing Kernel Data Protection, a new platform security technology for preventing data corruption

Attackers, confronted by security technologies that prevent memory corruption, like Code Integrity CI and Control Flow Guard CFG, are expectedly shifting their techniques towards data corruption. Attackers use data corruption techniques to target system security policy, escalate privileges, tampe...

The psychology of social engineering—the “soft” side of cybercrime

Forty-eight percent of people will exchange their password for a piece of chocolate,1 91 percent of cyberattacks begin with a simple phish,2 and two out of three people have experienced a tech support scam in the past 12 months.3 What do all of these have in common? They make use of social...

Modernizing the security operations center to better secure a remote workforce

The response to COVID-19 has required many security operations centers SOCs to rethink how they protect their organizations. With so many employees working remotely, IT groups are routing more traffic directly to cloud apps, rather than through the network. In this model, traditional network...

Barracuda and Microsoft: Securing applications in public cloud

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligence Security Association guest blog series. To learn more about MISA, go here. Barracuda Cloud Application Protection CAP platform features integrations with Microsoft Azure Active Directory Azure AD and Azure Security Center. A component of CAP,...

Defending the power grid against supply chain attacks: Part 3 – Risk management strategies for the utilities industry

Over the last fifteen years, attacks against critical infrastructure figure1 have steadily increased in both volume and sophistication. Because of the strategic importance of this industry to national security and economic stability, these organizations are targeted by sophisticated, patient, and...

IT executives prioritize Multi-Factor Authentication in 2020

In 2020, many IT executives will roll out or expand their implementation of Multi-Factor Authentication MFA to better safeguard identities. This is one of the key findings of a survey conducted by Pulse Q&A for Microsoft in October 2019.1 Specifically, 59 percent of executives will implement or...

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...

The language of InfoSec

As the cybersecurity industry has evolved, one dynamic has remained consistent: our industry-"speak". We use a language that is very unique, difficult for new folks to understand, and oftentimes just plain sensationalistic. While any industry has its own technical terms, our language can also be ...

Want better apps? You need a (agile security) hero!

If weve learned anything from the rise of Marvel Cinematic Universe, its that good things tend to happen when heroes intervene. For securing new applications, this metaphor is a useful one because security isnt always top-of-mind for scrum teams, nor is it always conducive to meeting aggressive...

Email threat landscape: Q2 2026 trends and insights

In this article 1. Tycoon2FA Q2 disruption impact 2. QR code phishing attacks 3. CAPTCHA-gated phishing tactics 4. Malicious payloads 5. Business email compromise 6. Microsoft Teams threats 7. Notable phishing campaigns 8. Mitigation and protection guidance 9. Indicators of compromise IOCs The...

Email threat landscape: Q2 2026 trends and insights

In this article 1. Tycoon2FA Q2 disruption impact 2. QR code phishing attacks 3. CAPTCHA-gated phishing tactics 4. Malicious payloads 5. Business email compromise 6. Microsoft Teams threats 7. Notable phishing campaigns 8. Mitigation and protection guidance 9. Indicators of compromise IOCs The...

What’s new in Microsoft Security: May 2026

At Microsoft, security innovations are purpose-built to help every organization protect end-to-end with the speed and scale of AI. Our vision is simple: security should be ambient and autonomous, just like the AI it protects. As organizations accelerate AI adoption, security teams are navigating...

The agentic SOC—Rethinking SecOps for the next decade

Every major shift in cyberattacker behavior over the past decade has followed a meaningful shift in how defenders operate. When security operation centers SOCs deployed endpoint detection and response EDR—and later extended detection and response XDR—security teams raised the bar, pushing...

Inside Tycoon2FA: How a leading AiTM phishing kit operated at scale

In this article 1. Operational overview of Tycoon2FA 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Microsoft Defender detections Following its emergence in August 2023, Tycoon2FA rapidly became one of the most widespread phishing-as-a-service PhaaS platforms, enabling campaigns responsible for tens of...

OAuth redirection abuse enables phishing and malware delivery

Microsoft observed phishing-led exploitation of OAuth’s by-design redirection mechanisms. The activity targets government and public-sector organizations and uses silent OAuth authentication flows and intentionally invalid scopes to redirect victims to attacker-controlled infrastructure without...

Microsoft ranked number one in modern endpoint security market share third year in a row

Amidst the backdrop of a surging number of ransomware campaigns worldwide, organizations have increasingly chosen Microsoft Defender’s endpoint security as their preferred solution. It’s engineered to disrupt cyberattacks and not business continuity. As a result, for a third year a row, Microsoft...

Microsoft shares threat intelligence at CYBERWARCON 2023

At the CYBERWARCON 2023 conference, Microsoft and LinkedIn analysts are presenting several sessions detailing analysis across multiple sets of threat actors and related activity. This blog is intended to summarize the content of the research covered in these presentations and demonstrates Microso...

Expanded Microsoft Security Experts offerings provide comprehensive protection

Since we first introduced Microsoft Security Experts in May 2022, we’ve worked hard to expand our new security services category. In the past 16 months, we’ve launched new services, expanded our capabilities, and introduced new ways to buy. Our customers face an unprecedented number of security...

IoT devices and Linux-based systems targeted by OpenSSH trojan campaign

Cryptojacking, the illicit use of computing resources to mine cryptocurrency, has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with attackers building a cybercriminal economy around attack tools, infrastructure, and services to generate revenue from targeting a wide range of vulnerable systems,...

Microsoft 365 Defender demonstrates industry-leading protection in the 2022 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations

For the fourth consecutive year, Microsoft 365 Defender demonstrated its industry-leading protection in MITRE Engenuity’s independent ATT&CK® Enterprise Evaluations, showcasing the value of an integrated XDR-based defense that unifies device and identity protection with a Zero Trust approach:...

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...

Azure Sentinel achieves a Leader placement in Forrester Wave, with top ranking in Strategy

I’m thrilled to announce Forrester Research has named Microsoft Azure Sentinel as a “Leader” in The Forrester Wave: Security Analytics Platform Providers, Q4 2020. When we released Azure Sentinel almost a year ago—the industry’s first cloud-native SIEM on a major public cloud—our goal was to...

Empowering employees to securely work from anywhere with an internet-first model and Zero Trust

Like many this year, our Microsoft workforce had to quickly transition to a work from the home model in response to COVID-19. While nobody could have predicted the world’s current state, it has provided a very real-world test of the investments we have made implementing a Zero Trust security mode...

CISO stress-busters: post #1 overcoming obstacles

As part of the launch of the U.S. space program’s moon shot, President Kennedy famously said we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” The same can be said for the people responsible for security at their organizations; it is not a job one takes because it is easy...

Building on secure productivity

Among the most common and powerful attack vectors we have seen are those that exploit the daily tradeoff users make between security and productivity. Often, this can be as simple as a document hiding an exploit or a malicious link. As an industry, we’re used to thinking of security and...

Gartner Names Microsoft a Leader in the 2019 Enterprise Information Archiving (EIA) Magic Quadrant

We often hear from customers about the explosion of data, and the challenge this presents for organizations in remaining compliant and protecting their information. We’ve invested in capabilities across the landscape of information protection and information governance, inclusive of archiving,...

Typosquatted npm packages used to steal cloud and CI/CD secrets

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 1. The lure: typosquats and spoofed metadata 2. Execution: npm lifecycle hook abuse 3. Gen-1 stager: HTTP C2 beacon and payload drop 4. Gen-2 stager: abusing the legitimate Bun runtime as a loader 5. Credential theft 6. Impact and blast radius 2. Mitigatio...

ClickFix campaign uses fake macOS utilities lures to deliver infostealers

In this article 1. Activity overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Hunting queries 4. Indicators of compromise Microsoft researchers continue to observe the evolution of an infostealer campaign distributing ClickFix‑style instructions and targeting macOS users. In this recent iteration...

SOHO router compromise leads to DNS hijacking and adversary-in-the-middle attacks

In this article 1. DNS hijacking attack chain: From compromised devices to AiTM and other follow-on activity 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance Executive summary Forest Blizzard, a threat actor linked to the Russian military, has been...

Secure agentic AI end-to-end

Next week, RSAC™ Conference celebrates its 35-year anniversary as a forum that brings the security community together to address new challenges and embrace opportunities in our quest to make the world a safer place for all. As we look towards that milestone, agentic AI is reshaping industries...

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now stops human-operated attacks on its own

Defenders need every edge they can get in the fight against ransomware. Today, were pleased to announce that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint customers will now be able automatically to disrupt human-operated attacks like ransomware early in the kill chain without needing to deploy any other...

Cloud storage security: What’s new in the threat matrix

Today, we announce the release of a second version of the threat matrix for storage services, a structured tool that assists in identifying and analyzing potential security threats on data stored in cloud storage services. The matrix, first released in April 2021 as detailed in the blog post Thre...

Microsoft Entra expands into Security Service Edge and Azure AD becomes Microsoft Entra ID

A year ago when we announced the Microsoft Entra product family, we asked what the world could achieve if we had trust in every digital experience and interaction.1 This question inspired us to offer a vision for securing the millions and millions of connections that happen every second between...

Healthy security habits to fight credential breaches: Cyberattack Series

Fifty percent of Microsoft cybersecurity recovery engagements relate to ransomware,1 and 61 percent of all breaches involve credentials.2 In this second report in our ongoing Cyberattack Series, we look at the steps taken to discover, understand, and respond to a push-bombing request that targete...

Simplified endpoint management with Microsoft Intune Suite: Adopting a long-term approach with intelligence and automation

The last couple of years have been difficult, with many organizations operating in a response mode. From a global pandemic to an economic downturn to increasing security risks, teams are under more pressure than ever to deliver greater cyber security and do more with less. This responsive approac...

New research, tooling, and partnerships for more secure AI and machine learning

Today we’re on the verge of a monumental shift in the technology landscape that will forever change the security community. AI and machine learning may embody the most consequential technology advances of our lifetime, bringing huge opportunities to build, discover, and create a better world. Bra...

Cybersecurity health and how to stay ahead of attackers with Linda Grasso

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyberthreats. In the latest post of our Community Voices blog series, Microsoft Security Senior Product Marketing Manager Brooke Lynn Weenig talks with Linda Grasso, the...

4 things to look for in a multicloud data protection solution

What does it mean to be a multicloud organization? As the name implies, the term describes a model of cloud computing where an organization uses multiple clouds—two or more public clouds, private clouds, or a combination of public, private, and edge clouds—to distribute applications and services...

Microsoft named a Leader in 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Access Management for the 6th year

We are honored to announce that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Access Management for Microsoft Azure Active Directory Azure AD, part of Microsoft Entra. We thank our customers who guide our strategy and product innovation, engage with us deeply in...

The many lives of BlackCat ransomware

The BlackCat ransomware, also known as ALPHV, is a prevalent threat and a prime example of the growing ransomware-as-a-service RaaS gig economy. It’s noteworthy due to its unconventional programming language Rust, multiple target devices and possible entry points, and affiliation with prolific...

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...

Easy authentication and authorization in Azure Active Directory with No-Code Datawiza

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. The acceleration of cloud journeys fueled by the pandemic and ever-increasing concerns about data security and information privacy have made access management one of the hottest topi...

A simpler, more integrated approach to data governance

It’s no secret that the volume of data created by organizations and people multiplies daily. And, in the digital—and hybrid work—world we live in, that data is spread across more tools, platforms, devices, and clouds than ever before, creating regulatory challenges and security risks. Organizatio...

Secure unmanaged devices with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now

As we have entered into new hybrid work environments, businesses need to think about how they will proactively protect their organizations from the influx of new or “bring your own” BYO connected devices. This new normal has exposed the most challenging cybersecurity landscape we’ve ever...

Protecting multi-cloud environments with Azure Security Center

We’ve heard from many of you that multi-cloud adoption is becoming a standard operating model for your organization and that it’s challenging to have the right security controls and posture across your environment. Historically, security teams have not had effective tools to secure multi-cloud...