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...

Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC—Part 3d: Zen and the art of threat hunting

Threat hunting is a powerful way for the SOC to reduce organizational risk, but it’s commonly portrayed and seen as a complex and mysterious art form for deep experts only, which can be counterproductive. In this and the next blog we will shed light on this important function and recommend simple...

Microsoft continues to extend security for all with mobile protection for Android

Just a year ago, we shared our first steps on a journey to enable our customers to protect endpoints running a variety of platforms with our announcement of Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac. Knowing that each of our customers have unique environments and unique needs and are looking for more...

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...

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...

The need and opportunity for adaptive prevention in the cloud

This post is authored by Michael Bargury, Data Scientist, C+E Security. The need The cloud introduces new security challenges, which differ from classic ones by diversity and scale. Once a Virtual Machine VM is up and running with an open internet port, it is almost instantaneously subject to...

#AVGater vulnerability does not affect Windows Defender Antivirus, MSE, or SCEP

On November 10, 2017, a vulnerability called AVGater was discovered affecting some antivirus products. The vulnerability requires a non-administrator-level account to perform a restore of a quarantined file. Windows Defender Antivirus and other Microsoft antimalware products, including System...

​​Microsoft named a Leader in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

As organizations adopt AI, they must secure both cloud and AI environments through a unified security control plane as their attack surface expands. Because modern applications and AI workloads are built and run in the cloud, security teams must understand which exposures matter most, prioritize...

ACR Stealer: Two observed intrusion chains amid increased threat activity

In this article 1. Campaign 1: WebDAV-based ClickFix with Python loaders and blockchain C2 2. Campaign 2: MSHTA-initiated PowerShell chain with steganographic payload delivery 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. References 5. Learn more From late April 2026 to mid-June 2026, Microsoft Defend...

Undermining the trust boundary: Investigating a stealthy intrusion through third-party compromise

In this article 1. Abuse of trusted relationships as an attack delivery mechanism 2. Methods, tools, and access strategies 3. Campaign conclusion 4. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance In recent years, many sophisticated intrusions have increasingly avoided using noisy exploits,...

Making opportunistic cyberattacks harder by design

This is part of a series of blogs and interviews conducted with our Microsoft Deputy CISOs , in which we surface a number of mission-critical security recommendations and best practices that businesses can enact right now and derive real meaningful benefits from. In this article, Ilya Grebnov,...

WhatsApp malware campaign delivers VBScript and MSI backdoors

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Hunting queries 4. Indicators of compromise Microsoft Defender Experts observed a campaign beginning in late February 2026 that uses WhatsApp messages to deliver malicious Visual Basic Script VBS files. Once execute...

New Microsoft Purview innovations for Fabric to safely accelerate your AI transformation

As organizations adopt AI, security and governance remain core primitives for safe AI transformation and acceleration. After all, data leaders are aware of the notion that: Your AI is only as good as your data. Organizations are skeptical about AI transformation due to concerns of sensitive data...

Malicious AI Assistant Extensions Harvest LLM Chat Histories

Microsoft Defender has been investigating reports of malicious Chromium‑based browser extensions that impersonate legitimate AI assistant tools to harvest LLM chat histories and browsing data. Reporting indicates these extensions have reached approximately 900,000 installs. Microsoft Defender...

Microsoft partners with Global Anti-Scam Alliance to fight cybercrime

Being the victim of a scam can be devastating. Unfortunately, the number of people who can attest to the truth of this statement, either because they themselves have been scammed or because it has happened to someone they know, is growing. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance GASA reports that in 2024...

New whitepaper outlines the taxonomy of failure modes in AI agents

We are releasing a taxonomy of failure modes in AI agents to help security professionals and machine learning engineers think through how AI systems can fail and design them with safety and security in mind. The taxonomy continues Microsoft AI Red Team's work to lead the creation of systematizati...

6 insights from Microsoft’s 2024 state of multicloud risk report to evolve your security strategy

Multicloud computing has become the foundation for digital businesses, with 86% of organizations having already adopted a multicloud approach.1 However, for all its benefits around increased agility, flexibility, and choice, we also see unique challenges with multicloud—including the need to mana...

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...

New Microsoft Security innovations expand multicloud visibility and enhance multiplatform protection

With more than 90 percent of organizations adopting a multicloud strategy1 and cloud-based cyberattacks growing 48 percent year over year,2 securing multicloud and hybrid environments is more important than ever. To successfully protect multicloud infrastructure—where customers are utilizing two ...

Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR helps triage, investigate, and respond to cyberthreats

It has been an eventful time since the introduction of Microsoft Security Experts.1 We launched Defender Experts for Hunting, our first-party managed threat hunting service for customers who want Microsoft to help them proactively hunt threats across endpoints, Microsoft Office 365, cloud...

Microsoft Build 2023: Announcing new identity, compliance, and security features from Microsoft Security

At Microsoft Build 2023—an event for developers by developers—we’re going to announce exciting new features and technologies, share ideas, and help everyone boost their skills so we can all build a more secure future together. This year’s Microsoft Build offers a full program, both online and...

DevOps threat matrix

The use of DevOps practices, which enable organizations to deliver software more quickly and efficiently, has been on the rise. This agile approach minimizes the time-to-market of new features and bug fixes. More and more companies are implementing DevOps services, each with its own infrastructur...

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...

Cyber Signals: Risks to critical infrastructure on the rise

Today, the third edition of Cyber Signals was released spotlighting security trends and insights gathered from Microsoft’s 43 trillion daily security signals and 8,500 security experts. In this edition, we share new insights on wider risks that converging IT, Internet of Things IoT, and operation...

Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting demonstrates industry-leading protection in the 2022 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations for Managed Services

Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting, our newest managed threat hunting service, delivered industry-leading results during the inaugural MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations for Managed Services. We provided a seamless, comprehensive, and rapid response to the simulated attack using expert-led...

Microsoft at RSA 2022: Envisioning the future of security

Like most of you, I was glad to see the 2022 RSA Conference return to its in-person roots after a two-year digital hiatus. This year’s event was a great success, drawing 26,000 attendees to three days of cutting-edge security sessions, tutorials, seminars, and special events at Moscone Center in...

archTIS and Microsoft: Zero Trust information security for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has seen a surge in growth during the pandemic with over 115 million daily active users and growing.1 With it, customer imperative for enabling safe and trustworthy online collaboration has also increased significantly. The speed and simplicity of Teams business users creating new...

Defend against zero-day exploits with Microsoft Defender Application Guard

Zero-day security vulnerabilities—known to hackers, but unknown to software creators, security researchers, and the public—are like gold to attackers. With zero-days, or even zero-hours, developers have no time to patch the code, giving hackers enough access and time to explore and map internal...

A guide to combatting human-operated ransomware: Part 2

This blog is part two 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. In part one of this bl...

How a positive hybrid work culture can help you to mitigate insider risk

As Vasu Jakkal recently shared, we are operating in the most sophisticated threat landscape ever seen, and coupled with the next great disruption—hybrid work—security is more challenging than ever. Protecting from external threats is only one part of the challenge, though. You also must protect...

It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month and there is still a lot to do

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month NCSAM. And there is still a lot to do! For the last 17 years, the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month NCSAM campaign, driven by the Department of Homeland Security, has raised awareness about the importance of cyber security across the Nation...

Unilever CISO on balancing business risks with cybersecurity

Imagine showing up to work every day knowing that your job requires protecting 160,000 employees creating more than 450 products around the world—tea, ice cream, personal care, laundry and dish soaps—across a customer base of more than two and a half billion people every day. Unilever Chief...

CISO Spotlight: How diversity of data (and people) defeats today’s cyber threats

This year, we have seen five significant security paradigm shifts in our industry. This includes the acknowledgment that the greater the diversity of our data sets, the better the AI and machine learning outcomes. This diversity gives us an advantage over our cyber adversaries and improves our...

3 ways Microsoft 365 can help you reduce helpdesk costs

With more people than ever working remotely, organizations must maximize employee productivity while protecting an ever-growing digital footprint. Many have stitched together specialized security solutions from different vendors to improve their cybersecurity posture, but this approach is expensi...

Force firmware code to be measured and attested by Secure Launch on Windows 10

You cannot build something great on a weak foundation – and security is no exception. Windows is filled with important security features like Hypervisor-protected code integrity HVCI and Windows Defender Credential Guard that protect users from advanced hardware and firmware attacks. For these...

How to detect and mitigate phishing risks with Microsoft and Terranova Security

Detect, assess, and remediate phishing risks across your organization A successful phishing attack requires just one person to take the bait. That’s why so many organizations fall victim to these cyber threats. To reduce this human risk, you need a combination of smart technology and people-centr...

Microsoft and Corrata integrate to extend cloud app security to mobile endpoints

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligence Security Association guest blog series. To learn more about MISA, go here. The growth of mobile and remote work and the emergence of the “post perimeter” world has made keeping track of shadow IT a huge challenge for enterprise IT teams. What...

CISO Stressbusters: Post #4: 4 tips for running a highly effective security operation

Rebecca Wynn, Global CISO & Chief Privacy Officer CISO of 247.ai , shares her advice for relieving stress in today’s CISO Stressbuster post. In many organizations, CISO is held accountable for security breaches, yet they don’t have control over all the decisions and systems that impact cyber risk...

Guiding principles of our identity strategy: staying ahead of evolving customer needs

Last June, when I shared the 5 principles driving a customer-obsessed identity strategy at Microsoft, many of you had embraced the idea of a boundaryless environment, but relatively few had implemented it in practice. A global pandemic made remote access essential and forced many of you to...

Best security, compliance, and privacy practices for the rapid deployment of publicly facing Microsoft Power Apps intake forms

With the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal agencies around the globe were looking at ways to modernize data intake for social services recipients. The government of a country of about 40 million citizens reached out to Microsoft and asked us to assist in this endeavor. Going...

Feeling fatigued? Cloud-based SIEM relieves security team burnout

Most CISOs and CSOs are worried that a growing volume of alerts is causing burnout among their teams, according to new research from IDG. You can learn about additional challenges to security operations teams by reading the IDG report SIEM Shift: How the Cloud is Transforming Security Operations...

Exploiting a crisis: How cybercriminals behaved during the outbreak

In the past several months, seemingly conflicting data has been published about cybercriminals taking advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak to attack consumers and enterprises alike. Big numbers can show shifts in attacker behavior and grab headlines. Cybercriminals did indeed adapt their tactics to...

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2020 Enterprise Detection and Response Wave

I’m proud to announce that Microsoft is positioned as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2020. Among the Leaders in the report, Microsoft received the highest score in the current offering category. Microsoft also received the highest score of all participating...

Microsoft Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance in Microsoft 365 now generally available

Microsoft Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance in Microsoft 365—now generally available—help organizations address internal risks, such as IP theft or code of conduct policy violations. The new Microsoft Insider Risk Management solution helps to quickly identify, detect, and act o...

Norsk Hydro responds to ransomware attack with transparency

Last March, aluminum supplier Norsk Hydro was attacked by LockerGoga, a form of ransomware. The attack began with an infected email and locked the files on thousands of servers and PCs. All 35,000 Norsk Hydro employees across 40 countries were affected. In the throes of this crisis, executives ma...

Steer clear of tax scams

In the month of February, we saw an average of 300,000 phishing attempts across Microsoft’s browsing platforms daily. Our security experts expect these attempted scams to become increasingly more prevalent through the April 15 Tax Day, especially in the two weeks leading up to it, when about 25...

Cyber resilience for the modern enterprise

Many organizations are undergoing a digital transformation that leverages a mix of cloud and on-premises assets to increase business efficiency and growth. While increased dependence on technology is necessary for this transformation, and to position the business for success, it does pose risks...

StealC and Amadey: Breaking down infostealers and the cybercrime services that deliver them

In this article 1. The role of infostealers: From credential theft to intrusion 2. StealC: Infostealer for rent 3. Amadey: Malware-as-a-service for delivery of infostealers 4. Defending against StealC and Amadey intrusions 5. Microsoft Defender detections 6. Indicators of compromise Infostealers...

Simplifying AWS defense with Microsoft Sentinel UEBA

In this article 1. Under the hood: The tables 2. Traditional vs. new approach 3. Real-world attack scenarios: Microsoft Sentinel UEBA in action 4. Practical implementation: Getting started 5. Limitations and constraints 6. From raw logs to behavioral context With the expansion of Microsoft Sentin...

How to deploy AI safely

In this blog you will hear directly from Corporate Vice President and Deputy Chief Information Security Officer CISO for AI, Yonatan Zunger, about how to build a plan to deploy AI safely. This blog is part of a new ongoing series where our Deputy CISOs share their thoughts on what is most importa...