So you want to be a CISO: What you should know about data protection

Data is the lifeblood of any organization. Whether you’re a Chief Information Security Officer CISO or aspiring to become one, protecting sensitive business data will be your main priority. But the job isn’t getting any easier. In 2021, the number of data breaches climbed 68 percent to 1,862,...

In hot pursuit of ‘cryware’: Defending hot wallets from attacks

The steep rise in cryptocurrency market capitalization, not surprisingly, mirrors a marked increase in threats and attacks that target or leverage cryptocurrencies. But Microsoft researchers are observing an even more interesting trend: the evolution of related malware and their techniques, and t...

A clearer lens on Zero Trust security strategy: Part 1

Todays world is flooded with definitions and perspectives on Zero Trust, so we are kicking off a blog series to bring clarity to what Zero Trust is and what it means. This first blog will draw on the past, present, and future to bring a clear vision while keeping our feet planted firmly on the...

Learn the latest cybersecurity techniques at the Microsoft Security Summit

In a world marked by change and uncertainty, innovation is more than a nice-to-have—it’s vital to any healthy organization. But fearless innovation becomes impossible when gaps in security can put those ideas at risk. Many organizations try to increase their defenses by piecing together a patchwo...

Microsoft CRSP shares the ways human behavior affects compromise recovery

The Microsoft Compromise Recover Security Practice CRSP is a worldwide team of cybersecurity experts operating in most countries, across all organizations public and private, with deep expertise to secure an environment post-security breach and to help you prevent a breach in the first place. As ...

Learn how Microsoft strengthens IoT and OT security with Zero Trust

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated and relentless, the need for Cybersecurity Awareness Month becomes more urgent every year. As part of our year-round commitment to security for all, Microsoft continues to track numerous incidents targeting both digital and physical operations for many...

Get career advice from 7 inspiring leaders in cybersecurity

Are you currently studying information security? Or are you considering transitioning to a career in cybersecurity? According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, cybersecurity jobs will grow 31 percent from 2019 to 2029—more than six times the national average job growth.1 Cybersecurity skills...

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,...

Azure LoLBins: Protecting against the dual use of virtual machine extensions

Azure Defender for Resource Manager offers unique protection by automatically monitoring the resource management operations in your organization, whether theyre performed through the Azure portal, Azure REST APIs, Azure CLI, or other Azure programmatic clients. In this blog, we will look into the...

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...

One simple action you can take to prevent 99.9 percent of attacks on your accounts

There are over 300 million fraudulent sign-in attempts to our cloud services every day. Cyberattacks aren’t slowing down, and it’s worth noting that many attacks have been successful without the use of advanced technology. All it takes is one compromised credential or one legacy application to...

Announcing new capabilities for the Microsoft Azure Security Center

Microsoft Azure Security Center—the central hub for monitoring and protecting against related incidents within Azure—has released new capabilities. The following features—announced at Hannover Messe 2019—are now generally available for the Azure Security Center: Advanced Threat Protection for Azu...

Securing the future of AI and machine learning at Microsoft

Artificial intelligence AI and machine learning are making a big impact on how people work, socialize, and live their lives. As consumption of products and services built around AI and machine learning increases, specialized actions must be undertaken to safeguard not only your customers and thei...

IGF proves the value of bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model in cyberspace policy-making

In December, the Internet Governance Forum IGF brought the world together to talk about the internet. I tend to take a definite interest in cybersecurity, but there were many more important topics discussed. They ranged from diversity in the technology sector through to philosophy in the digital...

128 Seconds to disruption: Microsoft Defender stops ransomware at QNET

In this article 1. What is device isolation? 2. Case study: QNET 3. Attack chain overview 4. MITRE ATT&CK techniques observed 5. References 6. Learn more Microsoft Defender's attack disruption now includes device isolation, a new response action that extends autonomous protection directly to...

Photo ZIP campaign targeting hospitality industry delivers Node.js implant for persistent access

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. References 4. Learn more Microsoft Threat Intelligence has identified an active multi-stage intrusion campaign targeting organizations in the hospitality and hotel industry since April 2026. We’ve observed this...

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,...

Connect with us at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit

Security professionals visiting booths scattered around a hall, eager for solutions to today’s top cybersecurity challenges to protect their resources and people. The hum of hundreds of conversations. Presenters in packed sessions sharing expertise, trends, and stories to energize attendees. Few...

14 secure coding tips: Learn from the experts at Microsoft Build

Hey friends! If you are a developer, you know that writing clean and efficient code is just the starting point. Now, with AI playing a bigger role, secure coding isn't just a 'nice-to-have'—it's a must. Whether you're building web apps, working on cloud services, or adding AI to your projects,...

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2023 Infrastructure-as-a-Service Platform Native Security report

As we continue to drive toward making the world safer and more productive for all, it is vital we empower our customers to secure every aspect of their organization. Each day we are seeing more advanced security threats as bad actors develop new tactics that aim to take advantage of businesses as...

DEV-1101 enables high-volume AiTM campaigns with open-source phishing kit

Adversary-in-the-middle AiTM phishing kits are part of an increasing trend that is observed supplanting many other less advanced forms of phishing. AiTM phishing is capable of circumventing multifactor authentication MFA through reverse-proxy functionality. DEV-1101 is an actor tracked by Microso...

Stopping C2 communications in human-operated ransomware through network protection

Command-and-control C2 servers are an essential part of ransomware, commodity, and nation-state attacks. They are used to control infected devices and perform malicious activities like downloading and launching payloads, controlling botnets, or commanding post-exploitation penetration frameworks ...

4 breakthrough ideas for compliance and data security

Compliance management will never be easy, but there are ways to make it simpler and more transparent. Every year, organizations confront a growing volume and diversity of data and ever-evolving industry and government regulations. But the answer to more data, more devices, and more regulations...

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...

New study shows customers save time, resources and improve security with Microsoft Cloud App Security

The global pandemic has forever changed our workplaces and reshaped our cybersecurity priorities. While in recent months cloud apps have helped people around the globe stay productive and connected. They also pose an increased cybersecurity risk to businesses large and small, especially when you...

Why the Pipeline Cybersecurity Initiative is a critical step

It’s well known by now that pipeline attacks and attacks on utilities of all kinds have been an unfortunately well-trodden path by cyber-adversaries in numerous countries for a few years now. These types of attacks are not theoretical, and the damage done to date—as well as the potential damage—i...

CISO series: Talking cybersecurity with the board of directors

In today’s threat landscape, boards of directors are more interested than ever before in their company's cybersecurity strategy. If you want to maintain a board’s confidence, you can’t wait until after an attack to start talking to them about how you are securing the enterprise. You need to engag...

Securing the modern workplace with Microsoft 365 threat protection – part 2

This post is authored by Debraj Ghosh, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft 365 Security. Protecting the modern workplace against Ransomware Last week, we shared the roots of Microsoft 365 threat protection. This week, we want to share how Microsoft 365 threat protection services work...

Developing an effective cyber strategy

The word strategy has its origins in the Roman Empire and was used to describe the leading of troops in battle. From a military perspective, strategy is a top-level plan designed to achieve one or more high-order goals. A clear strategy is especially important in times of uncertainty as it provid...

​​​​​​What’s new in Microsoft Security: August 2026

As organizations incorporate AI agents into more processes across business and operations, security teams can benefit from greater visibility and new purpose-built tools that help manage, secure, and govern AI. This month’s updates provide new capabilities to help organizations gain insights into...

Microsoft named a leader in the Frost Radar for cloud and application runtime security

Cloud security is shifting from visibility to contextual risk reduction, extending into the applications, APIs, and workloads where attacks actually occur. Because modern workloads are built and run in the cloud, security teams must understand which exposures matter most, prioritize what can trul...

New Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study projects a 124% ROI from unifying with Microsoft Security

Across many industries, organizations are unifying security and putting AI agents to work. Security teams are utilizing agents that reason, decide, and act on their behalf, under their governance. At Microsoft, we see this firsthand—more than 80% of the Fortune 500 are already using AI.1 The...

Building your cryptographic inventory: A customer strategy for cryptographic posture management

Post-quantum cryptography PQC is coming—and for most organizations, the hardest part won’t be choosing new algorithms. It will be finding where cryptography is used today across applications, infrastructure, devices, and services so teams can plan, prioritize, and modernize with confidence. At...

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...

Detecting backdoored language models at scale

Today, we are releasing new research on detecting backdoors in open-weight language models. Our research highlights several key properties of language model backdoors, laying the groundwork for a practical scanner designed to detect backdoored models at scale and improve overall trust in AI...

New Microsoft Data Security Index report explores secure AI adoption to protect sensitive data

Generative AI and agentic AI are redefining how organizations innovate and operate, unlocking new levels of productivity, creativity and collaboration across industry teams. From accelerating content creation to streamlining workflows, AI offers transformative benefits that empower organizations ...

Disrupting threats targeting Microsoft Teams

The extensive collaboration features and global adoption of Microsoft Teams make it a high-value target for both cybercriminals and state-sponsored actors. Threat actors abuse its core capabilities – messaging chat, calls and meetings, and video-based screen-sharing – at different points along th...

Marbled Dust leverages zero-day in Output Messenger for regional espionage

Since April 2024, the threat actor that Microsoft Threat Intelligence tracks as Marbled Dust has been observed exploiting user accounts that have not applied fixes to a zero-day vulnerability CVE-2025-27920 in the messaging app Output Messenger, a multiplatform chat software. These exploits have...

Understanding the threat landscape for Kubernetes and containerized assets

The dynamic nature of containers can make it challenging for security teams to detect runtime anomalies or pinpoint the source of a security incident, presenting an opportunity for attackers to stay undetected. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors taking advantage of unsecured...

Moonstone Sleet emerges as new North Korean threat actor with new bag of tricks

Microsoft has identified a new North Korean threat actor, now tracked as Moonstone Sleet formerly Storm-1789, that uses both a combination of many tried-and-true techniques used by other North Korean threat actors and unique attack methodologies to target companies for its financial and...

Why you should practice rollbacks to prevent data loss in a ransomware attack

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 Tanya Janca, Founder...

Microsoft achieves first native Cloud Data Management Capabilities certification

Today, Microsoft announced the successful completion of the Cloud Data Management Capabilities CDMC 14 Key Controls and Automations certification, conducted by Accenture and Avanade, accelerating the industry’s move to the cloud. The 14 Key Controls and Automations are a part of the EDM Council’s...

2022 in review: DDoS attack trends and insights

As organizations strengthen their defenses and take a more proactive approach to protection, attackers are adapting their techniques and increasing the sophistication of their operations. Cybercrime continues to rise with the industrialization of the cybercrime economy providing cybercriminals wi...

Introducing Adaptive Protection in Microsoft Purview—People-centric data protection for a multiplatform world

At Microsoft, we never stop working to protect you and your data. If the evolving cyberattacks over the past three years have taught us anything, it’s that threat actors are both cunning and committed. At every level of your enterprise, attackers never stop looking for a way in. The massive...

Microsoft Security tips for mitigating risk in mergers and acquisitions

Sixty-two percent of organizations that undertake mergers and acquisitions face significant cybersecurity risks or consider cyber risks their biggest concern post-acquisition.1 Threat actors that focus on corporate espionage often target the acquiring company, which we will refer to as the Parent...

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...

Microsoft publishes new report on holistic insider risk management

The risk landscape for organizations has changed significantly in the past few years. The amount of data captured, copied, and consumed is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes through 2025.1 Traditional ways of identifying and mitigating risks don’t always work. Historically, organization...

This World Password Day consider ditching passwords altogether

Did you know that May 5, 2022, is World Password Day?1 Created by cybersecurity professionals in 2013 and designated as the first Thursday every May, World Password Day is meant to foster good password habits that help keep our online lives secure. It might seem strange to have a day set aside to...

How a senior product manager is leading the passwordless movement at Microsoft

May 5, 2022, is World Password Day, a day we all use to create awareness around password security. At Microsoft, we choose to celebrate replacing passwords with better and more secure ways to sign in. I can’t think of a better person at Microsoft to represent this journey than Libby Brown, a seni...

What Generation Z can teach us about cybersecurity

Girl Security National Security Fellows Program fellow Amulya, a 17-year-old interested in countering online disinformation, said she feels her sense of personal privacy has been largely nonexistent “growing up in a media-saturated world.” She believes her sense of privacy was stolen by a...