Automatic disruption of human-operated attacks through containment of compromised user accounts

Our experience and insights from real-world incidents tell us that the swift containment of compromised user accounts is key to disrupting hands-on-keyboard attacks, especially those that involve human-operated ransomware. In these attacks, lateral movement follows initial access as the next...

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 Purview data security mitigations for BazaCall and other human-operated data exfiltration attacks

I recently worked with an enterprise customer who experienced a data exfiltration attack using the characteristics of the BazaCall campaign. BazaCall can be both a ransomware and data exfiltration attack that are used together to increase pressure on and damage to the victim. Microsoft Purview ha...

Cyber Signals: Shifting tactics fuel surge in business email compromise

Today we released the fourth edition of Cyber Signals highlighting a surge in cybercriminal activity around business email compromise BEC. Microsoft has observed a 38 percent increase in cybercrime as a service CaaS targeting business email between 2019 and 2022.1 Successful BEC attacks cost...

See product news and on-demand sessions from Microsoft Secure

“Great speakers and very knowledgeable.” “Brilliant.” “Wonderful and very useful.” The first Microsoft Secure on March 28, 2023, was a huge success—as this attendee feedback shows. Our virtual event brought together more than 20,000 security professionals eager to learn security best practices an...

Secure your endpoints with Transparity and Microsoft

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. Endpoint protection platforms EPPs are dead and no longer sufficient to protect your organization, right? Wrong. When it comes to cybersecurity, the ability to normalize and correlat...

ZINC weaponizing open-source software

In recent months, Microsoft has detected a wide range of social engineering campaigns using weaponized legitimate open-source software by an actor we track as ZINC. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC observed activity targeting employees in organizations across multiple industries includi...

Secure your endpoints with Transparity and Microsoft

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. Endpoint protection platforms EPPs are dead and no longer sufficient to protect your organization, right? Wrong. When it comes to cybersecurity, the ability to normalize and correlat...

Connect with Microsoft Security experts at the 2022 Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit

The transition to a remote and hybrid workforce happened fast during a time of uncertainty, and IT professionals rose to the challenge with ingenuity and dedication. But two years in, many IT teams are still responding with patchwork solutions to enforce identity and access management IAM across ...

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...

Streamlining employee onboarding: Microsoft’s response to the Great Reshuffle

In 2021, workers everywhere reevaluated their professional and personal choices, leading to what became known as the Great Resignation. In 2022, a new trend that many are calling the Great Reshuffle has emerged, with 43 percent of the workforce saying they’re very likely to consider changing jobs...

Secure access for a connected world—meet Microsoft Entra

What could the world achieve if we had trust in every digital experience and interaction? This question has inspired us to think differently about identity and access, and today, we’re announcing our expanded vision for how we will help provide secure access for our connected world. Microsoft Ent...

Discover the anatomy of an external cyberattack surface with new RiskIQ report

The internet is now part of the network. That might sound like hyperbole, but the massive shift to hybrid and remote work and a multicloud environment means security teams must now defend their entire online ecosystem. Recent ransomware attacks against internet-facing systems have served as a...

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2022 Enterprise Detection and Response Wave™ report

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2022. Microsoft received one of the highest scores in the strategy category and strength of current offering category. In the Forrester Wave assessment, Microsoft Defender f...

US Government sets forth Zero Trust architecture strategy and requirements

To help protect the United States from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, the White House issued Executive Order EO 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity, which requires US Federal Government organizations to take action to strengthen national cybersecurity.1 Section 3 of EO 14028...

Build a privacy-resilient workplace with Microsoft Priva

Today, we celebrate international Data Privacy Day. This day reminds us of the importance of respecting privacy, safeguarding data, and enabling trust. However, annual reminders are insufficient to drive material change, which can be seen in the effectiveness rates of one-off trainings. According...

Discover 3 ways to take a holistic approach to data protection

The risk landscape for organizations has changed significantly in the past few years. Traditional ways of identifying and mitigating risks simply don’t work. While traditionally, organizations have focused on external threats, risks from within the organization are just as prevalent and harmful...

Microsoft is a 5-time Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management

We are honored that Gartner recognized Microsoft as a Leader in Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Access Management in Microsoft Azure Active Directory Azure AD. In addition, Microsoft has placed the farthest right on the “Completeness of Vision” axis. None of this is possible without you, our...

Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Forrester Wave for Unified Endpoint Management

Microsoft is honored to be recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Unified Endpoint Management UEM, Q4 2021 report for our ability to help customers on their path to modern endpoint management. Microsoft Endpoint Manager—which brings together Microsoft Intune for cloud endpoint management a...

Protect your business with Microsoft Security’s comprehensive protection

Securing an organization has never been simple. But over the past year, we’ve seen significant changes in the threat landscape that are having a major impact on organizations of every size in every sector. The frequency and sophistication of cyber events have increased significantly. We see...

How Microsoft Defender for IoT can secure your IoT devices

Cybersecurity threats are always evolving, and today we’re seeing a new wave of advanced attacks specifically targeting IoT devices used in enterprise environments as well as operational technology OT devices used in industrial systems and critical infrastructure like ICS/SCADA. It’s not surprisi...

Encouraging women to embrace their cybersecurity superpowers

The cybersecurity challenges of today require a diversity of skills, perspectives, and experiences, yet women remain underrepresented in this field. On International Women’s Day, some Microsoft Security women leaders penned a powerful blog highlighting the underrepresentation of women in...

How companies are securing devices with Zero Trust practices

Organizations are seeing a substantial increase in the diversity of devices accessing their networks. With employees using personal devices and accessing corporate resources from new locations in record numbers, IT leaders are seeing an increase in their attack surface area. They’re turning to Ze...

Recommendations for deploying the latest Attack surface reduction rules for maximum impact

The keystone to good security hygiene is limiting your attack surface. Attack surface reduction is a technique to remove or constrain exploitable behaviors in your systems. In this blog, we discuss the two attack surface reduction rules introduced in the most recent release of Windows and cover...

Step 5. Set up mobile device management: top 10 actions to secure your environment

The “Top 10 actions to secure your environment” series outlines fundamental steps you can take with your investment in Microsoft 365 security solutions. In “Step 5. Set up mobile device management,” you’ll learn how to plan your Microsoft Intune deployment and set up Mobile Device Management MDM ...

How Microsoft tools and partners support GDPR compliance

This post is authored by Daniel Grabski,Executive Security Advisor, Microsoft Enterprise Cybersecurity Group. As an Executive Security Advisor for enterprises in Europe and the Middle East, I regularly engage with Chief Information Security Officers CISOs, Chief Information Officers CIOs and Data...

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...

​​Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in the 2026 Extended Detection and Response Platforms Wave™ report

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader inThe Forrester Wave™: Extended Detection and Response Platforms, Q2 2026. Microsoft ranked the highest of any vendor evaluated in the Strategy category and is the only vendor to receive the highest score in Vision. Microsoft also...

Microsoft Defender email security benchmarking: Key insights from one year of data

Microsoft publishes quarterly email security benchmarking data comparing Microsoft Defender against secure email gateway SEG and integrated cloud email security ICES vendors using real-world threat telemetry. A year ago, we set out to change how email security effectiveness is measured. With our...

Microsoft Build 2026: Securing code, agents, and models across the development lifecycle

In this article 1. Secure your code 2. Secure your agents 3. Trust agents with your data 4. Secure your models 5. Trust starts with security Today, developers and security teams are caught in growing tension. AI is accelerating development and introducing new issues around insecure code, opaque...

Mini Shai Hulud: Compromised @antv npm packages enable CI/CD credential theft

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 1. Technical analysis 2. How GitHub took action to prevent further harm 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 1. Microsoft Defender XDR Detections 2. Microsoft Defender XDR Threat analytics 3. Advanced hunting 4. Indicators of Compromise IOC 3. References ...

Accelerating detection engineering using AI-assisted synthetic attack logs generation

In this article 1. Core Idea: From TTPs to Logs 2. Approaches for Synthetic Attack Log Generation 3. Evaluation Datasets 4. References 5. Learn more Logs and telemetry are the foundation of modern cybersecurity. They enable threat detection, incident response, forensic investigation, and complian...

Mitigating the Axios npm supply chain compromise

In this article 1. Analysis of the attack 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Microsoft Defender detections 4. Indicators of compromise 5. Hunting queries On March 31, 2026, two new npm packages for updated versions of Axios, a popular HTTP client for JavaScript that simplifies making HTTP...

Mitigating the Axios npm supply chain compromise

In this article 1. Analysis of the attack 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Microsoft Defender detections 4. Indicators of compromise 5. Hunting queries On March 31, 2026, two new npm packages for updated versions of Axios, a popular HTTP client for JavaScript that simplifies making HTTP...

The security implementation gap: Why Microsoft is supporting Operation Winter SHIELD

Every conversation I have with information security leaders tends to land in the same place. People understand what matters. They know the frameworks, the controls, and the guidance. They can explain why identity security, patching, and access control are critical. And yet incidents keep happenin...

Shai-Hulud 2.0: Guidance for detecting, investigating, and defending against the supply chain attack

The Shai‑Hulud 2.0 supply chain attack represents one of the most significant cloud-native ecosystem compromises observed recently. Attackers maliciously modified hundreds of publicly available packages, targeting developer environments, continuous integration and continuous delivery CI/CD...

Discover how automatic attack disruption protects critical assets while ensuring business continuity

Traditional security solutions often operate in a one-size-fits-all alert model that treats every detection equally, regardless of how important the asset is. But not all assets are equal. Critical assets are systems governing access, identity, or sensitive data. They are essential to an...

Threat actors misuse Node.js to deliver malware and other malicious payloads

Since October 2024, Microsoft Defender Experts DEX has observed and helped multiple customers address campaigns leveraging Node.js to deliver malware and other payloads that ultimately lead to information theft and data exfiltration. While traditional scripting languages like Python, PHP, and...

Microsoft named an overall leader in KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for ITDR

The post Microsoft named an overall leader in KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for ITDR appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog...

“Dirty stream” attack: Discovering and mitigating a common vulnerability pattern in Android apps

Microsoft discovered a path traversal-affiliated vulnerability pattern in multiple popular Android applications that could enable a malicious application to overwrite files in the vulnerable application’s home directory. The implications of this vulnerability pattern include arbitrary code...

Flax Typhoon using legitimate software to quietly access Taiwanese organizations

Summary Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Flax Typhoon, based in China, that is targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the likely intention of performing espionage. Flax Typhoon gains and maintains long-term access to Taiwanese organizations networks with...

Adopting guidance from the US National Cybersecurity Strategy to secure the Internet of Things

The recently published United States National Cybersecurity Strategy warns that many popular Internet of Things IoT devices are not sufficiently secure to protect against many of today’s common cybersecurity threats.1 The strategy also cautions that many of these IoT devices are difficult—or, in...

How automation is evolving SecOps—and the real cost of cybercrime

This post is coauthored by Rob May, Founder and Managing Director, ramsac 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...

Expanding horizons—Microsoft Security’s continued commitment to multicloud

Multicloud strategies have become the new norm for most enterprises, with more than 90 percent of organizations adopting multiple cloud infrastructures, platforms, and services to run their businesses.1 However, a lack of visibility into their digital infrastructure exposes them to significant...

How Microsoft and Sonrai integrate to eliminate attack paths

Cloud development challenges conventional thinking about risk. A “perimeter” was always the abstraction that security teams could start from—defining their perimeter and exposing the cracks in firewalls and network access. With more and more infrastructure represented as ephemeral code, protectin...

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...

How to build a secure foundation for identity and access

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 Christina Richmond, a...

Microsoft collaborates with Tenable to support federal cybersecurity efforts

On May 12, 2021, the White House issued Presidential Executive Order EO 14028 to establish cybersecurity as a national priority.1 As part of this effort, the White House has called for greater public and private sector collaboration to address the evolving threats facing federal agencies. In the...

Microsoft protects against human-operated ransomware across the full attack chain in the 2022 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations

For the fourth year in a row, the independent MITRE Engenuity Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge ATT&CK® Evaluations demonstrated Microsoft’s strong detection and protection capabilities thanks to our multi-platform extended detection and response XDR defenses. The ever-evolvin...

2.5 million-plus cybersecurity jobs are open—women can fill them

This month is Women’s History Month and today is International Women’s Day—a time to reflect as individuals, societies, and industries on our progress for quality and equity for women. As a woman working in cybersecurity, I know firsthand that engaging girls, women, and people of color in...