Microsoft Purview innovations for your Fabric data: Unify data security and governance for the AI era

The Microsoft Fabric and Purview teams are thrilled to participate in the European Microsoft Fabric Community Conference September 15-18, 2025, in Vienna, Austria. This event is Microsoft’s largest tech conference in Europe, where data professionals gather to connect and share insights on data,...

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...

Sharing practical guidance: Launching Microsoft Secure Future Initiative (SFI) patterns and practices

We’re excited to launch Microsoft Secure Future Initiative SFI patterns and practices : a new library of actionable guidance designed to help organizations implement security measures at scale. This launch marks the next step in our journey to make our SFI learnings practical for our customers,...

Microsoft Entra Suite delivers 131% ROI by unifying identity and network access

In today’s AI-first world, identity and network access are the first touchpoints for enforcing least privilege and protecting against sophisticated, identity-based attacks—but for many organizations, that defense is fragmented. Siloed teams and disconnected tools create security gaps, operational...

Microsoft expands Zero Trust workshop to cover network, SecOps, and more

Building on identity, devices, and data, the workshop now covers network, infrastructure, and SecOps As the nature of cyberthreats and security challenges evolve, organizations have coalesced around a Zero Trust architecture as the approach to modernize their end-to-end security adoption and...

Planning your move to Microsoft Defender portal for all Microsoft Sentinel customers

In November 2023, Microsoft announced our strategy to unify security operations by bringing the best of XDR and SIEM together. Our first step was bringing Microsoft Sentinel into the Defender portal, giving teams a single, comprehensive view of incidents, reducing queue management, enriched threa...

Microsoft is named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, 2025​​

What is a security operations center? Learn more ↗ Microsoft is proud to be named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, Q2 2025—which we believe reflects our deep investment in innovation and commitment to support security operations centers SOCs’s critical mission. This...

Faster, more personalized service begins at the frontline with Microsoft Intune

In healthcare, patient trust often begins at the frontline with people who deliver care, respond to questions, and manage crucial in-the-moment decisions. Increasingly, those experiences are shaped by the tools frontline workers use. When devices are secure, responsive, and tailored to clinical...

New innovations in Microsoft Purview for protected, AI-ready data

The Microsoft Fabric and Microsoft Purview teams are excited to be in Las Vegas from March 31 to April 2, 2025, for the second annual and highly anticipated Microsoft Fabric Community Conference. With more than 200 sessions, 13 focused tracks, 21 hands-on workshops, and two keynotes, attendees ca...

Microsoft unveils Microsoft Security Copilot agents and new protections for AI

In this age of AI, securing AI and using it to boost security are crucial for every organization. At Microsoft, we are dedicated to helping organizations secure their future with our AI-first, end-to-end security platform. One year ago, we launched Microsoft Security Copilot to empower defenders ...

New XCSSET malware adds new obfuscation, persistence techniques to infect Xcode projects

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a new variant of XCSSET, a sophisticated modular macOS malware that infects Xcode projects, in the wild during routine threat hunting. Its first known variant since 2022, this latest XCSSET malware features enhanced obfuscation methods, updated...

Microsoft Entra ID security updates: Passkeys are the default authentication method in Entra ID

As identity attacks grow more sophisticated in the AI era, organizations need stronger authentication methods that protect users from phishing, credential theft, and social engineering. To address these evolving threats, Microsoft Entra ID is updating its authentication experience by making...

8 best practices for CISOs conducting risk reviews

The Deputy CISO blog series is where Microsoft Deputy Chief Information Security Officers CISOs share their thoughts on what is most important in their respective domains. In this series, you will get practical advice, tactics to start and stop deploying, forward-looking commentary on where the...

Detection strategies across cloud and identities against infiltrating IT workers

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 1. Activities in pre-recruitment phase 2. Activities in recruiting phase 3. Activities in post-recruitment phase 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Microsoft Defender XDR detections The shift to remote and hybrid work since the pandemic expanded glob...

Containing a domain compromise: How predictive shielding shut down lateral movement

In this article 1. Predictive shielding overview 2. Attack chain overview 3. How predictive shielding changed the outcome 4. MITRE ATT&CK® techniques observed 5. Learn more In identity-based attack campaigns, any initial access activity can turn an already serious intrusion into a critical incide...

Incident response for AI: Same fire, different fuel

In this article 1. The fundamentals still hold 2. Where AI changes the equation 3. Closing the gaps in telemetry, tooling, and response 4. The human dimension 5. Looking ahead When a traditional security incident hits, responders replay what happened. They trace a known code path, find the defect...

Investigating Storm-2755: “Payroll pirate” attacks targeting Canadian employees

In this article 1. Storm-2755’s attack chain 2. Defending against Storm-2755 and AiTM campaigns 3. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance 4. Indicators of compromise Microsoft Incident Response – Detection and Response Team DART researchers observed an emerging, financially motivated...

Cookie-controlled PHP webshells: A stealthy tradecraft in Linux hosting environments

In this article 1. Cookie-controlled execution behavior 2. Observed variants of cookie-controlled PHP web shells 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. Microsoft Defender XDR detections 5. Microsoft Security Copilot prompts 6. Microsoft Defender XDR threat analytics 7. MITRE ATT&CK™ Techniques...

How Microsoft Defender protects high-value assets in real-world attack scenarios

In this article 1. Using asset context to strengthen detection 2. How high-value asset protection works 3. Real-world high-value asset protection scenarios 4. Protecting your HVAs 5. Learn more High-value assets including domain controllers, web servers, and identity infrastructure are frequent...

Case study: How predictive shielding in Defender stopped GPO-based ransomware before it started

In this article 1. The growing threat: GPO abuse in ransomware operations 2. The incident 3. The results 4. The hardening dilemma: Why threat actors love operational mechanisms 5. Predictive shielding: Contextual, just-in-time hardening 6. Closing the gap 7. References Summary Microsoft Defender...

When tax season becomes cyberattack season: Phishing and malware campaigns using tax-related lures

In this article 1. A wide range of tax-themed campaigns 2. How to protect users and organization against tax-themed campaigns 3. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance 4. Indicators of compromise During tax season, threat actors reliably take advantage of the urgency and familiarity of...

Observability for AI Systems: Strengthening visibility for proactive risk detection

Adoption of Generative AI GenAI and agentic AI has accelerated from experimentation into real enterprise deployments. What began with copilots and chat interfaces has quickly evolved into powerful business systems that autonomously interact with sensitive data, call external APIs, connect to...

Storm-2561 uses SEO poisoning to distribute fake VPN clients for credential theft

In this article 1. From search to stolen credentials: Storm-2561 attack chain 2. Defending against credential theft campaigns 3. Microsoft Defender detection and hunting guidance 4. Indicators of compromise In mid-January 2026, Microsoft Defender Experts identified a credential theft campaign tha...

Threat modeling AI applications

Proactively identifying, assessing, and addressing risk in AI systems We cannot anticipate every misuse or emergent behavior in AI systems. We can , however, identify what can go wrong, assess how bad it could be, and design systems that help reduce the likelihood or impact of those failure modes...

Running OpenClaw safely: identity, isolation, and runtime risk

Self-hosted agent runtimes like OpenClaw are showing up fast in enterprise pilots, and they introduce a blunt reality: OpenClaw includes limited built-in security controls. The runtime can ingest untrusted text, download and execute skills i.e. code from external sources, and perform actions usin...

Unify now or pay later: New research exposes the operational cost of a fragmented SOC

Security operations are entering a pivotal moment: the operating model that grew around network logs and phishing emails is now buckling under tool sprawl, manual triage, and threat actors that outpace defender capacity. New research from Microsoft and Omdia shows just how heavy the burden can...

Detecting and mitigating common agent misconfigurations

Organizations are rapidly adopting agents, but attackers are equally fast at exploiting misconfigured AI workflows. Mis-sharing, unsafe orchestration, and weak authentication create new identity and data‑access paths that traditional controls don’t monitor. As agents become integrated into...

The strategic SIEM buyer’s guide: Choosing an AI-ready platform for the agentic era

As the agentic era reshapes security operations, leaders face a strategic inflection point: legacy security information and event management SIEM solutions and fragmented toolchains can no longer keep pace with the scale, speed, and complexity of modern cyberthreats. Organizations can choose to...

80% of Fortune 500 use active AI Agents: Observability, governance, and security shape the new frontier

Today, Microsoft is releasing the new Cyber Pulse report to provide leaders with straightforward, practical insights and guidance on new cybersecurity risks. One of today’s most pressing concerns is the governance of AI and autonomous agents. AI agents are scaling faster than some companies can s...

Turning threat reports into detection insights with AI

Security teams routinely need to transform unstructured threat knowledge, such as incident narratives, red team breach-path writeups, threat actor profiles, and public reports into concrete defensive action. The early stages of that work are often the slowest. These include extracting tactics,...

Microsoft announces the 2026 Security Excellence Awards winners

In today’s fast‑moving digital arena, security isn’t a solo act—it’s a team sport. Every day, defenders across the globe suit up, strategize, and work shoulder‑to‑shoulder to protect organizations and communities from an ever‑evolving field of cyberthreats. That shared spirit of collaboration is...

Microsoft Security success stories: Why integrated security is the foundation of AI transformation

AI is transforming how organizations operate and how they approach security. In this new era of agentic AI, every interaction, digital or human, must be built on trust. As businesses modernize, they’re not just adopting AI tools, they're rearchitecting their digital foundations. And that means...

Four priorities for AI-powered identity and network access security in 2026

No doubt, your organization has been hard at work over the past several years implementing industry best practices, including a Zero Trust architecture. But even so, the cybersecurity race only continues to intensify. AI has quickly become a powerful tool misused by threat actors, who use it to...

How Microsoft builds privacy and security to work hand-in-hand

The Deputy CISO blog series is where Microsoft Deputy Chief Information Security Officers CISOs share their thoughts on what is most important in their respective domains. In this series, you will get practical advice, tactics to start and stop deploying, forward-looking commentary on where the...

Explore the latest Microsoft Incident Response proactive services for enhanced resilience

As cyberthreats become faster, harder to detect, and more sophisticated, organizations must focus on building resilience—strengthening their ability to prevent, withstand, and recover from cybersecurity incidents. Resilience can mean the difference between containing an incident with minimal...

New Microsoft e-book: 3 reasons point solutions are holding you back

While patchwork tools slow defenders down and impact visibility into potential cyberthreats, they’re an unfortunate reality for many organizations. As digital risk accelerates and attack surfaces multiply, security leaders are doing their best to stitch together point solutions while trying to...

Access Fabric: A modern approach to identity and network access

Today, most organizations use multiple identity systems and multiple network access solutions from multiple vendors. This happens, either intentionally or organically, when different areas of a company choose different tools, creating a fragmented environment that leaves weaknesses that...

Microsoft named an overall leader in KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Generative AI Defense

Today, we are proud to share that Microsoft has been recognized as an overall leader in the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Generative AI Defense GAD, an independent report from a leading European analyst firm. This recognition reinforces the work we’ve been doing to deliver enterprise-ready...

Imposter for hire: How fake people can gain very real access

In the latest edition of our Cyberattack Series, we dive into a real-world case of fake employees. Cybercriminals are no longer just breaking into networks—they’re gaining access by posing as legitimate employees. This form of cyberattack involves operatives posing as legitimate remote hires,...

Changing the physics of cyber defense

The Deputy CISO blog series is whereMicrosoft Deputy Chief Information Security Officers CISOs share their thoughts on what is most important in their respective domains. In this series, you will get practical advice, tactics to start and stop deploying, forward-looking commentary on where the...

How to build forward-thinking cybersecurity teams for tomorrow

We are witnessing something unprecedented in cybersecurity: the democratization of advanced cyberattack capabilities. What once required nation-state resources sophisticated social engineering, polymorphic malware, coordinated infrastructure now fits in a prompt window. AI is no longer a futurist...

Charting the future of SOC: Human and AI collaboration for better security

Security operations centers are under pressure from unprecedented scale and complexity. Speed, precision, and consistency matter more than ever, and AI is everywhere—but hype alone doesn’t solve the challenge. This blog shares our journey and insights from building autonomous AI agents for MDR...

​​Ambient and autonomous security for the agentic era​​

Over the past year, I've had countless conversations with customers who are striving to unlock human ambition with AI. They are on their journey to become Frontier Firms, where humans and agents push the boundaries of innovation and create new possibilities, empowering humans to become limitless...

Collaborative research by Microsoft and NVIDIA on real-time immunity

AI-Powered Threats Demand AI-Powered Defense While AI supports growth and innovation, it is also reshaping how organizations address faster, more adaptive security risks. AI-driven security threats, including “vibe-hacking”, are evolving faster than traditional defenses can adapt. Attackers can n...

Harden your identity defense with improved protection, deeper correlation, and richer context

In today’s digital-first enterprise, identities have become the new corporate security perimeter. Hybrid work and cloud-first strategies have dissolved traditional network boundaries and dramatically increased the complexity of identity fabrics. Security teams are left managing a constellation of...

Microsoft raises the bar: A smarter way to measure AI for cybersecurity

ExCyTIn-Bench is Microsoft’s newest open-source benchmarking tool designed to evaluate how well AI systems perform real-world cybersecurity investigations.1 It helps business leaders assess language models by simulating realistic cyberthreat scenarios and providing clear, actionable insights into...

Microsoft raises the bar: A smarter way to measure AI for cybersecurity

ExCyTIn-Bench is Microsoft’s newest open-source benchmarking tool designed to evaluate how well AI systems perform real-world cybersecurity investigations.1 It helps business leaders assess language models by simulating realistic cyberthreat scenarios and providing clear, actionable insights into...

Building a lasting security culture at Microsoft

At Microsoft, building a lasting security culture is more than a strategic priority—it is a call to action. Security begins and ends with people, which is why every employee plays a critical role in protecting both Microsoft and our customers. When secure practices are woven into how we think,...

New Microsoft Secure Future Initiative (SFI) patterns and practices: Practical guides to strengthen security

Building on the momentum of our initial launch of the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative SFI patterns and practices, this second installment continues our commitment to making security implementation practical and scalable. The first release introduced a foundational library of actionable guidanc...

Inside Microsoft Threat Intelligence: Calm in the chaos

Leading Through the Worst Day Incident response is never orderly. Threat actors don’t wait. Environments are compromised. Data is missing. Confidence is shaken. But for Microsoft’s Incident Response IR team, that chaos is exactly where the work begins. In Episode 1, we showed how Microsoft Threat...