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...

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...

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...

Addressing the OWASP Top 10 Risks in Agentic AI with Microsoft Copilot Studio

Agentic AI is moving fast from pilots to production. That shift changes the security conversation. These systems do not just generate content. They can retrieve sensitive data, invoke tools, and take action using real identities and permissions. When something goes wrong, the failure is not limit...

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...

Detecting and analyzing prompt abuse in AI tools

This second post in our AI Application Security series is all about moving from planning to practice. AI Application Series 1: Security considerations when adopting AI tools established how AI adoption expands the attack surface and our threat-modelling guidance on the Microsoft security blog...

Signed malware impersonating workplace apps deploys RMM backdoors

In February 2026, Microsoft Defender Experts identified multiple phishing campaigns attributed to an unknown threat actor. The campaigns used workplace meeting lures, PDF attachments, and abuse of legitimate binaries to deliver signed malware. Phishing emails directed users to download malicious...

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...

Your complete guide to Microsoft experiences at RSAC™ 2026 Conference

The era of AI is reshaping both opportunity and risk faster than any shift security leaders have seen. Every organization is feeling the momentum; and for security teams, the question is no longer if AI will transform their work, but how to stay ahead of what comes next. At Microsoft, we see this...

Manipulating AI memory for profit: The rise of AI Recommendation Poisoning

That helpful "Summarize with AI" button? It might be secretly manipulating what your AI recommends. Microsoft security researchers have discovered a growing trend of AI memory poisoning attacks used for promotional purposes, a technique we call AI Recommendation Poisoning. Companies are embedding...

Inside RedVDS: How a single virtual desktop provider fueled worldwide cybercriminal operations

Over the past year, Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed the proliferation of RedVDS, a virtual dedicated server VDS provider used by multiple financially motivated threat actors to commit business email compromise BEC, mass phishing, account takeover, and financial fraud. Microsoft’s...

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...

Defending against the CVE-2025-55182 (React2Shell) vulnerability in React Server Components

CVE-2025-55182 also referred to as React2Shell and includes CVE-2025-66478, which was merged into it is a critical pre-authentication remote code execution RCE vulnerability affecting React Server Components, Next.js, and related frameworks. With a CVSS score of 10.0, this vulnerability could all...

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...

The new Microsoft Security Store unites partners and innovation

On September 30, 2025, Microsoft announced a bold new vision for security: a unified, AI-powered platform designed to help organizations defend against today’s most sophisticated cyberthreats. But an equally important story—one that’s just beginning to unfold—is how the Microsoft Security Store i...

Think before you Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix social engineering technique

Over the past year, Microsoft Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Defender Experts have observed the ClickFix social engineering technique growing in popularity, with campaigns targeting thousands of enterprise and end-user devices globally every day. Since early 2024, we’ve helped multiple custome...

Elevate your protection with expanded Microsoft Defender Experts coverage

Defender Experts now offers 24/7, expert-driven protection for cloud workloads, beginning with hybrid and multicloud servers in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Additionally, third-party network signals can be used in Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR to enhance incidents for faster and more accura...

Data governance: 5 tips for holistic data protection

Your data is a strategic asset. To benefit your business, data requires strict controls around structure, access, and lifecycle. However, most security leaders have doubts about data security—nearly 70 percent of chief information security officers CISOs expect to have their data compromised in a...

How one Microsoft software engineer works to improve access management

There’s still a perception that the most successful computer scientists learn programming at a young age, study engineering at a top school, and then get a software development job right out of college. While that’s how many people enter the field, it’s not the only path. Microsoft Software...

Microsoft best practices for managing IoT security concerns

The Internet of Things, or IoT, has expanded beyond the mere concept that it was when first introduced. IoT is now part of most individuals’ daily activities, from smart speakers and thermostats to smartwatches and vehicles. IoT devices and systems bring massive convenience and functionality. IoT...

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...

How public-private partnerships can combat cyber adversaries

For several years now, policymakers and practitioners from governments, CERTs, and the security industry have been speaking about the importance of public-private partnerships as an essential part of combating cyber threats. It is impossible to attend a security conference without a keynote...

Cybersecurity IR Workshop: The workshop you shouldn’t miss

In this article 1. What is the Cybersecurity Incident Response Readiness Workshop? 2. Our approach: How we assess your maturity 3. Learn more Cybersecurity incidents can unfold in hours, but response plans often fail at the point of execution: ownership is unclear, investigation findings is...

5 insights from Frost & Sullivan’s 2025 Frost Radar™ for Cloud Security Posture Management

Cloud security posture management CSPM is being redefined as two forces collide: Cloud environments are becoming more interconnected—spanning workloads, identities, data, APIs, and development pipelines—while security teams must reduce risk faster with fewer tools and less time. Frost & Sullivan’...

Microsoft a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Endpoint Management Platforms

The endpoint management category is being redefined in real time. Organizations no longer need tools that only inventory devices or enforce configuration policies; they need a platform that connects identity, security, compliance, and AI governance across every endpoint where work happens...

AI-powered defense for an AI-accelerated threat landscape

We are at an inflection point in cybersecurity. Recent advances in AI model capabilities are changing how vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited. AI models can autonomously discover weaknesses, chain multiple lower-severity issues into working end-to-end exploits, and produce working...

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,...

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...

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...

From transparency to action: What the latest Microsoft email security benchmark reveals

In our last benchmarking post, Clarity in complexity: New insights for transparent email security ,1 we shared why transparency matters more than ever in email security and how clear, consistent benchmarking helps security teams cut through noise and make confident decisions. Today, we’re...

Women’s History Month: Encouraging women in cybersecurity at every career stage

Women’s History Month—and International Women’s Day on March 8, 2026—always gives me pause for reflection. It’s a moment to think about how far we’ve come and think about who we choose to uplift as we look ahead. Throughout my career, I’ve been inspired by extraordinary women leaders—trailblazers...

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...

Microsoft SDL: Evolving security practices for an AI-powered world

As AI reshapes the world, organizations encounter unprecedented risks, and security leaders take on new responsibilities. Microsoft’s Secure Development Lifecycle SDL is expanding to address AI-specific security concerns in addition to the traditional software security areas that it has...

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...

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...

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...

Microsoft named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SIEM

We’re honored to share that Microsoft has again been recognized as a Leader in the2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Security Information and Event Management SIEM.1 We believe this recognition reinforces Microsoft Sentinel's position as an industry-leading, cloud and AI-powered SIEM—designed to...

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...

XCSSET evolves again: Analyzing the latest updates to XCSSET’s inventory

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has identified yet another XCSSET variant in the wild that introduces further updates and new modules beyond those detailed in our March 2025 blog post. The XCSSET malware is designed to infect Xcode projects, typically used by software developers, and run while an...

Retail at risk: How one alert uncovered a persistent cyberthreat​​

In the latest edition of our Cyberattack Series, we dive into real-world cases targeting retail organizations. With 60% of retail companies reporting operational disruptions from cyberattacks and 43% experiencing security compromises in the past year, the risks for businesses continue to increase...

Microsoft Defender delivered 242% return on investment over three years​​

The latest Forrester Total Economic Impact™ TEI study reveals a 242% return on investment ROI over three years for organizations that chose Microsoft Defender. It helps security leaders consolidate tools, reduce overhead, and empower their security operations SecOps teams with operational...

Storm-0501’s evolving techniques lead to cloud-based ransomware

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed financially motivated threat actor Storm-0501 continuously evolving their campaigns to achieve sharpened focus on cloud-based tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs. While the threat actor has been known for targeting hybrid cloud environments, their...

Dissecting PipeMagic: Inside the architecture of a modular backdoor framework

Among the plethora of advanced attacker tools that exemplify how threat actors continuously evolve their tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs to evade detection and maximize impact, PipeMagic, a highly modular backdoor used by Storm-2460 masquerading as a legitimate open-source ChatGPT Deskto...

Dow’s 125-year legacy: Innovating with AI to secure a long future

Founded more than 125 years ago, Dow has demonstrated a commitment to leveraging science to make the world a better place. Today, Dow’s ambition to be the most innovative, inclusive, and sustainable materials science company is supported by a global security team dedicated to keeping employees,...

Microsoft’s Secure by Design journey: One year of success

Cybersecurity is one of the top risks facing businesses. Organizations are struggling to navigate the ever-evolving cyberthreat landscape in which 600 million identity attacks are carried out daily.1 The median time for a cyberattacker to access private data from phishing is 1 hour and 12 minutes...

How the Microsoft Incident Response team helps customers remediate threats

Each year, organizations face tens of billions of malware, phishing, and credential threats—with real-world impacts. When an attack succeeds, it can result in grave impacts on any industry. For example, it could delay a police or fire department’s response to an emergency, prevent a hospital from...

Join us at InfoSec Jupyterthon 2022

Notebooks are gaining popularity in InfoSec. Used interactively for investigations and hunting or as scheduled processing jobs, notebooks offer plenty of advantages over traditional security operations center SOC tools. Sitting somewhere between scripting/macros and a full-blown development...

Announcing Microsoft Defender ATP for Mac and new Threat and Vulnerability Management capabilities

On February 28, 2019, we announced Microsoft Threat Experts, a new managed hunting service within the Microsoft 365 Security portfolio that enables customers to extend their expertise and insights with the help of Microsoft security professionals. This release showcased our philosophy that securi...

Microsoft named a Leader in the Frost Radar™: Cloud Workload Protection Platforms, 2026

Security teams are overwhelmed with findings but still struggle to answer a simple question: which risks matter right now? A vulnerability alone is rarely the problem. The same vulnerability running in production, exposed through a misconfiguration or over-permissioned identity, is a real path to...