1653 matches found
Inside an AI‑enabled device code phishing campaign
In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Indicators of compromise IOC 4. References 5. Learn more Microsoft Defender Security Research has observed a widespread phishing campaign leveraging the device code authentication flow to compromise organizational...
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,...
Cybersecurity strategies to prioritize now
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...
The CISO imperative: Building resilience in an era of accelerated cyberthreats
The latest Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025 paints a vivid picture of a cyberthreat landscape in flux. The surge in financially motivated cyberattacks and the persistent risk of nation-state actors demand urgent attention. But for those of us in the Office of the Chief Information Security...
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...
Microsoft Sentinel data lake: Unify signals, cut costs, and power agentic AI
You can’t protect what you can’t see. Security operations teams have long been faced with the challenge of managing massive, fast-growing datasets, and the cost of scaling traditional data management tools to handle these data volumes has become unsustainable. We’re evolving our industry-leading...
Enhancing Microsoft 365 security by eliminating high-privilege access
In this blog you will hear directly from Microsoft’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer CISO for Experiences and Devices, Naresh Kannan, about eliminating high-privileged access across all Microsoft 365 applications. This blog is part of an ongoing series where our Deputy CISOs share their...
Learn how to build an AI-powered, unified SOC in new Microsoft e-book
The sheer volume of cyberattacks continues to increase at a breathtaking scale worldwide, with customers facing more than 600 million cybercriminal and nation-state attacks every day.1 To stem the growing tide of malicious cyber activity takes a commitment from all of us—individuals from operatio...
Navigating cyber risks with Microsoft Security Exposure Management eBook
Imagine steering a vessel through Arctic waters where 90% of iceberg mass lies hidden beneath the surface; your lookouts equipped only with telescopes and blind to the submerged threats. This parallels today's cybersecurity landscape: According to the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024, nearly...
Minimize cybersecurity risk with Software Asset Management
This post is authored by Patama Chantaruck, General Manager of Worldwide Software Asset Management & Compliance. By 2021, worldwide cybercrime damage is expected to reach $6 trilliondouble what it cost businesses in 2015. Unapproved apps, unmanaged devices, poor password protection, and other...
Unmasking EvilTokens: Getting to the root of device code phishing
In this article 1. What is device code phishing? 2. EvilTokens platform and operations 3. EvilTokens phishing emails 4. Mitigation and protection guidance 5. Microsoft Defender XDR detections 6. Hunting queries Following its emergence in February 2026, EvilTokens quickly became one of the most...
The threat to critical infrastructure has changed. Has your readiness?
Critical infrastructure CI organizations underpin national security, public safety, and the economy. In 2026, the cyber threat landscape facing these sectors is structurally different than it was even two years ago. What Microsoft Threat Intelligence is observing across critical infrastructure...
Applying security fundamentals to AI: Practical advice for CISOs
What to know about the era of AI The first thing to know is that AI isn’t magic The best way to think about how to effectively use and secure a modern AI system is to imagine it like a very new, very junior person. It’s very smart and eager to help but can also be extremely unintelligent. Like a...
Clarity in complexity: New insights for transparent email security
As email threats grow more sophisticated and layered security architectures become more common, organizations need clear, data-driven insights to evaluate how their security solutions perform together. Benchmarking plays a critical role in helping security leaders understand not just individual...
Whisper Leak: A novel side-channel attack on remote language models
Microsoft has discovered a new type of side-channel attack on remote language models. This type of side-channel attack could allow a cyberattacker a position to observe your network traffic to conclude language model conversation topics, despite being end-to-end encrypted via Transport Layer...
Learn what generative AI can do for your security operations center
The busier security teams get, the harder it can be to understand the full impact of false positives, queue clutter, tool fragmentation, and more. But what is clear—it all adds up to increased fatigue and an increased potential to miss the cyberthreats that matter most. To help security teams...
AI vs. AI: Detecting an AI-obfuscated phishing campaign
Microsoft Threat Intelligence recently detected and blocked a credential phishing campaign that likely used AI-generated code to obfuscate its payload and evade traditional defenses. Appearing to be aided by a large language model LLM, the activity obfuscated its behavior within an SVG file,...
Pushing passkeys forward: Microsoft’s latest updates for simpler, safer sign-ins
Happy World Passkey Day! As the world shifts from passwords to passkeys, we’re excited to join the FIDO Alliance in leaving “World Password Day” behind to celebrate the very first “World Passkey Day.” To commemorate this renaming, Microsoft and dozens of other organizations have taken the Passkey...
Pushing passkeys forward: Microsoft’s latest updates for simpler, safer sign-ins
Happy World Passkey Day! As the world shifts from passwords to passkeys, we’re excited to join the FIDO Alliance in leaving “World Password Day” behind to celebrate the very first “World Passkey Day.” To commemorate this renaming, Microsoft and dozens of other organizations have taken the Passkey...
Windows 11 enables security by design from the chip to the cloud
Over the last year, PCs have kept us connected to family, friends, and enabled businesses to continue to run. This new hybrid work paradigm has got us thinking about how we will continue to deliver the best possible quality, experience, and security for the more than 1 billion people who use...
Preparing governments for an era of interconnected cyber risk
According to this year’s Microsoft Digital Defense Report, government agencies and services were the sector most impacted by cyber threats in 2026, accounting for 27% of observed activity, up from 17% in 2025. Governments are also the most frequently targeted sectors for nation-state activity. Th...
Beyond source code: A path to the keys to the kingdom
What began as a single compromised identity quickly expanded into an organization's development and cloud environments. In our latest Cyberattack Series report, we examine how the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART—the team that delivers Microsoft Defender Experts Cybersecurity Incident...
Reimagining the SOC for the agentic era in Microsoft Defender
The physics of cybersecurity are changing. So must the security operations center SOC. Cyberattackers are using agents to automate execution at unprecedented scale. What once required entire teams now requires a single operator and an agent framework. That shift has exposed a hard truth: security...
Counterfeit installers to system compromise: Tracking a deceptive software download campaign
In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Campaign scope and targeting 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. References 5. Learn more Microsoft Defender Experts is tracking an active malware campaign that uses counterfeit software-download websites to impersonate trusted vendors and distribu...
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...
Microsoft named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for Unified AI Governance Platforms
As organizations rapidly embrace generative and agentic AI, ensuring robust, unified governance has never been more critical. That’s why Microsoft is honored to be named a Leader in the2025-2026 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Unified AI Governance Platforms Vendor Assessment US53514825, December...
Stronger together: New Beazley collaboration enhances cyber resilience
Today’s cyberthreat landscape demands more than technical expertise: it requires a unified response team of technical responders, insurers, brokers, and legal counsel. This integrated approach is key to building long-term cyber resilience to help your organization anticipate, withstand, recover...
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,...
Azure mandatory multifactor authentication: Phase 2 starting in October 2025
As cyberattacks become increasingly frequent, sophisticated, and damaging, safeguarding your digital assets has never been more critical, and at Microsoft, your security is our top priority. Microsoft research shows that multi-factor authentication MFA can block more than 99.2% of account...
AI innovation requires AI security: Hear what’s new at Microsoft Secure
When you’re secure—innovation happens. But, the fast pace of AI often outpaces traditional security measures, leaving gaps that bad actors can take advantage of. As a security professional, you’re the hero in this battle between protecting vast amounts of data while ensuring AI systems remain...
3 lessons from frontier AI vulnerability research
In this article 1. Shift 1. From frontier capability to scale 2. Shift 2. From token consumption to reasoning economics 3. Shift 3. Validation and remediation as a continuous learning loop 4. Transferring security research to help open source projects 5. Open-source vulnerability reporting snapsh...
How to secure edge AI in customer-owned environments
In this article 1. Edge AI changes the trust model for AI systems 2. Constrain model actions through deterministic mediation 3. Establish trust before releasing sensitive assets 4. Verify runtime before releasing sensitive assets 5. Verify artifacts that shape model behavior 6. Next steps Edge AI...
Microsoft named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for XDR
When cybersecurity stakes are high and complexity is the norm, Microsoft doesn’t just participate, it excels with Microsoft Defender XDR—built to anticipate, disrupt, and outpace modern cyberthreats. We are excited to announce that Microsoft has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwi...
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...
Phishing campaign impersonates Booking .com, delivers a suite of credential-stealing malware
Starting in December 2024, leading up to some of the busiest travel days, Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a phishing campaign that impersonates online travel agency Booking.com and targets organizations in the hospitality industry. The campaign uses a social engineering technique called...
CISO perspectives on managing vulnerability risks in the age of AI
Most of what has been written about AI and vulnerability management focuses on speed: how much faster frontier AI models can scan code, find weaknesses, design patches, and build exploits than any human team. That part is true, and it matters to how we remediate vulnerabilities. The more...
Unauthenticated command injection on internet-facing mail servers: tracking CVE-2026-73570
In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. References 4. Learn More Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified and tracked exploitation of CVE-2026-73570 , an unauthenticated OS command injection vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite SNMP notificatio...
ASCII smuggling crosses over from AI prompt injection to phishing evasion
In this article 1. What is ASCII smuggling? 2. Writing a practical ASCII-smuggling signature 3. What we observed: ASCII smuggling repurposed for phishing 4. What is known and what is new 5. Is there a detection gap? 6. Mitigation and protection guidance 7. References 8. Learn More Microsoft...
New IDC research highlights a major cloud security shift
Cloud security is at a tipping point. While moving to the cloud powers both growth and speed for organizations, it can also bring new risks. According to IDC’s latest research, organizations experienced an average of nine cloud security incidents in 2024, with 89% reporting a year-over-year...
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...
Star Blizzard refines phishing and malware delivery with the RedFlick technique
In this article 1. Star Blizzard TTPs observed in 2026 2. Defending against Star Blizzard and RedFlick-related activity 3. Microsoft Defender detections 4. Hunting queries 5. Indicators of compromise Since January 2026, Microsoft has observed Russian state threat actor Star Blizzard evolve their...
Impersonating IT support: how threat actors turn a remote session into enterprise-wide access
In this article 1. Risk to enterprise environments 2. Attack chain overview 3. Mitigation and response recommendations 4. Learn more Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed a human-operated intrusion campaign that abuses Microsoft Teams external collaboration to impersonate IT or helpdesk...
Advance Zero Trust for AI: New tools and guidance to secure AI agents and DevSecOps
The calculus of cybersecurity has changed. AI is reshaping how organizations build, deploy, operate, and defend digital systems. AI-powered development tools, agents, and autonomous workflows are accelerating innovation but they are also introducing new attack surfaces, new trust boundaries, and...
A new era of agents, a new era of posture
The rise of AI Agents marks one of the most exciting shifts in technology today. Unlike traditional applications or cloud resources, these agents are not passive components- they reason, make decisions, invoke tools, and interact with other agents and systems on behalf of users. This autonomy...
Post-quantum authentication: Why organizations should start testing certificate ecosystems now
In this article 1. Why post-quantum authentication presents a different challenge 2. Why organizations should begin preparing now 3. Microsoft's perspective on readiness 4. Testing the future certificate ecosystem 5. Expanding end-to-end testing 6. What organizations can do today 7. Looking ahead...
Storm-3168: Agentic-driven cloud attacks using compromised service principals
In this article 1. Attack overview 2. Technical analysis 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. References 5. Learn More Microsoft Security Research has identified malicious cloud activity associated with JADEPUFFER, a threat actor discovered by Sysdig in July 2026 and reported to be the first...
Beyond the ransomware: Tracking Storm-2570’s consistent tradecraft across deployments
In this article 1. Who is Storm-2570? 2. Storm-2570 attack chain: From initial foothold to impact 3. What Storm-2570 activity means for defenders 4. Mitigation and protection guidance 5. Microsoft Defender detections 6. Hunting queries Activity associated with Storm-2570, a ransomware affiliate...
Protecting organizations from AI-assisted executive impersonation and invoice fraud
In this article 1. Attack chain overview 1. Email Delivery 2. Domain registration 3. Generative AI usage 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 1. Microsoft Defender detections 2. Microsoft Security Copilot 3. Threat intelligence reports 4. MITRE ATT&CK Techniques observed 5. Indicators of...
CISO perspectives on managing vulnerability risks in the age of AI
Most of what has been written about AI and vulnerability management focuses on speed: how much faster frontier AI models can scan code, find weaknesses, design patches, and build exploits than any human team. That part is true, and it matters to how we remediate vulnerabilities. The more...