A better cloud access security broker: Securing your SaaS cloud apps and services with Microsoft Cloud App Security

Today’s business uses an average of 1,180 cloud apps¹, with many of those organizations securing their apps through cloud access security brokers CASB. The organizational need for a CASB has grown alongside the use of cloud apps to enable remote work and greater user productivity. When security...

How to avoid getting caught in a “Groundhog Day” loop of security issues

It’s Cyber Security Awareness Month and it made me think about one of my favorite movies, called Groundhog Day. Have you ever seen it? Bill Murray is the cynical weatherman, Phil Connors, who gets stuck in an endless loop where he repeats the same day over and over again until he “participates in...

CISO series: Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC—Part 3a: Choosing SOC tools

The Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC blog series is designed to share our approach and experience with security operations center SOC operations. Our learnings in the series come primarily from Microsoft’s corporate IT security operation team, one of several specialized teams in the Microso...

New Surface PCs enable virtualization-based security (VBS) by default to empower customers to do more, securely

VBS and HVCI-enabled devices help protect from advanced attacks Escalation of privilege attacks are a malicious actor’s best friend, and they often target sensitive information stored in memory. These kinds of attacks can turn a minor user mode compromise into a full compromise of your OS and...

Threat actor leverages coin miner techniques to stay under the radar – here’s how to spot them

Cryptocurrency miners are typically associated with cybercriminal operations, not sophisticated nation state actor activity. They are not the most sophisticated type of threats, which also means that they are not among the most critical security issues that defenders address with urgency. Recent...

Operational resilience in a remote work world

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said, “We have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.” This is a result of many organizations having to adapt to the new world of document sharing and video conferencing as they become distributed organizations overnight. At Microsoft, ...

How to prevent phishing attacks that target your customers with DMARC and Office 365

You already know that email is the number one attack vector for cybercriminals. But what you might not know is that without a standard email security protocol called Domain Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance DMARC, your organization is open to the phishing attacks that target your...

Improve security and simplify operations with Windows Defender Antivirus + Morphisec

My team at Morphisec a Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA partner often talks with security professionals who are well-informed about the latest cyberthreats and have a longterm security strategy. The problem many of them face is how to create a stronger endpoint stack with limited...

Decentralized identity and the path to digital privacy

Security is the central challenge of the digital age. Our digital lives have moved into the cloud. People now use multiple devices to connect to multiple applications through many different networks. Just about everything is connected to the internet, where threats remain constant and evolving. I...

Safeguard your most sensitive data with Microsoft 365

I am Security Operations’ SecOps worst nightmare. Or at least I used to be. As an industrious product marketer, I often share intellectual property think: details of new product capabilities or spreadsheets that contain customer personal identifying information PII with colleagues and vendors. We...

Protecting the protector: Hardening machine learning defenses against adversarial attacks

Harnessing the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence has enabled Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Windows Defender ATP next-generation protection to stop new malware attacks before they can get started often within milliseconds. These predictive technologies are central...

Microsoft researchers work with Intel Labs to explore new deep learning approaches for malware classification

The opportunities for innovative approaches to threat detection through deep learning, a category of algorithms within the larger framework of machine learning, are vast. Microsoft Threat Protection today uses multiple deep learning-based classifiers that detect advanced threats, for example,...

Behavioral blocking and containment: Transforming optics into protection

In today’s threat landscape—overrun by fileless malware that live off the land, highly polymorphic threats that mutate faster than traditional solutions can keep up with, human-operated attacks that adapt to what adversaries find on compromised machines, and other sophisticated threats—behavioral...

Guide to Developing a National Cybersecurity Strategy—a resource for policymakers to respond to cybersecurity challenges

Nations from every corner of the world are increasingly leveraging digital transformation to grow their economies and empower businesses to improve services, including vital services provided by critical infrastructures. This adoption of new information communications technologies ICT has...

Cybersecurity threats: How to discover, remediate, and mitigate

This blog is part of a series that responds to common questions we receive from customers about deployment of Microsoft 365 security solutions. In this series youll find context, answers, and guidance for deployment and driving adoption within your organization. Check out our last blog, Protect...

Tapping the intelligent cloud to make security better and easier

There has been a distinct shift in my conversations with customers over the last year. Most have gone from asking can we still keep our assets secure as we adopt cloud services?, to declaring, we are adopting cloud services in order to improve our security posture. The driving factor is generally...

Migrating content from traditional SIEMs to Azure Sentinel

In part two of this three-part series, we covered the five types of side-by-side security information and event management SIEM configurations commonly used during a long-term migration to Microsoft Azure Sentinel. For part three, we’ll be looking at best practices for migrating your data and...

Foundations of Microsoft Flow—secure and compliant automation, part 1

Automation services are steadily becoming significant drivers of modern IT, helping improve efficiency and cost effectiveness for organizations. A recent McKinsey survey discovered that “the majority of all respondents 57 percent say their organizations are at least piloting the automation of...

Gartner names Microsoft a Leader in 2019 Endpoint Protection Platforms Magic Quadrant

Our mission as a company is to empower every person on the planet to achieve more. We deliver on that mission through products that achieve the highest marks in the industry, which we believe is inclusive of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. We have been on a journey for the last several years working ha...

Advancing Windows 10 as a passwordless platform

Passwords can be frustrating, difficult to remember, and easily hacked or stolen. That’s why our vision for Windows is one of a passwordless platform—a world where users don’t have to deal with the pains of a password. With the release of Windows 10, version 1903, we’re bringing Windows 10 closer...

Cybersecurity Reference Architecture: Security for a Hybrid Enterprise

The Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architecture describes Microsofts cybersecurity capabilities and how they integrate with existing security architectures and capabilities. We recently updated this diagram and wanted to share a little bit about the changes and the document itself to help you...

Exploitation of CLFS zero-day leads to ransomware activity

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC and Microsoft Security Response Center MSRC have discovered post-compromise exploitation of a zero-day elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System CLFS against a small number of targets. The targets include organizations in...

Nation-state threat actor Mint Sandstorm refines tradecraft to attack high-value targets

Over the past several months, Microsoft has observed a mature subgroup of Mint Sandstorm, an Iranian nation-state actor previously tracked as PHOSPHORUS, refining its tactics, techniques, and procedures TTPs. Specifically, this subset has rapidly weaponized N-day vulnerabilities in common...

DEV-0832 (Vice Society) opportunistic ransomware campaigns impacting US education sector

In recent months, Microsoft has detected active ransomware and extortion campaigns impacting the global education sector, particularly in the US, by a threat actor we track as DEV-0832, also known as Vice Society. Shifting ransomware payloads over time from BlackCat, QuantumLocker, and Zeppelin,...

How to cost-effectively manage and secure a mobile ecosystem

Today’s post was written by Roxane Suau, Vice President of Marketing for Pradeo. In the corporate environment, mobile devices and applications are at the center of communications, enhancing collaborators’ productivity with 24/7 access to information. But at the same time, they represent thousands...

Step 1. Identify users: top 10 actions to secure your environment

This series outlines the most fundamental steps you can take with your investment in Microsoft 365 security solutions. Well provide advice on activities such as setting up identity management through active directory, malware protection, and more. In this post, we explain how to create a single...

Voice of the Customer: Walmart embraces the cloud with Azure Active Directory

Todays post was written by Sue Bohn, partner director of Program Management and Ben Byford and Gerald Corson, senior directors of Identity and Access Management at Walmart. Greetings! Im Sue Bohn, partner director of Program Management at Microsoft. Im an insatiable, lifelong learner and I lead t...

Get deeper into security at Microsoft Ignite 2018

This year at Microsoft Ignite, we will be making some exciting announcementsfrom new capabilities for identity management and information protection to powerful artificial intelligence AI innovations that can help you stay ahead of an often overwhelming surge in threats and security alerts. Join ...

Enhancing Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection with detonation-based heuristics and machine learning

Email, coupled with reliable social engineering techniques, continues to be one of the primary entry points for credential phishing, targeted attacks, and commodity malware like ransomware and, increasingly in the last few months, cryptocurrency miners. Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection ATP...

The role that regions can and should play in critical infrastructure protection

Todays report, Critical Infrastructure Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean 2018, developed in partnership between Microsoft and the Organization of American States OAS, demonstrates the value of regional cooperation in global efforts to increase the security of the online environment...

New Microsoft Sysmon report in VirusTotal improves security

Today, following the 25th year anniversary of Microsoft Sysinternals, we are announcing the general availability of a new Microsoft Sysmon report in VirusTotal. Whether you’re an IT professional or a developer, you’re probably already using Microsoft Sysinternals utilities to help you manage,...

Protecting your data and maintaining compliance in a remote work environment

In this difficult time, remote work is becoming the new normal for many companies around the world. Employees are using tools like Microsoft Teams to collaborate, chat, and connect in new ways to try to keep their businesses moving forward amidst the challenging global health crisis. I sincerely...

Introducing the security configuration framework: A prioritized guide to hardening Windows 10

In the past, we left defining the security configuration for Windows 10 as a task for every customer to sort out. As a result, we saw as many different configurations as we saw customers. Standardization has many advantages, so we developed a security configuration framework to help simplify...

Partnering with the industry to minimize false positives

Every day, antivirus capabilities in Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Windows Defender ATP protect millions of customers from threats. To effectively scale protection, Windows Defender ATP uses intelligent systems that combine multiple layers of machine learning models, behavior-based...

MCCrash: Cross-platform DDoS botnet targets private Minecraft servers

Malware operations continue to rapidly evolve as threat actors add new capabilities to existing botnets, increasingly targeting and recruiting new types of devices. Attackers update malware to target additional operating systems, ranging from PCs to IoT devices, growing their infrastructure...

How to gain 24/7 detection and response coverage with Microsoft Defender ATP

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligence Security Association guest blog series. To learn more about MISA, go...

Microsoft AI competition explores the next evolution of predictive technologies in security

Predictive technologies are already effective at detecting and blocking malware at first sight. A new malware prediction competition on Kaggle will challenge the data science community to push these technologies even furtherto stop malware before it is even seen. The Microsoft-sponsored competiti...

Announcing: new British Standard for cyber risk and resilience

Technology is an integral part of the fabric of everyday life. There is almost no organization that does not rely on digital services in some way in order to survive. The opportunity that technology provides also brings with it more vulnerabilities and threats as organizations and data become mor...

Uncovering a macOS App Sandbox escape vulnerability: A deep dive into CVE-2022-26706

Microsoft uncovered a vulnerability in macOS that could allow specially crafted codes to escape the App Sandbox and run unrestricted on the system. We shared these findings with Apple through Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure CVD via Microsoft Security Vulnerability Research MSVR in October...

Microsoft recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Unstructured Data Security Platforms, Q2 2021

In this new world of hybrid work, organizations face an increasing volume of data, ever-evolving regulations around how that data is protected, and an evolving complexity and frequency of data security breaches. To help our customers navigate this complex data landscape, we are focused on...

Top 6 email security best practices to protect against phishing attacks and business email compromise

Most cyberattacks start over email—a user is tricked into opening a malicious attachment, or into clicking a malicious link and divulging credentials, or into responding with confidential data. Attackers dupe victims by using carefully crafted emails to build a false sense of trust and/or urgency...

The evolution of Microsoft Threat Protection—July update

Modern security teams need to proactively, efficiently, and effectively hunt for threats across multiple attack vectors. To address this need, today we’re excited to give you a glimpse of a new threat hunting capability coming soon to Microsoft Threat Protection. Building off the threat hunting...

New browser extensions for integrating Microsoft’s hardware-based isolation

The hardware-based isolation technology on Windows 10 that allows Microsoft Edge to isolate browser-based attacks is now available as a browser extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. We introduced the container technology in 2017. Since then, we have been evolving the technology and...

The challenges of adopting a consistent cybersecurity framework in the insurance industry

As hacking events have increased in number and severity, we in the cybersecurity community have united around common strategies that all organizations can implement to reduce their risk. Universal best practices provide organizations with many useful tools to protect their businesses. But what...

Ignite 2018 highlights: password-less sign-in, confidential computing, new threat protection, and more

What a week it was in Orlando! Ignite is always a biggie, and this one was no exception. For all of us here at Microsoft who get to work on security, spending time with customers to learn how you are using our security products today and to share new innovations to come is a highlight. At this...

Investing in the right innovation

RSA is around the corner which means tens of thousands of people will descend on Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Hundreds of innovative young companies will look for customers, props, and capital especially at the Early Stage Expo!. Venture capitalists will look for opportunities to invest a...

Cyber-risk assessments—the solution for companies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Technology continues to play a critical role in shaping the global risks landscape for individuals, governments, and businesses. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2020, cyberattacks are ranked as the second risk of greatest concern for business globally over the next 10...

Announcing the all new Attack Surface Analyzer 2.0

Few of us know what is really happening on our systems when we install new software from new or untrusted sources. This is important because most installation processes require elevated privileges, which can lead to undesired system configuration changes. Knowing what changes have been made is...

Zero Trust part 1: Identity and access management

Once in a while, a simple phrase captures our imagination, expressing a great way to think about a problem. Zero Trust is such a phrase. Today, Ill define Zero Trust and then discuss the first step to enabling a Zero Trust modelstrong identity and access management. In subsequent blogs, well cove...

Voice of the Customer: The Walsh Group found that Azure Active Directory gives them a competitive edge

Peter Vallianatos, director of IT Infrastructure and Security, and Phillip Nottoli, director of Enterprise Architecture at The Walsh Group. Hello! This is Sue Bohn from the Customer & Partner Success team for the Identity Division. Im delighted to announce the next post in our Voice of the Custom...