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...

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...

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...

Kicking off the Microsoft Graph Security Hackathon

Cybersecurity is one of the hottest sectors in tech with Gartner forecasting worldwide information spending to exceed $124 billion by the end of 2019. New startups and security solutions are coming onto the market while attackers continue to find new ways to breach systems. The security solutions...

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 ...

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...

Attack AI systems in Machine Learning Evasion Competition

Today, we are launching MLSEC.IO, an educational Machine Learning Security Evasion Competition MLSEC for the AI and security communities to exercise their muscle to attack critical AI systems in a realistic setting. Hosted and sponsored by Microsoft, alongside NVIDIA, CUJO AI, VM-Ray, and MRG...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Guidance for investigating attacks using CVE-2023-23397

This guide provides steps organizations can take to assess whether users have been targeted or compromised by threat actors exploiting CVE-2023-23397. A successful exploit of this vulnerability can result in unauthorized access to an organization’s environment by triggering a Net-NTLMv2 hash leak...

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...

Threat hunting in Azure Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

As members of Microsoft’s Detection and Response Team DART, we’ve seen a significant increase in adversaries “living off the land” and using compromised account credentials for malicious purposes. From an investigation standpoint, tracking adversaries using this method is quite difficult as you...

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...

Practical application of artificial intelligence that can transform cybersecurity

As I write this blog post, Im sitting by the beach on my computer in a sunny destination while my family plays in the water. Were on vacation, but we all have our own definition of fun. For me its writing blogs on the beachreally! The headspace is outstanding for uninterrupted thinking time and...

Phorpiex morphs: How a longstanding botnet persists and thrives in the current threat environment

Phorpiex, an enduring botnet known for extortion campaigns and for using old-fashioned worms that spread via removable USB drives and instant messaging apps, began diversifying its infrastructure in recent years to become more resilient and to deliver more dangerous payloads. Today, the Phorphiex...

Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC—Part 2: Organizing people

In the second post in our series, we focus on the most valuable resource in the security operations center SOC—our people. This series is designed to share our approach and experience with operations, so you can use what we learned to improve your SOC. In Part 1: Organization, we covered the SOC’...

Protecting the modern workplace from a wide range of undesirable software

Security is a fundamental component of the trusted and productive Windows experience that we deliver to customers through modern platforms like Windows 10 and Windows 10 in S mode. As we build intelligent security technologies that protect the modern workplace, we aim to always ensure that...

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...

Trend-spotting email techniques: How modern phishing emails hide in plain sight

With the massive volume of emails sent each day, coupled with the many methods that attackers use to blend in, identifying the unusual and malicious is more challenging than ever. An obscure Unicode character in a few emails is innocuous enough, but when a pattern of emails containing this obscur...

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...

Guarding against supply chain attacks—Part 1: The big picture

Every day, somewhere in the world, governments, businesses, educational organizations, and individuals are hacked. Precious data is stolen or held for ransom, and the wheels of “business-as-usual” grind to a halt. These criminal acts are expected to cost more than $2 trillion in 2019, a four-fold...

Your password doesn’t matter—but MFA does!

Your pa$$word doesn’t matter—Multi-Factor Authentication MFA is the best step you can take to protect your accounts. Using anything beyond passwords significantly increases the costs for attackers, which is why the rate of compromise of accounts using any MFA is less than 0.1 percent of the gener...

Microsoft partners with DigiCert to begin deprecating Symantec TLS certificates

Starting in September 2018, Microsoft began deprecating the SSL/TLS capability of Symantec root certificates due to compliance issues. Google, Mozilla, and Apple have also announced deprecation plans related to Symantec SSL/TLS certificates. Symantec cryptographic certificates are used in critica...

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...

Finding the signal of community in all the noise at Black Hat

I dont know about you, but I find large conferences overwhelming. Dont get me wrong, nothing beats the innovative potential of bringing a diverse group of brilliant people together to hash through thorny issues and share insights. But there are so many speakers, booths, and people, it can be a...

How Microsoft 365 Security integrates with the broader security ecosystem—part 1

Today's post was coauthored by Debraj Ghosh, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Diana Kelley, Cybersecurity Field CTO. This week is the annual Microsoft Inspire conference, where Microsoft directly engages with industry partners. Last year at Inspire, we announced Microsoft 365, providing a...

Data classification and protection now available for structured data in SQL

This post is authored by Gilad Mittelman, Senior Program Manager, SQL Data Security. Data privacy and data security have become one of the most prominent topics in organizations in almost every industry across the globe. New regulations that formalize requirements are emerging around these topics...

Unpacking the AsyncAPI npm supply chain compromise and import-time payload delivery

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. How the attack started: GitHub Actions pwn request 3. Mitigation and protection guidance 4. Learn more On July 14, 2026, Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a coordinated supply chain compromise of the @asyncapi npm organization, a widely used set ...

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...

How purple teams can embrace hacker culture to improve security

The security community is continuously changing, growing, and learning from each other to better position the world against cyber threats. In the latest Voice of the Community blog series post, Microsoft Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Matthew Hickey, co-founder, CEO, and writ...

Zero Trust framework to enable remote work

Zero Trust Assessment tool now live! With such a large influx of employees working remotely, many of the traditional network-based security controls are unable to protect the organization. For many organizations, there are two options: route all remote traffic through a strained legacy network...

Rethinking cyber learning—consider gamification

As promised, I’m back with a follow-up to my recent post, Rethinking how we learn security, on how we need modernize the learning experience for cybersecurity professionals by gamifying training to make learning fun. Some of you may have attended the recent Microsoft Ignite events in Orlando and...

How Axonius integrates with Microsoft to help customers solve the cybersecurity asset management challenge

Despite the amazing and futuristic progression of technologies in cybersecurity, it's still incredibly hard to answer the most basic of questions like: how many assets do I have, and do they adhere to my security policy? Somewhere along the line, asset management became very mundane compared to t...

Facing the cold chills

Have you ever felt the cold chill in your spine when the “fix engine” light comes on in your car? How about when one of your children turns pale and gets their first fever? It’s a feeling of helplessness and concern regarding what could be wrong. Then there’s the feeling of relief that comes with...

Forcepoint DLP integration with Microsoft Information Protection—protecting your critical data

Many organizations are undergoing a rapid digital transformation that is challenging their traditional approach to data security. Organizations in highly regulated industries or who partner with organizations in regulated industries are often faced with accelerated timelines and requirements to...

How to help maintain security compliance

This is the last post in our eight-blog series on deploying Intelligent Security scenarios. To read the previous entries, check out the Deployment series page. Your employees need to access, generate, and share organizational information ranging from extremely confidential to informal; you must...

Securing the modern workplace with Microsoft 365 threat protection – part 4

This post is authored by Debraj Ghosh, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft 365 Security. Responding to ransomware in the Modern Workplace Over the last few weeks, we have shared the roots of Microsoft 365 threat protection and how Microsoft 365 threat protection helps protect against and...

Filling the gaps in international law is essential to making cyberspace a safer place

A month ago, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Microsoft organized an expert workshop to discuss gaps in international law as it applies to cyberspace. We were fortunate enough to bring together twenty leading stakeholders, including international legal experts, United Nations...

Detecting and mitigating a multi-stage AiTM phishing and BEC campaign

Microsoft Defender Experts uncovered a multi-stage adversary-in-the-middle AiTM phishing and business email compromise BEC attack against banking and financial services organizations. The attack originated from a compromised trusted vendor and transitioned into a series of AiTM attacks and...

New macOS vulnerability, Migraine, could bypass System Integrity Protection

A new vulnerability, which we refer to as “Migraine” for its involvement with macOS migration, could allow an attacker with root access to automatically bypass System Integrity Protection SIP in macOS and perform arbitrary operations on a device. We shared these findings with Apple through...

ACTINIUM targets Ukrainian organizations

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC is sharing information on a threat group named ACTINIUM, which has been operational for almost a decade and has consistently pursued access to organizations in Ukraine or entities related to Ukrainian affairs. MSTIC previously tracked ACTINIUM activi...

Microsoft at Black Hat 2021: Sessions, bug bounty updates, product news, and more

Black Hat USA 2021 is about understanding the needs of security professionals and meeting you where you are. With last year’s pandemic-related firefighting still fresh in our minds, this year’s event will provide a welcome respite to learn about cutting-edge security solutions, build our skillset...

Defending against cryptojacking with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intel TDT

Cryptocurrency mining—once considered no more than a nuisance, a relatively benign activity that was a drain on machine resources—has been on the rise in recent years. This increase in cryptocurrency mining activity is driven by the increasing value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the growth in...

MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluation proves Microsoft Defender for Endpoint stops advanced attacks across platforms

For the third year in a row, Microsoft successfully demonstrated industry-leading defense capabilities in the independent MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge Evaluations. As the attack surface evolves on a near-daily basis, threat actors are creating more...

Threat hunting: Part 1—Why your SOC needs a proactive hunting team

Cybersecurity can often feel like a game of whack-a-mole. As our tools get better at stopping one type of attack, our adversaries innovate new tactics. Sophisticated cybercriminals burrow their way into network caverns, avoiding detection for weeks or even months, as they gather information and...

Why Windows Defender Antivirus is the most deployed in the enterprise

Statistics about the success and sophistication of malware can be daunting. The following figure is no different: Approximately 96% of all malware is polymorphic meaning that it is only experienced by a single user and device before it is replaced with yet another malware variant. This is because...

When prompts become shells: RCE vulnerabilities in AI agent frameworks

In this article 1. A representative case study: Semantic Kernel 2. CVE-2026-26030: In-Memory Vector Store 3. CVE-2026-25592: Arbitrary file write through SessionsPythonPlugin 4. The vulnerability 5. Attack chain overview 6. Defending the agentic edge 7. Not bugs, but developed by design 8. CTF...