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’...

Making it real—harnessing data gravity to build the next gen SOC

This post was coauthored by Diana Kelley, Cybersecurity Field CTO, andSin John,EMEA Chief Security Advisor, Cybersecurity Solutions Group. In our first blog, Diana and I talked about the concept of data gravity and how it could, conceptually, help organizations take a more cloud-ready approach to...

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...

Small businesses targeted by highly localized Ursnif campaign

Cyber thieves are continuously looking for new ways to get people to click on a bad link, open a malicious file, or install a poisoned update in order to steal valuable data. In the past, they cast as wide a net as possible to increase the pool of potential victims. But attacks that create a lot ...

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...

P = NP: Cloud data protection in vulnerable non-production environments

Data is the holy grail of your cloud workloads for attackers. Data breaches are the kind of breaches that make the news. With the recent European Union General Data Protection Regulations GDPR, they will make even bigger headlines. From an enterprise point of view, the most challenging aspect of...

Inside the attack chain: Threat activity targeting Azure Blob Storage

Azure Blob Storage, like any object data service, is a high-value target for threat actors due to its critical role in storing and managing massive amounts of unstructured data at scale across diverse workloads. Organizations of all sizes use Blob Storage to support key workloads—such as AI, high...

Microsoft 365 Defender demonstrates 100 percent protection coverage in the 2023 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations: Enterprise

For the fifth consecutive year, Microsoft 365 Defender demonstrated industry-leading extended detection and response XDR capabilities in the independent MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK® Evaluations: Enterprise. The attack used during the test highlights the importance of a unified XDR platform and showcas...

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...

How to manage a side-by-side transition from your traditional SIEM to Azure Sentinel

With every week bringing new headlines about crippling cyberattacks, and with organizations growing increasingly distributed, security teams are constantly asked to do more with less. Moving to cloud-native security information and event management SIEM can help security teams analyze data with t...

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...

Sophisticated cybersecurity threats demand collaborative, global response

Microsoft’s response to Solorigate Since December, the United States, its government, and other critical institutions including security firms have been addressing the world’s latest serious nation-state cyberattack, sometimes referred to as ‘Solorigate’ or ‘SUNBURST.’ As we shared earlier this i...

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...

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...

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...

WhatsApp malware campaign delivers VBScript and MSI backdoors

In this article 1. Attack chain overview 2. Mitigation and protection guidance 3. Hunting queries 4. Indicators of compromise Microsoft Defender Experts observed a campaign beginning in late February 2026 that uses WhatsApp messages to deliver malicious Visual Basic Script VBS files. Once execute...

New capabilities to help you secure your AI transformation

AI is transforming our world, unlocking new possibilities to enhance human abilities and to extend opportunities globally. At the same time, we are also facing an unprecedented threat landscape with the speed, scale, and sophistication of attacks increasing rapidly. To meet these challenges, we...

Cadet Blizzard emerges as a novel and distinct Russian threat actor

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its second year and Microsoft continues to collaborate with global partners in response, the exposure of destructive cyber capabilities and information operations provide greater clarity into the tools and techniques used by Russian state-sponsored...

Toll fraud malware: How an Android application can drain your wallet

Toll fraud malware, a subcategory of billing fraud in which malicious applications subscribe users to premium services without their knowledge or consent, is one of the most prevalent types of Android malware – and it continues to evolve. Compared to other subcategories of billing fraud, which...

Strategies, tools, and frameworks for building an effective threat intelligence team

How to think about building a threat intelligence program 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...

Stopping Carbanak+FIN7: How Microsoft led in the MITRE Engenuity® ATT&CK® Evaluation

In MITRE Engenuity’s recent Carbanak+FIN7 ATT&CK Evaluation, Microsoft demonstrated that we can stop advanced, real-world attacks by threat actor groups with our industry-leading security capabilities. In this year’s evaluation, we engaged our unified Microsoft 365 Defender stack, with...

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...

Addressing cybersecurity risk in industrial IoT and OT

As the industrial Internet of Things IIoT and operational technology OT continue to evolve and grow, so too, do the responsibilities of the Chief Information Security Officer CISO. The CISO now needs to mitigate risks from cloud-connected machinery, warehouse systems, and smart devices scattered...

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...

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...

Enable your users to work securely from anywhere, anytime, across all of their devices

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, Assessing...

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...

Frozen in transit: Secret Blizzard’s AiTM campaign against diplomats

Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a cyberespionage campaign by the Russian state actor we track as Secret Blizzard that has been targeting embassies located in Moscow using an adversary-in-the-middle AiTM position to deploy their custom ApolloShadow malware. ApolloShadow has the...

Why endpoint management is key to securing an AI-powered future

The chief information security officer CISO agenda has a new set of priorities. Hybrid work and the resultant architecture updates, so prevalent at the beginning of the pandemic, are no longer top of mind. Instead, the thinking is focused on tackling ever more sophisticated threats and integratin...

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...

Free import of AWS CloudTrail logs through June 2020 and other exciting Azure Sentinel updates

SecOps teams are increasingly challenged to protect assets across distributed environments, analyze the growing volume of security data, and prioritize response to real threats. As a cloud-native SIEM solution security information and event management, Azure Sentinel uses artificial intelligence ...

CISO series: Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC—Part 3b: A day in the life

The Lessons learned from the Microsoft SOC blog series is designed to share our approach and experience with security operations center SOC operations. We share strategies and learnings from our SOC, which protects Microsoft, and our Detection and Response Team DART, who helps our customers addre...

Improve cyber supply chain risk management with Microsoft Azure

For years, Microsoft has tracked threat actors exploiting federal cyber supply chain vulnerabilities. Supply chain attacks target software developers, systems integrators, and technology companies. Tactics often include obtaining source code, build processes, or update mechanisms to compromise...

Changing security incident response by utilizing the power of the cloud—DART tools, techniques, and procedures: part 1

This is the first in a blog series discussing the tools, techniques, and procedures that the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART use to investigate cybersecurity incidents at our customer organizations. Today, we introduce the team and give a brief overview of each of the tools that utiliz...

Rethinking how we learn security

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on the relative lack of investor and startup interest in addressing a crucial CISO priority—the preparedness of employees on the security team. Considering what seems to be a steady stream of news about breaches, what can be done to encourage more people ...

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...

Microsoft to deliver new products and strategies for security innovation at 2018 RSA Conference

At the 2018 RSA Conference, our senior leaders will dissect modern cyber defense strategies, and reveal new products to detect and block cyber attacks when they happen. Our objective is to arm business, government and consumers with deeply integrated intelligence and threat protection capabilitie...

​​Microsoft named an overall leader in KuppingerCole Analyst’s 2026 Emerging AI Security Operations Center (SOC) report ​​

Security operations are entering a new phase. As attack techniques grow faster and more complex, the effectiveness of a SOC depends less on collecting more data and more on how well platforms can turn context into action at scale. KuppingerCole Analysts’ 2026 Emerging AI Security Operations Cente...

Microsoft Security highlights from RSA Conference 2023

The RSA Conference RSAC gave us an incredible opportunity to meet with security professionals from around the world, learn about exciting advances in the world of cybersecurity, and share our own security innovations. Defenders everywhere serve an important mission of protecting our world, and RS...

Securing IoT devices against attacks that target critical infrastructure

South Staffordshire PLC, a company that supplies water to over one million customers in the United Kingdom, notified its customers in August of being a target of a criminal cyberattack. This incident highlights the sophisticated threats that critical industries face today. According to South...

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...

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...

Take steps to secure your business and users with our security business assessment

Businesses can no longer afford to take cybersecurity for granted. You cant read the news without seeing a splashy headline about a successful hack or data breach at a well-known company. However, this isnt just a problem for large enterprisesincreasingly small and medium-sized businesses are...

Attending Black Hat USA 2018? Here’s what to expect from Microsoft.

Black Hat USA 2018 brings together professionals at all career levels, encouraging growth and collaboration among academia, world-class researchers, and leaders in the public and private sectors. This is an exciting time as our Microsoft researchers, partners, and security experts will showcase t...

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...

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...

Finding a common language to describe AI security threats

As artificial intelligence AI and machine learning systems become increasingly important to our lives, it’s critical that when they fail we understand how and why. Many research papers have been dedicated to this topic, but inconsistent vocabulary has limited their usefulness. In collaboration wi...

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...

CyberMDX and Microsoft: Protecting life-saving medical devices

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. While hospitals continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, many are battling other “viruses” behind the scenes. Malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks against healthcare...