Breaking down NOBELIUM’s latest early-stage toolset

As we reported in earlier blog posts, the threat actor NOBELIUM recently intensified an email-based attack that it has been operating and evolving since early 2021. We continue to monitor this active attack and intend to post additional details as they become available. In this blog, we highlight...

New sophisticated email-based attack from NOBELIUM

Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC has uncovered a wide-scale malicious email campaign operated by NOBELIUM, the threat actor behind the attacks against SolarWinds, the SUNBURST backdoor, TEARDROP malware, GoldMax malware, and other related components. The campaign, initially observed and...

How user experience is shaping verifiable credentials and identity

Since 2017, Microsoft has been working with the identity community on two groundbreaking technologies designed from the ground up to make digital privacy convenient and practical: decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials. We believe verifiable credentials will revolutionize the way we...

Becoming resilient by understanding cybersecurity risks: Part 4—navigating current threats

In part three of this blog series on aligning security with business objectives and risk, we explored what it takes for security leaders to shift from looking at their mission as purely defending against technical attacks, to one that focuses on protecting valuable business assets, data, and...

Microsoft is a Leader in the 2021 Forrester Endpoint Security Software as a Service Wave

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Endpoint Security Software as a Service, Q2 20211, receiving one of the highest scores in the strategy category and among the top three scores in the current offering category. Forrester notes that “the focus on...

Resources for accelerating your Zero Trust journey

For many organizations, 2020 was the year that finally saw remote work become a reality on a global scale. As many people begin transitioning back to the office, many organizations are thinking about how they can transition from a remote workforce to a more permanent hybrid workplace. We recently...

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...

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...

SimuLand: Understand adversary tradecraft and improve detection strategies

At Microsoft, we continuously collaborate with customers and the InfoSec community to learn more about the latest adversary tradecraft so that we can improve our detection strategies across all our security services. Even though those detections are already built into our products, and protecting...

Protecting SAP applications with the new Azure Sentinel SAP threat monitoring solution

As one of the leading solution providers for applications that manage business processes, SAP is the custodian for massive amounts of sensitive data in many of the biggest organizations in the world. Since these applications are business-critical, an SAP security breach can be catastrophic. Yet,...

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Security Gateways, Q2 2021

I am thrilled to share that Forrester Research has named Microsoft Cloud App Security as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Cloud Security Gateways, Q2 2021. Additionally, Microsoft received the highest score in the strategy category. People have increasingly used cloud apps to stay productive and...

Mitigate OT security threats with these best practices

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 Chris Sistrunk, Technical Manager in...

How a positive hybrid work culture can help you to mitigate insider risk

As Vasu Jakkal recently shared, we are operating in the most sophisticated threat landscape ever seen, and coupled with the next great disruption—hybrid work—security is more challenging than ever. Protecting from external threats is only one part of the challenge, though. You also must protect...

Securing a new world of hybrid work: What to know and what to do

The cybersecurity landscape has fundamentally changed, as evidenced by large-scale, complex attacks like Nobelium, Hafnium, and more recently last week’s Colonial Pipeline attack, which signals that human-operated ransomware is on the rise. Hackers launch an average of 50 million password attacks...

How to secure your hybrid work world with a Zero Trust approach

We are operating in the most complex cybersecurity landscape we’ve ever seen. Sophisticated and determined attackers are the norm. And we all are preparing for the next great disruption—hybrid work. Security has never been more important, and as I shared in another Security blog today, it’s clear...

Threat and Vulnerability Management now supports all major platforms

We are swiftly adapting to the lasting reality of a hybrid workforce, with the number of remote workers in the US expected to nearly double over the next five years, compared to pre-pandemic times. As a result, security teams are being challenged to rethink how to secure a growing and increasingl...

Gartner names Microsoft a Leader in the 2021 Endpoint Protection Platforms Magic Quadrant

Our mission to empower defenders and protect and secure organizations has never been more important to us. Over the last year, our customers have faced unpredictable challenges and nearly overnight have had to quickly adapt in the face of a new hybrid work environment, evolving sophistication and...

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in the 2021 Enterprise Email Security Wave

Today, organizations face an evolving threat landscape and an exponentially increasing attack surface. Email represents the primary attack vector for cybercrime, and security teams are in search of efficient and cost-effective means to minimize the risk of these threats and the impact they have o...

Business email compromise campaign targets wide range of orgs with gift card scam

Cybercriminals continue to target businesses to trick recipients into approving payments, transferring funds, or, in this case, purchasing gift cards. This kind of email attack is called business email compromise BEC—a damaging form of phishing designed to gain access to critical business...

Business email compromise: How Microsoft is combating this costly threat

Amongst all cybercrime, phishing attacks continue to be the most prevalent today. With over 90 percent of attacks coming via email, it’s important that every organization has a plan to prevent these threats from reaching users. At Microsoft, we’re passionate about providing our customers with...

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...

How to apply a Zero Trust approach to your IoT solutions

For many, 2020 was a year of survival as they rapidly transformed their businesses in response to a new normal. From enabling new remote and hybrid work models to implementing new technology to help optimize operations, the last year has seen a significant uptick in the proliferation and role of...

AI security risk assessment using Counterfit

Today, we are releasing Counterfit, an automation tool for security testing AI systems as an open-source project. Counterfit helps organizations conduct AI security risk assessments to ensure that the algorithms used in their businesses are robust, reliable, and trustworthy. AI systems are...

Center for Threat-Informed Defense teams up with Microsoft, partners to build the ATT&CK® for Containers matrix

The MITRE ATT&CK® for Containers matrix was published today, establishing an industry knowledge base of attack techniques associated with containerization and related technologies that are increasingly more ubiquitous in the current computing landscape. Microsoft is happy to have contributed and...

Meet critical infrastructure security compliance requirements with Microsoft 365

Critical infrastructure operators face a hostile cyber threat environment and a complex compliance landscape. Every operator of an industrial control system also operates an IT network to service its productivity needs. A supervisory control and data acquisition SCADA system operator of a power...

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...

Evolving beyond password complexity as an identity strategy

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 Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Pwned,...

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...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Cybersecurity has become a pillar of the business

In a famous two-part episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians. During a pivotal scene, a Cardassian interrogator shows Picard four bright lights and demands that he “see” five lights. Picard resists, culminating with him shouting, “There...

Surface expands its Secured-core portfolio with the new Surface Laptop 4 powered by AMD Ryzen™ Mobile Processors

As operating systems are becoming more secure and resistant to compromise, advanced vectors like firmware, kernel and hardware direct memory access DMA have emerged as new favored targets for threat actors. Recent trends indicate a substantial growth in the number of hardware and firmware exploit...

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...

How far have we come? The evolution of securing identities

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 Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Pwned,...

Secure unmanaged devices with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now

As we have entered into new hybrid work environments, businesses need to think about how they will proactively protect their organizations from the influx of new or “bring your own” BYO connected devices. This new normal has exposed the most challenging cybersecurity landscape we’ve ever...

Investigating a unique “form” of email delivery for IcedID malware

Microsoft threat analysts have been tracking activity where contact forms published on websites are abused to deliver malicious links to enterprises using emails with fake legal threats. The emails instruct recipients to click a link to review supposed evidence behind their allegations, but are...

Threat matrix for storage services

The move to cloud is happening faster than ever before and organizations are increasing their dependency on cloud storage services. In fact, Microsoft Azure Storage services are one of the most popular services in the cloud. Companies need effective threat protection and mitigation strategies and...

Gamifying machine learning for stronger security and AI models

To stay ahead of adversaries, who show no restraint in adopting tools and techniques that can help them attain their goals, Microsoft continues to harness AI and machine learning to solve security challenges. One area we’ve been experimenting on is autonomous systems. In a simulated enterprise...

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now supports Windows 10 on Arm devices

Today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint support of Windows 10 on Arm devices is generally available. This expanded support is part of our continued efforts to extend Microsoft Defender for Endpoint capabilities across all the endpoints defenders need to secure. Arm...

Protect your business from email phishing with multi-factor authentication

Cybersecurity has been in the news far more often in the past 12 months than in previous years, as cybercriminals escalated their activity during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine. The seismic shift of hundreds of millions of people connecting and working from home every day presented cybercrimina...

BlueVoyant optimizes customer security with Microsoft security services

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. What a year it has been. The rapid and unexpected transition to work from home is one of the biggest issues affecting companies of all sizes and industries in 2020. As companies...

Automating threat actor tracking: Understanding attacker behavior for intelligence and contextual alerting

As seen in recent sophisticated cyberattacks, especially human-operated campaigns, it’s critical to not only detect an attack as early as possible but also to rapidly determine the scope of the compromise and predict how it will progress. How an attack proceeds depends on the attacker’s goals and...

Zero Trust: 7 adoption strategies from security leaders

Microsoft considers Zero Trust an essential component of any organization’s security plan. We have partnered with Cloud Security Alliance, a not-for-profit organization that promotes cloud computing best practices, to bring together executive security leaders to discuss and share insights about...

New Security Signals study shows firmware attacks on the rise; here’s how Microsoft is working to help eliminate this entire class of threats

Cybersecurity threats are always evolving, and today we’re seeing a new wave of advanced attacks targeting areas of computing that don’t have the protection of the cloud. New data shows that firmware attacks are on the rise, and businesses aren’t paying close enough attention to securing this...

How to build a successful application security 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 Godyla talks with Tanya Janca, Founder of We Hack Purple...

Securing our approach to domain fronting within Azure

Every single day our teams analyze the trillions of signals we see to understand attack vectors, and then take those learnings and apply them to our products and solutions. Having that understanding of the threat landscape is key to ensuring our customers are kept safe every day. However, being a...

Analyzing attacks taking advantage of the Exchange Server vulnerabilities

Microsoft continues to monitor and investigate attacks exploiting the recent on-premises Exchange Server vulnerabilities. These attacks are now performed by multiple threat actors ranging from financially motivated cybercriminals to state-sponsored groups. To help customers who are not able to...

How one data scientist is pioneering techniques to detect security threats

Data science is an increasingly popular field of study that’s relevant to every industry. When Maria Puertas Calvo was a student, she never imagined that one day she would pioneer data science techniques to detect security threats. She started her Microsoft career on the Safety Platform team,...

Secure containerized environments with updated threat matrix for Kubernetes

Last April, we released the first version of the threat matrix for Kubernetes. It was the first attempt to systematically map the threat landscape of Kubernetes. As we described in the previous post, we chose to adapt the structure of MITRE ATT&CK® framework which, became almost an industry...

Medius’ small IT team supports distributed workforce with Azure Active Directory

In today’s Voice of the Customer blog post, IT Manager Jacob Andersson and IT Systems Architect Fredrik Frööjd of Medius share how Azure Active Directory Azure AD has inspired employees to live by the cloud commitment the company encourages from customers and helped their small team support a...

Automatic on-premises Exchange Server mitigation now in Microsoft Defender Antivirus

As cybercriminals continue to exploit unpatched on-premises versions of Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019, we continue to actively work with customers and partners to help them secure their environments and respond to associated threats. To date, we have released a comprehensive Security Updat...

5 steps to enable your corporate SOC to rapidly detect and respond to IoT/OT threats

As organizations connect massive numbers of IoT/OT devices to their networks to optimize operations, boards and management teams are increasingly concerned about the expanding attack surface and corporate liability that they represent. These connected devices can be compromised by adversaries to...