The importance of identity and Microsoft Azure Active Directory resilience

I love hearing my colleagues explain how they came to the industry because so many of their stories are unusual. I’m surprised how often I hear that people got into computer science by some fortuitous accident. Although he loved computers from the time he was a kid, Oren Melzer never expected to...

Evolving trends in Iranian threat actor activity – MSTIC presentation at CyberWarCon 2021

Over the past year, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC has observed a gradual evolution of the tools, techniques, and procedures employed by malicious network operators based in Iran. At CyberWarCon 2021, MSTIC analysts presented their analysis of these trends in Iranian nation state...

How Open Systems uses Microsoft tools to improve security maturity

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. We’ve all seen it happen—an organization has all the top-notch security tools in place and still, they get breached. In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, complexity leads to...

AI-driven adaptive protection against human-operated ransomware

In human-operated ransomware attacks, threat actors use predictable methods to enter a device but eventually rely on hands-on-keyboard activities to move inside a network. To fortify our existing cloud-delivered automated protection against complex attacks like human-operated ransomware, we...

How to assess and improve the security culture of your business

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 Security Product Marketing Manager Natalia Godyla talks with Cygenta Co-founder and Co-Chief...

HTML smuggling surges: Highly evasive loader technique increasingly used in banking malware, targeted attacks

HTML smuggling, a highly evasive malware delivery technique that leverages legitimate HTML5 and JavaScript features, is increasingly used in email campaigns that deploy banking malware, remote access Trojans RATs, and other payloads related to targeted attacks. Notably, this technique was observe...

The hunt for NOBELIUM, the most sophisticated nation-state attack in history

This is the second in a four-part blog series on the NOBELIUM nation-state cyberattack. In December 2020, Microsoft began sharing details with the world about what became known as the most sophisticated nation-state cyberattack in history. Microsoft’s four-part video series “Decoding NOBELIUM”...

Microsoft is a 5-time Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management

We are honored that Gartner recognized Microsoft as a Leader in Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Access Management in Microsoft Azure Active Directory Azure AD. In addition, Microsoft has placed the farthest right on the “Completeness of Vision” axis. None of this is possible without you, our...

Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Forrester Wave for Unified Endpoint Management

Microsoft is honored to be recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Unified Endpoint Management UEM, Q4 2021 report for our ability to help customers on their path to modern endpoint management. Microsoft Endpoint Manager—which brings together Microsoft Intune for cloud endpoint management a...

Threat actor DEV-0322 exploiting ZOHO ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus

Microsoft has detected exploits being used to compromise systems running the ZOHO ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus software versions vulnerable to CVE-2021-40539 in a targeted campaign. Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC attributes this campaign with high confidence to DEV-0322, a group...

Learn how Microsoft strengthens IoT and OT security with Zero Trust

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated and relentless, the need for Cybersecurity Awareness Month becomes more urgent every year. As part of our year-round commitment to security for all, Microsoft continues to track numerous incidents targeting both digital and physical operations for many...

Discover what’s new and gain technical expertise from MISA at Ignite

It’s hard to believe we’re so close to the end of another year, and what a year it’s been. For too brief a time in some places, our masks were tossed away, only to find us digging them out of drawers again not long after. But masked up or not, it’s been good to see local restaurants buzzing with...

Evolving Zero Trust—Lessons learned and emerging trends

Looking back at the last two years, to say that our security strategies have evolved would be an understatement. Organizations around the world made overnight transitions to remote work models in response to a global pandemic, forcing them to reassess attack surface areas as they underwent an...

Protect your business with Microsoft Security’s comprehensive protection

Securing an organization has never been simple. But over the past year, we’ve seen significant changes in the threat landscape that are having a major impact on organizations of every size in every sector. The frequency and sophistication of cyber events have increased significantly. We see...

How Microsoft Defender for IoT can secure your IoT devices

Cybersecurity threats are always evolving, and today we’re seeing a new wave of advanced attacks specifically targeting IoT devices used in enterprise environments as well as operational technology OT devices used in industrial systems and critical infrastructure like ICS/SCADA. It’s not surprisi...

Microsoft finds new macOS vulnerability, Shrootless, that could bypass System Integrity Protection

Microsoft has discovered a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to bypass System Integrity Protection SIP in macOS and perform arbitrary operations on a device. We also found a similar technique that could allow an attacker to elevate their privileges to root an affected device. We shared...

New insights on cybersecurity in the age of hybrid work

As we approach the last week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, I think about what is top of mind for myself and my peers in security. The past year has continued the 2020s major shift in the way organizations operate. Recent data shows that 81 percent of enterprise organizations have begun the mo...

Protect your business from password sprays with Microsoft DART recommendations

Over the past year, the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART, along with Microsoft’s threat intelligence teams, have observed an uptick in the use of password sprays as an attack vector. This threat is a moving target with techniques and tools always changing, and Microsoft continues to fin...

Microsoft Digital Defense Report shares new insights on nation-state attacks

Microsoft is proud to promote Cybersecurity Awareness Month as part of our ongoing commitment to security for all. Year-round, Microsoft tracks nation-state threat activities to help protect organizations and individuals from these advanced persistent actors. We’re constantly improving our...

NOBELIUM targeting delegated administrative privileges to facilitate broader attacks

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC has detected nation-state activity associated with the threat actor tracked as NOBELIUM, attempting to gain access to downstream customers of multiple cloud service providers CSP, managed service providers MSP, and other IT services organizations...

How Microsoft is partnering with vendors to provide Zero Trust solutions

As workplaces around the world embrace hybrid work, Zero Trust provides the guiding strategy that keeps companies secure. However, no two organizations are alike. The Zero Trust journey will look unique for every organization that implements it. This means we must work together to create solution...

Defenders wanted—building the new cybersecurity professionals

As part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we published a special blog post earlier this week featuring real-world experiences shared by cybersecurity professionals: people with diverse backgrounds in law, academia, software development, and other seemingly unrelated fields. This topic is near and...

Franken-phish: TodayZoo built from other phishing kits

A phishing kit built using pieces of code copied from other kits, some available for sale through publicly accessible scam sellers or are reused and repackaged by other kit resellers, provides rich insight into the state of the economy that drives phishing and email threats today. We uncovered th...

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,...

Simplifying the complex: Introducing Privacy Management for Microsoft 365

The data privacy regulation landscape is more complex than ever. With new laws emerging in countries like China and India, shifts in Europe and the United Kingdom, and currently 26 different laws across the United States, staying ahead of regulations can feel impossible. But this work is...

Microsoft achieves a Leader placement in Forrester Wave for XDR

We are excited to share that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester New Wave: Extended Detection and Response XDR, Q4, 2021,1 receiving one of the highest scores in the strategy category. Microsoft 365 Defender was rated as “differentiated” in seven criteria including detection,...

Get career advice from 7 inspiring leaders in cybersecurity

Are you currently studying information security? Or are you considering transitioning to a career in cybersecurity? According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, cybersecurity jobs will grow 31 percent from 2019 to 2029—more than six times the national average job growth.1 Cybersecurity skills...

archTIS and Microsoft: Zero Trust information security for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has seen a surge in growth during the pandemic with over 115 million daily active users and growing.1 With it, customer imperative for enabling safe and trustworthy online collaboration has also increased significantly. The speed and simplicity of Teams business users creating new...

Azure network security helps reduce cost and risk according to Forrester TEI study

As organizations move their computing from on-premises to the cloud, they realize that leveraging cloud-native security tools can provide additional cost savings and business benefits to their security infrastructure. Microsoft Azure network security offers a suite of cloud-native security tools ...

How cyberattacks are changing according to new Microsoft Digital Defense Report

In 2021, cybercrime has become more sophisticated, widespread, and relentless. Criminals have targeted critical infrastructure—healthcare,1 information technology,2 financial services,3 energy sectors4—with headline-grabbing attacks that crippled businesses and harmed consumers. But there are...

Iran-linked DEV-0343 targeting defense, GIS, and maritime sectors

DEV-0343 is a new activity cluster that the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC first observed and began tracking in late July 2021. MSTIC has observed DEV-0343 conducting extensive password spraying against more than 250 Office 365 tenants, with a focus on US and Israeli defense technolog...

Microsoft’s 5 guiding principles for decentralized identities

Three years ago, as part of Microsoft’s mission to empower people and organizations to achieve more, we announced that we were incubating a new set of decentralized identity technologies based on a simple vision: Each of us needs a digital identity we own, one which securely and privately stores...

Practical tips on how to use application security testing and testing standards

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 Daniel Cuthbert, Global Head of Security...

Windows 11 offers chip to cloud protection to meet the new security challenges of hybrid work

As the world has changed over the past 18-months, companies have been wrestling with ways to keep employees and data protected as they support new ways of hybrid working. We built Windows 11 to be the most secure Windows yet with built-in chip to cloud protection that ensures company assets stay...

#BeCyberSmart: When we learn together, we’re more secure together

2021 has been a watershed year in cybersecurity. The pandemic continued to bring new challenges as attackers took advantage of overstretched security teams to unleash new human-operated ransomware1, malware, and nation-state attacks like those against Colonial Pipeline2 and JBS Food3. With the mo...

3 key resources to accelerate your passwordless journey

Every organization today faces password-related challenges—phishing campaigns, productivity loss, and password management costs to name just a few. The risks now outweigh the benefits when it comes to passwords. Even the strongest passwords are easily phish-able and vulnerable to attacks, such as...

Defend against zero-day exploits with Microsoft Defender Application Guard

Zero-day security vulnerabilities—known to hackers, but unknown to software creators, security researchers, and the public—are like gold to attackers. With zero-days, or even zero-hours, developers have no time to patch the code, giving hackers enough access and time to explore and map internal...

How nation-state attackers like NOBELIUM are changing cybersecurity

This is the first post in a four-part series on the NOBELIUM nation-state cyberattack. Microsoft started telling the industry about this extremely advanced cyberattack in December 2020. The NOBELIUM blog series—which mirrors Microsoft’s four-part video series “Decoding NOBELIUM”—will pull the...

A simpler, more integrated approach to data governance

It’s no secret that the volume of data created by organizations and people multiplies daily. And, in the digital—and hybrid work—world we live in, that data is spread across more tools, platforms, devices, and clouds than ever before, creating regulatory challenges and security risks. Organizatio...

FoggyWeb: Targeted NOBELIUM malware leads to persistent backdoor

Microsoft continues to work with partners and customers to track and expand our knowledge of the threat actor we refer to as NOBELIUM, the actor behind the SUNBURST backdoor, TEARDROP malware, and related components. As we stated before, we suspect that NOBELIUM can draw from significant...

A guide to combatting human-operated ransomware: Part 2

This blog is part two of a two-part series focused on how Microsoft DART helps customers with human-operated ransomware. For more guidance on human-operated ransomware and how to defend against these extortion-based attacks, refer to our human-operated ransomware docs page. In part one of this bl...

3 trends shaping identity as the center of modern security

I recently returned from Kenya, where I visited our Microsoft Nairobi development center. Like many of you, I’ve mostly worked from home for the past year and more, so it was refreshing to meet members of our global team and inspiring to feel their passion for our mission: delivering identity...

Catching the big fish: Analyzing a large-scale phishing-as-a-service operation

In researching phishing attacks, we came across a campaign that used a rather high volume of newly created and unique subdomains—over 300,000 in a single run. This investigation led us down a rabbit hole as we unearthed one of the operations that enabled the campaign: a large-scale...

A guide to combatting human-operated ransomware: Part 1

This blog is part one of a two-part series focused on how Microsoft DART helps customers with human-operated ransomware. For more guidance on human-operated ransomware and how to defend against these extortion-based attacks, refer to our human-operated ransomware docs page. Microsoft’s Detection...

Analyzing attacks that exploit the CVE-2021-40444 MSHTML vulnerability

In August, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC identified a small number of attacks less than 10 that attempted to exploit a remote code execution vulnerability in MSHTML using specially crafted Microsoft Office documents. These attacks used the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-40444, as...

The passwordless future is here for your Microsoft account

Nobody likes passwords. They’re inconvenient. They’re a prime target for attacks. Yet for years they’ve been the most important layer of security for everything in our digital lives—from email to bank accounts, shopping carts to video games. We are expected to create complex and unique passwords,...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Learn how to stop misinformation threats from nation-state bad actors

Information has long been wielded as an instrument of national power and influence. In today’s digital world, misinformation can also be just as powerful. On a special episode of Afternoon Cyber Tea with Ann Johnson, Sandra Joyce, Executive Vice President and Head of Mandiant Intelligence at...

Combat attacks with security solutions from Trustwave and Microsoft

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association guest blog series. Learn more about MISA. In 2021, cyberattacks and instances of ransomware demands against companies, agencies, and institutions have dominated the headlines. These kinds of attacks are on the rise and often...

Why diversity is important for a strong cybersecurity team

Medicine. Aeronautics. Academia. When you’re a cybersecurity professional, the colleague next to you could have started in one of these industries—or just about any other you can imagine. The backgrounds of cybersecurity professionals are more diverse than those of professionals in other...

3 steps to prevent and recover from ransomware

On July 14, 2021, the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence1 NCCoE at the National Institute of Standards and Technology2 NIST hosted a virtual workshop3 to seek feedback from government and industry experts on practical approaches to preventing and recovering from ransomware and other...