Security guidance for remote desktop adoption

As the volume of remote workers quickly increased over the past two to three months, the IT teams in many companies scrambled to figure out how their infrastructures and technologies would be able to handle the increase in remote connections. Many companies were forced to enhance their capabiliti...

Secure the software development lifecycle with machine learning

Every day, software developers stare down a long list of features and bugs that need to be addressed. Security professionals try to help by using automated tools to prioritize security bugs, but too often, engineers waste time on false positives or miss a critical security vulnerability that has...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Building operational resilience in a digital world

Operational resiliency is a topic of rising importance in the security community. Unplanned events, much like the one we are facing today, are reminders of how organizations can be prepared to respond to a cyberattack. Ian Coldwater and I explored a variety of options in my episode of Afternoon...

Enable remote work while keeping cloud deployments secure

As our customers shift to remote work in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many have asked how to maintain the security posture of their cloud assets. Azure Security Center security controls can help you monitor your security posture as usage of cloud assets increases. These are three common...

Microsoft shares new threat intelligence, security guidance during global crisis

Ready or not, much of the world was thrust into working from home, which means more people and devices are now accessing sensitive corporate data across home networks. Defenders are working round the clock to secure endpoints and ensure the fidelity of not only those endpoints, but also identitie...

Mobile security—the 60 percent problem

This blog post is part of the Microsoft Intelligence Security Association MISA guest blog series. To learn more about MISA, visit the MISA webpage. Off the top of your head, what percentage of endpoints in your organization are currently protected? Something in the 98 percent+ range? Most...

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...

Turning collaboration and customer engagement up with a strong identity approach

In these challenging times, it’s even more apparent that modern companies are managing a blended workforce that encompasses not only their full-time staff and customers but also their contractors, consultants, subsidiaries, suppliers, partners, and soon-to-be customers. Balancing friction-less...

Microsoft Defender ATP can help you secure your remote workforce

As the number of home-based workers has accelerated in the last few weeks, it’s introduced new challenges. You may want to expand the number and types of devices employees can use to access company resources. You need to support a surge in SaaS usage. And it’s important to adjust security policie...

Full Operational Shutdown—another cybercrime case from the Microsoft Detection and Response Team

Recently, we published our first case report 001: …And Then There Were Six by the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART. We received significant positive response from our customers and colleagues and our team has been getting inquiries asking for more reports. We are glad to share the DART...

Attack matrix for Kubernetes

Kubernetes, the most popular container orchestration system and one of the fastest-growing projects in the history of open source, becomes a significant part of many companies’ compute stack. The flexibility and scalability of containers encourage many developers to move their workloads to...

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...

Microsoft works with healthcare organizations to protect from popular ransomware during COVID-19 crisis: Here’s what to do

True to form, human-operated ransomware campaigns are always on prowl for any path of least resistance to gain initial access to target organizations. During this time of crisis, as organizations have moved to a remote workforce, ransomware operators have found a practical target: network devices...

Welcoming a more diverse workforce into cybersecurity: expanding the pipeline

Despite much focus on increasing the number of women in cybersecurity, as an industry we are still falling short. For many companies the problem starts with the tech pipeline—there just aren’t enough resumes from qualified female candidates. But I think the real problem is that our definition of...

Making it easier for your remote workforce to securely access all the apps they need, from anywhere

Since I published my last blog, Five identity priorities for 2020, COVID-19 has upended the way we work and socialize. Now that physical distancing has become essential to protect everyone’s health, more people than ever are going online to connect and get things done. As we all adjust to a new...

Alternative ways for security professionals and IT to achieve modern security controls in today’s unique remote work scenarios

With the bulk of end users now working remotely, legacy network architectures that route all remote traffic through a central corporate network are suddenly under enormous strain. The result can be poorer performance, productivity, and user experience. Many organizations are now rethinking their...

Welcoming and retaining diversity in cybersecurity

I doubt I’d be in the role I am now if leaders at one of my first jobs hadn’t taken an interest in my career. Although I taught myself to code when I was young, I graduated from college with a degree in English Literature and began my post-college career in editorial. I worked my way up to...

Defending the power grid against supply chain attacks—Part 2: Securing hardware and software

Artificial intelligence AI and connected devices have fueled digital transformation in the utilities industry. These technological advances promise to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of energy generation, transmission, and distribution. They’ve also created new vulnerabilities...

Latest Astaroth living-off-the-land attacks are even more invisible but not less observable

Following a short hiatus, Astaroth came back to life in early February sporting significant changes in its attack chain. Astaroth is an info-stealing malware that employs multiple fileless techniques and abuses various legitimate processes to attempt running undetected on compromised machines. Th...

Protecting against coronavirus themed phishing attacks

The world has changed in unprecedented ways in the last several weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic. While it has brought out the best in humanity in many ways, as with any crisis it can also attract the worst in some. Cybercriminals use people’s fear and need for information in phishing attack...

Welcoming more women into cybersecurity: the power of mentorships

From the way our industry tackles cyber threats, to the language we have developed to describe these attacks, I’ve long been a proponent to challenging traditional schools of thought—traditional cyber-norms—and encouraging our industry to get outside its comfort zones. It’s important to expand ou...

Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2020 Enterprise Detection and Response Wave

I’m proud to announce that Microsoft is positioned as a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2020. Among the Leaders in the report, Microsoft received the highest score in the current offering category. Microsoft also received the highest score of all participating...

Secured-core PCs: A brief showcase of chip-to-cloud security against kernel attacks

Gaining kernel privileges by taking advantage of legitimate but vulnerable kernel drivers has become an established tool of choice for advanced adversaries. Multiple malware attacks, including RobbinHood, Uroburos, Derusbi, GrayFish, and Sauron, and campaigns by the threat actor STRONTIUM, have...

Work remotely, stay secure—guidance for CISOs

With many employees suddenly working from home, there are things an organization and employees can do to help remain productive without increasing cybersecurity risk. While employees in this new remote work situation will be thinking about how to stay in touch with colleagues and coworkers using...

Empower Firstline Workers with Azure AD and YubiKey passwordless authentication

At the end of February, Microsoft announced the FIDO2 passwordless support for hybrid environments. The integration of FIDO2-based YubiKeys and Azure Active Directory Azure AD is a game changer. It combines the ubiquity of Azure AD, the usability of YubiKey, and the security of both solutions to...

Guarding against supply chain attacks—Part 3: How software becomes compromised

Do you know all the software your company uses? The software supply chain can be complex and opaque. It’s comprised of software that businesses use to run operations, such as customer relationship management CRM, enterprise resource planning ERP, and project management. It also includes the...

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...

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...

Real-life cybercrime stories from DART, the Microsoft Detection and Response Team

When we published our first blog about the Microsoft Detection and Response Team DART in March of 2019, we described our mission as responding to compromises and helping our customers become cyber-resilient. In pursuit of this mission we had already been providing onsite reactive incident respons...

Human-operated ransomware attacks: A preventable disaster

Human-operated ransomware campaigns pose a significant and growing threat to businesses and represent one of the most impactful trends in cyberattacks today. In these hands-on-keyboard attacks, which are different from auto-spreading ransomware like WannaCry or NotPetya, adversaries employ...

IT executives prioritize Multi-Factor Authentication in 2020

In 2020, many IT executives will roll out or expand their implementation of Multi-Factor Authentication MFA to better safeguard identities. This is one of the key findings of a survey conducted by Pulse Q&A for Microsoft in October 2019.1 Specifically, 59 percent of executives will implement or...

Quick wins—single sign-on (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

With Multi-Factor Authentication MFA and single sign-on SSO being a few of the most effective countermeasures against modern threats, organizations should consider a Cloud Identity as a Service IDaaS, and MFA solution, like Azure Active Directory AD. Here are seven benefits: 1. Azure AD is simple...

Microsoft identity acronyms—what do they mean and how do they relate to each other?

As a security advisor working with one to three Chief Information Security Officers CISOs each week, the topic of identity comes up often. These are smart people who have often been in industry for decades. They have their own vocabulary of acronyms that only security professionals know such as...

MISA expands with new members and new product additions

Another RSA Conference RSAC and another big year for the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association MISA. MISA was launched at RSAC 2018 with 26 members and a year later we had doubled in size to 53 members. Today, I am excited to share that the association has again doubled in size to 102 member...

Azure Sphere—Microsoft’s answer to escalating IoT threats—reaches general availability

Today Azure Sphere—Microsoft’s integrated security solution for IoT devices and equipment—is widely available for the development and deployment of secure, connected devices. Azure Sphere’s general availability milestone couldn’t be timelier. From consumer device hacking and botnets to nation sta...

New Microsoft Security innovations and partnerships

Today on the Official Microsoft Blog, Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President of the Cybersecurity Solutions Group, shared how Microsoft is helping turn the tide in cybersecurity by putting artificial intelligence AI in the hands of defenders. She announced the general availability of Microsoft...

Microsoft Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance in Microsoft 365 now generally available

Microsoft Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance in Microsoft 365—now generally available—help organizations address internal risks, such as IP theft or code of conduct policy violations. The new Microsoft Insider Risk Management solution helps to quickly identify, detect, and act o...

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 ...

Azure Sentinel uncovers the real threats hidden in billions of low fidelity signals

Cybercrime is as much a people problem as it is a technology problem. To respond effectively, the defender community must harness machine learning to compliment the strengths of people. This is the philosophy that undergirds Azure Sentinel. Azure Sentinel is a cloud-native SIEM that exploits...

Microsoft Threat Protection stops attack sprawl and auto-heals enterprise assets with built-in intelligence and automation

Attackers will cross multiple domains like email, identity, endpoints, and applications to find the point of least resistance. Today’s defense solutions have been designed to protect, detect, and block threats for each domain separately, allowing attackers to exploit the seams and threshold...

Unifying security policy across all mobile form-factors with Wandera and Microsoft

The way we work is evolving—technology enables more effective employees by helping them to be productive where and when they choose. Businesses have also been enjoying the productivity benefits of an always-on and always-connected workforce. While new business applications and device form-factors...

Defending the power grid against supply chain attacks—Part 1: The risk defined

Most people don’t think about electricity. If the internet works, their food is refrigerated, and their debit card is approved, why should they? Its ubiquity and reliability render it invisible—a bit of magic that powers much of modern life. That is, until a large storm passes through. Localized...

Changing the Monolith—Part 4: Quick tech wins for a cloud-first world

You may have heard that identity is the “new” perimeter. Indeed, with the proliferation of phishing attacks over the past few years, one of the best ways to secure data is to ensure that identity—the primary way we access data—can be trusted. How do we secure identity? Start by evaluating how use...

Mattress Firm deployed Azure Active Directory to securely connect Firstline Workers to their SaaS apps and to each other

Today, we have another interesting story for the Voice of the Customer blog series. Tony Miller and Jon Sider of Mattress Firm deployed Azure Active Directory Azure AD to create a secure authentication experience for employees, including their Firstline Workforce. Much like sleep and a good...

NERC CIP compliance in Azure

When I did my first North American Electric Reliability Corporation—Critical Infrastructure Protection NERC CIP compliance project it was 2009. NERC CIP was at version 3. It was the first mandatory cybersecurity standard that the utility I was working for had to meet. As it does today, the Bulk...

Building on secure productivity

Among the most common and powerful attack vectors we have seen are those that exploit the daily tradeoff users make between security and productivity. Often, this can be as simple as a document hiding an exploit or a malicious link. As an industry, we’re used to thinking of security and...

Afternoon Cyber Tea—From threat intelligence to chatbots: A look at AI in cybersecurity

I’ve often said our teams should be as diverse as the problems we are trying to solve. Hiring a diverse security team isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also good business. This is a topic I’m very passionate about, so I was delighted to interview Jane Frankland for the second podcast of...

Visionary security partners to be honored at the very first Microsoft Security 20/20 event

Microsoft Security 20/20 is nearly here and our team is putting the final touches on what we think will be a memorable event. Microsoft Security 20/20 will put the spotlight on companies and individuals with a clear-eyed view of the security challenges we face and smart solutions to help solve...

Ghost in the shell: Investigating web shell attacks

Recently, an organization in the public sector discovered that one of their internet-facing servers was misconfigured and allowed attackers to upload a web shell, which let the adversaries gain a foothold for further compromise. The organization enlisted the services of Microsoft’s Detection and...

RSA Conference 2020—Empower your defenders with artificial intelligence and automation

The RSA Conference 2020 kicks off in less than three weeks, and the Microsoft Security team can’t wait. This is one of our most important annual events because it provides an invaluable opportunity for us to connect with customers, partners, and other security thought leaders. New ideas are...