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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 Customer blog series. This series is designed to help you by sharing stories from real customers who are solving their identity and security challenges using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). I hope you find valuable insights and best practices that you can apply to your own projects. If you havent already, check out the first blog from in the series, Voice of the Custome…

Today, we released security updates to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. As a best practice, we encourage customers to turn on automatic updates. More information about this month’s security updates can be found on the Security Update Guide.

For some, holiday gift giving is an exercise in ingenuity, and shoppers become even more resourceful as the countdown winds down. Microsoft Store conducted an online survey* with U.S. shoppers who self-identify as last-minute gifters. They shared why they procrastinate when it comes to purchasing gifts. The survey revealed that the majority of last-minute gift shopping is done in two weeks or less, with 25 percent taking place in two days or less – and 37 percent feel stressed about it. If you’re one of these shoppers, Microsoft Store can help you up your gifting game this holiday season and ease the pressure thanks to free shipping and returns on every item, every day…

Today’s global cybersecurity threats are both dynamic and sophisticated, and new vulnerabilities are discovered almost every day. We focus on protecting customers from these security threats by providing security updates on a timely basis and with high quality. We strive to help you keep your Windows devices, regardless of which version of Windows they are running, up to date with the latest monthly quality updates to help mitigate the evolving threat landscape. That is why, today, as part of our series of blogs on the Windows approach to quality, I’ll share an overview of how we deliver these critical updates on a massive scale as a key component of our ongoing Windo…

With the Windows 10 October 2018 Update comes SwiftKey intelligence. Available on both Android and iOS, SwiftKey delivers more accurate autocorrections and predictions by adapting to your writing style – including the words, phrases and emoji that matter to you. Starting with the October 2018 Update, SwiftKey now powers the typing experience on Windows when using the touch keyboard, making it faster to write in English (United States), English (United Kingdom), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Brazil) or Russian. Check it out in action: If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 …

Microsoft has put a lot of effort in Hyper-V security. Hyper-V, and the whole virtualization stack, runs at the core of many of our products: cloud computing, Windows Defender Application Guard, and technology built on top of Virtualization Based Security (VBS). Because Hyper-V is critical to so much of what we do, we want to encourage researchers to study it and tell us about the vulnerabilities they find: we even offer a $250K bounty for those who do.

When Gordan Hartman opened Morgan’s Wonderland in April 2010, it was the culmination of a dream he’d had for five years after seeing his daughter, Morgan, a girl with physical and cognitive disabilities, wanting to play with other vacationing kids at a hotel swimming pool – but the children were leery of her and didn’t want to interact with her. At that moment, he resolved to create opportunities and places where people with and without disabilities can come together not only for fun, but also for a better understanding of one another. So he and his wife Maggie built the first ultra-accessible theme park of its kind. Completely wheelchair-accessible, the destination…

One of the things I love about my job is the time I get to spend with security professionals, learning firsthand about the challenges of managing security strategy and implementation day to day. There are certain themes that come up over and over in these conversations. My colleague Ken Malcolmson and I discussed a few of them on the inaugural episode of the Microsoft CISO Spotlight Series: CISO Lessons Learned. Specifically, we talked about the challenges CISOs face migrating to the cloud and protecting your organizations data. In this blog, I dig into one of the core concepts we talked about: practicing cybersecurity hygiene. Hygiene means conditions or practices c…

This series outlines the most fundamental steps you can take with your investment in Microsoft 365 security solutions. Well provide advice on activities such as setting up identity management through active directory, malware protection, and more. In this post, we explain how to create a single common identity across on-premises and cloud with hybrid authentication. Establishing a single, common identity for each user is the foundations step to your cybersecurity strategy. If you currently have an on-premises footprint, this means connecting your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to your on-premises resources. There are various requirements and circumstances that wil…

In MITREs evaluation of endpoint detection and response solutions, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection demonstrated industry-leading optics and detection capabilities. The breadth of telemetry, the strength of threat intelligence, and the advanced, automatic detection through machine learning, heuristics, and behavior monitoring delivered comprehensive coverage of attacker techniques across the entire attack chain. MITRE tested the ability of products to detect techniques commonly used by the targeted attack group APT3 (also known as Boron or UPS). To isolate detection capabilities, as part of the testing, all protection and prevention features were turned of…

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 market has grown at a rapid pace as a result. Our customers face immense challenges in integrating all these different solutions, tools, and intelligence. Oftentimes, the number of disconnected solutions make it more difficultrather than easierto defend and recover from attacks. We invite you to participate in the Microsoft Graph Security Hackathon for a chance to help sol…

Reuters recently reported a hacking campaign focused on a wide range of targets across the globe. In the days leading to the Reuters publication, Microsoft researchers were closely tracking the same campaign. Our sensors revealed that the campaign primarily targeted public sector institutions and non-governmental organizations like think tanks and research centers, but also included educational institutions and private-sector corporations in the oil and gas, chemical, and hospitality industries. Microsoft customers using the complete Microsoft Threat Protection solution were protected from the attack. Behavior-based protections in multiple Microsoft Threat Prote…

In my role, I often meet with CISOs and security architects who are updating their security strategy to meet the challenges of continuously evolving attacker techniques and cloud platforms. A frequent topic is prioritizing security for their highest value assets, both the assets that have the most business value today as well as the initiatives that the organization is banking on for the future. This typically includes intellectual property, customer data, key new digital initiatives, and other data that, if leaked, would do the greatest reputational and financial damage. Once weve identified the highest value assets, it inevitably leads to a conversation about all the pr…

Several weeks ago, the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP) team uncovered a new cyberattack that targeted several high-profile organizations in the energy and food and beverage sectors in Asia. Given the target region and verticals, the attack chain, and the toolsets used, we believe the threat actor that the industry refers to as Tropic Trooper was likely behind the attack. The attack set off numerous Windows Defender ATP alerts and triggered the device risk calculation mechanism, which labeled the affected machines with the highest risk. The high device risk score put the affected machines at the top of the list in Windows Defender Se…

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 ensure that all information and the movement of that information comply with industry standards without inhibiting workflow. Microsoft 365 security solutions can help you know whats happening with your data, set permissions and classifications, and discover and help prevent leaks. How can I make it easier to manage compliance processes? To better manage complianc…

Across Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Windows Defender ATP) engineering and research teams, innovation drives our mission to protect devices in the modern workplace. Our goal is to equip security teams with the tools and insights to protect, detect, investigate, and automatically respond to attacks. We continue to be inspired by feedback from customers and partners, who share with us the day-to-day realities of security operations teams constantly keeping up with the onslaught of threats. Today Im excited to share with you some of the latest significant enhancements to Windows Defender ATP. We added new capabilities to each of the pillars of Windows Def…

At Ignite 2018, we announced Microsoft Threat Protection, a comprehensive, integrated solution securing the modern workplace across identities, endpoints, user data, cloud apps, and, infrastructure (Figure 1). The foundation of the solution is the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph, which correlates 6.5 trillion signals daily from email alone and enables: Powerful machine learning developed by Microsofts 3500 in-house security specialists Automation capabilities for enhanced hunting, investigation, and remediationhelping reduce burden on IT teams Seamless integration between disparate services Figure 1: Microsoft Threat Protection provides an integ…

For the past few years, Microsoft has meaningfully increased participation in the open source software (OSS) community, becoming one of the world’s largest supporters of OSS projects. Today we’re announcing that we intend to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers. As part of this, we intend to become a significant contributor to the Chromium project, in a way that can make not just Microsoft Edge — but other browsers as well — better on both PCs and other devices. Making the web better for many audiences …

One of the things I love about my job is the time I get to spend with security professionals, learning firsthand about the challenges of managing security strategy and implementation day to day. There are certain themes that come up over and over in these conversations. My colleague Ken Malcolmson and I discussed a few of them on the inaugural episode of the Microsoft CISO Spotlight Series: CISO Lessons Learned. Specifically, we talked about the challenges CISOs face migrating to the cloud and protecting your organizations data. In this blog, I dig into one of the core concepts we talked about: practicing cybersecurity hygiene. Hygiene means conditions or practices c…

If you’re shopping for your friends and family this holiday season, we’d like to help you with this guide to devices for everyone in your life – especially those who prefer to work or play on the go. No matter what you choose, you’ll find thinner and lighter devices that deliver flexibility (tablets, laptops, 2-in-1s), voice assistants (Cortana, far-field mics) and enough power to run Windows Mixed Reality. Gamers and creators in your life will also appreciate powerful CPUs and 4K touch displays, and the ability to deftly maneuver between typing on a keyboard and writing, drawing or sketching with a digital pen. For those who need to stay connected – without relying on Wi…

This series outlines the most fundamental steps you can take with your investment in Microsoft 365 security solutions. Well provide advice on activities such as setting up identity management through active directory, malware protection, and more. In this post, we explain how to create a single common identity across on-premises and cloud with hybrid authentication. Establishing a single, common identity for each user is the foundations step to your cybersecurity strategy. If you currently have an on-premises footprint, this means connecting your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to your on-premises resources. There are various requirements and circumstances that wil…

In MITREs evaluation of endpoint detection and response solutions, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection demonstrated industry-leading optics and detection capabilities. The breadth of telemetry, the strength of threat intelligence, and the advanced, automatic detection through machine learning, heuristics, and behavior monitoring delivered comprehensive coverage of attacker techniques across the entire attack chain. MITRE tested the ability of products to detect techniques commonly used by the targeted attack group APT3 (also known as Boron or UPS). To isolate detection capabilities, as part of the testing, all protection and prevention features were turned of…

Did you know you can now name your tile folders, thanks to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update? To create a tile folder in Start, just drag one tile on top of another for a second, then release. Continue dropping as many tiles into the folder as you’d like. When you expand the folder, you’ll see a new option to name it. Check it out in action: If you like this, check out more Windows 10 Tips. The post Windows 10 Tip: Name your tile folders appeared first on Windows Experience Blog. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity is one of the hottest sectors in tech with Gartner predicting worldwide information security spending to reach $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 market has grown at a rapid pace as a result. Our customers face immense challenges in integrating all these different solutions, tools, and intelligence. Oftentimes, the number of disconnected solutions make it more difficultrather than easierto defend and recover from attacks. We invite you to participate in the Microsoft Graph Security Hackathon for a chance to hel…