The legal services industry in the UK has historically been one of the largest in the world, with UK legal industry revenue expected to grow to almost £40bn by 2028. But the sector is in a state of flux as US law firms look to grow market share in the UK and Europe, while a report by Thomson Reuters on the UK legal market suggests it is becoming harder to stand out as legal work becomes commoditised. In addition, a growing number of UK clients are looking to keep more activity in-house to improve efficiency and cost savings.

Multinational, newly merged law firm A&O Shearman is one company innovating to stay ahead – part of its mission is to be the world’s most advanced in its sector. An integral part of this is delivering legal services in new and flexible ways and optimising technology. This drive prompted the organisation to become an early adopter of AI, allowing it to successfully carve out a competitive advantage in a traditional industry.

As David Wakeling, partner and head of A&O Shearman’s Markets Innovation Group (MIG), explains, the company started its generative AI journey in November 2022, when it began trialling a generative AI tool designed for law firms, named Harvey. “As lawyers, we’re extremely focused on risk management. My team and I looked at generative AI, and we quickly realised it was going to be really disruptive for the global legal industry, as well as carrying with it quite a lot of risks.”

When deploying Harvey, Wakeling and his team focused on the governance needed to enable safe deployment. They introduced a feedback loop to understand how lawyers were using the AI tool, as well as to capture any concerns they had or challenges they were experiencing. “We did an incremental rollout, piece by piece, and developed governance around deployment, to ensure that it was done responsibly and in a way that was trustworthy. We made it our objective to roll it out to 2,000 lawyers across 43 jurisdictions by Christmas Eve 2022.”

The feedback from lawyers painted a very clear picture: “We could quickly see that this technology was going to augment, rather than displace the lawyer,” says Wakeling. “AI can ‘hallucinate’ – bringing up incorrect or misleading results – meaning that human decision-making and judgement, tailored to the specific industry sector in which the lawyer operates, is paramount.”

After the successful trial, the technology was integrated into the firm’s global practice, making A&O Shearman the first firm in the world to deploy generative AI at enterprise level.

A productive partnership

This led A&O Shearman to partner with Microsoft and Harvey to develop its own generative AI contract negotiation tool that leveraged its unique company knowledge. “We wanted to create an AI tool for lawyers that streamlined contract review and negotiation, while also managing the risk of hallucinations. We did this by grounding the AI output in high quality ‘benches’ of legal knowledge – in other words, a bank of gold standard precedents. We wanted to make sure the lawyer had a really good work product, which is quality assured,” says Wakeling. The result was ContractMatrix.

Wakeling says lawyers have long worked in Microsoft Word, meaning that they are familiar with the Microsoft environment. “We made ContractMatrix a Word add-in because we wanted it to be operated from the natural workspace of the lawyer. The idea is you hit the app, ContractMatrix opens, and your benches and previous deals are immediately accessible to you. It was so logical to build it in that environment.”

The tool speeds up many manual tasks, associated with drafting contracts, that a lawyer usually undertakes during their working day. “No one went to law school for manual process exercises – this is about enabling lawyers to focus on tasks that require strategic thinking and decision-making,” says Wakeling. “From a business perspective, it’s more productive and more efficient.”

The firm currently has more than 1,000 of its lawyers using ContractMatrix, and Wakeling estimates that the tool saves seven hours on average for each contract review, which is a productivity gain of about 30%. “That’s pretty significant,” he adds.

One of the biggest advantages afforded by ContractMatrix is the ability to access gold standard precedents in seconds. “We can find precedent contracts and bring those up to the screen with a couple of prompts of an AI engine,” says Wakeling. “That is huge for lawyers because the whole legal system is based on precedent, so if you can get the best precedents quickly, that is extremely impactful.”

ContractMatrix runs on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, which was an additional pull for partnering with Microsoft. As John O’Donovan, chief technology officer at A&O Shearman, explains, the law firm has a large IT infrastructure and a huge amount of information based in existing data centres. “It’s quite an intimidating job for a law firm to manage and organise such a vast infrastructure; you really need to be in the data centre business.”

Centralising technology with Azure

The opportunity to move its infrastructure into Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing platform enabled A&O Shearman to centralise its technology. “When you build things in an on-premise environment, you have to buy lots of infrastructure, such as new servers, and that restricts you. By moving from on-premise to a cloud environment, you can scale quickly and easily according to your needs.”

This also enabled A&O Shearman to scale ContractMatrix as software as a service for client and wider market use. As Wakeling says, this has presented a unique opportunity for the law firm to differentiate itself with, what is effectively, a new business. “We’re a law firm focused on the deployment of legal AI to clients, with Microsoft as the common infrastructure of delivery. Clients know how to use Microsoft Azure and we can deploy it for clients’ in-house legal functions through that environment, so it is very enabling.”

O’Donovan adds that lawyers rely on Microsoft’s suite of tools – such as SharePoint and OneDrive – in their everyday work, and this creates further opportunities for A&O Shearman to build on that within the wider Azure environment. “Microsoft has really invested in legal technology in the last couple of years, and we see that in the use of other tools like Power BI [a data visualisation tool augmented by AI]. So we can use those platforms to build customised tools and workflows for our firm and our clients – we’re not having to develop them from scratch. We are also able to help Microsoft to make products more relevant to the legal market, so it’s a mutually beneficial partnership.”

A&O Shearman has invested heavily in improving the firm’s technology capability over the years. The company ramped this up when generative AI appeared. “We hired loads of developers and added some data scientists, but we also realised we needed to upskill certain functions,” says Wakeling. “Our risk committee needed to be upskilled, as did some of our board members. All members of our risk committee now consider AI in their day-to-day work.”

The firm’s investment in generative AI touches everyone in the company, from marketing and finance to project managers, and the technology is transforming the business. “AI provides some very generic capabilities, such as using Copilot for Microsoft 365 [a Microsoft AI assistant designed to enhance business productivity] to take and distribute meeting notes,” says O’Donovan. “People used to have to do these things manually, so there are some simple, huge efficiencies being gained.

“But our use of AI now goes all the way through to augmenting the very specific skills and knowledge of our lawyers. ContractMatrix, which was made by our lawyers, for lawyers, is a prime example of this.”

A&O Shearman’s integration of AI has also prompted it to overhaul its graduate recruitment process, chiefly by asking graduates questions around AI, such as how they would write the prompts if they were given a certain research task. “We’re looking at their logic and prompt engineering,” says Wakeling. “And then we’re saying: ‘How do you validate the output and look for errors?’ So we’re asking them for a different skill set right from the beginning of their careers. We’re thinking about what’s going to make graduates good lawyers in the coming decades – it’s no longer about learning by rote; it’s more strategic.”

The innovation doesn’t stop there. Allen & Overy’s very recent merger with Shearman & Sterling has also been enabled by working with Microsoft, helping with the integration of systems and data. For example, O’Donovan cites Microsoft’s cross-tenant synchronisation capability, which allowed A&O Shearman to reroute the two legacy firms’ companies email addresses to the new email domain, as well as manage communication between the two organisations through Teams.

“These technologies have been invaluable in taking two large law firms and bringing them together,” he says. “A lot of work is required in a merger, which usually takes years, but we’ve been able to do some things fairly quickly by taking advantage of these technologies.”

Wakeling and his team are looking at opportunities to apply generative AI beyond contract negotiation, such as to due diligence, litigation discovery and mergers and acquisitions. “That’s where we’re starting to turn our attention,” he says.

A&O Shearman’s unique experience of developing and deploying AI systems also means that a large number of clients have approached it for advice on how to deploy AI safely within their businesses. “Since last summer, we have had incredible demand from clients for our global expertise on the key issues around AI deployment, as well as for advice on AI-related disputes, AI collaboration agreements and AI-focused transactions. Our tech expertise on building and deploying AI systems, unusually, sits at the centre of our AI legal advisory group. This is so valuable as clients want to know what responsible AI looks like in practice.”

Wakeling adds that it is likely that future apps his team develops will be devised in tandem with Microsoft. “It has certainly set a very good precedent for how one of the best tech companies can work very successfully with one of the best law firms.”

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A pioneer in the insurance comparison industry, today, Confused.com serves millions of consumers a year, helping them find the best prices to protect the things they love, power their homes and finance big purchases. At a time of rising living costs and economic uncertainty, consumers are increasingly seeking informed, trusted advice that enables them to make confident financial decisions. According to Mintel, 73% of UK adults have used a financial comparison website within the past year as they strive to find the best deals on financial products quickly and easily.

In such an aggressive and fast-moving sector, Confused.com must continually deliver a superior customer experience to maintain its competitive edge. This relies on understanding exactly what customers need and why, to ease anxiety so often associated with financial decisions. Being truly customer-centric is reliant on optimising data, as Nick Sharp, director of data and technology, Confused.com, explains: “Delivering a seamless customer journey, enabling real-time interactions, personalised experiences, and offering a range of tooling beyond the price comparison itself is all about being data-led. It’s about making decisions based on data insights.”

Confused.com’s traditional in-house data framework was frustrating this ambition. “When you have an on-premises infrastructure and simple integrations, you are dealing with silos,” says Sharp. “We wanted to bring that together to deliver a more cohesive customer journey. Making financial decisions can be overwhelming – our aim is to reduce that burden as much as possible.”

Working with a trusted partner

This need prompted the company to seek help from long-term partner Microsoft, which also works with many of Confused.com’s partners, giving it peace of mind that the technology company understood how it wanted to enhance customers’ experience. Confused.com chose to migrate to Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, a solution that enables it to manage and store its data securely, as well as giving it access to multiple applications, services and tools. “Microsoft’s maturity and range of assets made it appealing,” says Sharp. “The cost element was important too, as well as the huge support offered by Microsoft, which made it a very easy six-month migration.”

The migration to Azure, and becoming cloud native, has initiated a culture shift at Confused.com, putting technology at the forefront of the business and allowing it to innovate and challenge the market. “It focused minds on how technology could enable us to go beyond delivering the basic service and actually scale up what we were doing, helping us to derive greater insight and make a bigger difference to customers,” says Sharp. “It has empowered us to position ourselves as thought leaders, and that mindset is driving success.”

Considering Confused.com’s panel of partners was key to the decision. The company’s motor panel alone currently has more than 150 providers, and the numerous data feeds between customers and partners need to be robust and fast. “That was a driving factor for choosing Azure, as well as the ability to experiment, and scale,” says Sharp. “It was also about leveraging cloud technology and Azure’s out-of-the-box and customisable solutions.”

As Sharp says: “If we get the right message to the right customer at the right time, they are so much more likely to buy.” It was this need to deliver exactly what the customer is looking for at any given moment that also attracted Confused.com to Azure. Its generative AI enables companies to quickly build intelligent apps and scale them, training them to work with its customer data. “That is really where we’re seeing the uplift,” says Sharp.

For Confused.com, the technology has supercharged its marketing, improving spend by 10% through data enrichment and personalised offers and recommendations. “That relevance to customers shows we’re getting things right.”

Sharp adds that the integration of AI aligns with the company’s commitment to being a customer champion. “By leveraging AI for personalised services and gaining insights into customer needs, we can continue disrupting the insurance industry for the benefit of our customers.”

After all, people visit Confused.com seeking advice and reassurance. “For example, can we make any recommendations based on the information a customer has provided? If they are actively telling us they are interested in a product, or if there are any nuances we can respond to, we can be extra helpful,” says Sharp. “It allows us to anticipate what customers need and potentially save them even more time and money by alerting them to the most relevant product at the right time and at competitive prices.”

A key part of elevating technology to a more central role was using Azure’s AI capability to automate, freeing employees from repetitive tasks to focus on what Sharp describes as “the more gnarly stuff”. He says: “We can tackle the problems that haven’t been solved for customers – that’s where we can really add value – making that content relevant and personalised, and unearthing insights.”

Sharp adds that the impact of Azure goes beyond the company’s technologists. “All of our employees benefit from AI – ultimately it helps them to do their job better, spending more time helping customers to save money, and adding greater value.”

While use of Azure’s AI tools doesn’t remove the need for human input, Sharp says it is hugely valuable for generating ideas and starting conversations, as well as improving efficiencies. “It allows us to worry less about the infrastructure provisioning and scaling because that is all taken care of. Both AI and the cloud keep us operating at speed and meeting customer demand – that is where it matters and where we want our team spending their time.”

Reaping measurable benefits in the cloud

Since implementing Azure, Confused.com has reduced its analytics lead time by 50%, thanks to improved availability, speed, and richness of data, which is driving informed decisions. This benefits customers directly. “Customers rely on us for timely data products and services, they are not just simply getting a price,” says Sharp. “We are looking at the full customer journey, identifying friction points and experimenting and addressing them quickly, and we are able to swiftly respond to customer feedback.”

The company’s ceaseless drive to add value to customers has also been realised by Azure, allowing the company to introduce cashback and rewards, which are customised incentives rooted in data. “We are now able to give much more back to customers and make sure the experience is optimum,” says Sharp. “That additional capability has been enabled by our migration to Azure.”

Confused.com has big plans to continue building on its partnership with Microsoft and its success with Azure, and Sharp says it will carry on leveraging Microsoft’s latest off-the-shelf components and solutions to solve problems. “It’s a gamechanger knowing we don’t have to build everything ourselves or find our own solutions. We can tap into the expertise of a partner that truly understands our industry.”

He adds that the “ultimate dream” is simplification of the customer journey: “The more we can remove the friction points, the closer we can get to automatic switching. It’s great from a technology stance but it’s also great from a customer stance too. With so many people feeling the pinch at the moment, where people spend their money is important. So for us, saving people time, money and allowing them to make confident decisions, at no cost to them, is now more important than ever.”

Azure’s cloud and AI capabilities are playing a key role in ensuring that Confused.com remains dominant in a fierce market. “It is amazing being fully cloud native, and AI promises to be a very exciting next chapter,” says Sharp.

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There’s a funny and rather apt “spot the difference” Microsoft Visual Studio advert that used to run in computing magazines.

On the left of the image is the desk of an “unhappy” software developer. It’s the middle of the night; beneath the gaze of a single desk lamp, piles of screwed up paper litter the scene, and yellow sticky notes hang off the computer screen.

The right-hand side shows the “happy” software developer’s desk, clean and neat, with a calendar full of social appointments and a sunny day outside.

The message was clear: if developers used C++, a popular programming language that can develop software, no matter the platform, they would reduce their stress.

Almost 20 years later, technologies have moved on, yet software developers continue to face many of the same challenges – how do you handle the entire lifecycle of creating a product for your customer, from designing the software, getting it to work and making it secure, to deploying and maintaining the finished product?

Scaling up and down is frictionless

Cloud platforms can make the life of a developer much easier – from planning, writing, editing and debugging their code, through to delivering it live to their customers – even when they’re not sure what the final demands are likely to be.

Previously, once software firms delivered applications and services to their customers, they would have to guess how much infrastructure they needed to support the delivery and maintenance of the product.

This problem could be further compounded by the fact that the customer might also be struggling to keep up with widely fluctuating demand from its end users.

Azure’s scalable cloud platform remedies this by hosting the developer’s software and automatically scaling as demand decreases or increases, so that developers can concentrate on what they do best – software development.

Take the case of Live Tech Games (LTG), for example. The company faced challenges supporting 10,000 users playing its live football tournament multiplayer mobile games concurrently online, and needed to increase that number to 500,000 users.

“During the 2022 Fifa World Cup, in partnership with ITV, we ran more than 30 live tournament games with thousands of players joining and playing against each other all at once – and thanks to Azure, everything ran perfectly,” said LTG’s co-founder and co-CEO Samuel Worsley.

Developing and debugging can be done all in one place

Software development is a complex process, especially when you have many cooks involved and everyone, including your boss, has a different idea of which coding language the software should be written in.

“If you love to work in one specific programming language and your colleague likes to work in a different one, it doesn’t matter with Visual Studio,” says Denise Dourado, director of digital and application innovation, data and artificial intelligence at Microsoft UK.

Visual Studio is an “integrated development environment” where a developer has one place they can write, edit and debug their code instead of jumping from tool to tool.

“Without Visual Studio, you’d end up having to design the code in one place, then debug it somewhere else … it would take much longer to deliver your debugged code, as opposed to doing it in one place,” says Dourado.

The worst thing for a developer, she says, is as you switch from one tool to another, you’re worrying about what happens to your code, and the development process takes a long time.

Auditing software is straightforward

So you’ve built the software, but now you need to deploy it and maintain it, which can be a huge headache. This is where Azure DevOps Services comes in.

Azure DevOps can be used by multiple people working together in collaboration and they can track any changes made to their software’s source code and release it to their customers in a live environment.

Added to that, during this time of global economic uncertainty, there’s a real need to cut costs and increase efficiency, while still delivering added value to your customers, whose businesses are undergoing significant digital transformations.

Mobile operator Vodafone found it had far too many computer systems across the company and many different code repositories for all its software. Some of its control systems even relied on Word documents to manually track source code changes.

“At that time, we were a long way off being able to automatically roll back a deployment and see specifically which line of code had caused a problem, link it back to the developer or see why we were doing it,” says Ben Connolly, head of Digital Engineering, Vodafone.

“That’s been revolutionised by the power of Azure DevOps. Now, it’s all pipelines and it’s way better audited than anything we used to have.”

Productivity boosted

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also increasingly helping to solve developer headaches. GitHub, the world’s largest code repository and social software development community is harnessing AI in the shape of GitHub Copilot.

“GitHub Copilot provides enhanced capabilities to developers, such as making suggestions for code improvements, identifying common coding errors and helping developers understand codebases more quickly, especially if they are new to a project,” adds Dourado.

GitHub says that 46% of new code is now written by AI and overall developer productivity has jumped 55%, with 75% of developers on the platform reporting that they are able to focus on the more creative parts of software development.

Software development has been democratised

Microsoft wants to take things one step further by “democratising” the IT industry and enabling people without a software development background to be able to build software too, says Dourado. “It’s bringing in users from a business environment and giving them the ability to build programs without necessarily having to understand the code,” she adds.

She also sees benefits for computing professionals who’d like to use AI, but don’t know much about how to use it in their software. Azure has a suite of AI services designed just for this issue.

For example, Azure Cognitive Services can automate document processing, improve customer service, understand the root cause of anomalies or extract insights from content.

“The world of tech is constantly changing, particularly around things like AI, and when you’re a developer, that may not be your core skill. We’re trying to allow seasoned developers to take advantage of AI without having to spend months or years learning about data science,” says Dourado.

“A key thing for me is it takes the pain out of learning new technology so they can be more free to be more creative and exploit capabilities in their applications.”

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The world stands on the brink of a productivity revolution as artificial intelligence (AI) creates a new wave of opportunity for businesses of all sizes.

Whether it’s using chatbots or more advanced AI, uncovering deeper insights about customer needs, or speeding up product development, no business wants to miss out on the uplift in output offered by AI. For some organisations, the arrival of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, which generate content and images, has further boosted the business cases for adopting an AI strategy.

But while business leaders are keen to make the most of the technology’s advantages, they’ll also need to understand the wider responsibilities that come with it (for example, considerations around data privacy, unintentional bias, and copyright infringement) and how to make the most of opportunities that are evolving quickly.

To help boardroom executives and IT leaders navigate a successful AI strategy, Michael Wignall, director of infrastructure in the Customer Success Unit at Microsoft’s Azure business, sets out the first five steps he believes leaders should take ahead of utilising AI.

1. Make AI part of a broader cloud computing strategy

First and foremost, says Wignall, businesses should think about collaborating with an established technology provider.

AI works best when it is part of a broader cloud computing strategy, which is where IT operations are outsourced to externally run data centres, such as the cloud platform offered by Microsoft Azure, he says.

“AI is born in the cloud, and you need to be in the cloud to take advantage of this wave of innovation,” he adds. He points to the three main components of AI – computing power, data and algorithms – all of which are best provided through a cloud service. He believes businesses should adopt a “cloud native” approach, where their entire AI infrastructure is built on a cloud platform.

Such an approach brings many benefits, including: cost savings achieved by paying for only the resources used, rather than maintaining and updating costly on-premises equipment; flexibility and scalability, which allows customers to easily add or remove resources as needed; access to enhanced security tools, which can better detect, assess and warn customers about threats to their data; and disaster recovery, as in the cloud data can be easily backed up and quickly restored in the event of an outage or disaster.

2. Locate your data

Next, businesses need to get a firm handle on where data is located in their organisations and then migrate it to the cloud platform.

Success in AI depends on analysing large sets of relevant data. To fine-tune AI to achieve the best business results, it should be powered by the company’s own data from customer lists, inventories, sales information, financial and other key data. “It’s about making sure that your data platform and your data strategy are the best they can be and that you know where your data is located and how to access it,” says Wignall.

Overall, organisations need to become more data literate. “To succeed with AI, most of our customers, big or small, need to create a more data-led corporate culture,” he adds.

3. Protect your data

Once the cloud infrastructure is in place and the relevant data is migrated, the next crucial step is to protect and secure that data. With all of a company’s key data in one place – the cloud – it’s important to have peace of mind when multiple threats, such as hackers, exist. “Make sure you are protected with best-in-class security capabilities, with well-defined policies and governance around who can access the data as well as the ability to audit what they do with it,” says Wignall.

He adds that Azure offers a full set of built-in security capabilities with products such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud, a cloud native cybersecurity platform. Meanwhile, Microsoft Purview offers unified data governance, allowing users to map their data landscape and ensure their data complies with rules and regulations.

4. Decide what functions or tasks to use AI for

With the infrastructure, data and security in place, businesses can move on to deciding the best uses for AI – whether to automate office processes, extract insights from data, handle copywriting or a range of other tasks.

Over the past five years, general AI has offered what are known as “cognitive services” such as data analytics and product recommendations.

Generative AI takes the technology to a new level. With a few keystrokes, users can create content such as reports, adverts, images, copy, automatic emails and personalised connections with users.

Generative AI can also analyse a large selection of documents, call centre logs or financial results and summarise the information in a short precis.

Microsoft is building a range of AI capabilities into its workplace tools through Microsoft Copilot, which combines AI with applications such as Word, Excel and Teams – for instance, automatically summarising the main points of a Teams meeting.

Another area that can be enhanced by generative AI is rapid prototyping, where designers and product engineers can develop their ideas in days or hours rather than weeks or months.

5. Put in place responsible AI policies

Once a company puts these steps in place, its AI strategy is ready for rollout. But before launch, the business should make sure it has implemented responsible AI policies throughout. The business must make sure that the AI is not embedding bias, that it has adequate governance around its use, that it is being used ethically and does not produce unexpected or unwanted results.

Microsoft provides responsible AI policy guidance and offers tools to check for bias, ensure inappropriate data is excluded and run sentiment checks that vet the output. Ultimately, though, it is essential the business makes sure responsible AI policies are in place.

With many organisations just setting out on their AI journey, Wignall sums up the thinking that businesses should adopt when considering AI: “Urgency is key. Partnership is key. Cloud is key. Prioritise the business benefits that matter to your organisation. And get started today.”

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As organisations move their computing infrastructure into the cloud, they are harnessing the power of data as never before. Cloud-based services are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make data more accessible, easier to search and simpler to understand. Rather than data being the preserve of a team of data scientists and analysts, the new cloud-based tools and technologies are opening up this specialised area to a wider cohort of employees across organisations.

Leighton Searle, director of Azure Solutions UK at Microsoft, sees strong benefits for businesses that run their IT infrastructure through the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. “The huge potential of new generative AI technology has triggered renewed urgency and focus on the quality and availability of an organisation’s data,” he says. Once businesses migrate their data to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform they can instantly access tools and services to unlock its value for both employees and customers. This is leading to a transformation of company culture and the embedding of data more deeply across businesses.

Searle identifies four areas where cloud is boosting the use of data, empowering employees, and enhancing productivity.

1. Empowering employees to make data-driven decisions

Searle highlights that the cloud is helping to democratise data, making it accessible to employees directly in their daily workflows, rather than stuck in management reports or individual line-of-business applications. “To unlock the value – and realise the potential – of data, it’s got to be accessible to the people who need it,” says Searle. “That could mean empowering a contact centre agent with a scannable summary of all customers’ previous engagements, transactions and support calls alongside immediate access to the entire company’s knowledge base of specialist information to provide a world class customer experience, or a mobile mechanic so they are able to identify a part and inventory status from a photograph captured on their phone.”

Almost every role can benefit from timely, secure and relevant data, says Searle. If staff are to become responsible for managing the data relevant to their roles, they will need tools that simplify the process. Data visualisation tools help employees create simple representations of data to glean insights and improve the customer experience. For instance, Heathrow Airport is using the Microsoft Power BI data visualisation tool through Microsoft Teams to turn data from its admin systems into easy-to-read visualisations for staff. These offer employees an at-a-glance look at how airport passenger traffic is changing in real time, enabling airport staff to prepare for passenger traffic peaks and troughs rather than simply react to them.

2. Breaking down data silos

To achieve greater data democracy, data must be available across an organisation rather than being locked up in a central repository. “With the right guidance, governance and guardrails in place, you can then enable the rest of the business and provide them access to the data they need,” says Searle.

For instance, a group of five south London boroughs formed the South London Partnership and worked to create a universal data platform with Microsoft Azure. This includes sharing data from “internet of things” (IoT) sensors that monitor at-risk residents – which the partnership estimates has already helped to save four lives. The IoT sensors also monitor air quality and flood risks. “We’ve been able to break down data silos through cloud technology’s ability to share data while maintaining the permissions and privacy of that data,” says Searle.

3. Building AI and modern search to accelerate business

Customer and employee expectations have changed as AI-powered experiences play a greater role in everyday life. Along with a good data foundation and a good data culture these experiences are rapidly becoming table stakes for both employee and customer retention. Employees need to delve deep into institutional knowledge, from finding data in the company’s in-house apps or accessing historical information in either “structured” tables and charts or in “unstructured” form in documents, images and other sources.

Searle points to the Azure Cognitive Search platform and Azure Open AI Service, which allows users to input a general, natural language query into a search bar – which the AI-powered system will process to deliver back a natural language summary from the most relevant sources, referencing all of the data sources used for verification or further research. He says this type of AI-powered experience can help businesses unlock insights and make data-driven decisions intuitively and at a speed never seen before.

For instance, Cambridge and Peterborough NHS foundation trust moved its computing infrastructure into the cloud and made patient records more easily searchable by clinicians using Azure Cognitive Search. The trust uploaded all of its records to Azure, and these included data in all sorts of unstructured formats such as handwritten records, doctors’ notes, scans and pictures.

Clinicians said it was “mind blowing” to discover that Azure Cognitive Search made these diverse formats discoverable, and they could quickly locate handwritten notes and records from previous years.

4. Creating a data-driven culture

From frontline workers to boardroom executives, all employees should be open to embedding data into their working practices, says Searle. He believes they can all learn from the data that is flowing to them and contribute to enriching it. Employees involved in managing their own data are also well placed to reduce the risks of bias and incorrect assumptions in their data-driven decision making.

Data democratisation requires a significant shift in corporate culture, Searle believes. Departments across an organisation, whether HR, marketing, operations, sales or finance, have an important role to play in the data that they produce and consume. For example, these business users of organisational data are best placed to set the security and access policies for their data and to curate it in a way that other parts of the business can confidently make use of it.

The pace of change can be daunting for leaders at all levels. To help organisations upskill, Microsoft has partnered with European business school Insead to create a free online course called AI Business School.

Searle sums up the steps businesses need to take to get the most out of their data. “Bring your data securely into the Microsoft cloud. Lead from the top to create a data-led culture across the organisation and then move quickly on projects that are going to deliver business value. The positive experience will cascade across the business and help embed this data-led approach to scale even further.”

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Few technologies have changed the way the world operates as much as the cloud. But given its role in enabling some of our most-valued digital experiences, it doesn’t always get the credit it deserves.

Cloud technology forms the backbone of much of our day-to-day world, with businesses from the tiniest startup to the biggest conglomerate using it to power their operations. For example, ASOS used the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to deploy a new digital architecture, accelerating its ability to provide more tailored and engaging customer experiences.

But what’s really turbo-charged cloud technology’s impact is the ability to democratise access to computing power, giving disruptors and innovators chances to break into new industries.

“The cloud makes digital transformation accessible,” says Tosca Colangeli, general manager at Microsoft UK. “Because it can scale as needed. It is also an area where we see the ‘born in the cloud’ digital native community becoming huge disruptors. They can disrupt 100-year-old businesses in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before. It’s super exciting.”

Cloud technology enables businesses to access computing power via the internet. Before it came along in the 2000s, companies would have owned and run private physical servers on their premises. They would have been responsible for their upkeep and for fixing them when things went wrong; they would also have been limited to the power and capacity that server could provide, and security was often compromised. Moving to the cloud ensures access to a set of security tools that can better detect, assess and warn customers about threats to their data. When cloud technology took over, with companies such as Microsoft offering access to large public servers via the web, the flexibility and ability to scale up or down was transformative.

Pay-as-you-go

“It’s about being able to pay for the resources that you need as and when you need them,” says Colangeli, adding that this characteristic allows businesses to flex and adapt according to their peak trading periods. Not only this, but cloud’s adaptability also stretches to disaster recovery. “You’ve got this pay-as-you-go subscription model, not just for your core applications, but also for managing your disaster recovery. It’s been a great move forward.”

Cloud’s flexibility has changed how businesses operate, and it’s also changed how they innovate – something that will become increasingly important for companies coping with the pace of change wrought by Al. “The generative Al era is going to redefine how we operate, and how we innovate with technology for years to come,” says Colangeli. “It’s going to be quick, it’s going to be very fast. It took years for the internet to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months.”

According to Gartner, by 2026 global cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending. The key to keeping up with this pace of change is embedding cloud within an organisation. Microsoft in particular is planning for this uptake by working to make sure its data centres support the increasing demand for both its Azure Al service and Copilot technologies. “Establishing a digital culture is core, and you have to start with the foundations. Cloud technology will be fundamental to this era of Al,” says Colangeli.

AI’s impact will differ according to how each company embraces the opportunity, Colangeli says. For example, she has found Microsoft’s recently launched Copilot functionality has transformed her working day. It’s called ‘Copilot’ because it sits alongside you in support. “The speed at which I can now respond to customers is remarkable. Copilot augments me, and helps me accelerate the value I can bring.”

Focus on data

So what should businesses be doing to ready themselves for the next phase of cloud technology? Colangeli flags that focusing on data should be top priority. “Your success with Al will be as good as the data you hold in your organisation. Making sure your data is accessible on a unified data platform is job number one.”

Using AI responsibly will also be a key priority for businesses. Keeping a handle on this can be challenging, however, especially with things moving so rapidly. Colangeli says Microsoft has built a series of principles, tools and processes into the Microsoft Azure platform to help with this. “When you create technologies that can change the world, you must work to ensure that the technology is used responsibly.”

Microsoft’s principles are grounded in fairness, reliability, safety, privacy, and security, and the business has built on these to develop practical boundaries. “Having principles is not enough – they are not self-executing, and they could be open to interpretation,” Colangeli says. “For that reason we’ve got a set of tools and practices that we use to set up guardrails around and within all of our products.”

Ability to adapt

Businesses looking to innovate, evolve, and ensure a place for themselves in the future will want to explore, or ramp up, their use of cloud and Al technologies. The exact approach will differ according to the business, but what’s most important is developing that ability to adapt and flex. “Cloud – particularly what we’ve done with Microsoft Azure – is the most adaptable way to build your business,” says Colangeli. “It’s not one-size-fits-all – every customer has different problems. But cloud computing is the foundation for building a truly digital business.” Building a unified data platform will enable the business to use Al to accelerate value. “But you have to start with the foundations to be able to build on it, and adopt innovation. That’s where it starts.”

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Explore the Microsoft UK AI Hub

Non-independent content produced as part of a commercial deal with Guardian Labs.

Header photograph: Laurence Dutton/Getty Images/iStockphoto

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People say that the last part in a trilogy is the perfect way to close out a movie series. But what happens when the last movie was actually the prequel?

Microsoft has remastered existing guidance in “Entra ID vision” as a series of documents under the banner “Microsoft 365 guidance for UK Government”.  Following the release of the Information Protection guidance and the update to External Collaboration guidance, we have also remastered the one that kicked it off: Secure Configuration Blueprint.

Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government

The three-piece collection provides a common baseline which UK Government departments, and their partners, can use to enable secure use of Microsoft 365.

The goal of the Secure Configuration Blueprint is to create a secure foundation for a Microsoft 365 tenancy. It provides guidance using the “Good, Better, Best” approach targeted on feature availability by licence, offering policies and settings that protect your Microsoft 365 tenancy from the most common attacks.  It includes:

• Securing identities that access services, including privileged users.
• Protecting devices that your users use to access services.
• Configuration of services to require use of the above when accessing data.

The updated Secure Configuration Blueprint guidance is the base upon which the other pieces of guidance are built. But how have we got to where we are today?

Securing user devices

It all started as a result of understanding that device trust was key to protecting the data stored locally and in datacentres.

In 2004, on the back of some high-profile worm viruses, SQL Slammer (January 2003) and Blaster (August 2003), Microsoft worked closely with Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG), now a part of the NCSC. This joint effort developed a set of security controls to take advantage of the security improvements in SP2 for Windows XP, including Windows Firewall on by default, Software Restriction Policies, and Automatic Updates enabled by default.

The outcome of this work was known as the “Government Assurance Pack” or GAP for short. GAP was revised and updated for Vista and Windows 7 and added BitLocker device encryption and AppLocker when those features were released.

Moving forward to 2014, and CESG moved to a model that evaluated all end-user devices, PC and mobile, against a common set of principles, the End User Device Security Principles. Windows 8 (8.1), Windows 10 and Windows 11 have all had End User Device (EUD) security guidance developed with CESG initially and then the NCSC when that was formed in October 2016.

By following the latest guidance provided by NCSC, organisations (including Government departments) can be confident that the devices used by their users to access and handle data are secure against common attacks.

Figure 1. Timeline leading to the updated Secure Configuration Blueprint guidance.

Securing cloud services

The UK Government introduced a “Cloud First” policy in 2013 for all technology decisions with the NCSC, publishing 14 Cloud Security Principles (originally in December 2013) to support Government as it started to adopt cloud services.

Historically, the focus of the guidance was on securing devices but, with the UK Government adopting a Cloud First policy, data was no longer being stored in on-premises datacentres and networks. Instead, it would increasingly be stored in Public Cloud services like Microsoft 365.

To address this, Microsoft worked with the NCSC to produce guidance for Microsoft Azure in October 2017, and in July 2019 we released the initial version of Office 365 Blueprint and a supporting document detailing how Office 365 met the NCSC 14 Cloud Security Principles.

As a result, in parallel to releasing Office 365 guidance, we also worked with NCSC to produce the first MDM (Mobile Device Management) End User Device (EUD) guidance for cloud-managed Windows 10 EUDs using Microsoft Intune. This guidance formed the base for Microsoft’s first cloud-based Privileged Access Workstation (PAW), allowing organisations to manage their risk in Microsoft 365 management. Microsoft recommends using a PAW for administrative access and managed EUDs for standard user access, both using Entra ID to secure access to cloud services – please refer to Protect Microsoft 365 and Securing Privileged Access.

Once the foundational guidance was released, and on the back of the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to UK Government departments, we worked with NCSC and Government Security Group and released the first iteration of our BYOD guidance in June 2020.

The rest is history, as they say. Working with Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) and NCSC, the Cross-Government Collaboration guidance was released in 2021 and updated in 2023, along with the release of the Purview Information Protection guidance.

With that, UK Government departments have at their disposal guidance for how to securely configure their Entra ID and Microsoft 365 tenant, classify and protect their data, and use it to securely collaborate with not only other government departments but also industry partners.

But remember, if you don’t pay attention to the film, the sequels might be confusing. So, ensure that you implement the guidance in the Secure Configuration Blueprint before looking to adopt the External Collaboration or External Collaboration guidance.

Find out more

Read the Secure Configuration Blueprint

Guidance on protecting government data using Microsoft Purview

About the author

James has spent his entire IT career of 27 years specialising in the security arena, the last 22 of which have been for Microsoft. Based in the UK, he works in the key areas of security and identity in the public sector as a Security Technical Specialist. He is a regular contributor to Microsoft docs for Securing Privileged Access and was the lead architect for the Microsoft 365, External Collaboration, Information Protection, and BYOD guidance produced for Cabinet Office and NCSC.

The post Updated Microsoft 365 security and compliance guidance for the UK public sector appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Transacting through our marketplace connects you to thousands of pre-vetted Microsoft partner solutions, enabling you to rapidly accelerate your AI transformation and drive business outcomes. Whether that’s helping to enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement or reshape business processes.  

It also represents smart spend. To move at the speed of business today, many companies prefer buying to building cloud apps, handing off the associated costs and management to SaaS partners while provisioning end-to-end solutions quickly and reliably. 

In this series of four blogs, we’ll dive into some exciting new AI-powered software solutions and how they can benefit your business. Here’s a taste of what follows.

Decision intelligence for service operations 

Imagine if every decision that service operations teams make were consistently more accurate, timely and planned for. That’s countless micro-gains every minute of the day – at your fingertips. Delivering “decision intelligence” for service operations in banks, insurance companies and healthcare providers,

ActiveOps’ blend of AI and human intelligence delivers the most complete and useful set of predictive and prescriptive insight to help make better decisions at the right time – resulting in over 20% more capacity, over 30% boost in productivity, and significant business impact, quickly. 

Guarding against cyber disruption, 24/7 

Darktrace offers global leadership in cybersecurity AI. Rather than study attacks, Darktrace DETECT’s “Self-Learning AI” technology continuously learns about your organisation, inside and out, and applies that understanding to optimise your state of cybersecurity. Darktrace is fuelling a continuous end-to-end security capability that can autonomously spot and respond to novel in-progress threats within seconds.

Read Blog 2: Safeguard your business with AI-powered security solutions 

Harness emerging Causal AI to go beyond prediction 

Causal AI is a new class of machine intelligence that overcomes many of the issues seen with traditional machine learning and AI. Using Causal AI models, organisations can now go beyond making predictions to answer “what-if?” questions.  

causaLens is the only company to have productised Causal AI through its decisionOS solution – enabling customers to optimise pricing and promotions strategies, fine-tune the marketing mix, anticipate and pre-empt customer churn, and much more. decisionOS is available via the Microsoft marketplace.

Read Blog 3: Optimise business operations through AI-powered solutions 

Delivering outstanding people processes 

Zellis is the largest provider of payroll and HR software, and managed services, to companies in the UK & Ireland. Built on Microsoft Azure, Zellis HCM Cloud connects into PowerBI for analytics, and Power Automate to create integrated solutions for payroll, HR, benefits, and recognition – driving efficiencies and staff satisfaction across your entire organisation.

Read Blog 4: Deliver transformational employee experiences through AI-empowering solutions

Empowering smooth operations from start to finish 

Innovation is thriving across sectors such as banking, finance and insurance, with support from the Microsoft cloud. Enate helps large enterprises to better manage end-to-end workflow smoothly, harnessing the power of automation and AI.

Powered by the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, EnateAI saves Operations teams from having to buy, train and test costly AI MLops solutions from third-party vendors. Instead, just “switch on” EnateAI to extract data from documents, categorise and automate email processing, and understand your customers’ sentiments, driving efficiency and cost savings straightaway.

Making smarter decisions, faster 

Imagine building your own AI-powered data extraction models with no data scientists required. That’s AI with real ROI, a solution offered by Eigen that reduces the amount of time your organisation spends on manual processes by up to 90%.  

Eigen’s no-code AI platform automates the extraction, classification, and understanding of data from any kind of document, so customers can make faster, smarter decisions. Leveraging Microsoft capabilities, Eigen’s software integrates multiple AI technologies, including natural language processing, machine learning, and computer vision.  Building a model requires only a small number of training documents, which means business users can start automating their document workflows quickly. 

Using AI to make working capital more accessible 

Trade Ledger’s mission is helping every business get the capital they need to thrive, through enabling banks and alternative lenders to simplify complex business lending. Using Large Language Models, finance professionals can query their business systems using natural language and get rich analysis and insights into their working-capital needs. AI matches their funding needs with appropriate lending products; once a product is selected, it performs the loan application process.  

By integrating AI, Trade Ledger bridges the gap between what businesses need and what lenders have on offer. It also speeds the application and decision-making process, contributing to a more accessible and transparent working-capital market. 

Reimagining trade transactions 

Meanwhile, Traydstream – a trade finance document-checking automation and digitisation platform – has partnered with Microsoft Azure to reimagine the paper-based processes that support trade finance. Available on the Microsoft marketplace, Traydstream uses a machine learning-based engine, slashing the time to complete checks on the dozens of documents and over 400,000 rules-permutations generated by a single transaction. Traydstream is now collaborating with Citi to provide their clients with access to this cutting-edge and automated trade-document processing capability. 

Start your AI transformation journey today  

Whether it’s safeguarding your organisation and data, amplifying human ingenuity or delivering transformational customer experiences, buying cloud-driven AI software solutions through the global marketplace allows your business to be more innovative, agile and resilient, with less complexity, time and cost. 

That’s because the Microsoft marketplace offers the most comprehensive catalogue of certified cloud solutions anywhere. We’ve made procurement simple, enabling you to complete your entire journey in one place, with straightforward invoicing.

Your organisation’s existing Azure cloud commitment means you can benefit from faster time-to-value, integrating solutions that work with your current technology. In addition, software/IP costs incurred by buying solutions contribute 100% off your Azure Marketplace invoice. You can also rest assured that you’re buying and running solutions on a trusted cloud that boasts industry-leading security. 

We hope you enjoy the other blogs in our series. Meanwhile, why not check out more solutions on the Azure Marketplace? For more information and partner introductions, contact our ISV team.

Other blogs in this series

Blog 2: Safeguarding your business with AI-powered security solutions 

Blog 3: Optimising business operations through AI-powered solutions 

Blog 4: Deliver transformational employee experiences through AI-empowering solutions

About the author

James joined Microsoft 15 years ago and has held leadership positions across the Consumer, Enterprise, and the Partner teams at Microsoft. James is currently the ISV Ecosystem Lead and has a passion for people and technology coming together to drive customer success. James has been at the forefront of Cloud & Digital transformation for the last 10 years launching new business models and driving transformation through the Microsoft Partner ecosystem resulting in and contributing to exciting new revenue streams and significantly accelerated growth for Microsoft and Partners.

The post Driving AI transformation with the Microsoft commercial marketplace  appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Today, the pressures are different. The global workforce is shrinking as the population ages. Labour productivity is in the doldrums. And, with a more connected global population, security threats emerge and evolve faster than ever. While human ingenuity and expertise will always be needed to defend against these threats, 87% of leaders see AI as a market advantage.  

Whether you’re looking to improve agility and security in your SAP workloads, wanting to innovate without disrupting core business processes or looking for more control over your SAP migration, the cloud and AI offer a unique opportunity.

Here are five ways the Microsoft Cloud can help you harness the power of AI and extend your SAP capabilities. 

1. Create faster with AI-driven data insights

In a world of deadlines and labour-intensive tasks, innovation and creativity can suffer. By integrating Azure AI services to your SAP data, you can optimise your workflow and empower your employees to create ideas and content faster. Our AI-powered data platforms also help you complete time-consuming tasks with ease, offering instant and intelligent insights that propel your work forward. 

An example is the Microsoft Fabric platform. It delivers data analytics in a software-as-a-service model, with an open, lake-centric data architecture and deep integration with Microsoft 365. Its built-in AI Copilot helps you find out what you need to know using natural language. In addition, it’s built to work across clouds, so you can easily migrate elsewhere in the future. 

Part of the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform is Power BI, relied on by the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies. With easy-to-use AI analysis capabilities and AI-powered data summarisation, it helps you find insights, make decisions and take appropriate action with ease.  

2. Improve collaboration and productivity

To get the most from your employees, they need to be freed from siloed technology, software and business processes. You can enhance employee productivity by integrating and giving access to SAP data in Microsoft 365. 

With Microsoft 365 Copilot, your AI assistant can help you keep work organised and your employees productive. It combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph – your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more – and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365 works alongside your favourite day-to-day office apps. Just a few examples:

• You can be more creative in Microsoft Word, as Copilot writes, edits, summarises and creates alongside you. Rapidly find key information or get a head start by generating (and then re-generating) a full client brief.

• Copilot helps put all the rich capabilities of Microsoft Excel at your fingertips. It will review and edit data with simple prompts, make sheet-wide updates in seconds, and visualise key insights from large data-sets. 

• In Microsoft PowerPoint, you can now quickly summarise an entire presentation deck, or organise your deck into sections. Copilot also makes it easy to transform existing written documents into full decks, complete with speaker notes and sources – all with a few simple, spoken prompts. 

• With Microsoft Outlook and Teams, Copilot lightens the load and provides the gift of clarity. Summarising long email or message threads (with bullet points and all), pulling out different opinions expressed in meetings, and quickly drafting suggested replies and action items, all in real time. So you can unlock the magic of efficient and effective meetings. ​ 

Combining Microsoft Generative AI with SAP’s SuccessFactors and Joule enables new experiences for HR leaders, recruiters, hiring managers and employees. They can now create tailored job descriptions based on SAP SuccessFactors data and external data. Or rapidly generate interview questions based on an applicant’s CV. Using Microsoft Viva Copilot, employees will be able to curate their own learning paths. 

3. Simplify with automation and innovation

When great ideas or highly productive employees are held back by repetitive or labour-intensive business processes, it can stifle progress and creativity. Simplify your business process with AI-driven development and automation, using your SAP data. 

For over a decade, we’ve been progressively unifying the Microsoft Power Platform into a unique, fully integrated and cloud-powered suite. With solutions such as Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder, we’ve reinvented how all makers develop software, further democratising access to innovative business solutions.

Today, all employees have access to the tools they need to create applications, solve problems, automate workflows and analyse data more effectively. With Copilot working as your AI assistant in Power Apps, the development process is more accessible and less repetitive, so your development cycles don’t get slowed down.

Just describe your goal verbally, and Power Apps will use integrated AI to generate code, and even build complete apps. Check out the latest AI and other advances built into Power Apps.

You can also auto-generate working apps and data within seconds from images and design files. Save time, build more complex solutions, and reimagine business applications. Empower anyone across the business to create apps quickly and easily. 

4. Improve developer productivity with Copilot

Working faster and smarter can be crucial when it comes to business competitiveness and innovation. One of the most exciting new capabilities we’ve recently launched with GitHub is a new service we call GitHub Copilot. It can empower developers to save time and energy with AI-generated code, and helps easily integrate AI capabilities into SAP ABAP applications. 

GitHub Copilot provides an AI-pair programmer that works with all of the popular programming languages. This dramatically accelerates developer productivity. Up to 46% of all new code written by developers using Copilot is now fully AI-generated, with developers reporting a 55% productivity boost by using Copilot. 60% to 75% of developers who use GitHub Copilot also say it helps them focus on more satisfying work and enjoy their jobs more. 

5. Stay ahead with AI-driven security

Keeping protected against cyberthreats in today’s security landscape means being able to respond quickly and effectively. With Microsoft Security Copilot, you can do just that. 

Security Copilot combines the most advanced GPT4 model from OpenAI with a Microsoft-developed, security-specific model. It’s powered by Microsoft Security’s unique expertise and scale, sifting through 65 trillion signals daily. So whether you need to detect hidden patterns, harden defences or respond to incidents in your SAP systems, it’ll help you do it better and faster. 

As the first and only generative AI security product to help defend organisations at machine speed and scale, Security Copilot helps you be more effective and efficient while also supporting your teams to solve security challenges. It runs on our security and privacy-compliant hyperscale infrastructure, which is unique to Microsoft and brings the full benefit of being on the Azure cloud platform. And over time, it will work with a growing ecosystem of products from third-party vendors. 

With this comprehensive approach, and all your security capabilities in one place, you’ll benefit from unparalleled simplicity, visibility, automation, and intelligence.  

Extend SAP and innovate on Microsoft Cloud

Redefine what’s possible by integrating AI and Microsoft into your SAP data. It can help empower your employees, accelerate savings in your business, optimise your workload and enhance your productivity.  

To learn how AI can benefit your organisation and how we’ll support you through the change, please contact the authors, Sean Pilkington and Tom Payne, or your Microsoft representatives. 

Find out more

Microsoft Discovery Day: SAP on the Microsoft Cloud

Maximize SAP Investments by Migrating to the Microsoft Cloud: On-demand webinar

Innovate on Your SAP Data with Power Platform Integration: On-demand webinar

About the authors

Sean Pilkington

As the SAP on Azure UK Lead at Microsoft, Sean draws on over 20 years of experience in SAP design and solutioning to help clients visualise how their SAP solutions can be deployed into the Azure cloud. He thrives on demonstrating innovative technology that seamlessly blends with SAP to give customers the best experience, while enabling their business to drive down costs, increase ROI on technology and accelerate their digital transformation.

Tom Payne

As the SAP on Azure Sales Lead at Microsoft, Tom brings a wealth of experience to empowering SAP customers as they embrace cloud transformation with Microsoft Azure. He is adept at simplifying complex technology applications while optimising the customer journey.

The post Embrace the art of the possible: 5 ways Microsoft AI can enhance your SAP workload  appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

The use of automated detection and response systems can help tip the scale in favour of defenders by using risk-based algorithms and anomalous activity detection to flag events that require human expertise to investigate further. This helps security analysts detect patterns and behaviours that are not obvious to the human eye, with more precision and speed than human defenders alone.

The background to “cognitive cyber”

As advances in dynamic and adaptive cyber defence systems become reality, what do organisations need to do to become ready for cognitive cyber, and what exactly is it?

Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. Cognitive cyber attempts to simulate that process with the application of self-learning algorithms, natural language processing, and big-data mining techniques as applied to the cybersecurity domain. It uses cognitive system overlays to traditional artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) models to achieve something greater than the sum of the parts. 

To recap:

• Classic/traditional AI and ML​ detects and classifies, and can work on vast amounts of data for use in real-time applications and automation of capabilities. ​Traditional AI is strong when it comes to looking at a large field of data and finding patterns or continuations (like making recommendations).
• Generative AI (GAI), often powered by generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), effectively understands and creates content. It works on relatively small chunks of data – text, images, sounds, videos. Large language models (LLMs) are a kind of GAI that work on text.​ LLMs are good at understanding language, summarising, and translating concepts, for example from language to code or vice-versa. ​

Clearly, linking these models makes for a much more powerful narrative. And, by using the compute power, scalability, and richness of the cloud, we can build entire systems of intelligence that can reason over vast amounts of information – structured and unstructured.​

Our name for this intelligence-based cognitive capability? Microsoft Copilots. These are experiences that use generative AI to help humans with complex cognitive tasks.

Introducing Microsoft Security Copilot

Built specifically to augment human security expertise, Microsoft Security Copilot is a combination of the most advanced GPT4 model from OpenAI, with a Microsoft expert-driven, security-specific LLM model.

Most LLMs are trained on corpuses of written human language. Security Copilot is trained on security logs, attack telemetry and threat intelligence, the outcome of which is the first AI/ML model trained specifically for security.

But the capability is much more than just the large language model. Built into the product are specific cyber skills and promptbooks informed by our global threat intelligence, which runs on Azure’s hyperscale infrastructure. This means that the models inherit Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. When it comes to the data Copilot is reasoning across, your data remains your data.

Security Copilot democratises defender skills by allowing natural language for querying rather than having to learn complex querying languages like Kusto Query Language (KQL). This lowers the barrier to entry for new analysts, which helps address the cybersecurity skills shortage. We’ve launched an Early Access program for qualified candidates to explore the capabilities of Security Copilot. Reach out to your sales representative to get more details.

Use cases for Microsoft Security Copilot

Human ingenuity and expertise will always be an irreplaceable component of defence, so we need technology that can augment these unique capabilities to improve the analyst experience all-up. For this reason, initially we are focusing on security operations centre (SOC) use cases.

The three primary use cases are security posture management, incident response, and security reporting.​

• Security posture management: Security Copilot delivers information on anything that might expose an organisation to a known threat. It then gives prescriptive guidance on how to protect against those potential vulnerabilities.​ A query such as: ‘How can I improve my security posture?’ will return evidence-based recommendations.

• Incident response: Security Copilot can quickly surface an incident, enrich it with context from other data sources, assess its scale and impact, and provide information on what the source might be. Again, it will support the analyst through the response and remediation steps with guided recommendations.

• Security reporting: Security Copilot can deliver customisable reports that are ready to share and easy to consume to keep managers and other stakeholders in the loop. What this means tactically is you can ask Security Copilot in natural language: ‘Summarise this incident in a single PowerPoint slide’, and it will do just that.

Preparing for cognitive cyber defence: 3 steps

In the future, our vision with Security Copilot is to support use cases across security, identity, management, compliance and more, leveraging skillsets across Microsoft and third-party products. In the meantime, and whilst Security Copilot is not yet publicly available, there are things organisations can do to prepare for these cognitive cyber defence capabilities:

Step 1: Secure your identities, especially privileged identities, and SOC members. Attackers will frequently target these individuals to gain access to critical information and systems to elevate the impact of a successful compromise.

Step 2: The age of AI is also referred to as the age of platforms. Integrating your security signals into an observability platform brings huge security gains in terms of visibility and automation. 

Step 3: Initially, Security Copilot is integrated with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and for an even better experience, deploy Microsoft Sentinel and Intune. Going forward, Security Copilot will integrate with third-party products.  

Finally, prepare for the risks. As with any new technology, there are both risks and rewards. To help organisations navigate the risk/reward balance, we’ve released guidance, frameworks, and tooling. 

More information, including links to the risk assessment framework, the Counterfit tool and the Adversarial Threat Matrix (MITRE ATLAS) can be found in our Security blog post Best practices for AI security risk management. 

For information on our commitment to build trustworthy and responsible AI, please read Responsible and trusted AI and Building AI responsibly from research to practice.

Cognitive and AIML technologies are here to stay. While they have the power to bring immense potential for improving our defenders’ experience, securing our organisations, and protecting society, we must also be mindful of potential vulnerabilities on an equally large scale and defend against that risk.

Find out more

Introducing Microsoft Security Copilot

Microsoft Security Copilot Early Access Program

News Center: Microsoft brings the power of AI to cyberdefense

Microsoft Security Copilot: Empowering defenders at the speed of AI

About the author

Previously lead investigator for Microsoft’s detection and response team (DART), Lesley Kipling has spent more than 17 years responding to our customers’ largest and most impactful cybersecurity incidents. As Chief Cybersecurity Advisor, she now provides customers, partners and agencies around the globe with deep insights into how and why security incidents happen, how to harden defences and more importantly, how to automate response and contain attacks with the power of the cloud and machine learning. She holds a Master of Science in Forensic Computing from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom.

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