Alongside applauding our partners’ achievements, we highlighted the transformative impact of AI in security. AI is the defining technology of our time, revolutionizing how we anticipate, prevent, and respond to threats. MISA—a coalition of Microsoft leaders and subject matter experts, independent software vendors (ISVs), and managed security service providers (MSSPs)—and its members play a pivotal role in driving this evolution, ensuring a safer digital future for everyone.

Together, we work to defend organizations around the world from increasing cyberthreats. In San Francisco, California, on May 6, 2024, the first day of RSA Conference 2024 (RSAC), we were honored to bring together MISA members and Microsoft Security leadership to honor the top finalists and announce award winners.

“I’m so pleased to congratulate this year’s Microsoft Security Excellence awards recipients and to acknowledge all those who were nominated,” said Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security Business. “Our partner community plays such an important role in helping our customers navigate a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape. Each of this year’s recipients demonstrates true innovation and an inspiring dedication to the mission of security. We are so proud to work alongside them in a shared commitment to building a safer world for everyone.”

Celebrating innovation and impact

This year we streamlined the award categories to spotlight the achievements that not only redefine our industry but also significantly advance our collective mission towards a more secure and efficient digital future.

We also introduced a new award category: the Endpoint Management Trailblazer, which celebrates partners’ contributions to modernizing endpoint and device management. As the landscape of cyberthreats continues to evolve, the security perimeter of organizations extends beyond traditional boundaries, making endpoint management more critical than ever.

Effective endpoint and device management ensures that every device connected to an organization’s network is continuously monitored and secured, reducing the risk of breaches. This not only includes safeguarding the devices themselves but also involves managing access to networks and data in a way that keeps up with the dynamic nature of cyberthreats.

By spotlighting our partners who excel in this area, we aim to underscore the importance of adopting forward-thinking security measures that align with the modern workplace’s needs, ultimately fostering a safer and more resilient digital environment for businesses and their stakeholders.

Meet the leaders behind this year’s awards

Executives from across Microsoft came together to recognize and celebrate all the award winner finalists and winners, including:

Security Trailblazer: Alym Rayani, Vice President Security GTM.

Compliance and Privacy Trailblazer: Herain Oberoi, General Manager, Data Security, Governance, Compliance, and Privacy.

Identity Trailblazer: Irina Nechaeva, General Manager, Identity and Network Access; and Morgan Webb, Principle Group Manager, Security Customer Experience Engineering.

Endpoint Management Trailblazer: Dilip Radhakrishnan, General Manager, Microsoft Intune.

Security Customer Champion: Jeffrey York, Vice President, Security Partner Investments and Incentives.

Security Changemaker: Ann Choi, General Manager, Commercial Cloud Partner Strategy.

Diversity in Security: Tara Knapp, Director, Security Business Development; and Tara Ragan, Channel Strategy and Operations Manager, Lighthouse.

Security MSSP of the Year: Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security Business.

Security ISV of the Year: Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security Business.

2024 Security Excellence Award winners

In line with this year’s theme focused on the evolution of cybersecurity, we’re proud to spotlight the key role of innovative technology and dedicated individuals in shaping a more secure future. After receiving many impressive award nominations, our review panel shortlisted five nominees for each category, with winners determined by votes from Microsoft and MISA members. The finalists and winners in each category are:

Security Trailblazer 

Partners that have delivered innovative solutions or services that leverage the full Microsoft range of security products and have proven to be outstanding leaders in accelerating customers’ efforts to mitigate cybersecurity threats.

• Bulletproof—Winner
• Atech Cloud
• BlueVoyant
• Kovrr
• Performanta

Compliance and Privacy Trailblazer

Partners that deliver innovative solutions or services and are distinguished leaders in driving holistic or end-to-end Microsoft compliance or privacy strategy with customers.

• Lighthouse—Winner
• archTIS
• Infotechtion
• PwC
• Secude

Identity Trailblazer

Partners that are leaders in the identity space, have driven identity-related initiatives, and delivered innovative solutions or services with Microsoft Entra ID.

• Thales—Winner
• InSpark
• Oxford Computer Group
• Valence Security
• Wipro

Endpoint Management Trailblazer

Partners that have proven expertise in helping customers modernize their endpoint and device management posture while enabling organizations to reduce costs.

• water IT Security—Winner
• CGI
• Insight
• Senserva
• Synergy Advisors

Security Customer Champion

Partners that go above and beyond to drive customer impact and that have a proven track record of customer obsession and success.

• Ascent Solutions—Winner
• Protiviti
• PwC
• Quorum Cyber
• Tanium

Security Changemaker

Individuals within partner organizations who have made a remarkable security contribution to the company or the larger security community.

• Anna Webb, Kocho—Winner
• Adrianna Chen, D3 Security
• Ricardo Nicolini, Bulletproof
• Scott Edwards, Summit 7
• Tom Boltman, Kovrr

Diversity in Security

Partners that have demonstrated a significant commitment to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion to better serve security customers and foster change in the industry.

• Avanade—Winner
• Check Point
• CyberProof a UST Company
• Entrust
• Eviden

Security MSSP of the Year  

MSSPs that are all-around powerhouses with strong integration between Microsoft products and ongoing managed security services that drive the end-to-end Microsoft Security stack to our mutual customers.       

• Wortell—Winner
• Difenda
• glueckkanja AG
• Quorum Cyber
• Transparity

Security ISV of the Year

ISVs that are all-around powerhouses, show growth potential, and have innovative security solutions that integrate with a MISA-qualifying security product.

• ContraForce—Winner
• Kovrr
• Netskope
• Senserva
• Silverfort

We’re ready for what’s next 

This was an amazing evening, bringing together MISA members, Microsoft executives, and future security experts. Many thanks to all who came, and congratulations again to all our finalists and winners. One constant within the ever-changing world of cybersecurity is the way our community comes together to protect and empower customers. We look forward to seeing everything you accomplish in the upcoming year. 

If you’re at RSA Conference May 6-9, 2024, come and visit us at the Microsoft Booth 6044 North Expo where MISA members will be showcasing their solutions at our MISA demo station and the Microsoft Theater. We’d love to see you at the following Theater sessions: 

• ContraForce and Bulletproof—Hyperautomation for SecOps Service Management. Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 5:00 PM PT to 5:20 PM PT.
• glueckkanja AG—Use Microsoft Copilot for Security to bring context to your incidents. Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 5:30 PM PT to 5:50 PM PT.  
• Kovrr—The need for Shift Up Strategy: Financially Quantifying C-Suite Cyber Risk Management Decisions. Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 5:00 PM PT to 5:20 PM PT. 
• Darktrace—Combining the power of Darktrace & Microsoft Copilot for Security to Empower the Modern SOC. Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 5:30 PM PT to 5:50 PM PT.
• Avanade—Real world stories of using Microsoft Purview Data Protection to enable responsible adoption of Copilot for Microsoft 365. ​Thursday May 9, 2024, 10:30 AM PT to 10:50 AM PT. 

Learn more

Learn more about the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Microsoft announces the 2024 Microsoft Security Excellence Awards winners appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Security is our top priority at Microsoft—above all else—and our expanded Secure Future Initiative underscores our company-wide commitment to making the world a safer place for everyone. I am proud that Microsoft is prioritizing security in the age of AI as we continue to innovate with a security-first mindset. 

Today, new capabilities are now available in Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview to help organizations secure and govern generative AI applications at work. These releases deliver purpose-built policy tools and better visibility to help you secure and govern generative AI apps and their data. We are also delivering a new unified experience for the security analyst and integrating Microsoft Copilot for Security across our security product portfolio.  

You’ll be able to see firsthand these innovations and more across the Microsoft Security portfolio at RSA Conference (RSAC). I also hope you will also join me on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, for “Securing AI: What We’ve Learned and What Comes Next,” to explore the strategies that every organization can implement to securely design, deploy, and govern AI.

Secure your AI transformation with Microsoft Security

Wherever your organization is in your AI transformation, you will need comprehensive security controls to secure govern your AI applications and data throughout their lifecycle—development, deployment, and runtime.  

With the new capabilities announced today, Microsoft becomes the first security provider to deliver end-to-end AI security posture management, threat protection, data security, and governance for AI.

Discover new AI attack surfaces, strengthen your AI security posture, and protect AI apps against threats with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Now security teams can identify their entire AI infrastructure—such as plugins, SDKs, and other AI technologies—with AI security posture management capabilities across platforms like Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, and Amazon Bedrock. You can continuously identify risks, map attack paths, and use built-in security best practices to prevent direct and indirect attacks on AI applications, from development to runtime.

Integrated with Microsoft Azure AI services, including Microsoft Azure AI Content Safety and Azure OpenAI, Defender for Cloud will continuously monitor AI applications for anomalous activity, correlate findings, and enrich security alerts with supporting evidence. Defender for Cloud is the first cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) to deliver threat protection for AI workloads at runtime, providing security operations center (SOC) analysts with new detections that alert to malicious activity and active threats, such as jailbreak attacks, credential theft, and sensitive data leakage. Additionally, SOC analysts will be able facilitate incident response with native integration of these signals into Microsoft Defender XDR.

Identify and mitigate data security and data compliance risks with Microsoft Purview. Give your security teams greater visibility into and understanding of which AI applications are being used and how to help you safeguard your data effectively in the age of AI. The Microsoft Purview AI Hub, now in preview, delivers insights such as sensitive data shared with AI applications, total number of users interacting with AI apps and their associated risk level, and more. To prevent potential oversharing of sensitive data, new insights help organizations identify unlabeled files that Copilot references and prioritize mitigation of oversharing risks. Additionally, we are excited to announce the preview of non-compliant usage insights in the AI Hub to help customers discover potential AI interactions that violate enterprise and regulatory policies in areas like hate and discrimination, corporate sabotage, money laundering, and more.

Govern AI usage to comply with regulatory policies with new AI compliance assessments in Microsoft Purview. We understand how important it is to comply with regulations, and how complicated it can be when deploying new technology. Four new Compliance Manager assessment templates, now in preview, are available to help you assess, implement, and strengthen compliance with AI regulations and standards, including EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 23894:2023, and ISO/IEC 42001. The new assessment insights will also be surfaced within the Purview AI Hub, providing recommended actions to support compliance as you onboard and deploy AI solutions.

Together we can help everyone pursue the benefits of AI, by thoughtfully addressing the new risks. The new capabilities in Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Purview, which build on top of the innovations we shared at Microsoft Ignite 2023 and Microsoft Secure 2024, are important advancements in empowering security teams to discover, protect, and govern AI—whether you’re adopting software as a service (SaaS) AI solutions or building your own.

Read more about all of the new capabilities and features that help you secure and govern AI.

Strengthening end-to-end security with a unified security operations platform

We continue investing in our long-standing commitment to providing you with the most complete end-to-end protection for your entire digital estate. There is an immediate need for tool consolidation and AI to gain the speed and scale required to defend against these new digital threats. Microsoft integrates all of the foundational SOC tools—cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM), comprehensive native extended detection and response (XDR), unified security posture management, and generative AI—to deliver true end-to-end threat protection in a single platform, with a common data model, and a unified analyst experience.  

The new unified security operations platform experience, in preview, transforms the real-world analyst experience with a simple, approachable user experience that brings together all the security signals and threat intelligence currently stuck in other tools. Analysts will have more context at every stage, with helpful recommendations and suggestions for automation that make investigation and response easier than ever before. We are also introducing new features across Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR, including global search, custom detections, and automation rules.

We are also pleased to announce a number of additional new features and capabilities that will empower your security operations center (SOC) to work across Microsoft security products for stronger end-to-end security.

• Microsoft Security Exposure Management initiatives help your security team identify risky exposures and instances of insufficient implementation of essential security controls, to find opportunities for improvement.
• SOC analysts can now use insider risk information as part of their investigation in Microsoft Defender XDR.
• Microsoft Defender XDR expands to include native operational technology (OT) protection, enabling automatic correlation of OT threat signal into cross-workload incidents and the ability to manage OT and industrial control system vulnerabilities directly within Defender XDR.
• Expanded attack disruption in Microsoft Defender XDR, powered by AI, machine learning, and threat intelligence, will cover new attack scenarios like disabling malicious OAuth apps and will significantly broaden compromised user disruption, such as leaked credentials, stuffing, and guessing.
• Microsoft Sentinel launches SOC Optimizations to provide tailored guidance to help manage costs, increase the value of data ingested, and improve coverage against common attack techniques.

Expanded Microsoft Copilot for Security integrations

When it comes to supporting security teams and relieving complexity, Microsoft Copilot for Security offers a great advantage. Greater integration of Copilot across the Microsoft security portfolio and beyond provides richer embedded experiences and Copilot capabilities from familiar and trusted products. We are proud to announce new Microsoft Copilot for Security integrations, including Purview, new partner plugins, Azure Firewall, and Azure Web Application Firewall. These integrations provide your security teams with real-time guidance, deeper investigative insights, and expanded access to data from across your environment.  

Security for the era of AI

An end-to-end security platform will be a determining factor in every organization’s transformation and will play a critical role in the durability of AI-powered innovation. Organizations that focus on securing AI and invest in using AI to strengthen security will be the lasting leaders in their industries and markets. Microsoft is committed to empowering these industry and market leaders with security solutions that can help them achieve more. We bring together four critical advantages: large-scale data and threat intelligence; the most complete end-to-end platform; industry leading, responsible AI; and tools to help you secure and govern AI.

With the general availability of Copilot for Security, Microsoft has delivered on our promise to put industry-leading generative AI into the hands of IT and security professionals of all levels of experience. Now, with today’s release of new capabilities in Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Purview, we are also delivering on our commitment to empower IT and security teams with the tools they need to take advantage of AI safely, responsibly, and securely.

Lastly and importantly, security is a team sport. We look forward to working together with the industry and our partners on advancing cyber security for all. 

I do hope you’ll connect with us at RSAC this week, where we will be demonstrating our comprehensive security portfolio and how it helps you protect your environment from every angle to prepare for and confidently adopt and deploy AI. 

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post New capabilities to help you secure your AI transformation appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Recently at Microsoft Secure, we shared our latest innovations for securing and governing AI and announced the generative AI solution for cyberdefenders: Microsoft Copilot for Security. We’re excited to talk with you about how to bring these innovations to life in your organization at the RSA Conference (RSAC), May 6 to 9, 2024, in San Francisco.

At the conference, we’ll demonstrate how to secure and govern AI and benefit from end-to-end protection with solutions across the Microsoft Security portfolio, including Microsoft Copilot for Security. We’ll show you how we help security teams build their skills faster to protect their organizations.

Join us a day early, on Sunday, May 5, 2024, at Microsoft Pre-Day to kick-off RSA Conference 2024, and hear directly from our Microsoft Security Business leaders, including Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security Business, and Charlie Bell, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Security. Plus, view live demos at a variety of Microsoft sessions happening throughout the conference in breakout rooms and at our booth #6044N.

Microsoft Pre-Day: Hear from Microsoft Security product leaders

Start the conference on a high note by joining us for the Microsoft Pre-Day at the Microsoft Security Hub beginning at 4:00 PM PT on Sunday, May 5, 2024. For chief information security officers (CISOs) and cybersecurity professionals, we invite you to dive deeper into the latest AI announcements, learn about new product capabilities, and gain peace of mind of how to secure AI as you introduce the technology into your organization.

Vasu Jakkal and other Microsoft leaders will share our perspectives on topics like AI-powered security, innovations in end-to-end protection, and solutions to secure AI. We’ll also be joined by Microsoft customers who will share how they have been successful in their security evolution.

Pre-Day will continue with a Q&A session with Vasu Jakkal, Charlie Bell, and other leaders. They’ll reflect on the latest developments in cybersecurity, AI, and how the global community of cyber professionals can work together for a more secure future.

The conclusion of Pre-Day will be an evening reception at 6:00 PM PT, where you will have an opportunity to network with other professionals over drinks and appetizers.

Microsoft keynote and sessions: Get valuable insights and inspiration

Once the RSA Conference begins, you’ll have several opportunities to attend demos and connect one-on-one with Microsoft product experts. Mark your calendar on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, to visit our keynote in the official conference line up from 3:40 PM PT to 4:00 PM PT at Moscone West. Vasu Jakkal will share insights on how AI is evolving, its impact on the threat landscape, and what every organization should do to keep it safe.

While there is a lot of hype around AI, most security professionals are taking a risk-averse approach. This means that employees will find workarounds to use generative AI. Join Brian Fielder, Vice President of Security Engineering at Microsoft, who will talk about Microsoft’s approach to securing and governing AI.  You will walk away with practical guidance on governing AI, how to ensure data privacy, and compliance.

Check out one or all of our Microsoft Security sessions included in the RSA Conference agenda. Here are just a few you won’t want to miss:

• “Hiding in Plain Sight: Hunting Volt Typhoon Cyber Actors.” Monday, May 6, 2024, 2:20 PM PT to 3:10 PM PT. Explore how the private sector and United States government work together to identify activity of the Volt Typhoon cyberthreat. Get lessons learned from Volt Typhoon’s tactics, techniques, and procedures, and how network defenders can best defend themselves. Kelly Bissell, Deputy CISO and CVP, Security Services, Microsoft; Cynthia Kaiser, Deputy Assistant Director, FBI; Morgan Adamski, Chief NSA Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, DOD; and Andrew Scott, Associate Director for China Operations, CISA; will share insights.
• “AI Safety: Where’s the Puck Headed?” Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 9:40 AM PT to 10:30 AM PT. Hear from a panel of experts—Ram Shankar Siva Kumar Data Cowboy, Microsoft; Vijay Bolina, CISO, Head of Cybersecurity Research, Google DeepMind; Rumman Chowdhury, Responsible AI Fellow, Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University; Dan Hendrycks, Founder, Center for AI Safety; and Daniel Rohrer, Vice President of Software Product Security—Architecture and Research, NVIDIA—on what AI safety means, why it rose to prominence, and what this means for the future of AI and cybersecurity.
• “From Attribution to Accountability: Upholding International Rules Online.” Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 1:15 PM PT to 2:05 PM PT. Get insights from a panel of litigation experts on how governments and the private sector can improve their public attribution efforts and ensure they are working cooperatively to advance respect for international rules online. The panel will include Amy Hogan-Burney, Associate Counsel and General Manager, Cybersecurity Policy and Protection, Microsoft; Megan Stifel, Chief Strategy Officer, Institute for Security and Technology; Liesyl Franz, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Cyberspace Security, United States Department of State; Jonathan Horowitz, Legal Advisor, International Committee of the Red Cross; and William Middleton of the Foreign, Cyber Director, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

You can also stop by our Security Hub, located at The Palace Hotel, at any time to view an additional lineup of sessions well worth exploring, highlighting a few:

• “A Year of Microsoft Copilot for Security.” Monday, May 6, 2024,10:30 AM PT to 11:30 AM PT. Join us as we reflect on 12 months of learning from early customers, listen to their real-world experiences, dive into research on how Copilot for Security can elevate productivity with optimized security and catch a sneak peek into the future of generative AI in security. 
• “Threat intelligence trends and insights breakfast panel.”: Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 8:00 AM PT to 9:00 AM PT. Attend an exclusive briefing featuring experts from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team, who analyze 78 trillion signals daily to uncover emerging threats. They will share insights and guidance on nation-state actors, cybercrime takedowns, fraud and social engineering, and cyber influence operations. 
• AI Safety lunch and fireside chat: Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 12:00 PM PT to 1:30 PM PT. Join Sarah Bird, Chief Product Officer of Responsible AI, and Bret Arsenault, Chief Cybersecurity Advisor, where we’ll address CISOs’ top AI concerns, the importance of responsible AI, and Microsoft’s commitment to AI safety. Walk away with practical guidance on implementing AI safely in your organization. 
• “Zero Trust for AI Security Leaders session.” Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 2:30 PM PT to 3:15 PM PT. Gain a deeper understanding of the five top risks inherent to generative AI and how Zero Trust for AI can help your organization deploy and use AI securely. You will walk away from this session with a Zero Trust for AI framework and a copy of the book signed by the author and presenter Mark Simos.

Visit Microsoft Security Hub at The Palace Hotel  

Join us for these sessions and more at the Microsoft Security Hub. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to explore all our sessions and ancillary events, plus you can also engage in a gamified experience dedicated to AI for security and have the chance to win exciting prizes. Additionally, you can schedule meetings with Microsoft experts and delve into the Cyber Threat Intelligence Program’s (CTIP) interactive experience from the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), where you’ll be able to explore the world of the malware sinkhole. The CTIP collects actionable cyberthreat intelligence from its malware disruption operations and uses this data to inform Microsoft products and services. Leveraging unique insights from Microsoft Threat Intelligence, the DCU disrupts cybercriminals’ technical infrastructure through civil legal actions, technical measures, criminal referrals to law enforcement, and public and private partnerships.

Register now to attend a variety of sessions at the Microsoft Security Hub, hosted at the historical Palace Hotel.

Stop by Microsoft Security booth at Moscone North  

The Microsoft booth will be located this year in Moscone North, close to the entrance, and will feature demos of Microsoft Security portfolio, theater presentations, gamified experience focused on Security for AI, and interactive DCU experience. Have some refreshments amidst your busy conference day and get your copy of the books about Zero Trust and Threat Intelligence signed by the authors.  

Drop by the theater at the the Microsoft booth to hear from our experts on the latest news and demos on AI, threat protection, secure access, data governance, cloud security, privacy, Zero Trust, and more. 

Participate in conversations on the future of cybersecurity

While at RSAC, consider participating in other events that will connect you with cybersecurity professionals and spark interesting conversation about the future of cybersecurity and AI.

• CSA AI Summit​: Monday, May 6, 2024, 12:10 PM PT to 12:30 PM PT. Get a front-row seat to Microsoft Security for AI innovations as part of the summit. Led by Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager Tina Ying, our session will focus on Security for AI. The CSA AI Summit, from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM PT on Level 3 of Moscone Center South, will explore the intersection of AI and cloud and offer best practices on how to make the most of the AI revolution. More than 1,100 cybersecurity leaders and professionals are expected to attend the summit.
• Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) Meetup: ​Tuesday, May 7, 2024, 6:30 PM PT to 7:30 PM PT. Learn how WiCyS is introducing more women to cybersecurity—and how you can support these endeavors. The meetup will spotlight the achievements of WiCyS, established in 2012 to increase the number of women in cybersecurity roles by giving them mentorships, networking opportunities, and access to training and resources.

Microsoft Partners: Networking opportunity and Security Excellence Awards celebration

The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), comprised of independent software vendors (ISV) and managed security service providers (MSSPs) that have integrated their solutions with Microsoft’s security products, will be back at RSAC 2024. MISA will again have a demo station at Microsoft Booth #6044N in Moscone North Expo among other events, including the fifth annual Microsoft Security Excellence Awards (presented by MISA).

MISA’s RSAC 2024 presence will include:

• MISA Demo Station: Stop by Microsoft Booth #6044N Monday, May 6, 2024, to Thursday, May 9, 2024, for demonstrations of Microsoft products.
• Theater sessions: Join one or more of our five theater sessions for valuable insights focused on how MISA members work together with Microsoft to protect customers from cyberthreats. Led by MISA members, these sessions will focus on strategies to protect customers from cyber threats. The sessions will feature expertise from partners Bulletproof, ContraForce, Darktrace, Avanade, Kovrr, and glueckkanja AG.
• Hub sessions: Join MISA members for a one-hour session on top-of-mind security topics in the Microsoft Security Hub.
• Partner awards: MISA members are invited to attend the Microsoft Security Excellence Awards on Monday, May 6, 2024, where winners will be announced in nine security award categories.

Congratulations to the finalists of the 2024 Excellence Awards!

Connect with Microsoft at RSAC

Register today for the Microsoft Security RSAC Pre-Day on May 5, 2024 from 4:00 PM PT to 6:00 PM PT. Explore our sessions, receptions, and other events. Leverage this opportunity to learn and connect. Stop by our booth #6044N to ask questions. Enjoy conversation or simply say hello. Looking forward to seeing you at RSAC!

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Explore Microsoft’s AI innovations at RSA Conference 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Fragmentation is in the way

The market has responded with dozens of products that address this challenge locally. Security and governance teams often bolt on security controls to protect individual data stores, having to stitch together a patchwork of solutions. This approach not only strains resources but is also ineffective. Security outcomes are worse—audits are failed and brand reputations are damaged.

In Microsoft’s most recent Data Security Index report, we found that 74% of organizations experienced some sensitive data exposure in the past year. Similarly, 68% of companies reported not being able to gather the right data insights, leading to poor data quality.² And even though organizations are quickly adopting generative AI, less than half of business leaders are confident in their organization’s ability to mitigate AI risks and adhere to its upcoming regulations.³ In the era of AI, before unlocking the power of data, organizations are looking for integrated security and governance solutions to help them confidently activate their data estate.

“In the age of data-driven decision making, organizations must recognize that governance practices are prerequisites for extracting trusted and responsible insights from their data. Without proper security and governance, analytics initiatives are at risk of producing unreliable or compromised results, which in turn negatively impacts business outcomes.”

—Chandana Gopal, Research Director, Enterprise Intelligence, IDC

Microsoft Purview—Seamlessly securing and confidently activating your data estate

The rise of generative AI and data democratization in the form of new analytics tools has made organizations look inward to adopt responsible analytics practices. At Microsoft, we believe that the key to responsible analytics is in adopting integrated solutions to secure your data, so you can confidently activate it. Security and governance are no longer an aftermath to data deployments, they are table stakes.

In 2022, we introduced Microsoft Purview, a comprehensive set of solutions that let you secure, govern, and ensure compliance across your data estate. Since then, the teams have worked tirelessly to bring this vision to life. With a unified approach, Microsoft Purview combines a variety of capabilities to allow customers to seamlessly secure, and confidently activate data, while adhering to regulatory requirements in one single solution built on a shared set of AI-powered data governance, classification, and audit logging, all under a unified management experience.

Seamlessly secure your data with built-in controls

With the rapid adoption of platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, we are excited to announce new innovations—all in preview—to help organizations adopt built-in data security across their most utilized systems. Starting today, we are enabling the following experiences:

• Built-in protections: Business users can now apply label-based protections—a familiar concept to the millions of users who employ Microsoft 365 labels and data loss prevention (DLP) policies, into Microsoft Fabric workloads. 
• Consistent enforcements: Admins can now extend their label-based protections across structured and unstructured data stores, including Microsoft Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage, and Amazon S3 buckets.
• Data risk detections: Data doesn’t move itself. People move data. Security teams can now ingest signals coming from Microsoft Fabric into the millions of signals across Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management.

Click here to watch the Microsoft Mechanics video to see this scenario in action!

These capabilities enable a confident approach to data democratization as organizations work on all types of data, whether sensitive or not, in a secure and responsible way. Learn more about how to seamlessly secure your data estate with our new capabilities.

Confidently activate your data with modern data governance

We are thrilled to introduce the new Microsoft Purview Data Governance experience. This new reimagined software as a service (SaaS) solution offers sophisticated yet simple business-friendly interaction, integration across your multicloud data estate, and actionable insights that help data leaders to responsibly unlock business value within their data estate. The new experience is:

• Business-friendly, federated, multicloud: Purpose-built for federated governance with efficient data office management and oversight that offers customizable business terms, roles, and policies for your multisource, multicloud data estate.
• Designed for business efficiency: Scan and search data assets and accelerate your practice with built-in templates, terms, and policy recommendations served up based on your metadata. Define data quality policies that follow the data through your governance practice.
• Actionable and informative: Aggregated actions and health insights help you put the practice in data governance by showcasing the overall health of your governed estate through built-in reports while interactive summarized actions help you improve the overall posture of your data governance practice.

Click here to learn more about our new modern Data Governance experience.

Expanding across your data estate

These innovations, all in public preview, are just the beginning of our journey to provide you with an integrated solution to secure and govern your data estate. We invite you to try them out and share your feedback with us. These capabilities will come in a new pay-as-you-go consumptive model, available at no additional cost during preview in the near term, with pricing details to follow in the future.

Join us at the Fabric Community Conference

Please join us at the first ever Microsoft Fabric Community Conference in Las Vegas. If you’re attending, don’t miss the “Microsoft Purview for the Age of AI” keynote and our sessions on Microsoft Purview. Explore more details on how Microsoft Purview can help you and read our e-book “Crash Course in Microsoft Purview: A guide to securing and managing your data estate.”

Microsoft Purview

Secure and govern data across your data estate while reducing risk and meeting compliance requirements.

Learn more

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on X at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Worldwide Global DataSphere and Global StorageSphere Structured and Unstructured, DOC #US50397723, Data Forecast, 2023–2027 Market Forecast. June 13, 2023.

²2022 Chief Data Officer survey, Deloitte. September 2022.

³ISMG First Annual Generative AI Study: Business rewards vs. Security Risks. January 31, 2024.

The post The foundation for responsible analytics with Microsoft Purview appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Here are just a few examples of incredible women at Microsoft who may never have envisioned cybersecurity as their destination when they were starting out:

• In our recent Cyber Signals briefing, I had the privilege of talking to Homa Hayatyfar, Principal Detection Analytics Manager, Microsoft, who has seen how her pathway to a career in cybersecurity was nonlinear. She arrived at her career in cybersecurity by way of a research background in biochemistry and molecular biology—along with a passion for solving complex puzzles—and she believes that may be what the industry needs more of.
• From our threat intelligence team, Fanta Orr, Intelligence Analysis Director, who improves the understanding of and protection against nation-state cyberthreats to Microsoft customers and the global digital ecosystem. She’s a seasoned foreign affair professional, who spent well over a decade in United States government service before pivoting over to cyberthreat analysis.
• When Sherrod DeGrippo, Director of Threat Intelligence Strategy, began studying fine arts in college, internet access was a rare luxury and the cybersecurity field as we know it today was just emerging. She developed a dual interest in the new world of online communication and do-it-yourself computing after her first experience with bulletin board systems at 14 years old. She thinks her fine arts education helps her discover new ideas and methods for threat intelligence, after more than 20 years in cybersecurity and an unplanned role in incident response. 

“Threat intelligence is about taking subjective information and turning it into objective protections. Ultimately, it’s data-driven intuition and it’s extremely powerful. Women learn this skill early, and in so many areas of life they’re natural threat intelligence analysts.”

—Sherrod DeGrippo, Director of Threat Intelligence Strategy, Microsoft

These cyberdefenders work every day to keep our world safe and also support and mentor other women to create their own trails and pathways. I invite you to follow them on LinkedIn and attend the Women in Cybersecurity (WyCiS) conference presentations and RSA Conference, where many of these amazing women will share their stories over the next few months.

We have made a lot of progress, but there is still much more opportunity

A huge opportunity still exists to welcome more women into cybersecurity. More than 4 million cybersecurity jobs are available globally.² These are roles that women can help fill and triumph in, but we must lay the groundwork to make such roles an attractive and available career option, and to help change the perception of what it takes to succeed.

While there’s been steady progress over the past few years, women fill just 21% of cybersecurity leadership roles and only 17% of board member positions in cybersecurity.³ In 2022, Microsoft Security commissioned a survey to explore the reasons behind the gender gap in cybersecurity skills. Just 44% of women who responded said they feel adequately represented in the industry.

Several factors contribute to fewer women joining the cybersecurity profession than men:

• 28% of respondents believed parents were more encouraging of sons than daughters to explore technology and cybersecurity fields.
• Women lacking cybersecurity role models, including women in leadership roles.
• Implicit bias in the hiring process and a belief that men are a better fit for roles related to technology.

We need to create a pathway to success

By fostering an environment that welcomes women into cybersecurity, we break down barriers and build stronger, more resilient cyber defense mechanisms. Diversity isn’t about filling quotas; it’s about building resilient, innovative teams capable of outthinking and outmaneuvering cyberadversaries. It’s up to us to shift the view that cybersecurity is too demanding—especially as AI can help to alter this balance. And it’s past time to change the perception that cybersecurity is a field of hacker men in hoodies in their basement.

We need to continue to be role models and allies for underrepresented groups, especially for those from underprivileged backgrounds. There is often no easy way for underprivileged aspiring entrants to practice their craft from a young age and eventually enter science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, regardless of other factors. To change this, we need to invest and support the many not-for-profits that help those from underprivileged backgrounds.

Inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity professionals

During the past year, Microsoft has partnered with many organizations similarly committed to building a more diverse cybersecurity workforce. One huge way these organizations are doing that is by offering training to girls so they can become the next generation of cybersecurity professionals through programs like GirlSecurity, TechTogether, and IGNITE Worldwide (Inspiring Girls Now in Technology Evolution).

Another initiative we support through partnerships offers training to women interested in switching careers or upskilling their cybersecurity knowledge through programs like WiCyS and Executive Women’s Forum (EWF). We also partner with global education programs, including CyberShikshaa in India and WOMCY in Latin America, to empower women and minorities in cybersecurity.

These programs and initiatives have a tremendous impact on encouraging more girls to consider careers in cybersecurity and getting more women to join the cybersecurity workforce. Among other benefits, they help girls and women build confidence, meet female cybersecurity role models, develop or enhance their skills, and gain experience to add to their resumes.

To further develop women’s careers, Microsoft Philanthropies and Women in Cloud jointly sponsor the Women in Cloud Cybersecurity Scholarship to provide women with structured skills development, certification opportunities, and employability readiness coaching. By 2025, more than 5,100 scholarships will be awarded.

The momentum is due in part to community-wide efforts to increase the number of women and diverse employees in cybersecurity roles. Community organizations like Blacks in Cybersecurity (BIC) and WiCyS play a crucial role in providing pipelines for marginalized groups to enter the cybersecurity field.

AI as an ally in cybersecurity diversity

AI is revolutionizing how we approach cybersecurity, from predictive analytics to automated threat detection. Yet beyond algorithms and data models, there’s an urgent need for human insight. According to a study from Utica University, women with their unique perspective also have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, which are essential for identifying and addressing security threats, and tend to have a more risk-averse approach, which can help to reduce the likelihood of human error in security operations.⁴ These unique perspectives help to shape our AI for security and help to ensure that AI is inclusive, fair, reliable, and safe, transparent and inclusive. We also believe that creators of AI, as well as its users, must hold themselves to a standard of accountability. And within that context, the possibilities for this exciting technology are limitless.

Happy International Women’s Day! While progress is being made—and opportunities are opening—for women and minorities in cybersecurity, much can still be done to overcome barriers to entry for these groups. Let’s continue to work for more representation in cybersecurity by forging new paths with more allies.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Women to Watch in Cybersecurity, Forbes. October 26, 2022.

²How the Economy, Skills Gap and Artificial Intelligence are Challenging the Global Cybersecurity Workforce, ISC2. 2023.

³International Women’s Day: Only One-Fifth of Cybersecurity Leadership Roles Filled by Women, IT Security Guru. March 8, 2023.

⁴Why we need more women in cybersecurity TechBeacon.

The post International Women’s Day: Expanding cybersecurity opportunities in the era of AI appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft Secure is a two-hour digital showcase that will focus on product announcements and immediate use cases for new capabilities. Join thousands of other cybersecurity professionals inspired by AI’s promise and eager to gain product knowledge for an advantage over bad actors.  

Watch the video for details from Microsoft Security’s Vice President, Security Marketing, Alym Rayani, on how Microsoft Secure will empower you and your cybersecurity efforts. 

Here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect at the event. 

A keynote with AI product updates across the Microsoft Security portfolio  

At Microsoft, we understand what is required to create and operate AI applications securely at scale. We understand the opportunity we have to empower everyone to develop AI that is safe and reliable. That’s why we are committed to putting secure and responsible AI solutions in the hands of security professionals everywhere—AI is transforming security. 

Hear all about our latest features and capabilities at the Microsoft Secure welcome keynote by Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security Business, and Charlie Bell, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Security, along with other product leaders. They will share product innovations across the Microsoft Security portfolio and the advantages that help you address the changing threat landscape:   

• AI for security: We’ll share exciting news about Microsoft Copilot for Security, learnings from our early access program, new features, and new ways to try the solution. Copilot for Security puts generative AI in the hands of security and IT professionals to help them supercharge their skills, collaborate more, see more, and respond faster—all informed by threat intelligence.  
• Securing and governing AI: Explore how the features of Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Entra make it easier to secure and govern AI. Across the Microsoft Security portfolio, we are innovating rapidly to give our customers a new category of critical tools for securing AI that deliver greater visibility, control, and governance as you embrace generative AI.  
• Expanded end-to-end security: Gain broad visibility and control for your digital estate with and protect your environment from every angle, across security, compliance, identity, device management, and privacy. We integrate more than 50 categories within six product families to form one end-to-end Microsoft Security solution. These product families work together, each powering the next with more context and integrated controls.

Real-world Microsoft Security applications from a customer

Don’t miss a conversation with Dow Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Mario Ferket, on his experience using the Microsoft Security portfolio, hosted by Irina Nechaeva, General Manager, Product Marketing, Identity, and Access. Hear real-world applications from a leader at a manufacturing company on how they are leveraging AI to defend their enterprise.

Demos to practically inform your cybersecurity strategy 

After the keynote and customer story, our product experts will host three informative demo sessions to offer deeper understanding of the latest cybersecurity innovations from Microsoft.  

• 9:30-10 AM PT: Microsoft Copilot for Security: Tailoring defense with AI—Principal Product Manager, Brandon Dixon, and Senior Director, Microsoft Security Business, Scott Woodgate, will show you Copilot for Security in action and share how to initiate Copilot and use customizable features to fit your security needs.  
• 10-10:30 AM PT: Secure and govern AI to enable responsible adoption—Principal Product Manager, Neta Haiby, and General Manager of Data Security, Compliance, and Privacy, Herain Oberoi, will offer guidance on how to leverage built-in security and compliance controls to secure and govern your AI stack. They’ll address AI adoption challenges we see in the market such as preventing oversharing, data leaks, and misuse.   
• 10:30-11 AM PT: Stay ahead of threats with proactive posture management—Alym Rayani, Vice President, Security Marketing, and Tomer Teller, Group Project Manager for Exposure Management, will explore how to detect, disrupt, and prevent threats in near real time with Microsoft Exposure Management solutions. Stopping cyberattacks at machine speed is crucial, but prevention is even more powerful. 

Register for Microsoft Secure today 

Register to watch the live Microsoft Secure digital event. If you can’t join us live, watch on-demand content after March 13, 2024​.  

For a more technical deep-dive into Microsoft Secure announcements, mark your calendar on April 3, 2024 for the Microsoft Secure Tech Accelerator to get live demos of how Microsoft Security products help secure your AI, and ask our product team questions.

And if you’re attending RSA Conference 2024 in San Francisco, join us for Microsoft Pre-Day, on May 5, 2024, to connect with our product experts in-person and be the first to hear even more announcements from Microsoft Security. ​ 

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity. 

The post Microsoft Secure: Learn expert AI strategy at our online event appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Our upcoming 2024 events, including Microsoft Secure on March 13, 2024, will spotlight our product innovation and critical advantages that exist nowhere else: large-scale data and threat intelligence, end-to-end protection, and responsible AI.

Microsoft Secure

Watch the second annual Microsoft Secure digital event to learn how to bring world-class threat intelligence, comprehensive protection, and industry-leading responsible AI to your organization.

Watch today

A quick view of Microsoft Security events designed for you

We’d love to see you at every event but know you have limited time and can’t attend them all. This blog post aims to give you clarity on which of our cybersecurity events and third-party events deserve your RSVP based on your interests and role. 

Keep reading for a deeper dive into which events are right for you. 

For everyone: Showcasing our latest technology innovations at the year’s key events

Microsoft Security leaders and product experts always debut our most impressive innovations at our premiere events—Microsoft Secure (digital) and Microsoft Ignite (in-person and digital). These events provide content and product innovation for security professionals of all levels.

• Microsoft Secure: Register for our second annual Microsoft Secure on March 13, 2024. The two-hour, digital showcase focuses on sharing our latest technology innovations and use cases to empower security teams. Through the keynote and demos, you’ll gain product knowledge to inspire and inform your cybersecurity efforts.
• Microsoft Ignite: Join us for Microsoft’s annual user conference, coming in the fall of 2024. The conference covers a wide range of technology topics and aims to help you learn and find solutions to your security challenges. The in-person security experience both for leaders looking for strategic insights and practitioners looking for hands-on guidance. If you only have one opportunity per year—save it and join us for Microsoft Ignite.

For security teams: Product training to help you as you support your organizations

Security teams are the heroes of their organizations and we host many events to help you get more familiar with Microsoft Security products you use daily. After Microsoft Secure and Microsoft Ignite, dive deeper into the “how” of our technology with hands-on training.

• Microsoft Secure Tech Accelerator: Tech accelerator is designed for security teams using our products daily. At the April 3, 2024, Tech Accelerator, you will learn technical information to guide you as you implement Microsoft Copilot for Security, see demonstrations, learn how to secure your AI, and ask our product team questions. RSVP today.

We don’t just host our own events. We meet you where you are, too. This year, you can catch us at:

• RSA Conference: Join us at Microsoft Pre-Day to kick off RSA Conference 2024 on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in San Francisco, where Microsoft leaders, like Vasu Jakkal and Charlie Bell will be on site. Learn how security and IT professionals can skill up, collaborate more, see more, and respond faster with generative AI within Microsoft Copilot for Security.
• Identiverse: Connect with Microsoft identity experts from May 28 to 31, 2024, in Las Vegas for more on securing access for any trustworthy identity, anywhere, to any apps or resources in any cloud or on-premises, with unified identity and network access solutions.
• Black Hat USA: Threat researchers and analysts can learn about all things Microsoft threat protection at Black Hat from August 3 to 8, 2024, in Las Vegas.  

In between our major events, you have numerous learning options, from ask-me-anythings to webinars. Our one-day technical workshops also offer training on a wide range of topics, including ​configuring security operations using Microsoft Sentinel and threat defense strategies.

For security leaders: Equipping you to transform your security approach 

Chief information security officers, executives, and other decision makers have many opportunities to hear perspectives to formulate your security strategies and guide your teams toward business objectives. As we mentioned, Microsoft Secure on March 13, 2024, and Microsoft Ignite in the fall will provide executive-focused content designed to help you lead. Other events provide smaller settings for you to engage with Microsoft Security product leaders: 

• Microsoft AI tour: Introduced in 2023, the Microsoft AI Tour brings Microsoft Security to major cities around the world. Open to business leaders, these one-day events are designed for them to meet one-on-one with Microsoft Security executives and product leaders (signups available) and learn strategies on how to harness the potential of AI across your organization’s tech stack. Our remaining tour stops include Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Paris, France; and São Paulo, Brazil.
• RSA Conference: If you’re attending RSA Conference 2024, join us at Microsoft Pre-Day on Sunday May 5, 2024, to learn how your security teams can go beyond individual expertise and protect more with AI-powered solutions. We’ll be kicking off the conference with insights from Microsoft leaders, including Vasu Jakkal and Charlie Bell, and early access to the latest innovations in Microsoft Security through sessions, Q&A, and networking. Secure your spot today.     

For developers, IT professionals and other unintended cybersecurity advocates

The cybersecurity talent shortage is requiring many to step up even if cybersecurity isn’t in their official job description. If you are an IT professional being tasked with cybersecurity or someone with an eagerness to learn cybersecurity tactics, join our Microsoft events aimed at helping you uplevel your cybersecurity skills.

Two Microsoft events in particular deliver educational experiences in cybersecurity.

• Microsoft Build: Microsoft Build provides a full catalog of sessions targeted at developers and DevSecOps pros to help you learn how to build into and leverage security baked into your products. This event will be occurring in Seattle, Washington and online, May 21 to 23, 2024. 
• Microsoft Ignite: Microsoft Ignite includes in-person Learn Labs, which are intensive training sessions on a variety of cybersecurity approaches, and online, interactive resources that you can access afterward. This year’s event will take place in Chicago, Illinois and online, November 18 to 22, 2024. 

For partners: Strengthening our cybersecurity partnerships

We couldn’t achieve what we do—and neither could customers—without the expertise of our partners. We are united in our desire to help customers overcome cybersecurity challenges. We encourage you to connect with us at any of the previously mentioned events as well as at Microsoft Inspire, our flagship partner conference, which will be available online July 2024. 

Connect with us at an event (or two or three) this year

We value your participation at these events—we learn as much from you as you learn from us.​ Whether you’re a security team member, a business decision maker, a partner, or an IT team member, there’s a Microsoft event that can make your job easier. Register now for Microsoft Secure for the insights, engagement, and inspiration shared at the premiere cybersecurity event of the year. And bookmark this page to see your top event options in one place. Hope to see you at a future event!

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Connect with Microsoft at these cybersecurity events in 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

With the growing use of AI in litigation and number of data storage locations, the process of ediscovery gets increasingly more complex and must be more agile, comprehensive, and integrated. The tools legal professionals need in today’s digital environment necessitate using advanced tools such as AI to locate the relevant data quickly and securing data in a way that complies with myriad regulations and major challenges.

To help you secure data and address your needs efficiently in the age of AI, we’re making it easier to safeguard and manage compliance of data using generative AI tools. Recent advanced capabilities of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery are aimed at giving you the advantage. If you’re attending the Legalweek conference in New York City from January 29 to February 1, 2024, we’d love to connect. Read on for an overview of what you can expect our experts to discuss, and keep scrolling for sessions and other ways to connect with us at Legalweek.

Microsoft at Legalweek: How generative AI helps address eDiscovery challenges

Microsoft is continuously innovating to ensure our solutions help organizations achieve their objectives, and Microsoft Purview is no exception. We are committed to enhancing Microsoft Purview for an improved overall user experience. Offering the advantages of AI is a further step toward this commitment. In November 2023, we announced new features and capabilities of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery harnessing Microsoft Security Copilot.

The latest release of eDiscovery enables the search, discovery, preservation, review, and export of Copilot interactions in Microsoft 365 across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, and other applications. This boosts the efficiency of eDiscovery—an essential tool that allows you to search for evidence and gain an understanding of what occurred for informed decision-making.

Here are two advantages of the combination of eDiscovery and generative AI for legal professionals:

Efficient handling of massive datasets

The volume of data produced in litigation necessitates a solution that can keep up. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery features intelligent, machine learning capabilities to make it easier to locate the most relevant items for review, and help you get started quickly.

Two new Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Purview help you better manage huge datasets by helping you to:

• Accelerate and refine your search: A successful investigation relies on an accurate search but query-building can be challenging. Creating a query in Keyword Query Language (KQL) can be time-consuming. Soon available in preview, a new capability lets you provide a prompt in natural language and Copilot will translate the query into KQL.
• Accelerate and navigate your investigation: Based on conversations with our customers, eDiscovery admins and managers spent 60% of their time reviewing evidence collected in review sets. Soon in preview, a new capability lets you generate document summaries and walks you through your investigation with guided prompts.   

Compliance with constantly changing regulations

Integrating AI technology like Microsoft Security Copilot into your existing eDiscovery workflows gives you more careful accounting of your sensitive or confidential information or evidence of intellectual property. This makes it much easier to satisfy the numerous regulations that dictate how data can be collected, stored, used, and managed.

Microsoft Purview makes it easy to comply by providing tools for data risk identification and regulatory requirement management. In addition, this solution features expanded risk detections gathering signals from infrastructure clouds and third-party apps, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Box, Dropbox, and GitHub.

Compliance is also easier because the solution allows you to:

• Ensure more consistent protections regardless of data type.
• Discover, label, and classify data across sources, including Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.
• Restrict access to sensitive data (determined by labels or roles).
• Detect business violations.
• Gain visibility into generative AI app usage.

Mark your calendar for these Legalweek sessions

There’s more we’ll cover at Legalweek 2024. During three sessions, Microsoft experts and legal experts will provide a glimpse at the current cybersecurity challenges in the legal sector as well as share strategies to tackle these challenges with modern cybersecurity and technology solutions.

The Microsoft sessions at Legalweek are:

Connect with Microsoft at Legalweek

If you seek strategies for safeguarding and managing the compliance of your data, check out one or more of our sessions at Legalweek. Throughout the conference, you can also interact with our Microsoft experts directly in a few ways:

• Stop by Booth #3105 in Americas Hall 2 to learn how Microsoft solutions can address your challenges.
• Request to attend the Executive Breakfast on Tuesday, January 30, 2024.
• Request dedicated time with our eDiscovery experts, who will be available between 9:00 AM ET and 5:00 PM ET, Monday, January 29, 2024, through Thursday, February 1, 2024. We’d love to connect. Hope to see you there!

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹New report on ChatGPT & generative AI in law firms shows opportunities abound, even as concerns persist, Thomson Reuters. April 17, 2023.

The post Microsoft at Legalweek: Secure data and gain efficiencies with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery enhanced by generative AI appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

The increasing speed, scale, and sophistication of recent cyberattacks demand a new approach to security. Traditional tools are no longer enough to keep pace with the threats posed by cybercriminals. In just two years, the number of password attacks detected by Microsoft has risen from 579 per second to more than 4,000 per second.¹ According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the global cost of cybercrime is expected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2025, up from $3 trillion in 2015.² On average, organizations use 80 security tools to manage their environment, resulting in security teams facing data deluge, alert fatigue, and limited visibility across security solutions. Security teams face an asymmetric challenge: they must protect everything, while cyberattackers only need to find one weak point. And security teams must do this while facing regulatory complexity, a global talent shortage, and rampant fragmentation.

One of the advantages for security teams is their view of the data field—they know how the infrastructure, user posture, and applications, are set up before a cyberattack begins. To further tip the scale in favor of cyberdefenders, Microsoft Security offers a very large-scale data advantage—65 trillion daily signals, expertise of global threat intelligence, monitoring more than 300 cyberthreat groups, and insights on cyberattacker behaviors from more than 1 million customers and more than 15,000 partners.¹

Our new generative AI solution—Microsoft Security Copilot—combined with our massive data advantage and end-to-end security, all built on the principles of Zero Trust, creates a flywheel of protection to change the asymmetry of the digital threat landscape and favor security teams in this new era of security.

To learn more about Microsoft Security’s vision for the future and the latest generative AI announcements and demos, watch the Microsoft Ignite keynote “The Future of Security with AI” presented by Charlie Bell, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Security, and I on Thursday, November 16, 2023, at 10:15 AM PT.  

Changing the paradigm with Microsoft Security Copilot

One of the biggest challenges in security is the lack of cybersecurity professionals. This is an urgent need given the three million unfilled positions in the field, with cyberthreats increasing in frequency and severity.³ 

In a recent study to measure the productivity impact for “new in career” analysts, participants using Security Copilot demonstrated 44 percent more accurate responses and were 26 percent faster across all tasks.⁴ 

According to the same study:

• 86 percent reported that Security Copilot helped them improve the quality of their work. 
• 83 percent stated that Security Copilot reduced the effort needed to complete the task. 
• 86 percent said that Security Copilot made them more productive. 
• 90 percent expressed their desire to use Security Copilot next time they do the same task. 

Check out the Security Copilot Early Access Program—with Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence included at no additional charge—that adds speed and scale for scenarios like security posture management, incident investigation and response, security reporting, and more—now available to interested and qualified customers. For example, one early adopter from Willis Towers Watson (WTW) said “I envision Microsoft Security Copilot as a change accelerator. The ability to do threat hunting at pace will mean that I’m able to reduce my mean time to investigate, and the faster I can do that, the better my security posture will become.”  Keep reading for a full list of capabilities.

Introducing the industry’s first generative AI-powered unified security operations platform with built-in Copilot

Security operations teams struggle to manage disparate security toolsets from siloed technologies and apps. This challenge is only exacerbated given the scarcity of skilled security talent. And while organizations have been investing in traditional AI and machine learning to improve threat intelligence, deploying AI and machine learning comes with its unique challenges and its own shortage of data science talent. It’s time for a step-change in our industry, and thanks to generative AI, we can now close the talent gap for both security and data professionals. Securing an organization today requires an innovative approach that prevents, detects, and disrupts cyberattacks at machine speed, while delivering simplicity and and approachable, conversational experiences to help security operations center (SOC) teams move faster, and bringing together all the security signals and threat intelligence currently stuck in disconnected tools. Today, we are thrilled to announce the next major step in this industry-defining vision: combining the power of leading solutions in security information and event management (SIEM), extended detection and response (XDR), and generative AI for security into the first unified security operations platform.

By bringing together Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR (previously Microsoft 365 Defender), and Microsoft Security Copilot, security analysts now have a unified incident experience that streamlines triage and provides a complete, end-to-end view of threats across the digital estate. With a single set of automation rules and playbooks enriched with generative AI, coordinating response is now easier and quicker for analysts of every level. In addition, unified hunting now gives analysts the ability to query all SIEM and XDR data in one place to uncover cyberthreats and take appropriate remediation action. Customers interested in joining the preview of the unified security operations platform should contact their account team.

Further, Microsoft Security Copilot is natively embedded into the analyst experience supporting both SIEM and XDR and equipping analysts with step-by-step guidance and automation for investigating and resolving incidents, without the reliance of data analysts. Complex tasks, such as analyzing malicious scripts or crafting Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries to hunt across data in Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR, can be accomplished simply by asking a question in natural language or accepting a suggestion from Security Copilot. If you need to update your chief information security officer (CISO) on an incident, you can now instantly generate a polished report that summarizes the investigation and the remediation actions that were taken to resolve it.

To keep up with the speed of cyberattackers, the unified security operations platform catches cyberthreats at machine speed and protects your organization by automatically disrupting advanced attacks. We are extending this capability to act on third-party signals, for example with SAP signals and alerts. For SIEM customers who have SAP connected, attack disruption will automatically detect financial fraud techniques and disable the native SAP and connected Microsoft Entra account to prevent the cyberattacker from transferring any funds—with no SOC intervention. The attack disruption capabilities will be further strengthened by new deception capabilities in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint—which can now automatically generate authentic-looking decoys and lures, so you can entice cyberattackers with fake, valuable assets that will deliver high-confidence, early stage signal to the SOC and trigger automatic attack disruption even faster.

Lastly, we are building on the native XDR experience by including cloud workload signals and alerts from Microsoft Defender for Cloud—a leading cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP)—so analysts can conduct investigations that span across their multicloud infrastructure (Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform environments) and identities, email and collaboration tools, software as a service (SaaS) apps, and multiplatform endpoints—making Microsoft Defender XDR one of the most comprehensive native XDR platforms in the industry.

Customers who operate both SIEM and XDR can add Microsoft Sentinel into their Microsoft Defender portal experience easily, with no migration required. Existing Microsoft Sentinel customers can continue using the Azure portal. The unified security operations platform is now available in private preview and will move to public preview in 2024.

Expanding Copilot for data security, identity, device management, and more 

Security is a shared responsibility across teams, yet many don’t share the same tools or data—and they often don’t collaborate with one another. We are adding new capabilities and embedded experiences of Security Copilot across the Microsoft Security portfolio as part of the Early Access Program to empower all security and IT roles to detect and address cyberthreats at machine speed. And to enable all roles to protect against top security risks and drive operational efficiency, Microsoft Security Copilot now brings together signals across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview into a single pane of glass.

New capabilities in Security Copilot creating a force multiplier for security and IT teams

Microsoft Purview: Data security and compliance teams review a multitude of complex and diverse alerts spread across multiple security tools, each alert containing a wealth of rich insights. To make data protection faster, more effective, and easier, Security Copilot is now embedded in Microsoft Purview, offering summarization capabilities directly within Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention, Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery, and Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance workflows, making sense of profuse and diverse data, accelerating investigation and response times, and enabling analysts at all levels to complete complex tasks with AI-powered intelligence at their fingertips. Additionally, with AI translator capabilities in eDiscovery, you can use natural language to define search queries, resulting in faster and more accurate search iterations and eliminating the need to use keyword query language. These new data security capabilities are also available now in the Microsoft Security Copilot standalone experience.

Microsoft Entra: Password-based attacks have increased dramatically in the last year, and new attack techniques are now trying to circumvent multifactor authentication. To strengthen your defenses against identity compromise, Security Copilot embedded in Microsoft Entra can assist in investigating identity risks and help with troubleshooting daily identity tasks, such as why a sign-in required multifactor authentication or why a user’s risk level increased. IT administrators can instantly get a risk summary, steps to remediate, and recommended guidance for each identity at risk, in natural language. Quickly get to the root of an issue for a sign-in with a summarized report of the most relevant information and context. Additionally, in Microsoft Entra ID Governance, admins can use Security Copilot to guide in the creation of a lifecycle workflow to streamline the process of creating and issuing user credentials and access rights. These new capabilities to summarize users and groups, sign-in logs, and high-risk users are also available now in the Microsoft Security Copilot standalone experience.

Microsoft Intune: The evolving device landscape is driving IT complexity and risk of endpoint vulnerabilities—and IT administrators play a critical security role in managing these devices and protecting organizational data. We are introducing Security Copilot embedded in Microsoft Intune in the coming weeks for select customers of the Early Access Program, marking a meaningful advancement in endpoint management and security. This experience offers unprecedented visibility across security data with full device context, provides real-time guidance when creating policies, and empowers security and IT teams to discover and remediate the root cause of device issues faster and easier. Now IT administrators and security analysts are empowered to drive better and informed outcomes with pre-deployment, AI-based guard rails to help them understand the impact of policy changes in their environment before applying them. With Copilot, they can save time and reduce complexity of gathering near real-time device, user, and app data and receive AI-driven recommendations to respond to threats, incidents, and vulnerabilities, fortifying endpoint security. 

Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Maintaining a strong cloud security posture is a challenge for cybersecurity teams, as they face siloed visibility into risks and vulnerabilities across the application lifecycle, due to the rise of cloud-native development and multicloud environments. With Security Copilot now embedded in Microsoft Defender for Cloud, security admins are empowered to identify critical concerns to resources faster with guided risk exploration that summarizes risks, enriched with contextual insights such as critical vulnerabilities, sensitive data, and lateral movement. To address the uncovered critical risks more efficiently, admins can use Security Copilot in Microsoft Defender for Cloud to guide remediation efforts and streamline the implementation of recommendations by generating recommendation summaries, step-by-step remediation actions, and scripts in a preferred language, and directly delegate remediation actions to key resource users. These new cloud security capabilities are also available now in the Microsoft Security Copilot standalone experience. 

Microsoft Defender for External Attack Surface Management (EASM): Keeping up with tracking assets and their vulnerabilities can be overwhelming for security teams, as it requires time, coordination, and research to understand which assets pose a risk to the organization. New Defender for EASM capabilities are available in the Security Copilot standalone experience and enable security teams to quickly gain insights into their external attack surface, regardless of where the assets are hosted, and feel confident in the outcomes. These capabilities provide security operations teams with a snapshot view of their external attack surface, help vulnerability managers understand if their external attack surface is impacted by a particular common vulnerability and exposure (CVE), and provide visibility into vulnerable critical and high priority CVEs to help teams know how pervasive they are to their assets, so they can prioritize remediation efforts.

Custom plugins to trusted third-party tools: Security Copilot provides more robust, enriched insight and guidance when it is integrated with a broader set of security and IT teams’ tools. To do so, Security Copilot must embrace a vast ecosystem of security partners. As part of this effort, we are excited to announce the latest integration now available to Security Copilot customers with ServiceNow. For customers who want to bring onboard their trusted security tools and integrate their own organizational data and applications, we’re also introducing a new set of custom plugins that will enable them to expand the reach of Security Copilot to new data and new capabilities.

Securing the use of generative AI for safeguarding your organization

As organizations quickly adopt generative AI, it is vital to have robust security measures in place to ensure safe and responsible use. This involves understanding how generative AI is being used, protecting the data that is being used or created by generative AI, and governing the use of AI. As generative AI apps become more popular, security teams need tools that secure both the AI applications and the data they interact with. In fact, 43 percent of organizations said lack of controls to detect and mitigate risk in AI is a top concern.⁵ Different AI applications pose various levels of risk, and organizations need the ability to monitor and control these generative AI apps with varying levels of protection.

Microsoft Defender: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is expanding its discovery capabilities to help organizations gain visibility into the generative AI apps in use, provide extensive protection and control to block risky generative AI apps, and apply ready-to-use customizable policies to prevent data loss in AI prompts and AI responses. This new feature supports more than 400 generative AI apps, and offers an easy way to sift through low- versus high-risk apps. 

Microsoft Purview: New capabilities in Microsoft Purview help comprehensively secure and govern data in AI, including Microsoft Copilot and non-Microsoft generative AI applications. Customers can gain visibility into AI activity, including sensitive data usage in AI prompts, comprehensive protection with ready-to-use policies to protect data in AI prompts and responses, and compliance controls to help easily meet business and regulatory requirements. Microsoft Purview capabilities are integrated with Microsoft Copilot, starting with Copilot for Microsoft 365, strengthening the data security and compliance for Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Further, to enable customers to gain a better understanding of which AI applications are being used and how, we are announcing the preview of AI hub in Microsoft Purview. Microsoft Purview can provide organizations with an aggregated view of total prompts being sent to Copilot and the sensitive information included in those prompts. Organizations can also see an aggregated view of the number of users interacting with Copilot. And we are extending these capabilities to provide insights for more than 100 of the most commonly used consumer generative AI applications, such as ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E, and more.

Expanding end-to-end security for comprehensive protection everywhere

Keeping up with daily protection requirements is a security challenge that can’t be ignored—and the struggle to stay ahead of cyberattackers and safeguard your organization’s data is why we’ve designed our security features to evolve with the digital threat landscape and provide comprehensive protection against cyberthreats.

Strengthen your code-to-cloud defenses with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. To cope with the complexity of multicloud environments and cloud-native applications, security teams need a comprehensive strategy that enables code-to-cloud defenses on all cloud deployments. For posture management, the preview of Defender for Cloud’s integration with Microsoft Entra Permissions Management helps you apply the least privilege principle for cloud resources and shows the link between access permissions and potential vulnerabilities across Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Defender for Cloud also has an improved attack path analysis experience, which helps you predict and prevent complex cloud attacks—and provides more insights into your Kubernetes deployments across Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters and APIs insights to prioritize cloud risk remediation.

To strengthen security throughout the application lifecycle, preview of the GitLab Ultimate integration gives you a clear view of your application security posture and simplifies code-to-cloud remediation workflows across all major developer platforms—GitHub, Azure DevOps, and GitLab within Defender for Cloud. Additionally, general availability of Defender for APIs, which offers machine learning-driven protection against API threats and agentless vulnerability assessments for container images in Microsoft Azure Container Registries. Defender for Cloud now offers a unified vulnerability assessment engine spanning all cloud workloads, powered by the strong capabilities of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management.

Leverage Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence for elevating your threat intelligence. Available in Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence offers valuable open-source intelligence and internet data sets found nowhere else. These capabilities now enhance Microsoft Defender products with crucial context around threat actors, tooling, and infrastructure at no additional cost to customers. Available in the Threat Intelligence blade of Defender XDR, Detonation Intelligence enables users to search, look up, and contextualize cyberthreats as well as detonate URLs and view results to quickly understand a malicious file or URL. Defender XDR customers can quickly submit an indicator of compromise (IoC) to immediately view the results. Vulnerability Profiles put intelligence collected from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team about vulnerabilities all in one place. Profiles are updated when new information is discovered and contains a description, Common Vulnerability Scoring System scores (CVSS), a priority score, exploits, and deep and dark web chatter observations.

Use Microsoft Purview to extend data protection capabilities across structured and unstructured data types. In the past, securing and governing sensitive data across these diverse elements of your digital estate would have required multiple providers, adding a heavy integration tax. But today, with Microsoft Purview, you can gain visibility across your entire data estate, secure your structured and unstructured data, and detect risks across clouds. Microsoft Purview’s labeling and classification capabilities are expanding beyond Microsoft 365, offering access controls for both structured and unstructured data types. Users will have the ability to discover, classify, and safeguard sensitive information hosted in structured databases such as Microsoft Azure SQL and Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS)—also extending these capabilities into Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets.

Detect insider risk with Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, which offers ready-to-use risk indicators to detect critical insider risks in Azure, AWS, and SaaS applications, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and GitHub. Admins with appropriate permissions will no longer need to manually cross-reference signals in these environments. They can now utilize the curated and preprocessed indicators to obtain a more holistic view of a potential insider incident.

Simplify access security with Microsoft Entra. Securing access points is critical and can be complex when using multiple providers for identity management, network security, and cloud security. With Microsoft Entra, you can centralize all your access controls together to more fully secure and protect your environment. Microsoft’s Security Service Edge solution is expanding with several new features.

• By the end of 2023, Microsoft Entra Internet Access preview will include context-aware secure web gateway (SWG) capabilities for all internet apps and resources with web content filtering, Conditional Access controls, compliant network check, and source IP restoration.
• Microsoft Entra Private Access for private apps and resources has extended protocol support so you can seamlessly transition from your traditional VPN to a modern Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution, and the ability to add multifactor authentication to all private apps for remote and on-premises users.
• Now with auto-enrollment into Microsoft Entra Conditional Access policies you can enhance security posture and reduce complexity for securing access. Easily create and manage a passkey, a free phishing-resistant credential based on open standards, in the Microsoft Authenticator app for signing into Microsoft Entra ID-managed apps.
• Promote enforcement of least-privilege access for cloud resources with new integrations for Microsoft Entra Permissions Management. Permissions Management has a new integration with ServiceNow that enables organizations to incorporate time-bound access permission requests to existing approval workflows in ServiceNow.

Unify, simplify, and delight users by the Microsoft Intune Suite. We’re adding three new solutions to the Intune Suite, available in February 2024. These solutions further unify critical endpoint management workloads in Intune to fortify device security posture, power better experiences, and simplify IT and security operations end-to-end. We will also be able to offer these solutions coupled with the existing Intune Suite capabilities to agencies and organizations of the Government Community Cloud (GCC) in March 2024.

• Microsoft Cloud PKI offers a comprehensive, cloud-based public key infrastructure and certificate management solution to simply create, deploy, and manage certificates for authentication, Wi-Fi, and VPN endpoint scenarios.
• Microsoft Intune Enterprise Application Management streamlines third-party app discovery, packaging, deployment, and updates via a secure enterprise catalog to help all workers stay current.
• Microsoft Intune Advanced Analytics extends the Intune Suite anomaly detection capabilities and provides deep device data insights as well as battery health scoring for administrators to proactively power better, more secure user experiences and productivity improvements.

Partner opportunities and news

There are several partners participating in our engineer-led Security Copilot Partner Private Preview to validate usage scenarios and provide feedback on functionality, operations, and APIs to assist with extensibility. If you are joining us in person at Microsoft Ignite, watch the demos at the Customer Meet-up Hub, presented by Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) members sponsoring at Microsoft Ignite. And if you’re a partner interested in staying current, join the Security Copilot Partner Interest Community.

Join us in creating a more secure future

Embracing innovation has never been more important for an organization, not only with respect to today’s cyberthreats but also in anticipation of those to come. Recently, to create a more secure future, we launched the Secure Future Initiative—a new initiative to pursue our next generation of cybersecurity protection.

Microsoft Ignite 2023

Join Vasu Jakkal and Charlie Bell at Microsoft Ignite to watch "the Future of Security and AI" on November 16, 2023, at 10:15 AM PT.

Watch the keynote

AI is changing our world forever. It is empowering us to achieve the impossible and it will usher in a new era of security that favors security teams. Microsoft is privileged to be a leader in this effort and committed to a vision of security for all.

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (formerly known as Twitter) (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023.

²Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025, Cybercrime Magazine. November 13, 2020.

³Cybersecurity Workforce Study, ISC². 2022.

⁴Microsoft Security Copilot randomized controlled trial conducted by Microsoft Office of the Chief Economist, November 2023.

⁵Data Security Index: Trends, insights, and strategies to secure data, Microsoft.

The post Microsoft unveils expansion of AI for security and security for AI at Microsoft Ignite appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

While our in-person tickets have sold out, registration for the virtual event is still available to participate in the Microsoft Security experience at Microsoft Ignite, which includes sessions on security strategies and practical applications. In both tracks,​ you’ll learn about the latest innovations and implementation strategies from Microsoft Security across comprehensive security, unified visibility, and Microsoft Security Copilot. Keep reading this blog post for ideas on keynotes, breakout sessions, and discussions to check out. Register to browse our session catalog and bookmark sessions you’d like to attend.

Catch the news highlights during our keynote

Our announcement-packed keynote from Charlie Bell, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Security, and Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management, Microsoft, will be highlighted on Day 2 of Microsoft Ignite. Don’t miss insights from them during their keynote, “The Future of Security with AI.” They will share how Microsoft is delivering AI for security with Microsoft Security Copilot, and how we enable organizations to secure and govern AI with new capabilities. This new era of AI offers unprecedented opportunities to elevate human potential but also challenges organizations with unknowns and risks.

Learn security strategies for today’s and tomorrow’s challenges 

Our cybersecurity strategy sessions are focused on equipping you to leverage AI and Microsoft Security solutions to strengthen your threat defense strategy. Join these sessions to take your strategies to the next level across identity protection, code-to-cloud approaches, industry best practices for AI, and the latest learnings in threat intelligence.   

Strategy sessions to consider joining include:

• “How we secure the Microsoft estate” (BRK291H: in-person and online): Join a fireside chat with Bret Arsenault, Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, on Microsoft’s approach to security and how Microsoft plans to adapt as the industry continues to embrace the new era of AI.
• “Boosting ID Protection Amid Sophisticated Attacks” (BRK294H: in-person and online): Alex Weinert, Vice President, Identity Security, and Mia Reyes, Director, Foundational Security—Cybersecurity, will offer a deep dive into the escalating landscape of cyberthreats targeting digital identities amid the evolving tech realms of the Internet of Things, operational technology, and hybrid workspaces. Learn about innovation in automated key management and Hardware Security Modules for fortified key storage, crucial in mitigating human errors and bolstering defenses against sophisticated aggressors.
• “This Year In Threats: Tales From Microsoft’s Global Fight Against APTs” (BRK299: in-person only): Sherrod DeGrippo, Director of Threat Intelligence, and John Lambert, Corporate Vice President, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Security Research, will discuss how Microsoft defends customers at the nexus of the cyber and physical worlds and how they can join our global alliance to help give bad actors nowhere to hide. This year, Microsoft Threat Intelligence stood with its partners on the leading edge of the global response to the most impactful threats and incidents. In this session, look back at the threat actors and campaigns that defined 2023 and hear our experts tell their favorite stories from the front line.
• “Secure access in the AI era: What’s new in Microsoft Entra” (BRK297H: in-person and online): Jade D’Souza, Product Manager; John Savill, Cloud Solution Architect; and Joy Chik, President, Identity and Network Access, will offer details on innovations for Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) that can help you automatically prevent identity compromise, enforce granular access policies, govern permissions, and leverage AI to secure access for anyone to anything from anywhere. This demo-centric session will follow an employee as they onboard, access resources, and collaborate.
• “Unifying XDR + SIEM: A new era in SecOps” (BRK293H: in-person and online): Preeti Krishna, Principal Product Manager, and Rob Lefferts, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Threat Protection, will offer insights on how the latest innovations in generative AI, automatic attack disruption, embedded threat intelligence, decoy assets, a reimagined user interface, and cloud posture management capabilities will supercharge your threat detection, response, and defense.
• “Secure and govern your data in the era of AI” (BRK296H: in-person and online): Erin Miyake, Principal Product Manager; Herain Oberoi, Marketing Leader; Tina Ying, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Insider Risk Management; and Rudra Mitra, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Data Security and Compliance, will demonstrate how Microsoft Purview’s comprehensive approach to data security, compliance, and privacy helps empower organizations to protect and govern their data.
• “Security for AI: Prepare, protect, and defend in the AI era” (BRK298H: in-person and online): Douglas Santos, Senior Product Manager; Maithili Dandige, Partner Group Program Manager, Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance; and Shilpa Bothra, Senior Product Marketing Manager, will discuss the importance of preventing sensitive data leaks in AI as third-party AI apps grow exponentially and hackers continue to launch adversarial attacks using generative AI. Leave this session with a solid defense and ways to secure data as you interact with AI using Microsoft’s comprehensive security suite.

Gain practical applications with in-depth product views

When strategizing a security approach, technology solutions play a critical role. To help you become an expert on security solutions and implement new features within your organization, Microsoft Ignite will include sessions exploring the use cases of Microsoft solutions, including Security Copilot, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Intune.

Practical application sessions to consider joining include:

• “Boost multicloud security with a comprehensive code to cloud strategy” (BRK261H: in-person and online): Safeena Begum, Principal Product Manager, and Yuri Diogenes, Principal Product Manager, will talk about how Microsoft Defender for Cloud can help you fortify your defenses and enhance your incident response strategy with cloud security graphic insights and tailored analytics from Defender for Cloud workload protection plans.
• “Fortified security and simplicity come together with Microsoft Intune” (BRK263H: in-person and online): Archana Devi Sunder Rajan, Partner Group Product Manager, Microsoft Intune; Dilip Radhakrishnan, Partner Group Product Manager, Microsoft Intune; Jason Roszak, Chief Product Officer, Microsoft Intune; and Sangeetha Visweswaran, Partner Director of Engineering, will discuss how the next generation of endpoint management and security capabilities from Microsoft Intune help transform security and IT operations. Learn how to simplify app updates, cut the cost of public key infrastructure lifecycle management, mitigate risks with AI-derived insights, and free up resources by automating IT workflows.
• “Modern management innovation shaping endpoint security” (BRK295H: in-person and online): Jeff Pinkston, Director of Engineering; Ramya Chitrakar, Corporate Vice President, Intune Engineering; and Steve Dispensa, Corporate Vice President, will explore how to defend against the evolving sophistication of cyberthreats while ensuring a productive workforce. The newest wave of Microsoft Intune innovation can shape your defense-in-depth strategy for a secure and productive end user computing estate.
• “Beyond traditional DLP: Comprehensive and AI-powered data security” (BRK262H: in-person and online): Maithili Dandige, Shilpa Bothra, and Talhah Mir, Product Manager, will share how AI-powered Microsoft Purview Information Protection and Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management can transform your data loss prevention (DLP) program, enabling Adaptive Protection and fortifying your data security posture. You will also hear about new features that enhance incident response and expand endpoint coverage and gain insights on how to enhance their data security strategies.
• “How Microsoft Purview helps you protect your data” (OD07: online only): Anna Chiang, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Tony Themelis, Principal Product Manager, will explore organizational paradoxes and how Microsoft Purview can help strengthen your data security posture. They will also demonstrate how our latest AI-powered and contextual classifiers can identify sensitive trade secrets, personally identifiable information, and more in seconds across your digital estate.
• “Effortless application migration using Microsoft Entra ID” (OD03: online only): David Gregory, Director of Product Marketing, Identity Compete, will share how our newly proposed tool supplies a one-click configuration to integrate applications into Microsoft Entra ID. During this on-demand session, we will provide an overview of how our tool offers a guided experience to seamlessly facilitate the migration of your applications from Active Directory Federation Services to Microsoft Entra ID.
• “Bringing Passkey into your Passwordless journey” (OD02: online only): Calvin Lui, Product Manager; Erik Dauner, Senior Program Manager; and Mayur Santani, Product Manager, walk you through the background of where passkeys came from, their impact on the passwordless ecosystem, and the product features and roadmap bringing passkeys into the Microsoft Entra passwordless portfolio and phishing-resistant strategy.
• “The power of Microsoft’s XDR: they attempted, we disrupted” (BRK265H: in-person and online): Dustin Duran, Director of Security Research, and Kim Kischel, Director of Product Marketing—XDR, will discuss Microsoft 365 Defender’s automatic attack disruption technology and give you a clear understanding of attack disruption and how it’s providing immediate value to customers in the real world today.
• “Making end-to-end security real” (BRK267H: in-person and online): Mark Simos, Lead Cybersecurity Architect, and Sarah Young, Senior Cloud Security Advocate, will share quick wins that solve real-world problems using Microsoft’s integrated security products. This session will show you how to make progress on end-to-end security across identity, security operations, and more.

Interact with the experts

Bring your questions about Microsoft solutions. Our experts have answers. Connect with them during live discussions to learn more.

Opportunities to interact with the experts include:

• “Windows 11, Windows 365, & Microsoft Intune Q&A” (DIS657H: in-person and online): Gabe Frost, Group Product Manager; Harjit Dhaliwal, Senior Product Marketing Manager; Jason Githens, Principal Group Product Manager; and Joe Lurie, Senior Product Manager, will participate in a collaborative question and answer session about where we are today with Windows 11 and device management—and what you need to propel your organization and IT strategies. We’ll quickly outline a few of the latest commercial enhancements, but the focus here is on your thoughts and questions.
• “Preventing loss of sensitive data: Microsoft Purview DLP Q&A” (DIS666H: in-person and online): Shekhar Palta, Principal Product Marketing Manager, and Shilpa Bothra will discuss Microsoft Purview DLP and the way it can prevent accidental or intentional loss of sensitive data across apps and devices. Join us to discuss how you can modernize your DLP and get started quickly, and learn how DLP works with Microsoft Defender products.
• “Panel discussion: Resilient. Compliant. Secure by default” (DISFP375: online only): Joye Purser, Global Lead, Field Cybersecurity, Veritas Technologies; Saurabh Sensharma, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft; Simon Jelley, General Manager for SaaS Protection, Endpoint and Backup Executive, Veritas Technologies; and Tim Burlowski, Senior Director of Product Management, Veritas Technologies, will discuss security strategies. Join Veritas experts for an interactive question and answer on ensuring your cloud applications are resilient and your data is protected, compliant, and recoverable when it matters most.

Socialize with us and your peers

As you’ve probably experienced yourself at previous conferences and business networking events, some of the best ideas are sparked during conversations with other security professionals. Get social and join us and your cybersecurity peers at two incredible networking events.

• The Lounge at Microsoft Ignite: Located in the Hub on Level 5 (Summit Convention Center), the Lounge is the main gathering area for community. The Lounge will be staffed by Microsoft full time employees and attending Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) to provide continuous question and answer opportunities.
• Microsoft Ignite Security After Party: Network and connect over drinks and appetizers on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, at The Collective. Partners, customers, Microsoft MVPs, and Microsoft subject-matter experts will mix and mingle. Register to reserve your spot.

Register today for Microsoft Ignite

Join us online from anywhere from November 15 to 16, 2023, to hear major product announcements, inspiring messages, and expert insights on the future of cybersecurity and Microsoft solutions. And if you’re not able to participate at all this year, you can still check out plenty of session content, product announcements, and keynotes after Microsoft Ignite wraps up. It will be available on demand after the event. Reserve your spot today. Hope you can join us!

Join the Security Tech Accelerator

We’re also having a Tech Accelerator event on Wednesday, December 6, 2023. Ask questions about the latest product announcements from Ignite and connect with your security peers at this virtual skilling event hosted on the Security Tech Community—register today.

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (formerly known as Twitter) (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Digital security sessions at Microsoft Ignite to prepare you for the era of AI appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.