AI has quickly become a powerful tool misused by threat actors, who use it to slip into the tiniest crack in your defenses. They use AI to automate and launch password attacks and phishing attempts at scale, craft emails that seem to come from people you know, manufacture voicemails and videos that impersonate people, join calls, request IT support, and reset passwords. They even use AI to rewrite AI agents on the fly as they compromise and traverse your network.

To stay ahead in the coming year, we recommend four priorities for identity security leaders:

1. Implement fast, adaptive, and relentless AI-powered protection.
2. Manage, govern, and protect AI and agents.
3. Extend Zero Trust principles everywhere with an integrated Access Fabric security solution.
4. Strengthen your identity and access foundation to start secure and stay secure.

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1. Implement fast, adaptive, and relentless AI-powered protection

2026 is the year to integrate AI agents into your workflows to reduce risk, accelerate decisions, and strengthen your defenses.

While security systems generate plenty of signals, the work of turning that data into clear next steps is still too manual and error-prone. Investigations, policy tuning, and response actions require stitching together an overwhelming volume of context from multiple tools, often under pressure. When cyberattackers are operating at the speed and scale of AI, human-only workflows constrain defenders.

That’s where generative AI and agentic AI come in. Instead of reacting to incidents after the fact, AI agents help your identity teams proactively design, refine, and govern access. Which policies should you create? How do you keep them current? Agents work alongside you to identify policy gaps, recommend smarter and more consistent controls, and continuously improve coverage without adding friction for your users. You can interact with these agents the same way you’d talk to a colleague. They can help you analyze sign-in patterns, existing policies, and identity posture to understand what policies you need, why they matter, and how to improve them.

In a recent study, identity admins using the Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra completed Conditional Access tasks 43% faster and 48% more accurately across tested scenarios. These gains directly translate into a stronger identity security posture with fewer gaps for cyberattackers to exploit. Microsoft Entra also includes built-in AI agents for reasoning over users, apps, sign-ins, risks, and configurations in context. They can help you investigate anomalies, summarize risky behavior, review sign-in changes, remediate and investigate risks, and refine access policies.

The real advantage of AI-powered protection is speed, scale, and adaptability. Static, human-only workflows just can’t keep up with constantly evolving cyberattacks. Working side-by-side with AI agents, your teams can continuously assess posture, strengthen access controls, and respond to emerging risks before they turn into compromise.

2. Manage, govern, and protect AI and agents 

Another critical shift is to make every AI agent a first-class identity and govern it with the same rigor as human identities. This means inventorying agents, assigning clear ownership, governing what they can access, and applying consistent security standards across all identities.

Just as unsanctioned software as a service (SaaS) apps once created shadow IT and data leakage risks, organizations now face agent sprawl—an exploding number of AI systems that can access data, call external services, and act autonomously. While you want your employees to get the most out of these powerful and convenient productivity tools, you also want to protect them from new risks.

Fortunately, the same Zero Trust principles that apply to human employees apply to AI agents, and now you can use the same tools to manage both. You can also add more advanced controls: monitoring agent interaction with external services, enforcing guardrails around internet access, and preventing sensitive data from flowing into unauthorized AI or SaaS applications.

With Microsoft Entra Agent ID, you can register and manage agents using familiar Entra experiences. Each agent receives its own identity, which improves visibility and auditability across your security stack. Requiring a human sponsor to govern an agent’s identity and lifecycle helps prevent orphaned agents and preserves accountability as agents and teams evolve. You can even automate lifecycle actions to onboard and retire agents. With Conditional Access policies, you can block risky agents and set guardrails for least privilege and just in time access to resources.

To govern how employees use agents and to prevent misuse, you can turn to Microsoft Entra Internet Access, included in Microsoft Entra Suite. It’s now a secure web and AI gateway that works with Microsoft Defender to help you discover use of unsanctioned private apps, shadow IT, generative AI, and SaaS apps. It also protects against prompt injection attacks and prevents data exfiltration by integrating network filtering with Microsoft Purview classification policies.

When you have observability into everything that traverses your network, you can embrace AI confidently while ensuring that agents operate safely, responsibly, and in line with organizational policy.

3. Extend Zero Trust principles everywhere with an integrated Access Fabric security solution

There’s often a gap between what your identity system can see and what’s happening on the network. That’s why our next recommendation is to unify the identity and network access layers of your Zero Trust architecture, so they can share signals and reinforce each other’s strengths through a unified policy engine. This gives you deeper visibility into and finer control over every user session.

Today, enterprise organizations juggle an average of five different identity solutions and four different network access solutions, usually from multiple vendors.¹ Each solution enforces access differently with disconnected policies that limit visibility across identity and network layers. Cyberattackers are weaponizing AI to scale phishing campaigns and automate intrusions to exploit the seams between these siloed solutions, resulting in more breaches.²

An access security platform that integrates context from identity, network, and endpoints creates a dynamic safety net—an Access Fabric—that surrounds every digital interaction and helps keep organizational resources secure. An Access Fabric solution wraps every connection, session, and resource in consistent, intelligent access security, wherever work happens—in the cloud, on-premises, or at the edge. Because it reasons over context from identity, network, devices, agents, and other security tools, it determines access risk more accurately than an identity-only system. It continuously re‑evaluates trust across authentication and network layers, so it can enforce real‑time, risk‑based access decisions beyond first sign‑in.

Microsoft Entra delivers integrated access security across AI and SaaS apps, internet traffic, and private resources by bringing identity and network access controls together under a unified Zero Trust policy engine, Microsoft Entra Conditional Access. It continuously monitors user and network risk levels. If any of those risk levels change, it enforces policies that adapt in real time, so you can block access for users, apps, and even AI agents before they cause damage.

Your security teams can set policies in one central place and trust Entra to enforce them everywhere. The same adaptive controls protect human users, devices, and AI agents wherever they move, closing access security gaps while reducing the burden of managing multiple policies across multiple tools.

4. Strengthen your identity and access foundation to start secure and stay secure

To address modern cyberthreats, you need to start from a secure baseline—anchored in phishing‑resistant credentials and strong identity proofing—so only the right person can access your environment at every step of authentication and recovery.

A baseline security model sets minimum guardrails for identity, access, hardening, and monitoring. These guardrails include must-have controls, like those in security defaults, Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies, or Baseline Security Mode in Microsoft 365. This approach includes moving away from easily compromised credentials like passwords and adopting passkeys to balance security with a fast, familiar sign-in experience. Equally important is high‑assurance account recovery and onboarding that combines a government‑issued ID with a biometric match to ensure that no bad actors or AI impersonators gain access.

Microsoft Entra makes it easy to implement these best practices. You can require phishing‑resistant credentials for any account accessing your environment and tailor passkey policies based on risk and regulatory needs. For example, admins or users in highly regulated industries can be required to use device‑bound passkeys such as physical security keys or Microsoft Authenticator, while other worker groups can use synced passkeys for a simpler experience and easier recovery. At a minimum, protect all admin accounts with phishing‑resistant credentials included in Microsoft Entra ID. You can even require new employees to set up a passkey before they can access anything. With Microsoft Entra Verified ID, you can add a live‑person check and validate government‑issued ID for both onboarding and account recovery.

Combining access control policies with device compliance, threat detection, and identity protection will further fortify your foundation. 

Support your identity and network access priorities with Microsoft

The plan for 2026 is straightforward: use AI to automate protection at speed and scale, protect the AI and agents your teams use to boost productivity, extend Zero Trust principles with an Access Fabric solution, and strengthen your identity security baseline. These measures will give your organization the resilience it needs to move fast without compromise. The threats will keep evolving—but you can tip the scales in your favor against increasingly sophisticated cyberattackers.

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.

¹Secure employee access in the age of AI report, Microsoft.

²Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025.

The post Four priorities for AI-powered identity and network access security in 2026 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft maintains a continuous effort to protect its platforms and customers from fraud and abuse. From blocking imposters on Microsoft Azure and adding anti-scam features to Microsoft Edge, to fighting tech support fraud with new features in Windows Quick Assist, this edition of Cyber Signals takes you inside the work underway and important milestones achieved that protect customers.

We are all defenders. 

Between April 2024 and April 2025, Microsoft:

• Thwarted $4 billion in fraud attempts.
• Rejected 49,000 fraudulent partnership enrollments.
• Blocked about 1.6 million bot signup attempts per hour.

The evolution of AI-enhanced cyber scams

AI has started to lower the technical bar for fraud and cybercrime actors looking for their own productivity tools, making it easier and cheaper to generate believable content for cyberattacks at an increasingly rapid rate. AI software used in fraud attempts runs the gamut, from legitimate apps misused for malicious purposes to more fraud-oriented tools used by bad actors in the cybercrime underground.

AI tools can scan and scrape the web for company information, helping cyberattackers build detailed profiles of employees or other targets to create highly convincing social engineering lures. In some cases, bad actors are luring victims into increasingly complex fraud schemes using fake AI-enhanced product reviews and AI-generated storefronts, where scammers create entire websites and e-commerce brands, complete with fake business histories and customer testimonials. By using deepfakes, voice cloning, phishing emails, and authentic-looking fake websites, threat actors seek to appear legitimate at wider scale.

According to the Microsoft Anti-Fraud Team, AI-powered fraud attacks are happening globally, with much of the activity coming from China and Europe, specifically Germany due in part to Germany’s status as one of the largest e-commerce and online services markets in the European Union (EU). The larger a digital marketplace in any region, the more likely a proportional degree of attempted fraud will take place.

E-commerce fraud

Fraudulent e-commerce websites can be set up in minutes using AI and other tools requiring minimal technical knowledge. Previously, it would take threat actors days or weeks to stand up convincing websites. These fraudulent websites often mimic legitimate sites, making it challenging for consumers to identify them as fake. 

Using AI-generated product descriptions, images, and customer reviews, customers are duped into believing they are interacting with a genuine merchant, exploiting consumer trust in familiar brands.

AI-powered customer service chatbots add another layer of deception by convincingly interacting with customers. These bots can delay chargebacks by stalling customers with scripted excuses and manipulating complaints with AI-generated responses that make scam sites appear professional.

In a multipronged approach, Microsoft has implemented robust defenses across our products and services to protect customers from AI-powered fraud. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides comprehensive threat protection for Azure resources, including vulnerability assessments and threat detection for virtual machines, container images, and endpoints.

Microsoft Edge features website typo protection and domain impersonation protection using deep learning technology to help users avoid fraudulent websites. Edge has also implemented a machine learning-based Scareware Blocker to identify and block potential scam pages and deceptive pop-up screens with alarming warnings claiming a computer has been compromised. These attacks try to frighten users into calling fraudulent support numbers or downloading harmful software.

Job and employment fraud

The rapid advancement of generative AI has made it easier for scammers to create fake listings on various job platforms. They generate fake profiles with stolen credentials, fake job postings with auto-generated descriptions, and AI-powered email campaigns to phish job seekers. AI-powered interviews and automated emails enhance the credibility of job scams, making it harder for job seekers to identify fraudulent offers.

To prevent this, job platforms should introduce multifactor authentication for employer accounts to make it harder for bad actors to take over legitimate hirers’ listings and use available fraud-detection technologies to catch suspicious content.

Fraudsters often ask for personal information, such as resumes or even bank account details, under the guise of verifying the applicant’s information. Unsolicited text and email messages offering employment opportunities that promise high pay for minimal qualifications are typically an indicator of fraud.

Employment offers that include requests for payment, offers that seem too good to be true, unsolicited offers or interview requests over text message, and a lack of formal communication platforms can all be indicators of fraud.

Tech support scams

Tech support scams are a type of fraud where scammers trick victims into unnecessary technical support services to fix a device or software problems that don’t exist. The scammers may then gain remote access to a computer—which lets them access all information stored on it, and on any network connected to it or install malware that gives them access to the computer and sensitive data.

Tech support scams are a case where elevated fraud risks exist, even if AI does not play a role. For example, in mid-April 2024, Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed the financially motivated and ransomware-focused cybercriminal group Storm-1811 abusing Windows Quick Assist software by posing as IT support. Microsoft did not observe AI used in these attacks; Storm-1811 instead impersonated legitimate organizations through voice phishing (vishing) as a form of social engineering, convincing victims to grant them device access through Quick Assist. 

Quick Assist is a tool that enables users to share their Windows or macOS device with another person over a remote connection. Tech support scammers often pretend to be legitimate IT support from well-known companies and use social engineering tactics to gain the trust of their targets. They then attempt to employ tools like Quick Assist to connect to the target’s device. 

Quick Assist and Microsoft are not compromised in these cyberattack scenarios; however, the abuse of legitimate software presents risk Microsoft is focused on mitigating. Informed by Microsoft’s understanding of evolving cyberattack techniques, the company’s anti-fraud and product teams work closely together to improve transparency for users and enhance fraud detection techniques. 

The Storm-1811 cyberattacks highlight the capability of social engineering to circumvent security defenses. Social engineering involves collecting relevant information about targeted victims and arranging it into credible lures delivered through phone, email, text, or other mediums. Various AI tools can quickly find, organize, and generate information, thus acting as productivity tools for cyberattackers. Although AI is a new development, enduring measures to counter social engineering attacks remain highly effective. These include increasing employee awareness of legitimate helpdesk contact and support procedures, and applying Zero Trust principles to enforce least privilege across employee accounts and devices, thereby limiting the impact of any compromised assets while they are being addressed. 

Microsoft has taken action to mitigate attacks by Storm-1811 and other groups by suspending identified accounts and tenants associated with inauthentic behavior. If you receive an unsolicited tech support offer, it is likely a scam. Always reach out to trusted sources for tech support. If scammers claim to be from Microsoft, we encourage you to report it directly to us at http://approjects.co.za/?big=reportascam. 

Building on the Secure Future Initiative (SFI), Microsoft is taking a proactive approach to ensuring our products and services are “Fraud-resistant by Design.” In January 2025, a new fraud prevention policy was introduced: Microsoft product teams must now perform fraud prevention assessments and implement fraud controls as part of their design process. 

Recommendations

• Strengthen employer authentication: Fraudsters often hijack legitimate company profiles or create fake recruiters to deceive job seekers. To prevent this, job platforms should introduce multifactor authentication and Verified ID as part of Microsoft Entra ID for employer accounts, making it harder for unauthorized users to gain control.
• Monitor for AI-based recruitment scams: Companies should deploy deepfake detection algorithms to identify AI-generated interviews where facial expressions and speech patterns may not align naturally.
• Be cautious of websites and job listings that seem too good to be true: Verify the legitimacy of websites by checking for secure connections (https) and using tools like Microsoft Edge’s typo protection.
• Avoid providing personal information or payment details to unverified sources: Look for red flags in job listings, such as requests for payment or communication through informal platforms like text messages, WhatsApp, nonbusiness Gmail accounts, or requests to contact someone on a personal device for more information.

Using Microsoft’s security signal to combat fraud

Microsoft is actively working to stop fraud attempts using AI and other technologies by evolving large-scale detection models based on AI, such as machine learning, to play defense by learning from and mitigating fraud attempts. Machine learning is the process that helps a computer learn without direct instruction using algorithms to discover patterns in large datasets. Those patterns are then used to create a comprehensive AI model, allowing for predictions with high accuracy.

We have developed in-product safety controls that warn users about potential malicious activity and integrate rapid detection and prevention of new types of attacks.

Our fraud team has developed domain impersonation protection using deep-learning technology at the domain creation stage, to help protect against fraudulent e-commerce websites and fake job listings. Microsoft Edge has incorporated website typo protection, and we have developed AI-powered fake job detection systems for LinkedIn.

Microsoft Defender Smartscreen is a cloud-based security feature that aims to prevent unsafe browsing habits by analyzing websites, files, and applications based on their reputation and behavior. It is integrated into Windows and the Edge browser to help protect users from phishing attacks, malicious websites, and potentially harmful downloads.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) partners with others in the private and public sector to disrupt the malicious infrastructure used by criminals perpetuating cyber-enabled fraud. The team’s longstanding collaboration with law enforcement around the world to respond to tech support fraud has resulted in hundreds of arrests and increasingly severe prison sentences worldwide. The DCU is applying key learnings from past actions to disrupt those who seek to abuse generative AI technology for malicious or fraudulent purposes. 

Quick Assist features and remote help combat tech support fraud

To help combat tech support fraud, we have incorporated warning messages to alert users about possible tech support scams in Quick Assist before they grant access to someone approaching them purporting to be an authorized IT department or other support resource.

Windows users must read and click the box to acknowledge the security risk of granting remote access to the device.

Microsoft has significantly enhanced Quick Assist protection for Windows users by leveraging its security signal. In response to tech support scams and other threats, Microsoft now blocks an average of 4,415 suspicious Quick Assist connection attempts daily, accounting for approximately 5.46% of global connection attempts. These blocks target connections exhibiting suspicious attributes, such as associations with malicious actors or unverified connections.

Microsoft’s continual focus on advancing Quick Assist safeguards seeks to counter adaptive cybercriminals, who previously targeted individuals opportunistically with fraudulent connection attempts, but more recently have sought to target enterprises with more organized cybercrime campaigns that Microsoft’s actions have helped disrupt.

Our Digital Fingerprinting capability, which leverages AI and machine learning, drives these safeguards by providing fraud and risk signals to detect fraudulent activity. If our risk signals detect a possible scam, the Quick Assist session is automatically ended. Digital Fingerprinting works by collecting various signals to detect and prevent fraud.

For enterprises combating tech support fraud, Remote Help is another valuable resource for employees. Remote Help is designed for internal use within an organization and includes features that make it ideal for enterprises.

By reducing scams and fraud, Microsoft aims to enhance the overall security of its products and protect its users from malicious activities.

Consumer protection tips

Fraudsters exploit psychological triggers such as urgency, scarcity, and trust in social proof. Consumers should be cautious of:

• Impulse buying—Scammers create a sense of urgency with “limited-time” deals and countdown timers.
• Trusting fake social proof—AI generates fake reviews, influencer endorsements, and testimonials to appear legitimate.
• Clicking on ads without verification—Many scam sites spread through AI-optimized social media ads. Consumers should cross-check domain names and reviews before purchasing.
• Ignoring payment security—Avoid direct bank transfers or cryptocurrency payments, which lack fraud protections.

Job seekers should verify employer legitimacy, be on the lookout for common job scam red flags, and avoid sharing personal or financial information with unverified employers.

• Verify employer legitimacy—Cross-check company details on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and official websites to verify legitimacy.
• Notice common job scam red flags—If a job requires upfront payments for training materials, certifications, or background checks, it is likely a scam. Unrealistic salaries or no-experience-required remote positions should be approached with skepticism. Emails from free domains (such as johndoehr@gmail.com instead of hr@company.com) are also typically indicators of fraudulent activity.
• Be cautious of AI-generated interviews and communications—If a video interview seems unnatural, with lip-syncing delays, robotic speech, or odd facial expressions, it could be deepfake technology at work. Job seekers should always verify recruiter credentials through the company’s official website before engaging in any further discussions.
• Avoid sharing personal or financial information—Under no circumstances should you provide a Social Security number, banking details, or passwords to an unverified employer.

Microsoft is also a member of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), which aims to bring governments, law enforcement, consumer protection organizations, financial authorities and providers, brand protection agencies, social media, internet service providers, and cybersecurity companies together to share knowledge and protect consumers from getting scammed.

Recommendations

• Remote Help: Microsoft recommends using Remote Help instead of Quick Assist for internal tech support. Remote Help is designed for internal use within an organization and incorporates several features designed to enhance security and minimize the risk of tech support hacks. It is engineered to be used only within an organization’s tenant, providing a safer alternative to Quick Assist.
• Digital Fingerprinting: This identifies malicious behaviors and ties them back to specific individuals. This helps in monitoring and preventing unauthorized access.
• Blocking full control requests: Quick Assist now includes warnings and requires users to check a box acknowledging the security implications of sharing their screen. This adds a layer of helpful “security friction” by prompting users who may be multitasking or preoccupied to pause to complete an authorization step.

Kelly Bissell: A cybersecurity pioneer combating fraud in the new era of AI

Kelly Bissell’s journey into cybersecurity began unexpectedly in 1990. Initially working in computer science, Kelly was involved in building software for healthcare patient accounting and operating systems at Medaphis and Bellsouth, now AT&T.

His interest in cybersecurity was sparked when he noticed someone logged into a phone switch attempting to get free long-distance calls and traced the intruder back to Romania. This incident marked the beginning of Kelly’s career in cybersecurity.

“I stayed in cybersecurity hunting for bad actors, integrating security controls for hundreds of companies, and helping shape the NIST security frameworks and regulations such as FFIEC, PCI, NERC-CIP,” he explains.

Currently, Kelly is Corporate Vice President of Anti-Fraud and Product Abuse within Microsoft Security. Microsoft’s fraud team employs machine learning and AI to build better detection code and understand fraud operations. They use AI-powered solutions to detect and prevent cyberthreats, leveraging advanced fraud detection frameworks that continuously learn and evolve.

“Cybercrime is a trillion-dollar problem, and it’s been going up every year for the past 30 years. I think we have an opportunity today to adopt AI faster so we can detect and close the gap of exposure quickly. Now we have AI that can make a difference at scale and help us build security and fraud protections into our products much faster.”

Previously Kelly managed the Microsoft Detection and Response Team (DART) and created the Global Hunting, Oversight, and Strategic Triage (GHOST) team that detected and responded to attackers such as Storm-0558 and Midnight Blizzard.

Prior to Microsoft, during his time at Accenture and Deloitte, Kelly collaborated with companies and worked extensively with government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he helped build security systems inside their operations.

His time as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at a bank exposed him to addressing both cybersecurity and fraud, leading to his involvement in shaping regulatory guidelines to protect banks and eventually Microsoft.

Kelly has also played a significant role in shaping regulations around the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, which helps ensure the security of businesses’ credit card transactions, among others.

Internationally, Kelly played a crucial role in helping establish agencies and improve cybersecurity measures. As a consultant in London, he helped stand up the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the equivalent of CISA. Kelly’s efforts in content moderation with several social media companies, including YouTube, were instrumental in removing harmful content.

That’s why he’s excited about Microsoft’s partnership with GASA. GASA brings together governments, law enforcement, consumer protection organizations, financial authorities, internet service providers, cybersecurity companies, and others to share knowledge and define joint actions to protect consumers from getting scammed.

“If I protect Microsoft, that’s good, but it’s not sufficient. In the same way, if Apple does their thing, and Google does their thing, but if we’re not working together, we’ve all missed the bigger opportunity. We must share cybercrime information with each other and educate the public. If we can have a three-pronged approach of tech companies building security and fraud protection into their products, public awareness, and sharing cybercrime and fraudster information with law enforcement, I think we can make a big difference,” he says.

Next steps with 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.

Methodology: Microsoft platforms and services, including Azure, Microsoft Defender for Office, Microsoft Threat Intelligence, and Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), provided anonymized data on threat actor activity and trends. Additionally, Microsoft Entra ID provided anonymized data on threat activity, such as malicious email accounts, phishing emails, and attacker movement within networks. Additional insights are from the daily security signals gained across Microsoft, including the cloud, endpoints, the intelligent edge, and telemetry from Microsoft platforms and services. The $4 billion figure represents an aggregated total of fraud and scam attempts against Microsoft and our customers in consumer and enterprise segments (in 12 months).

The post Cyber Signals Issue 9 | AI-powered deception: Emerging fraud threats and countermeasures appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft Entra

With a single place to secure identities and access, protecting your digital everything has never been easier.

Learn more

Alongside our commitment to put security above all else through the Secure Future Initiative (SFI), Microsoft Security is committed to investing in secure identity and network access innovation. At Gartner IAM Summit, Microsoft Security will showcase the Microsoft Entra Suite—a complete Zero Trust employee access solution. Keep reading for how to connect with us in Grapevine.

AI for identity and access management

Ensuring that organizations of all sizes and industries can give the right individuals right-sized access to the right resources at the right time has been a top priority for Microsoft for years. Companies looking into IAM solutions often face challenges related to decentralized data, provisioning secure user access, and poor IAM interoperability. Microsoft Entra addresses each of these concerns directly and is designed to help organizations secure and manage digital identities across cloud-native and hybrid environments. It provides secure access for any identity, from anywhere, to any app, AI, or resource.

Last month at Microsoft Ignite we announced new capabilities—now in preview—for Microsoft Security Copilot, which is now embedded in Microsoft Entra. You can now access all identity skills previously made generally available for the Security Copilot standalone experience in April 2024, along with new identity capabilities for admins and security analysts, directly within the Microsoft Entra admin center.

Results of our recent Security Copilot IT Admin Efficiency Study are already showing promising impact:

• Copilot users showed a 46.11% reduction in completion times for sign-in troubleshooting tasks.
• Users were 46.8% more accurate across sign-in troubleshooting-related tasks when using Copilot.
• And, most notably, 95% of users agreed that Copilot helped improve the quality of their work, and 96.7% said they would want to use Copilot for these tasks in the future.

Read more on the new skills and how to implement them.

How to engage with Microsoft Security at Gartner IAM Summit

We’re excited to show off the new capabilities of Copilot in Microsoft Entra, as well as other Entra capabilities, throughout our presence at Gartner IAM Summit. Here are a few ways to join us:

• See live demos: We welcome you to visit booth #403, where you can see live demonstrations of Microsoft Security Copilot and the Microsoft Entra Suite. You’ll also hear from our experts on the best practices and product use cases.

• Join our session on AI and identity: On December 9, 2024, from 11:45 AM CT to 12:15 PM CT, Microsoft will be conducting the session Transforming the future of IAM: Bridging Identity, Network Security and AI, presented by Kaitlin Murphy, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Identity Innovations. This session explores how the current state of access management is rapidly evolving, uncovers the unification of IAM and network security, and asks whether traditional IAM solutions do enough to meet the exponential growth of identities and apps across today’s dynamic, AI-powered cyberthreat landscape. Join us to find out if identity remains the center of security.

• Join our session on improving your onboarding: The following day, December 10, 2024, from 12:45 PM CT to 1:15 PM CT, Manmeet Bawa, Director of Product Management, Identity and Network Access, will present the sponsored lunch session Strengthen your workforce security and streamline effortless onboarding with Microsoft Entra Suite. This session lets you experience how Microsoft Entra delivers seamless workforce access security from day one. You’ll be able to watch as a Microsoft expert demonstrates the process of setting up new access package policies with Microsoft Entra ID Governance and creates top-tier identity verification and entitlement management using Face Check with Microsoft Entra Verified ID.

• Book a meeting: One of the most hands-on opportunities to engage at this event is joining us for a one-on-one meeting with Microsoft Security leaders and experts. To book a meeting, click here or visit us at at booth #403, covering the important and emerging identity and network access topics you deem most important. So, whether you’re most interested in the ways Microsoft Security Copilot adds to a secure IAM landscape, have questions regarding advanced identity topics, want to learn more about the unification of identity and network security, or would like an expert’s perspective on what Microsoft Entra can do for you, we’ll be there to talk you through it.

Now that you’re interested in attending the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit 2024, if you’ve yet to secure tickets for your team, Microsoft can now offer you a $375 discount on event registration. Simply use code IAM19EDC when registering. Once you are registered, make sure to schedule your one-on-one meeting with our experts.

For those unable to attend who are looking for another way to discover the latest innovations in the IAM space and see how technologies are evolving, the Microsoft page on identity and network access is a great place to start.

Are you a regular user of Microsoft Entra ID? Review your experience on Gartner Peer Insights™ and get a $25 gift card. 

Learn more

Learn more about the Microsoft Entra Suite.

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.

¹ State of Multicloud Risk Report, Microsoft. 2024.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. 

The post Explore new Microsoft Entra capabilities at Gartner® Identity & Access Management Summit 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

We’re announcing new capvabilities to help accelerate your transition to a Zero Trust security model with the general availability of the Microsoft Entra Suite, the industry’s most comprehensive secure access solution for the workforce, and the general availability of Microsoft Sentinel within the Microsoft unified security operations platform, which delivers unified threat protection and posture management. These innovations make it easier to secure access, identify and close critical security gaps, detect cyberthreats, reduce response times, and streamline operations.

Zero Trust in the age of AI

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to simplify your Zero Trust strategy with the latest end-to-end security innovations.

Watch the webinar

The extraordinary advancements in technology that make our work lives easier and more flexible also create opportunities for bad actors seeking more effective ways to launch cyberattacks. A Zero Trust strategy is vital for helping keep your organization safe in an era when cyberattacks against passwords, networks, and applications continue to increase. According to Gartner®, “AI enhancement can provide malicious code, and facilitate phishing and social engineering, which enables better intrusion, increased credibility, and more damaging attacks.”¹

A proactive Zero Trust security strategy unifies defenses across identities, endpoints, networks, applications, data, and infrastructure with comprehensive security policies, pervasive threat protection, and governance. While individual tools are typically used to fulfill requirements across each Zero Trust pillar, a truly comprehensive strategy connects them together through a centralized access policy engine and integrated threat protection. This delivers defense-in-depth cybersecurity across your on-premises, hybrid, and multicloud environments.

Buying individual solutions and building truly comprehensive architecture from scratch is a herculean effort for most organizations. We’ve designed our security offering from the ground up to enable Zero Trust—delivering built-in integrations with unified policies, controls, and automation to accelerate your implementation and strengthen your security posture.

These announcements further simplify the implementation of a Zero Trust architecture across the full lifecycle from prevention to detection and response. The Microsoft Entra Suite enables organizations to converge policies across identities, endpoints, and private and public networks with a unified access policy engine. Our unified security operations platform brings together all the security signals your environment generates, then normalizes, analyzes, and uses them to proactively defend against cyberthreats.

The Microsoft Entra Suite

Given that 66% of digital attack paths involve insecure identity credentials, the Microsoft Entra Suite plays a critical role in preventing security breaches.²

Implemented alone, neither identity nor network security can address all possible access scenarios. The Microsoft Entra Suite unifies identity and network access security—a novel and necessary approach for Zero Trust security. It provides everything you need to verify users, prevent overprivileged permissions, improve detections, and enforce granular access controls for all users and resources. Its native integration facilitates collaboration between identity and network teams. It also reduces your IT administrators’ workload, because they can easily manage and enforce granular identity and network access policies in one place. In addition, Microsoft Entra skills in Microsoft Copilot for Security help identity professionals respond more quickly to identity risks.

The Microsoft Entra Suite can help you do the following:

Unify Conditional Access policies for identities and networks. Security teams only have to manage one set of policies in one portal to configure access controls for both identities and networks. Now they can extend Zero Trust access policies to any application, whether it’s in the cloud, on-premises, or even to the open internet. Conditional Access evaluates any access request, no matter where it’s coming from, performing real-time risk assessment to strengthen protection against unauthorized access. And because the access policy engine is unified, identity and network teams can be confident that they protect every access point without leaving gaps that often exist between disparate solutions.  

Ensure least privilege access for all users accessing all resources and apps, including AI. Identity professionals can automate the access lifecycle from the day a new employee joins their organization, through all their role changes, until the time of their exit. No matter how long or multifaceted an employee’s journey, Microsoft Entra ID Governance ensures they have the right access to just the applications and resources they need, which helps prevent a cyberattacker’s lateral movement in case of a breach. Identity professionals and business leaders have an additional layer of access control with regular, machine learning-powered access reviews to recertify access needs, ensure compliance with internal policies, and remove unnecessary permissions based on machine learning-powered insights that help reduce reviewer fatigue.  

Improve the user experience for both in-office and remote workers. Employees enjoy a faster and easier onboarding experience, faster and more secure sign-in through passwordless authentication, single sign-on for all applications, and superior performance. They can use a self-service portal to request access to relevant packages, manage approvals and access reviews, and view request and approval history. Face Check with Microsoft Entra Verified ID enables real-time verification of a user’s identity, which streamlines remote onboarding and self-service recovery of passwordless accounts.

Reduce the complexity and cost of managing security tools from multiple vendors. Since traditional on-premises security solutions don’t scale to the needs of modern cloud-first, AI-first environments, organizations are seeking ways to secure and manage their assets from the cloud. With the Microsoft Entra Suite, they can retire multiple on-premises security tools, such as traditional VPNs, on-premises Secure Web Gateway, and on-premises identity governance.

Microsoft Sentinel is generally available in Microsoft’s unified security operations platform

A complete Zero Trust architecture provides effective prevention, detection, investigation, and response to cyberthreats across every layer of your digital estate. Because threat actors constantly pivot, no defense is ever absolute. That’s why taking an “assume breach” stance by continuously re-verifying every action while monitoring for new risks and threats is a Zero Trust principle.

According to our research, organizations use as many as 80 individual tools in their security portfolio. For many, this means having to manually manage integration between their security information and event management (SIEM); security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR); extended detection and response (XDR); posture and exposure management; cloud security; and threat intelligence.

We’ve been on a journey to unify these tools over the last few years and are excited to take the next step by bringing Microsoft Sentinel into the Microsoft Defender portal, which we can announce is generally available. Microsoft Sentinel customers on the commercial cloud with at least one Microsoft Defender XDR workload deployed will now be able to:

• Onboard a single workspace into the Defender portal.
• Have unified incidents and unified hunting with Microsoft Defender XDR, streamlining their investigations and reducing context switching.
• Take advantage of Microsoft Copilot for Security for incident summaries and reports, guided investigation, auto-generated Microsoft Teams messages, code analysis, and more.
• Extend attack disruption beyond Defender XDR workloads to other critical apps—starting with SAP.
• Get tailored, post-incident recommendations on preventing similar or repeat cyberattacks that tie directly into the Microsoft Security Exposure Management initiatives to automatically improve readiness scores as actions are completed.

Microsoft Sentinel customers can adopt the new experience easily while continuing to use the classic experience in Microsoft Azure if needed. It’s never been easier to add SIEM capabilities like connectors to hundreds of data sources, and extended retention or additional compliance capabilities to your existing Microsoft Defender XDR environment.

Some more details of the unified security operations platform include:

Automatically disrupt hands-on-keyboard cyberattacks with attack disruption. This out-of-the-box capability is powered by AI and machine learning to detect and stop the progression of advanced cyberattacks being conducted by well-resourced and sophisticated threat actors. Attack disruption stops the progress of human-operated ransomware, business email compromise, adversary-in-the-middle, and malicious use of OAuth apps in real time with 99% confidence, giving your security team a chance to complete their investigation and remediation under less pressure. By combining native and third-party signals from Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel, attack disruption has expanded to stop even more attacks in critical apps, such as SAP.

Detect and investigate faster with more accuracy. Bringing the depth of XDR signal from Defender and the flexibility of log sources from Microsoft Sentinel delivers an improved signal-to-noise ratio and enhanced alert correlation. Cyberattack timelines are automatically fully correlated in a single incident, allowing analysts to move faster to respond to breaches, with a more comprehensive view of an attack. The unification of SIEM and XDR has delivered to our customers, on average, 50% faster correlation among XDR, log data, custom detections, and threat intelligence—with 99% accuracy.³

Improved threat hunting experience. With a single experience for data querying, analysts don’t have to remember where data is available or jump across portals. Customers have found significant benefit in their ability to proactively search through data for an indicator of compromise. Embedded Microsoft Copilot for Security acts across SIEM and XDR data to further accelerate the work of security analysts with skills such as guided response or natural language to Kusto Query Language (KQL) translation.

“Our team has greatly benefited from the unified threat hunting experience provided by the platform. The integration of various data sources, including those from third-party providers through Microsoft Sentinel, has significantly enhanced our incident response capabilities. This has allowed us to expand on our threat hunting and custom detection possibilities.”

—DOW

Get started now: Commercial cloud users of Microsoft Sentinel with at least one Defender XDR workload deployed can onboard a single workspace into the Defender portal through a simple wizard, available on the home screen at security.microsoft.com. After the workspace is onboarded, customers can use the unified security operations platform for SIEM and XDR, while retaining access to their Microsoft Sentinel experience in the Azure portal.

“The biggest benefit of the unified security operations platform has been the ability to combine data in Defender XDR with logs from third-party security tools. Another advantage has been to eliminate the need to switch between Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel portals. We now have a single pane of glass, which the team has been wanting for some years.”

—Robel Kidane, Group Information Security Manager, Renishaw plc

Simplifying implementation of your Zero Trust architecture

By incorporating the principles of Zero Trust—verify explicitly, use least privileged access, and assume breach—the Microsoft Entra Suite and the Microsoft unified security operations platform help leaders and stakeholders for security operations, identity, IT, and network infrastructure understand their organization’s overall Zero Trust posture. They verify explicitly by ensuring continuous authentication and authorization of all access requests. They enforce least privileged access by granting only the minimal level of access necessary for users to perform their tasks, thereby reducing attack surfaces. Additionally, they assume breach by continuously monitoring and analyzing activities to identify and respond to cyberthreats proactively.

We encourage you to watch the Zero Trust spotlight on-demand, when Microsoft experts and thought leaders will dive deeper into these and other announcements, including the general availability of Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access, which is part of the Microsoft Entra Suite.

Learn more about the Microsoft Entra Suite

• Read more about the general availability of Microsoft Entra Suite.
• Read more about the general availability of Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access.
• Read about Microsoft Entra plans and pricing.
• Visit the Microsoft Entra Suite trial page.
• Learn more about Microsoft identity and network access solutions.
• Register for the Tech Accelerator on August 14, 2024.

Learn more about the unified security operations platform

• Combine least privileged access with endpoint management and data governance for even stronger protection of sensitive information.
• Get started with the general availability of Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender Portal with some helpful FAQs.
• Learn more about the exposure management public preview.
• Read about the new Microsoft Sentinel SOC optimization API.
• Learn more about the general availability of Microsoft Sentinel in the unified SOC platform.
• Learn about our how SOC optimization helps your organization manage costs and protections.
• Manually deploy playbooks in the unified experience.
• Compare Microsoft 365 Enterprise Plans.
• Learn about Microsoft Sentinel pricing.

Learn more about Zero Trust

• Watch the on-demand Zero Trust spotlight.
• Embrace proactive security with Zero Trust.

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.

¹Gartner Survey Shows AI-Enhanced Malicious Attacks Are a New Top Emerging Risk for Enterprises, Gartner press release. May 22, 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

²State of Multicloud Risk Report, Microsoft. 2024.

³Microsoft Internal Research. June 2024.

The post Simplified Zero Trust security with the Microsoft Entra Suite and unified security operations platform, now generally available appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Try Face Check for yourself.

Verified ID: Verify once, use everywhere

In our everyday lives, we use identity documents like driver’s licenses or passports as convenient and secure ways to prove our identity. Until now, we have not had a good digital equivalent. Microsoft Entra Verified ID provides a secure and easy-to-use experience for digitally verifying many aspects of our identity, such as education, skills, and workplace affiliation. As fraud skyrockets for businesses and consumers, and fraud tactics become increasingly complex—especially with advancements in generative AI—identity verification has never been more important.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID is based on open standards, enabling organizations to verify the widest variety of credentials using a simple API. Verified ID integrates with some of the leading verification partners to verify identity attributes for individuals (for example, a driver’s license and a liveness match) across 192 countries. Today, hundreds of organizations rely on Verified ID to remotely onboard new users as well as reduce fraud when providing self-service recovery. For example, Skype has reduced fraudulent cases of registering Skype Phone Numbers in Japan by 90% by implementing Verified ID. Elsewhere, enterprises are issuing Verified Employee Credentials to enable employees to verify their employment status with LinkedIn as well as for business-to-business collaboration.

Learn more about how Verified ID works and how organizations are using it today in our whitepaper.

Introducing Face Check with Verified ID: Unlocking high-assurance verifications at scale

Face Check, powered by Azure AI services, adds a critical layer of trust by matching a user’s real-time selfie and the photo from their identity document (such as a passport or driver’s license). By sharing only the match results and not any sensitive identity data, Face Check improves user privacy while allowing organizations to be sure the person claiming an identity is really them.

Many organizations are evaluating Face Check as part of the preview. BEMO, a leader in help desk services for cybersecurity operations, uses Face Check to quickly verify the identity of an employee and reduce the risk of impersonation. “The liability of granting admin [role] access to the wrong person is high, so Face Check provides an extra layer of insurance. In the past we had to trade off between increasing risk of fraudulent access or increased compliance risk by collecting personally identifiable information in an ad hoc manner. Now we can verify the identity of an employee instantly and with high confidence, without trading off between security and compliance.” More than a hundred of BEMO’s business customers have already implemented Face Check.

Visit our frequently asked questions to learn more. If you are ready to implement Face Check with Verified ID for your organization, see the steps below to get started. 

Get started with Face Check in Verified ID

If you are ready to implement Verified ID for your organization, here are the steps to get started.

Total time: 5 minutes

1. Follow this tutorial to create a Face Check-ready Verified Workplace Credential.

Time: 1 minute

2. Configure who can request a Verified ID by selecting all users or specific groups of users.

Time: 3 minutes

3. Users can sign in to http://myaccount.microsoft.com. Use the new option under your profile to get your Verified ID (using photo from Microsoft 365 profile). Use Microsoft Authenticator to get your Face Check-ready Verified ID. It’s that easy!

Time: 1 minute

How Face Check enables high-assurance verification

Apps can make a simple API request for users to perform a Face Check against a Verified Employee credential, state-issued government ID, or a custom digital credential with a trusted photo. For example, businesses can enable a wide variety of self-service scenarios including activating a passkey or resetting a password. A help desk service for a business can request a Face Check against a Verified Employee credential to verify the identity quickly and securely. To reduce compliance risk, apps receive a confidence score for match against the photo from the desired credential, without gaining access to liveness data.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID developer docs has a reference for a presentation request sample with Face Check.

What’s next for Verified ID?

Today, businesses can verify a wide variety of identity attributes, such as employment, education or government-issued ID (with partners like LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, Au10tix, and IDEMIA). Now with Face Check, businesses can be confident that the person presenting these credentials is indeed the right person to whom these credentials were issued. Next, we are extending this API pattern to verify other identity attributes that businesses care about, including verified work history and legal entity verification in partnership with Dun & Bradstreet (DNB), LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, and IDEMIA. Stay tuned for more details on this program in coming weeks.

Join us online at Microsoft Secure on March 13, 2024, to learn about Microsoft Entra innovations that redefine how to think about secure access for any identity to any resource, from anywhere.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Entra Verified ID.

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 Entra Verified ID introduces Face Check in preview appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Generative AI will empower individuals and organizations to increase productivity and accelerate their work, but these tools can also be susceptible to internal and external risk. Attackers are already using AI to launch, scale, and even automate new and sophisticated cyberattacks, all without writing a single line of code. Machine learning demands have increased as well, leading to an abundance of workload identities across corporate multicloud environments. This makes it more complex for identity and access professionals to secure, permission, and track a growing set of human and machine identities.

Adopting a comprehensive defense-in-depth strategy that spans identity, endpoint, and network can help your organization be better prepared for the opportunities and challenges we face in 2024 and beyond. To confidently secure identity and access at your organization, here are five areas worth prioritizing in the new year:

1. Empower your workforce with Microsoft Security Copilot.
2. Enforce least privilege access everywhere, including AI apps.
3. Get prepared for more sophisticated attacks.
4. Unify access policies across identity, endpoint, and network security.
5. Control identities and access for multicloud.

Our recommendations come from serving thousands of customers, collaborating with the industry, and continuously protecting the digital economy from a rapidly evolving threat landscape.

Microsoft Entra

Learn how unified multicloud identity and network access help you protect and verify identities, manage permissions, and enforce intelligent access policies, all in one place.

Explore Microsoft Entra

Priority 1: Empower your workforce with Microsoft Security Copilot

This year generative AI will become deeply infused into cybersecurity solutions and play a critical role in securing access. Identities, both human and machine, are multiplying at a faster rate than ever—as are identity-based attacks. Sifting through sign-in logs to investigate or remediate identity risks does not scale to the realities of cybersecurity talent shortages when there are more than 4,000 identity attacks per second.¹ To stay ahead of malicious actors, identity professionals need all the help they can get. Here’s where Microsoft Security Copilot can make a big difference at your organization and help cut through today’s noisy security landscape. Generative AI can meaningfully augment the talent and ingenuity of your identity experts with automations that work at machine-speed and intelligence.

Based on the latest Work Trend Index, business leaders are empowering workers with AI to increase productivity and help employees with repetitive and low value tasks.² Early adopters of Microsoft Security Copilot, our AI companion for cybersecurity teams, have seen a 44% increase in efficiency and 86% increase in quality of work.³ Identity teams can use natural language prompts in Copilot to reduce time spent on common tasks, such as troubleshooting sign-ins and minimizing gaps in identity lifecycle workflows. It can also strengthen and uplevel expertise in the team with more advanced capabilities like investigating users and sign-ins associated with security incidents while taking immediate corrective action. 

To get the most out of your AI investments, identity teams will need to build a consistent habit of using their AI companions. Once your workforce becomes comfortable using these tools, it is time to start building a company prompt library that outlines the specific queries commonly used for various company tasks, projects, and business processes. This will equip all current and future workers with an index of shortcuts that they can use to be productive immediately.

How to get started: Check out this Microsoft Learn training on the fundamentals of generative AI, and subscribe for updates on Microsoft Security Copilot to be the first to hear about new product innovations, the latest generative AI tips, and upcoming events.

Priority 2: Enforce least privilege access everywhere, including AI apps

One of the most common questions we hear is how to secure access to AI apps—especially those in corporate (sanctioned) and third-party (unsanctioned) environments. Insider risks like data leakage or spoilage can lead to tainted large language models, confidential data being shared in apps that are not monitored, or the creation of rogue user accounts that are easily compromised. The consequences of excessively permissioned users are especially damaging within sanctioned AI apps where users who are incorrectly permissioned can quickly gain access to and manipulate company data that was never meant for them.

Ultimately, organizations must secure their AI applications with the same identity and access governance rules they apply to the rest of their corporate resources. This can be done with an identity governance solution, which lets you define and roll out granular access policies for all your users and company resources, including the generative AI apps your organization decides to adopt. As a result, only the right people will have the right level of access to the right resources. The access lifecycle can be automated at scale through controls like identity verification, entitlement management, lifecycle workflows, access requests, reviews, and expirations. 

To enforce least privilege access, make sure that all sanctioned apps and services, including generative AI apps, are managed by your identity and access solution. Then, define or update your access policies with a tool like Microsoft Entra ID Governance that controls who, when, why, and how long users retain access to company resources. Use lifecycle workflows to automate user access policies so that any time a user’s status changes, they still maintain the correct level of access. Where applicable, extend custom governance rules and user experiences to any customer, vendor, contractor, or partner by integrating Microsoft Entra External ID, a customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution. For high-risk actions, require proof of identity in real-time using Microsoft Entra Verified ID. Microsoft Security Copilot also comes with built-in governance policies, tailored specifically for generative AI applications, to prevent misuse.

How to get started: Read the guide to securely govern AI and other business-critical applications in your environment. Make sure your governance strategy abides by least privilege access principles.

Priority 3: Get prepared for more sophisticated attacks

Not only are known attacks like password spray increasing in intensity, speed, and scale, but new attack techniques are being developed rapidly that pose a serious threat to unprepared teams. Multifactor authentication adds a layer of security, but cybercriminals can still find ways around it. More sophisticated attacks like token theft, cookie replay, and AI-powered phishing campaigns are also becoming more prevalent. Identity teams need to adapt to a new cyberthreat landscape where bad actors can automate the full lifecycle of a threat campaign—all without writing a single line of code.

To stay safe in today’s relentless identity threat landscape, we recommend taking a multi-layered approach. Start by implementing phishing-resistant multifactor authentication that is based on cryptography or biometrics such as Windows Hello, FIDO2 security keys, certificate-based authentication, and passkeys (both roaming and device-bound). These methods can help you combat more than 99% of identity attacks as well as advanced phishing and social engineering schemes.⁴ 

For sophisticated attacks like token theft and cookie replay, have in place a machine learning-powered identity protection tool and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) to detect a wide range of risk signals that flag unusual user behavior. Then use continuous access evaluation (CAE) with token protection features to respond to risk signals in real-time and block, challenge, limit, revoke, or allow user access. For new attacks like one-time password (OTP) bots that take advantage of multifactor authentication fatigue, educate employees about common social engineering tactics and use the Microsoft Authenticator app to suppress sign-in prompts when a multifactor authentication fatigue attack is detected. Finally, for high assurance scenarios, consider using verifiable credentials—digital identity claims from authoritative sources—to quickly verify an individual’s credentials and grant least privilege access with confidence. 

Customize your policies in the Microsoft Entra admin center to mandate strong, phishing resistant authentication for any scenario, including step up authentication with Microsoft Entra Verified ID. Make sure to implement an identity protection tool like Microsoft Entra ID Protection, which now has token protection capabilities, to detect and flag risky user signals that your risk-based CAE engine can actively respond to. Lastly, secure all internet traffic, including all software as a service (SaaS) apps, with Microsoft Entra Internet Access, an identity-centric SWG that shields users against malicious internet traffic and unsafe content.  

How to get started: To quick start your defense-in-depth campaign, we’ve developed default access policies that make it easy to implement security best practices, such as requiring multifactor authentication for all users. Check out these guides on requiring phishing-resistant multifactor authentication and planning your conditional access deployment. Finally, read up on our token protection, continuous access evaluation, and multifactor authentication fatigue suppression capabilities.

Priority 4: Unify access policies across identity, endpoint, and network security

In most organizations, the identity, endpoint, and network security functions are siloed, with teams using different technologies for managing access. This is problematic because it requires conditional access changes to be made in multiple places, increasing the chance of security holes, redundancies, and inconsistent access policies between teams. Identity, endpoint, and network tools need to be integrated under one policy engine, as neither category alone can protect all access points.

By adopting a Zero Trust security model that spans identity, endpoint, and network security, you can easily manage and enforce granular access policies in one place. This helps reduce operational complexity and can eliminate gaps in policy coverage. Plus, by enforcing universal conditional access policies from a single location, your policy engine can analyze a more diverse set of signals such as network, identity, endpoint, and application conditions before granting access to any resource—without making any code changes. 

Microsoft’s Security Service Edge (SSE) solution is identity-aware and is delivering a unique innovation to the SSE category by bringing together identity, endpoint, and network security access policies. The solution includes Microsoft Entra Internet Access, an SWG for safeguarding SaaS apps and internet traffic, as well as Microsoft Entra Private Access, a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution for securing access to all applications and resources. When you unify your network and identity access policies, it is easier to secure access and manage your organization’s conditional access lifecycle.

How to get started: Read these blogs to learn why their identity-aware designs make Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access unique to the SSE category. To learn about the different use cases and scenarios, configuration prerequisites, and how to enable secure access, go to the Microsoft Entra admin center. 

Priority 5: Control identities and access for multicloud

Today, as multicloud adoption increases, it is harder than ever to gain full visibility over which identities, human or machine, have access to what resources across your various clouds.  Plus, with the massive increase in AI-driven workloads, the number of machine identities being used in multicloud environments is quickly rising, outnumbering human identities 10 to 1.⁵ Many of these identities are created with excessive permissions and little to no governance, with less than 5% of permissions granted actually used, suggesting that a vast majority of machine identities are not abiding by least privilege access principles. As a result, attackers have shifted their attention to apps, homing in on workload identities as a vulnerable new threat vector. Organizations need a unified control center for managing workload identities and permissions across all their clouds.

Securing access to your multicloud infrastructure across all identity types starts with selecting the methodology that makes sense for your organization. Zero Trust provides an excellent, customizable framework that applies just as well to workload identities as it does to human identities. You can effectively apply these principles with a cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) platform, which provides deep insights into the permissions granted across your multicloud, how they are used, and the ability to right size those permissions. Extending these controls to your machine identities will require a purpose-built tool for workload identities that uses strong credentials, conditional access policies, anomaly and risk signal monitoring, access reviews, and location restrictions.

Unifying and streamlining the management of your organization’s multicloud starts with diagnosing the health of your multicloud infrastructure with Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, which will help you discover, detect, right-size, and govern your organization’s multicloud identities. Then, using Microsoft Entra Workload ID, migrate your workload identities to managed identities where possible and apply strong Zero Trust principles and conditional access controls to them.

How to get started: Start a Microsoft Entra Permissions Management free trial to assess the state of your organization’s multicloud environment, then take the recommended actions to remediate any access right risks. Also, use Microsoft Entra Workload ID to assign conditional access policies to all of your apps, services, and machine identities based on least privilege principles.

Our commitment to continued partnership with you

It is our hope that the strategies in this blog help you form an actionable roadmap for securing access at your organization—for everyone, to everything.

But access security is not a one-way street, it is your continuous feedback that enables us to provide truly customer-centric solutions to the identity and access problems we face in 2024 and beyond.  We are grateful for the continued partnership and dialogue with you—from day-to-day interactions, to joint deployment planning, to the direct feedback that informs our strategy. As always, we remain committed to building the products and tools you need to defend your organization throughout 2024 and beyond.

Learn more about Microsoft Entra, or recap the identity at Microsoft Ignite blog.

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.

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report, Microsoft. October 2023. 

²Work Trend Index Annual Report: Will AI Fix Work? Microsoft. May 9, 2023.

³Microsoft unveils expansion of AI for security and security for AI at Microsoft Ignite, Vasu Jakkal. November 15, 2023.

⁴How effective is multifactor authentication at deterring cyberattacks? Microsoft.

⁵2023 State of Cloud Permissions Risks report now published, Alex Simons. March 28, 2023.

The post 5 ways to secure identity and access for 2024 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft Entra is a unified identity and network access solution that protects any identity and secures access to any application or resource, in any cloud or on-premises. We’re grateful to all of you—our customers and partners, for your generous feedback that guides our product vision, roadmap, and innovation, and for the collaborative engineering approach that has enabled us to co-create modern identity and access solutions.  

Today, we are honored to announce that for the seventh year in a row, Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant ^TM for Access Management. We believe Microsoft’s placement in the Leaders quadrant validates our commitment to empowering our customers with a comprehensive solution powered by AI and automation.

Making it easier to secure access

Microsoft Entra’s mission is to help you stay ahead of the evolving digital threat landscape by making it easier to secure access to everything, for everyone, from anywhere. This year, we released several key innovations in pursuit of this goal. Here are a few recent highlights: 

First, we introduced Microsoft Entra ID Governance, our complete identity governance solution that helps ensure the right people have the right access to the right resources at the right time. This cloud-delivered product includes capabilities that were already available in Microsoft Entra ID, plus more advanced tools that automate identity and access lifecycle management, and simplify access governance for on-premises, software as a service, and cloud apps and resources.

Second, we made significant progress towards offering additional phishing-resistant authentication methods in alignment with Executive Order 14028: Users will be able to sign in using passkeys managed from the Microsoft Authenticator app, which is also Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-compliant for both iOS and Android. We have also added more customization for our cloud-based certificate-based authentication (CBA) solution. 

Third, Microsoft Entra ID introduced a series of marquee features, including Microsoft Entra ID Protection that help you proactively block identity takeover in real-time. These innovations include a brand-new dashboard with improved security posture insights and recommendations, new risk detections that can prevent attacks in their early phases, and an integration with Microsoft Defender XDR to correlate incidents. Strict location enforcement capabilities have also been added to continuous access evaluation (CAE), which enables Microsoft Entra ID to use those signals to revoke access and remediate potential compromise if a change in location was detected in in near real-time. As part of an ongoing commitment to token protection, Microsoft Entra ID also released sign-in session token protection to help defend against token theft attacks. 

Fourth, we released the preview of new, unified capabilities in Microsoft Entra External ID, our next-generation customer identity and access management platform that unifies secure and engaging experiences for all external identities, including customers, partners, citizens, and others within a single integrated platform. These new capabilities deliver a more developer-centric platform with the latest security and governance capabilities of Microsoft Entra ID and deep integrations across Microsoft Security. 

Fifth, we launched our new identity-centric Security Service Edge solution with the release of two products, Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access. This solution unifies identity and network access controls under a single policy engine, extending universal Conditional Access controls to any user and any resource across identity, endpoint and network. By bringing these two solutions into the Microsoft Entra portfolio, we’re expanding our reach beyond identity and access management to a comprehensive solution that can help secure access holistically.

We can’t wait to bring more innovations to the Microsoft Entra portfolio in this new year and continue making progress against our goal to simplify securing access to everything, for everyone.

Discover the Microsoft Entra product family

The Microsoft Entra product family includes:

• Microsoft Entra ID, part of Microsoft Entra, our flagship cloud identity product.
• Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, our cloud infrastructure entitlement management product.
• Microsoft Entra External ID, our customer identity and access management product.
• Microsoft Entra Verified ID, our decentralized identity product.
• Microsoft Entra Identity Governance, our complete identity governance product.
• Microsoft Entra Workload ID, our product that brings advanced security and governance to non-human identities.
• Microsoft Entra Internet Access, our identity-centric secure web gateway (SWG) product.
• Microsoft Entra Private Access, our identity-centric Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) product.

Are you a regular user of Microsoft Entra? Review your experience on Gartner Peer Insights™ and get a $25 gift card.

Microsoft Entra

Unified multicloud identity and network access help you protect and verify identities, manage permissions, and enforce intelligent access policies, all in one place.

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Learn more

You can learn more by reading the full 2023 Gartner^® Magic Quadrant^TM for Access Management report. To learn more about the Microsoft Entra portfolio and its products, visit our website.

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.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks and service marks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Access Management, by Henrique Teixeira, Abhyuday Data, Nathan Harris, Robertson Pimentel. 16 November 2023.

The post Microsoft named a Leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Access Management for the 7th year​​ appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Protecting identities and access is critical. As our work and lives become increasingly digital, cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated, affecting organizations of every size, in every industry, and in every part of the world. In the last 12 months, we saw an average of more than 4,000 password attacks per second, an almost threefold increase from the 1,287 attacks per second we saw the previous year.² We’re also seeing far more sophisticated attacks, including ones that manage to evade critical defenses, such as multifactor authentication, to steal access tokens, impersonate a rightful user, and gain access to critical data.

To help organizations protect their ever-evolving digital estates, we’ve been expanding beyond managing directories and authenticating users to securing and governing access for any identity to any app or resource. Today, we’re thrilled to announce the next milestone in our vision of making it easy to secure access with two new products: Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access. We’re adding these capabilities to help organizations instill trust, not only in their digital experiences and services but in every digital interaction that powers them.

Secure access to any app or resource, from anywhere

Flexible work arrangements and the resulting increase in cloud workloads are straining traditional corporate networks and legacy network security approaches. Using VPNs to backhaul traffic to the legacy network security stack weakens security posture and damages the user experience while using siloed solutions and access policies leaves security gaps.

Microsoft Entra Internet Access is an identity-centric Secure Web Gateway that protects access to internet, software as a service (SaaS), and Microsoft 365 apps and resources. It extends Conditional Access policies with network conditions to protect against malicious internet traffic and other threats from the open internet. For Microsoft 365 environments, it enables best-in-class security and visibility, along with faster and more seamless access to Microsoft 365 apps, so you can boost productivity for any user, anywhere. Microsoft 365 scenarios in Microsoft Entra Internet Access are in preview today, and you can sign up for the preview of capabilities for all internet traffic and SaaS apps and resources that will be available later this year.

Microsoft Entra Private Access is an identity-centric Zero Trust Network Access that secures access to private apps and resources. Now any user, wherever they are, can quickly and easily connect to private apps—across hybrid and multicloud environments, private networks, and data centers—from any device and any network. Now in preview, Microsoft Entra Private Access reduces operational complexity and cost by replacing legacy VPNs and offers more granular security. You can apply Conditional Access to individual applications, and enforce multifactor authentication, device compliance, and other controls to any legacy application without changing those applications.

Together, Internet Access and Private Access, coupled with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, our SaaS security-focused cloud access security broker, comprise Microsoft’s Security Service Edge (SSE) solution. We’ll continue to evolve our SSE solution as an open platform that delivers the flexibility of choice between solutions from Microsoft and our partners. Pricing for Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Microsoft Entra Private Access will be available when those products reach general availability.

Figure 1. Microsoft’s Security Service Edge (SSE) solution.

Neither identity nor network security alone can protect the breadth of access points and scenarios that modern organizations require. That’s why, as cyberattacks get more sophisticated, we’re adding identity-centric network access to our cloud identity solutions. We’re converging controls for identity and network access so you can create unified Conditional Access policies that extend all protections and governance to all identities and resources. With a single place to safeguard and verify identities, manage permissions, and enforce intelligent access policies, protecting your digital estate has never been easier.

Microsoft Azure Active Directory is becoming Microsoft Entra ID

When we introduced Microsoft Entra in May of 2022, it included three products: Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, and Microsoft Entra Verified ID.¹ We later expanded the Microsoft Entra family with Microsoft Entra ID Governance and Microsoft Entra Workload ID.³ Today, Microsoft Entra protects any identity and secures access to any resource—on-premises, across clouds, and anywhere in between—with a product family that unifies multicloud identity and network access solutions.

To simplify our product naming and unify our product family, we’re changing the name of Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID. Capabilities and licensing plans, sign-in URLs, and APIs remain unchanged, and all existing deployments, configurations, and integrations will continue to work as before. Starting today, you’ll see notifications in the administrator portal, on our websites, in documentation, and in other places where you may interact with Azure AD. We’ll complete the name change from Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID by the end of 2023. No action is needed from you.

Figure 2. With the name change to Microsoft Entra ID, the standalone license names are changing. Azure AD Free becomes Microsoft Entra ID Free. Azure AD Premium P1 becomes Microsoft Entra ID P1. Azure AD Premium P2 becomes Microsoft Entra ID P2. And our product for customer identities, Azure AD External Identities, becomes Microsoft Entra External ID. SKU and service plan name changes take effect on October 1, 2023.

More innovations in Microsoft Entra

Today we’d also like to highlight other innovations in the Microsoft Entra portfolio that strengthen defenses against attackers who are becoming more adept at exploiting identity-related vulnerabilities such as weak credentials, misconfigurations, and excessive access permissions.

Prevent identity takeover in real time

Several exciting changes to Microsoft Entra ID Protection (currently Azure AD Identity Protection) help IT and identity practitioners prevent account compromise. Instead of reactively revoking access based on stale data, ID Protection uses the power of advanced machine learning to identify sign-in anomalies and anomalous user behavior and then block, challenge, or limit access in real time. For example, it may trigger a risk-based Conditional Access policy that requires high-assurance and phishing-resistant authentication methods for accessing sensitive resources.

A new dashboard demonstrates the impact of the identity protections that organizations deploy with a comprehensive snapshot of prevented identity attacks and the most common attack patterns. On the dashboard, you can view simple metric cards and attack graphs that show risk origins, security posture over time, types of current attacks, as well as recommendations based on risk exposure, while highlighting the business impact of enforced controls. With these insights, you can further investigate your organization’s security posture in additional tools and applications for enhanced recommendations.

Figure 3. New Microsoft Entra ID Protection dashboard.

Automate access governance

An important part of securing access for any identity to any app is ensuring that only the right identities have the right access at the right time. Some organizations only realize they need to take this approach when they fail a security audit. Microsoft Entra ID Governance, now generally available, is a complete identity governance solution that helps you comply with organizational and regulatory security requirements while increasing employee productivity through real-time, self-service, and workflow-based app entitlements.⁴

ID Governance automates the employee identity lifecycle to reduce manual work for IT and provides machine learning-based insights about identities and app entitlements. Because it’s cloud-delivered, it scales to complex cloud and hybrid environments, unlike traditional on-premises identity governance point solutions. It supports cloud and on-premises apps from any provider, as well as custom-built apps hosted in the public cloud or on-premises. Our global system integrator partners—including Edgile, a Wipro company, EY, KPMG, and PwC—started helping with the planning and deployment of ID Governance on July 1, 2023.

Figure 4. New Microsoft Entra ID Governance dashboard.

Personalize and secure access to any application for customers and partners

As we announced at Microsoft Build 2023, new developer-centric capabilities in Microsoft Entra External ID are now in preview. External ID is an integrated identity solution for external users, including customers, patients, citizens, guests, partners, and suppliers. It offers rich customization options, Conditional Access, identity protection, and support for social identity providers. Using our comprehensive developer tools, even those developers who have little to no identity experience can create personalized sign-in and sign-up experiences for their applications within minutes.

Simplify identity verification with Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Since we announced the general availability of Microsoft Entra Verified ID last summer, organizations around the world have been reinventing business processes, such as new employee onboarding, around this new, simpler way of verifying someone’s identity.⁵ For example, we recently announced that millions of LinkedIn members will be able to verify their place of work using a Verified ID credential.⁶ At the 2023 Microsoft Build event, we launched the Microsoft Entra Verified ID SDK so that developers can quickly add a secure digital wallet to any mobile application. The app can then store and verify a wide range of digital ID cards.

Microsoft Entra: Secure access for a connected world

You can see our expanded Microsoft Entra product family in Figure 5. Visit the Microsoft Entra website to learn more.

Figure 5. The Microsoft Entra family of identity and network access products.

We’re committed to building a more secure world for all and making life harder for threat actors, easier for admins, and more secure for every user. As part of that commitment, we’ll keep expanding Microsoft Entra to provide the broadest possible coverage along with a flexible and agile model where people, organizations, apps, and even smart things can confidently make real-time access decisions.

Encourage your technical teams to dive deeper into these announcements by attending the Tech Accelerator event on July 20, 2023, on the Microsoft Tech Community.

Microsoft Entra

Meet the family of multicloud identity and access products.

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 LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Secure access for a connected world—meet Microsoft Entra, Joy Chik and Vasu Jakkal. May 31, 2022.

²Microsoft internal data.

³Do more with less—Discover the latest Microsoft Entra innovations, Joy Chik. October 19, 2022.

⁴Microsoft Entra ID Governance is generally available, Joseph Dadzie. June 7, 2023.

⁵Microsoft Entra Verified ID now generally available, Ankur Patel. August 8, 2022.

⁶LinkedIn and Microsoft Entra introduce a new way to verify your workplace, Joy Chik. April 12, 2023.

The post Microsoft Entra expands into Security Service Edge and Azure AD becomes Microsoft Entra ID appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft Build 2023

Browse virtual and in-person security sessions at Microsoft Build.

Register now

Below is a quick tour of a few security-related sessions and the new features and technologies they highlight.

New identity and access features in Microsoft Entra

Welcome to modern identity and access management with Microsoft Entra

Developers are in the business of building app features and capabilities. Most developers are not—and don’t want to be—identity security experts.

At Microsoft Build, we’re announcing the next generation customer identity access management platform: Microsoft Entra External ID, now in preview. Microsoft Entra External ID was purpose-built to personalize and secure access to applications while protecting any external identity and effectively controlling which resources they can access. It delivers a flexible, unified identity platform, personalized customer experiences, adaptive access policies, and built-in identity governance. In the session “Explore CIAM capabilities with External Identities in Microsoft Entra,” Yoel Horvitz, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), and Namita Singh, Senior Software Engineer at Cloud Data Center Cybersecurity, Microsoft, will explore how easily you can create branded sign-up and sign-in app experiences. No more trade-offs between great security and great customer experiences. You’ll see how quickly you can add a strong sign-up or sign-in experience plus comprehensive onboarding flows that capture and validate customer information.

Partner identity scenarios (B2B Collaboration) remain in the same location on the Microsoft Entra admin portal within the Workforce tenant. Please note that there is no action for our current Azure AD business-to-consumer (B2C) customers required at this time as the next generation platform is currently in early preview only. We remain fully committed to support the current Azure AD B2C solution, and there are no requirements for B2C customers to migrate at this time and no plans to discontinue the current B2C service.

This next-generation expanded solution for customer and partner identities marks the next chapter in our customer identity solution, addressing critical customer feedback and building on top of our existing capabilities.

External ID now combines familiar B2B collaboration functionality in Microsoft Entra (generally available) with evolved and unified customer identity (CIAM) capabilities, targeting customer-facing applications, now in preview. Help us shape the future of this new platform with your participation in our preview.

Microsoft Entra Verified ID digital wallet SDK

Microsoft Entra Verified ID is an open standards-based verifiable credentials service that customers can use to automate the identity validation process while enabling privacy-protected interactions between organizations and users. You can integrate the upcoming release of the Verified ID Wallet Library into your mobile apps to store and share digital Verified ID cards. This allows you to issue verifiable credentials for dozens of use cases, such as reducing the risk for fraud and account takeovers, streamlining app sign-ins, creating self-service account recovery and helpdesk flows, and enabling rich partner rewards ecosystems. Be sure to check out the “Reduce fraud and improve engagement using Digital Wallets” session by Christer Ljung, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft, and Sydney Morton, Software Engineer, Microsoft, to learn more about Verified ID’s open source digital wallet SDK.

New capabilities for compliance and data automation in Microsoft Purview

General availability of machine learning-enabled source code classifier

Microsoft Purview Information Protection helps organizations automate data classification, labeling, and protection across multiple platforms. More than 35 pre-trained classifiers help quickly identify and protect some of the most sensitive data, such as intellectual property and trade secrets, material non-public information, sensitive health and medical files, business sensitive financial information, and personally identifiable information for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance. Plus, an improved ready-to-use source code classifier that supports more than 70 file extensions and 23 programming languages can detect embedded and partial source code.  

New APIs available to help automate compliance workflows

You can take advantage of new Microsoft Graph APIs built specifically for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and compliance scenarios to help organizations automate their litigation and investigation workflows. Join us for “Streamline eDiscovery with new innovations, including Microsoft Graph APIs,” a sequel to Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager Caitlin Fitzgerald’s Microsoft Build 2022 session, which will share recent examples of using APIs to ensure repeatable and predictable management of time-sensitive compliance processes.

Explore built-in security features in these Microsoft Build sessions

Unlocking the Power of Azure Security: Conversations with Experts, Q&A

In this Q&A session, Richard Diver, Technical Story Design Lead, Microsoft, will moderate a panel of experts who help secure the software supply chain within Microsoft Azure and other platforms. The session is based on a four-part blog series that includes Microsoft Azure’s defense-in-depth approach to cloud vulnerabilities and Cloud Variant Hunting. The panel will share Microsoft security best practices and how we’re enhancing our response process, extending our internal security research, and continually improving how we secure multitenant services.

Next-Level DevSecOps: Secure Supply Chain Consumption Framework, Q&A

Microsoft Build 2023

Join us in Seattle for Microsoft Build from May 23 to 25, 2023. We’ll stream online sessions May 23 and 24, 2023 during Pacific Time hours. Register now to reserve your spot and visit the Microsoft Build 2023 website to explore the session catalog and plan your experience. We look forward to connecting with you!

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 Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹8th Annual State of the Software Supply Chain Report, Sonatype.

The post Microsoft Build 2023: Announcing new identity, compliance, and security features from Microsoft Security appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

To evaluate the net effects of moving to Microsoft’s cloud-native identity and access management (IAM) solution, Forrester Consulting has conducted a commissioned study on behalf of Microsoft: The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Entra. Forrester interviewed 10 representatives from eight existing Microsoft customers that are currently using three products in the Microsoft Entra family: Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, and Microsoft Entra Verified ID.  

In total, Forrester’s financial analysis found that a composite organization based on these interviewed customers experienced benefits of USD12.14 million over three years, versus costs of USD3.57 million. This adds up to a net present value of USD8.57 million and a return on investment (ROI) of 240 percent. Forrester left no stone unturned in examining the financial impact of Microsoft Entra. The results were divided into five categories common to most organizations. Here’s an overview of their findings:

Modernizing identity and consolidating vendors

Before Microsoft Entra, interviewed organizations managed identity and access using multiple-point solutions. This patchwork approach came up short in providing adequate security and introduced high complexity and costs. With Microsoft Entra, organizations could retire some of these solutions as well as sunset legacy on-premises infrastructure such as Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS). After consolidating with Microsoft Entra, Forrester determined that composite organization’s cost savings totaled USD2,084,082.

“We wanted to centralize all of our IAM tools, and we decided to use Microsoft Entra because of what Microsoft offered in terms of its security and enterprise relationships, and also [because of] the fact that our chief information security officer felt comfortable about having our identity managed by Microsoft.”

—Identity and access team lead, software industry

Increasing identity team efficiency

By securing access for all their identities to any app and resource, the surveyed organizations were able to implement granular risk-based policies. With multifactor authentication, they protected against phishing, credential stuffing, and other attacks that exploit user credentials. Permissions Management enabled organizations to discover and remediate security risks caused by excessive and unused permissions in their multicloud environments. Forrester found that the composite organization was able to reduce the likelihood of a breach by 20 percent over three years. This also helped ensure compliance with regulatory standards. All these improvements yielded a three-year, risk-adjusted total of USD1,521,840.

Accelerating development velocity

Surveyed organizations shared that for security purposes developers were required to request permissions every time they needed new access, and this tended to have a negative impact on product-development speed. A developer’s work on a project could get interrupted by up to several days while the developer was waiting for access, and any project as a whole could get delayed by weeks or even months as those interruptions added up. Adopting Permissions Management improved product development velocity from days to hours, which helped keep development projects on schedule. Forrester calculated that wait time for developers was reduced by 90 percent. This sped-up development yields a total of USD922,422 in benefits over three years.

“What previously took two to three days is now handled in a couple of hours at most.”

—Head of enterprise security architecture, insurance industry

Increasing worker productivity and reducing IT friction

Employees expect to collaborate on any project from anywhere using any app—especially now that hybrid work is the new normal. But they find signing into multiple applications throughout the day frustrating and time-consuming. Interviewees shared that one of their primary goals for their organizations was to improve user experience by enabling single sign-on for applications from almost any device or location. According to Forrester’s calculations, with Microsoft Entra, each employee saved 13 hours per year on average and the composite organization saved USD4,048,685 over three years. If you have a help desk, your employees likely make thousands of password reset requests per month. Locked-out users can’t be productive, and their pleas for help eat up valuable time help desk workers could spend on other priority tasks. With Microsoft Entra, employees can reset their own passwords without help desk intervention. Forrester estimates that customers can decrease the number of password reset calls per year by 75 percent, yielding a three-year adjusted present value of USD251,794.

“If you have your applications integrated with Azure AD, you can have a really, really sweet user experience, security model, and simple administration.”
—Senior security engineer, software industry

Security for all

At Microsoft Security, we’re committed to being a trusted partner for IAM and security teams like those who shared their experiences for this study. We believe a holistic approach to security can help you protect what matters without slowing productivity. To get the full analysis on how cloud-native, scalable Microsoft Entra can deliver significant, be sure to download The Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Entra and share its accompanying infographic for fast insights.

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 Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

¹Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report

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