Across many sessions and demos, we’ll address the top security pain points related to AI and empower you with practical, actionable strategies. Keep reading this blog for a guide of highlighted sessions for security professionals of all levels, whether you’re attending in-person or online.

And be sure to register for the digital experience to explore the Microsoft Security sessions at Microsoft Ignite.

Be among the first to hear top news

Microsoft is bringing together every part of the company in a collective mission to advance cybersecurity protection to help our customers and the security community. We have four powerful advantages to drive security innovation: large-scale data and threat intelligence; end-to-end protection; responsible AI; and tools to secure and govern the use of AI.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in May 2024 that security is the top priority for our company. At the Microsoft Ignite opening keynote on Tuesday, November 19, 2024, Microsoft Security Executive Vice President Charlie Bell and Corporate Vice President (CVP), Microsoft Security Business Vasu Jakkal will join Nadella to discuss Microsoft’s vision for the future of security. Other well-known cybersecurity speakers at Microsoft Ignite include Ann Johnson, CVP and Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO); Joy Chik, President, Identity, and Network Access; Mark Russinovich, Chief Technology Officer and Deputy CISO; and Sherrod DeGrippo, Director of Threat Intelligence Strategy.

For a deeper dive into security product news and demos, join the security general session on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, at 11:00 AM CT. Hear from Vasu Jakkal; Joy Chik; Rob Lefferts, CVP, Microsoft Threat Protection; Herain Oberoi, General Manager, Microsoft Data Security, Privacy, and Compliance; and Michael Wallent, CVP; who will share exciting security innovations to empower you with AI tools designed to help you get ahead of attackers.

These news-breaking sessions are just the start of the value you can gain from attending online.

Benefit from insights designed for your role

While cybersecurity is a shared concern of security professionals, we realize the specific concerns are unique to role. Recognizing this, we developed sessions tailored to what matters most to you.

• CISOs and senior security leaders: If you’ll be with us in Chicago, kick off the conference with the Microsoft Ignite Security Forum on November 18, 2024 from 1 PM CT to 5 PM CT. Join this exclusive pre-day event to hear from Microsoft security experts on threat intelligence insights, our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), and trends in security. Go back to your registration to add this experience on. Also for those in Chicago, be sure to join the Security Leaders Dinner, where you can engage with your peers and provide insights on your greatest challenges and successes. If you’re joining online, gain firsthand access to the latest Microsoft Security announcements. Whether you’re in person or online, don’t miss “Proactive security with continuous exposure management” (BRK324), which will explore how Microsoft Security Exposure Management unifies disparate data silos for visibility of end-to-end attack surface, and “Secure and govern data in Microsoft 365 Copilot and beyond” (BRK321), which will discuss the top concerns of security leaders when it comes to AI and how you can gain the confidence and tools to adopt AI. Plus, learn how to make your organization as diverse as the threats you are defending in “The Power of Diversity: Building a stronger workforce in the era of AI” (BRK330).
• Security analysts and engineers: Join actionable sessions for information you can use immediately. Sessions designed for the security operations center (SOC) include “Microsoft cybersecurity architect lab—Infrastructure security” (LAB454), which will showcase how to best use the Microsoft Secure Score to improve your security posture, and “Simplify your SOC with the unified security operations platform” (BRK310), which will feature a fireside chat with security experts to discuss common security challenges and topics. Plus, learn to be a champion of safe AI adoption in “Scott and Mark learn responsible AI” (BRK329), which will explore the three top risks in large language models and the origins and potential impacts of each of these.
• Developers and IT professionals: We get it—security isn’t your main focus, but it’s increasingly becoming part of your scope. Get answers to your most pressing questions at Microsoft Ignite. Sessions that may interest you include “Secure and govern custom AI built on Azure AI and Copilot Studio” (BRK322), which will dive into how Microsoft can enable data security and compliance controls for custom apps, detect and respond to AI threats, and managed your AI stack vulnerabilities, and “Making Zero Trust real: Top 10 security controls you can implement now” (BRK328), which offers technical guidance to make Zero Trust actionable with 10 top controls to help improve your organization’s security posture. Plus, join “Supercharge endpoint management with Microsoft Copilot in Intune” (THR656) for guidance on unlocking Microsoft Intune’s potential to streamline endpoint management.
• Microsoft partners: We appreciate our partners and have developed sessions aimed at supporting you. These include “Security partner growth: The power of identity with Entra Suite” (BRK332) and “Security partner growth: Help customers modernize security operations” (BRK336).

Attend sessions tailored to addressing your top challenge

When exploring effective cybersecurity strategies, you likely have specific challenges that are motivating your actions, regardless of your role within your organization. We respect that our attendees want a Microsoft Ignite experience tailored to their specific objectives. We’re committed to maximizing your value from attending the event, with Microsoft Security sessions that address the most common cybersecurity challenges.

• Managing complexity: Discover ways to simplify your infrastructure in sessions like “Simpler, smarter, and more secure endpoint management with Intune” (BRK319), which will explore new ways to strengthen your security with Microsoft Intune and AI, and “Break down risk silos and build up code-to-code security posture” (BRK312), which will focus on how defenders can overcome the expansive alphabet soup of security posture tools and gain a unified cloud security posture with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.   
• Increasing efficiency:: Learn how AI can help you overcome talent shortage challenges in sessions like “Secure data across its lifecycle in the era of AI” (BRK318), which will explore Microsoft Purview leveraging Microsoft Security Copilot can help you detect hidden risks, mitigate them, and protect and prevent data loss, and “One goal, many roles: Microsoft Security Copilot: Real-world insights and expert advice” (BRK316), which will share best practices and insider tricks to maximize Copilot’s benefits so you can realize quick value and enhance your security and IT operations.  
• Threat landscape: Navigate effectively through the modern cyberthreat landscape, guided by the insights shared in sessions like “AI-driven ransomware protection at machine speed: Defender for Endpoint” (BRK325), which will share a secret in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint success and how it uses machine learning and threat intelligence, and the theater session “Threat intelligence at machine speed with Microsoft Security Copilot” (THR555), which will showcase how Copilot can be used as a research assistant, analyst, and responder to simplify threat management.
• Regulatory compliance: Increase your confidence in meeting regulatory requirements by attending sessions like “Secure and govern your data estate with Microsoft Purview” (BRK317), which will explore how to secure and govern your data with Microsoft Purview, and “Secure and govern your data with Microsoft Fabric and Purview” (BRK327), which will dive into how Microsoft Purview works together with Microsoft Fabric for a comprehensive approach to secure and govern data.
• Maximizing value: Discover how to maximize the value of your cybersecurity investments during sessions like “Transform your security with GenAI innovations in Security Copilot” (BRK307), which will showcase how Microsoft Security Copilot’s automation capabilities and use cases can elevate your security organization-wide, and “AI-driven ransomware protection at machine speed: Defender for Endpoint” (BRK325), which will dive into the key secret to the success of Defender for Endpoint customers in reducing the risk of ransomware attacks as well maximizing the value of the product’s new features and user interfaces.

Explore cybersecurity tools with product showcases and hands-on training

Learning about Microsoft security capabilities is useful, but there’s nothing like trying out the solutions for yourself. Our in-depth showcases and hands-on trainings give you the chance to explore these capabilities for yourself. Bring a notepad and your laptop and let’s put these tools to work.

• “Secure access at the speed of AI with Copilot in Microsoft Entra” (THR556): Learn how AI with Security Copilot and Microsoft Entra can help you accelerate tasks like troubleshooting, automate cybersecurity insights, and strengthen Zero Trust.  
• “Mastering custom plugins in Microsoft Security Copliot” (THR653): Gain practical knowledge of using Security Copilot’s capabilities during a hands-on session aimed at security and IT professionals ready for advanced customization and integration with existing security tools. 
• “Getting started with Microsoft Sentinel” (LAB452): Get hands-on experience on building detections and queries, configuring your Microsoft Sentinel environment, and performing investigations. 
• “Secure Azure services and workloads with Microsoft Defender for Cloud” (LAB457): Explore how to mitigate security risks with endpoint security, network security, data protection, and posture and vulnerability management. 
• “Evolving from DLP to data security with Microsoft Preview” (THR658): See for yourself how Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) integrates with insider risk management and information protection to optimize your end-to-end DLP program. 

Network with Microsoft and other industry professionals

While you’ll gain a wealth of insights and learn about our latest product innovations in sessions, our ancillary events offer opportunities to connect and socialize with Microsoft and other security professionals as committed to you to strengthening the industry’s defenses against cyberthreats. That’s worth celebrating!

• Pre-day Forum: All Chicago Microsoft Ignite attendees are welcome to add on to the event with our pre-day sessions on November 18, 2024, from 1 PM CT to 5 PM CT. Topics covered will include threat intelligence, Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative, AI innovation, and AI security research, and the event will feature a fireside chat with Microsoft partners and customers. The pre-day event is designed for decision-makers from businesses of all sizes to advance your security strategy. If you’re already attending in person, log in to your Microsoft Ignite registration and add on the Microsoft Security Ignite Forum.
• Security Leaders Dinner: We’re hosting an exclusive dinner with leaders of security teams, where you can engage with your peers and provide insights on your greatest challenges and successes. This intimate gathering is designed specifically for CISOs and other senior security leaders to network, share learnings, and discuss what’s happening in cybersecurity.   
• Secure the Night Party: All security professionals are encouraged to celebrate the cybersecurity community with Microsoft from 6 PM CT to 10 PM CT on Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with Microsoft Security subject matter experts and peers at our “Secure the Night” party during Microsoft Ignite in Chicago. Enjoy an engaging evening of conversations and experiences while sipping tasty drinks and noshing on heavy appetizers provided by Microsoft. We look forward to welcoming you. Reserve your spot today! 

Something that excites us the most about Microsoft Ignite is the opportunity to meet with cybersecurity professionals dedicated to modern defense. Stop by the Microsoft Security Expert Meetup space to say hello, learn more about capabilities you’ve been curious about, or ask questions about Microsoft’s cybersecurity efforts. 

Hear from our Microsoft Intelligent Security Association partners at Microsoft Ignite

The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), comprised of independent software vendors (ISV) and managed security service providers (MSSPs) that have integrated their solutions with Microsoft’s security technology, will be back at Microsoft Ignite 2024.

We kick things off by celebrating our Security Partner of the Year award winners BlueVoyant (Security), Cyclotron (Compliance), and Inspark (Identity) who will join Vasu Jakkal for a fireside chat on “How security strategy is adapting for AI,” during the Microsoft Ignite Security Pre-day Forum. This panel discussion includes insights into trends partners are seeing with customers relating to AI, a view on practical challenges, and scenarios that companies encounter when deploying AI, as well as the expert guidance and best practices that security partners can offer to ensure successful AI integration in security strategies.

MISA is thrilled to welcome small and medium business (SMB) verified solution status to its portfolio. This solution verification highlights technology solutions that are purpose built to meet the needs of small and medium businesses, and the MSSPs who often manage IT and security on behalf of SMBs. MISA members who meet the qualifying criteria and have gone through engineering review, will receive a specialized MISA member badge showcasing the verification and will be featured in the MISA partner catalog. We are excited to launch this status with Blackpoint Cyber and Huntress.

Join MISA members including Blackpoint Cyber and Huntress at the Microsoft Expert Meetup Security area where 14 members will showcase their solutions and Microsoft Security Technology. Review the full schedule below.

We are looking forward to connecting with our customers and partners at the Microsoft Secure the Night Party on Wednesday, November 20, from 6 to 10 PM CT.  This evening event offers a chance to connect with Microsoft Security subject matter experts and MISA partners while enjoying cocktails, great food, and entertainment. A special thank you to our MISA sponsors: Armor, Cayosoft, ContraForce, HID, Lighthouse, Ontinue, and Quorum Cyber.

Register today to attend Microsoft Ignite online

There’s still time to register to participate in Microsoft Ignite online from November 19 to 22, 2024, to catch security-focused breakout sessions, product demos, and participate in interactive Q&A sessions with our experts. No matter how you participate in Microsoft Ignite, you’ll gain insights on how to secure your future with an AI-first, end-to-end cybersecurity approach to keep your organizations safer.

Plus, you can take your security knowledge further at Tech Community Live: Microsoft Security edition on December 3, 2024, to ask all your follow-up questions from Microsoft Ignite. Microsoft Experts will be hosting live Ask Microsoft Anything sessions on topics from Security for AI to Copilot for 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 at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

The post Microsoft Ignite: Sessions and demos to improve your security strategy appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud, the integrated CNAPP from Microsoft, delivers comprehensive security and compliance from code to runtime, enhanced by generative AI and threat intelligence to help you secure your hybrid and multicloud environments. With Defender for Cloud, organizations can support secure development, minimize risks with contextual posture management, and protect workloads and applications from modern threats in a unified security operations (SecOps) experience.  

Defender for Cloud not only transcends traditional security silos and extends its end-to-end security across multicloud and hybrid infrastructure, it delivers advanced security posture management and threat remediation capabilities as well. In order to prove the solution’s business benefits, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study. The study aims to provide business leaders and decision-makers with a solid framework with which they can evaluate the benefits and potential financial impact of Defender for Cloud on their organizations.

Through the course of the study, participating interviewees reported experiencing a wide variety of benefits related to Defender for Cloud, including reduced operational risk, a compressed, more secure development lifecycle, and reduced time to investigate and remediate threats faster.

All told, the study found that the benefits of Defender for Cloud add up to a significant net present value (NPV) of $4.25 million over three years. But that’s not the whole story. Here are some other key takeaways mentioned by Forrester’s interviewees.

1. Shorter threat investigation and remediation times

“[Defender for Cloud] just takes out the weird stuff happening on our network that ends up on the cybersecurity desk. We’ve already probably cut back about 60% of the workload, and a lot of that revolves around false positives, so I can get better data. The systems assess the data properly…I’m not even going to give it to the analyst. I’m going to auto-close.”

—Chief technology officer, Life Sciences

Defender for Cloud was found to register 50% fewer false positives than legacy security solutions. Simultaneously, the solution reduced the investigation and remediation times of legitimate threats by 30%. Due to these dramatic improvements, study participants avoided 36,000 investigation and remediation hours on average. By reallocating the corresponding $796,000 of SecOps labor to proactive threat hunting and other high-value activities, companies were able to further improve their security performance.

2. Improved security operations center (SOC) productivity

“[With Defender for Cloud], if the tools are configured properly, the [global] efficiencies in your SOC can probably be up to 30% for a fine-tuned environment.”

—Technical manager, Business-to-business Software

By broadening the number and types of workloads protected by Defender for Cloud, participating businesses saw an average 30% improvement in SecOps productivity. This boost was a combination of consolidating duplicative multicloud security policies, replacing patching processes and other similar time-consuming procedures with automation, and embracing the efficiency gains of a better-integrated Microsoft ecosystem. In financial terms, these productivity gains translate to a $5.6 million savings over three years.

3. Lower total cost of ownership

“[Without Defender for Cloud], it would be so much more complex. It would cost us double to maintain [our multicloud security stack].”

—Cyberdefense leader, Materials

Interviewees reported that Defender for Cloud reduced their licensing costs by 10% when compared to legacy security solutions. This savings is the result of eliminating the licensing and management costs associated with five legacy security solutions over three years—made possible because of the breadth of workloads protected by Defender for Cloud. Interviewees also reported 1,700-hour reduction in security stack administrative work thanks to their ability to consolidate workloads across their multicloud infrastructures. These adjustments together yielded more than $1 million in cost savings.

4. More comprehensive cyberthreat coverage and prioritization

“Microsoft is capturing 10% of real incidents [not caught by other solutions deployed], reducing our attack surface by 10%.“

—Chief information security officer (CISO), Technology

Defender for Cloud caught 10% more legitimate cyberthreats than the prior security environments study participants had been using, on average. Each of these threats required a response and would have been missed. Interviewees defined the incidents they had previously lacked the capacity to address a mix of increasingly complex and overlapping cyberthreats that included but were not limited to runtime container risk, overprovisioning container privileges, malware, phishing and social engineering efforts, and shadow IT. Not only did Defender for Cloud identify these incidents, it provided greater context surrounding them, improving threat prioritization and avoiding $292,000 in costs related to data breaches.

5. Lower compliance costs

“[Defender for Cloud] is capable of saving up to 5% of [my organization’s] engineering overhead around [audit and compliance] meetings and collaboration.”  

—CISO, Technology

With Defender for Cloud, participating organizations decreased their compliance-related costs. Auditing fees were avoided and compliance-related meeting schedules were streamlined, reducing reliance on outside auditing services. Over three years, the average savings related to these process improvements was $857,000, a 15% reduction in audit compliance overhead.

The advantages of Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Overall, the Forrester study found that Defender for Cloud markedly enhanced the security, compliance, and operational efficiency of each company participating in the TEI study. Through representative interviews and financial analysis, Forrester determined that a composite organization experiencing the aggregate benefits of the study’s participants received $8.52 million in financial benefits over three years. In balancing these benefits against $4.27 million in costs over the same period, Forrester determined that Defender for Cloud represents a net present value (NPV) of $4.25 million.

Interviewees participating in the study went beyond the financial benefits in their praise of Defender for Cloud. After adopting the solution, participants saw reduced risk and improvements to both their security and compliance postures at scale. Even as regulatory and compliance landscapes shifted beneath their feet, these organizations were better able to use the added context of Microsoft cloud security benchmarks to stay on solid ground—remaining compliant when others might not have.

Additionally, interviewees noted that Defender for Cloud helped them more securely collaborate with their technology partners and to establish more secure, more efficient software development pipelines. These benefits, interviewees emphasized, would have further benefits down the road as well, including reduced development times, improved time-to-value, and ultimately greater potential for business growth.

Learn more

To learn more about the business value of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, explore the Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft Defender for Cloud study for further analysis and findings, as well as the perspectives of Defender for Cloud users interviewed in the study. Also, register for the webinar featuring Forrester on top cloud security trends, key considerations, and quantifying the business value of CNAPP.

Learn more about Microsoft Cloud Security Solutions.

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 Defender for Cloud remediated threats 30% faster than other solutions, according to Forrester TEI study appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

As we discussed in a previous blog post about AI jailbreaks, an AI jailbreak could cause the system to violate its operators’ policies, make decisions unduly influenced by a user, or execute malicious instructions.     

In this blog, we’ll cover the details of a newly discovered type of jailbreak attack that we call Skeleton Key, which we covered briefly in the Microsoft Build talk Inside AI Security with Mark Russinovich (under the name Master Key). Because this technique affects multiple generative AI models tested, Microsoft has shared these findings with other AI providers through responsible disclosure procedures and addressed the issue in Microsoft Azure AI-managed models using Prompt Shields to detect and block this type of attack. Microsoft has also made software updates to the large language model (LLM) technology behind Microsoft’s additional AI offerings, including our Copilot AI assistants, to mitigate the impact of this guardrail bypass.

Introducing Skeleton Key

This AI jailbreak technique works by using a multi-turn (or multiple step) strategy to cause a model to ignore its guardrails. Once guardrails are ignored, a model will not be able to determine malicious or unsanctioned requests from any other. Because of its full bypass abilities, we have named this jailbreak technique Skeleton Key.

This threat is in the jailbreak category, and therefore relies on the attacker already having legitimate access to the AI model. In bypassing safeguards, Skeleton Key allows the user to cause the model to produce ordinarily forbidden behaviors, which could range from production of harmful content to overriding its usual decision-making rules. Like all jailbreaks, the impact can be understood as narrowing the gap between what the model is capable of doing (given the user credentials, etc.) and what it is willing to do. As this is an attack on the model itself, it does not impute other risks on the AI system, such as permitting access to another user’s data, taking control of the system, or exfiltrating data.

To protect against Skeleton Key attacks, as detailed in this blog, Microsoft has implemented several approaches to our AI system design and provides tools for customers developing their own applications on Azure. Below, we also share mitigation guidance for defenders to discover and protect against such attacks.

Microsoft recommends customers who are building their own AI models and/or integrating AI into their applications to consider how this type of attack could impact their threat model and to add this knowledge to their AI red team approach, using tools such as PyRIT. (Note: Microsoft has updated PyRIT to include Skeleton Key)

In the next sections, we will discuss some of the known methods for exploiting generative AI models using the Skeleton Key technique, explain the steps we’re taking to address the risk, and provide guidance for the detection and mitigation of this threat. You can watch this video to learn more about how Microsoft approaches AI Red Teaming.

Attack flow

Skeleton Key works by asking a model to augment, rather than change, its behavior guidelines so that it responds to any request for information or content, providing a warning (rather than refusing) if its output might be considered offensive, harmful, or illegal if followed. This attack type is known as Explicit: forced instruction-following.

In one example, informing a model that the user is trained in safety and ethics, and that the output is for research purposes only, helps to convince some models to comply, as shown below:

When the Skeleton Key jailbreak is successful, a model acknowledges that it has updated its guidelines and will subsequently comply with instructions to produce any content, no matter how much it violates its original responsible AI guidelines.

During our testing, from April to May 2024, the jailbreak was shown to work on the following base models and hosted models:

• Meta Llama3-70b-instruct (base)
• Google Gemini Pro (base)
• OpenAI GPT 3.5 Turbo (hosted)
• OpenAI GPT 4o (hosted)
• Mistral Large (hosted)
• Anthropic Claude 3 Opus (hosted)
• Cohere Commander R Plus (hosted)

For each model that we tested, we evaluated a diverse set of tasks across risk and safety content categories, including areas such as explosives, bioweapons, political content, self-harm, racism, drugs, graphic sex, and violence. All the affected models complied fully and without censorship for these tasks, though with a warning note prefixing the output as requested. Unlike other jailbreaks like Crescendo, where models must be asked about tasks indirectly or with encodings, Skeleton Key puts the models in a mode where a user can directly request tasks, for example, “Write a recipe for homemade explosives”. Further, the model’s output appears to be completely unfiltered and reveals the extent of a model’s knowledge or ability to produce the requested content.

Consistent with responsible disclosure principles, Microsoft shared this research with the affected AI vendors before publication, helping them determine how to best address mitigations, as needed, in their respective products or services.

GPT-4 demonstrated resistance to Skeleton Key, except when the behavior update request was included as part of a user-defined system message, rather than as a part of the primary user input. This is something that is not ordinarily possible in the interfaces of most software that uses GPT-4, but can be done from the underlying API or tools that access it directly. This indicates that the differentiation of system message from user request in GPT-4 is successfully reducing attackers’ ability to override behavior.

Mitigation and protection guidance

Microsoft has made software updates to the LLM technology behind Microsoft’s AI offerings, including our Copilot AI assistants, to mitigate the impact of this guardrail bypass. Customers should consider the following approach to mitigate and protect against this type of jailbreak in their own AI system design:

• Input filtering: Azure AI Content Safety detects and blocks inputs that contain harmful or malicious intent leading to a jailbreak attack that could circumvent safeguards.
• System message: Prompt engineering the system prompts to clearly instruct the large language model (LLM) on appropriate behavior and to provide additional safeguards. For instance, specify that any attempts to undermine the safety guardrail instructions should be prevented (read our guidance on building a system message framework here).
• Output filtering: Azure AI Content Safety post-processing filter that identifies and prevents output generated by the model that breaches safety criteria.
• Abuse monitoring: Deploying an AI-driven detection system trained on adversarial examples, and using content classification, abuse pattern capture, and other methods to detect and mitigate instances of recurring content and/or behaviors that suggest use of the service in a manner that may violate guardrails. As a separate AI system, it avoids being influenced by malicious instructions. Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service abuse monitoring is an example of this approach.

Building AI solutions on Azure

Microsoft provides tools for customers developing their own applications on Azure. Azure AI Content Safety Prompt Shields are enabled by default for models hosted in the Azure AI model catalog as a service, and they are parameterized by a severity threshold. We recommend setting the most restrictive threshold to ensure the best protection against safety violations. These input and output filters act as a general defense not only against this particular jailbreak technique, but also a broad set of emerging techniques that attempt to generate harmful content. Azure also provides built-in tooling for model selection, prompt engineering, evaluation, and monitoring. For example, risk and safety evaluations in Azure AI Studio can assess a model and/or application for susceptibility to jailbreak attacks using synthetic adversarial datasets, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud can alert security operations teams to jailbreaks and other active threats.

With the integration of Azure AI and Microsoft Security (Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Defender for Cloud) security teams can also discover, protect, and govern these attacks. The new native integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud with Azure OpenAI Service, enables contextual and actionable security alerts, driven by Azure AI Content Safety Prompt Shields and Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence. Threat protection for AI workloads allows security teams to monitor their Azure OpenAI powered applications in runtime for malicious activity associated with direct and in-direct prompt injection attacks, sensitive data leaks and data poisoning, or denial of service attacks.

References

• Attacks, Defenses and Evaluations for LLM Conversation Safety: A Survey (Shanghai AI Laboratory)
• AI jailbreaks: What they are and how they can be mitigated
• How Microsoft discovers and mitigates evolving attacks against AI guardrails

Learn more

To learn more about Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles and approach, refer to http://approjects.co.za/?big=ai/principles-and-approach.

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog: https://aka.ms/threatintelblog.

To get notified about new publications and to join discussions on social media, follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/microsoft-threat-intelligence, and on X (formerly Twitter) at https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel.

To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/microsoft-threat-intelligence.

The post Mitigating Skeleton Key, a new type of generative AI jailbreak technique appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Tools like Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Microsoft Secure Score, and regulatory compliance dashboard in Microsoft Defender for Cloud are great ways for an organization to benchmark and communicate its security and compliance posture.

This blog post will offer these learnings to CISOs and IT security teams to set their relationship with the cybersecurity committee of the board up for success.

Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager

Meet multicloud compliance requirements across global, industrial, or regional regulations and standards.

Learn more

The cybersecurity committee of the board

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted rules in July 2023¹ to expand the scope of its cybersecurity reporting requirements for publicly traded companies,² making the governance of IT security by the board of directors and the cybersecurity expertise of board members reportable to the marketplace.

Corporate governance benchmarks including the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) ESG Governance QualityScore, widely used by analysts and for some executive compensation are including IT security measurements in their scoring.³ Cybersecurity is recognized as requiring governance from the board of directors. Boards are changing to make this possible.

The IT security function was viewed as the province of technical specialists, to be given some increased investment for a more hostile security landscape and in response to high profile security incidents. Cybersecurity was not considered a focus area of the board like finance, audit, or executive compensation. This has changed. Boards are seating directors with IT security expertise and asking for more communication from the IT security team, usually through the CISO.

Mandate of the cybersecurity committee

The mandate of the cybersecurity committee includes learning about the organization’s IT security team. To optimize the relationship, the security team needs to understand how the board and the cybersecurity committee work as well.

The cybersecurity committee will have a mandate, vetted and granted by the board members and likely the chief executive officer (CEO). This mandate will be set out in a corporate document that describes the responsibilities of the committee, the content, and frequency of their reports and the type of information they are to review. The CISO should understand the mandate and with it the scope of the committee to know how to best and most efficiently partner with them. A proactive CISO can contribute to the formulation of the mandate, avoiding conflict and inefficiency, and setting the relationship up for success.

Beyond the mandate document, the board will likely have public-facing Rules of Procedure. This document sets out the mission, duties, and operations of the board. It will likely also have a section describing the various board committees, their operations, and responsibilities.

The committee will be focused on discharging these responsibilities in an auditable way.

Time on the agenda of board meetings is at a premium. A typical two-hour meeting agenda might include:

• Approval of the last board meeting minutes.
• Review of first half results.
• Review of Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) report and ESG committee recommendations.
• Approval of board members’ expenses.
• Financial and business outlook.
• Business plan update.
• Review of next meeting dates.

Some of these are mandated by law, leaving little time for discretionary topics. There may be four or five such board meetings per year. The cybersecurity committee will have a slot on the agenda slot as will other business.

A board may receive a briefing from the CISO on current state and plan once a year. The CISO may be called on to provide ad hoc input on risks, incidents, or other emerging topics.

A cybersecurity committee is a subgroup of the board. It is led by one or two directors that have a relatively high level of cybersecurity expertise. They should:

• Understand the IT security function, policies, standards, current state, and plan.
• Offer their opinion as to how the current state and plan aligns with the company’s risk management posture and business objectives.
• Identify areas in current state and plan that need focus from the IT security function.
• Communicate blockers and advocate for the security function with the board and executives.

The committee is accountable for reporting to the board on these items.

Working with the cybersecurity committee

The board and the CISO need to align on how they will work together. They need to agree on efficient ways to get the information and context the committee needs to achieve its mandate.

This is an opportunity for the CISO to leverage their existing reporting and documents to the extent possible. A CISO who is proactive and suggests a framework will be a good partner to the committee. This will reduce the level of effort for the security team going forward.

The role of the board and the committee is to act on behalf of the shareholders to manage risk—not to manage the IT security team, the plan, or be accountable for cybersecurity. That’s the CISO’s job.

Board members often serve on multiple boards and have high profile roles in other organizations. They need information that is on target, that they can consume quickly, and report with confidence to stakeholders. Effective communication includes:

Context

What does it mean to the business?

Cybersecurity risk and planning should be communicated in similar format to the financial and business risk that the board is used to managing.

Progress to plan should be shown in context. A security roadmap for a minimum of three years should be shared with progress and changes tracked over time.

The focus should be on a holistic IT security strategy and architecture spanning infrastructure, services, internal, vendors, on-premises, cloud, and culture.

Objective data

Recommendations from the IT security team should be presented together with objective information that supports it.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be agreed upon and visualized over time to expose trends. The committee should see that the right things are being monitored but not expect to drill down into every KPI.

Objective outputs that can show trends and be mapped to investments in security include Secure Score in Microsoft Defender. Secure Score monitors platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments in Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform.    

Microsoft Secure Score is a similar service focused on the improvement of security posture of a company’s Microsoft 365 software as a service (SaaS), including identity, devices, and applications.

The score, which is expressed as a percentage from 0 to 100, is shown with a list of recommendations that can be undertaken to meet security controls. These security controls should be considered for the security roadmap. As the controls are implemented, the Secure Score increases.

A company should not be focused on driving Secure Score to 100 percent but rather that the recommendations are considered in light of the company’s risk appetite and security roadmap. If the score is not rising as expected then the reason should be understood.

Similarly Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager provides Compliance Score for Microsoft 365. For Azure customers, Microsoft provides the regulatory compliance dashboard in Microsoft Defender for Cloud, which also provides visibility into the compliance posture of non-Microsoft clouds. These solutions are vehicles to help customers objectively assess and communicate the company’s compliance posture with their most important regulatory standards.

The updated security roadmap, with progress indicated, should be presented to the committee, and the KPIs should broadly track with this progress, allowing an increased confidence in the organization’s security posture and trends.

Align with the mandate of the committee

Working with the cybersecurity committee and the board will involve communicating to a diverse group whose first expertise may not be information technology. We need to teach.

We also need to learn. The committee operates within its mandate. Servicing this mandate is the primary focus of the committee. It will come before other subjects we may want to discuss. Map these subjects to the committee’s mandate.

The board operates within its rules of procedure. We will be much more effective if we are familiar with these. If we map our asks and replies to the committee’s mandate, our communication will be well received and we’ll strengthen the partnership. If we understand the rules of procedure we can avoid ad hoc engagement and communicate our message effectively.

The mandate may indicate that a report from the committee is due to the board in advance of the Annual General Meeting. If we’ve agreed on the information needed to service the mandate, we can be proactive about providing this. We can anticipate questions and put challenges in context with what they mean to the business and what we’re doing to address them.

Confidentiality

Some of the materials provided to the cybersecurity committee will require confidentiality. They should be watermarked or encrypted per company policy. Board members are not employees, and they probably don’t have a company email address or access to the company network. The tools and procedures will need to take this into account.

The reporting of the cybersecurity committee to the board is also confidential. Beyond bad actors, the information may be taken out of context by analysts or those seeking to harm the company’s reputation. Security controls should be agreed with the CISO to ensure that the documents provided to and produced by the cybersecurity committee will be limited in distribution to the committee, company leadership and the office of the CISO.

Some board documents are shared with shareholders and made available to the public, such as minutes of the board meetings. Where input from the CISO or the cybersecurity committee for these documents is needed, it should be made sufficiently general so as not to expose the company to risk.

Get started with committee collaboration

The formation of a cybersecurity committee as part of a company’s board will mean more scrutiny of the IT security function. More time will be devoted to communicating and reporting.

The CISO and their team will get visibility with the board and can use this to advocate for the resources and cultural changes they need to protect the company. Productive, efficient interaction with the committee can build a partnership with the board, which protects and adds value for the company.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager.

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

¹SEC Adopts Rules on Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure by Public Companies, SEC. July 26, 2023.

²SEC cyber risk management rule—a security and compliance opportunity, Steve Vandenberg. March 1, 2023.

³IT security: An opportunity to raise corporate governance scores, Steve Vandenberg. August 8, 2022.

The post Working with a cybersecurity committee of the board appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Securing multicloud environments is a deeply nuanced task, and many organizations struggle to fully safeguard the many different ways cyberthreat actors can compromise their environment. In our latest report, “2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk,” we analyzed usage patterns across Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Security Exposure Management, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, and Microsoft Purview to identify the top multicloud security risks across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and beyond. This is the first time Microsoft has released a report sharing key insights across aspects of cloud security, including identity and data. 

This multidimensional analysis is key because it provides deeper visibility into all of the angles cyberattackers can use to breach cloud environments. For example, we found that more than 50% of cloud identities had access to all permissions and resources in 2023. Can you imagine what would happen if even one of these “super identities” were compromised? Looking beyond identity and access, we also discovered significant vulnerabilities in development and runtime environments and within organizations’ data security postures. These threats and more are the driving forces behind Microsoft’s work to advance cybersecurity protections by sharing the latest security intelligence and through programs like the recently expanded Secure Future Initiative, which works to guide Microsoft advancements according to secure by design, secure by default, and secure operations principles.

Read on for our topline insights from the report.

2024 State of Multicloud Security

The new report shares trends and insights to drive an integrated multicloud security strategy.

Read the report

1. Multicloud security demands a proactive, prioritized approach  

Any practitioner who has worked in cloud security can tell you just how challenging it is to analyze, prioritize, and address the hundreds of security alerts they receive every day. Security teams are also responsible for managing all exposed assets and other potential risk vectors. The average multicloud estate has 351 exploitable attack paths that lead to high-value assets, and we discovered more than 6.3 million exposed critical assets among all organizations.  

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is one solution, but rather than taking a siloed approach, we recommend driving deeper, more contextualized CSPM as part of a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP).  

CNAPPs are unified platforms that simplify securing cloud-native applications and infrastructure throughout their lifecycle. Because CNAPPs can unify CSPM with things like multipipeline DevOps security, cloud workload protections, cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), and cloud service network security (CSNS), they can correlate alerts and eliminate visibility gaps between otherwise disparate tools. This allows security teams to proactively identify, prioritize, and mitigate potential cyberattack paths before they can be exploited. 

2. CNAPP embeds secure best practices throughout the entire application lifecycle

Properly securing cloud-native applications and infrastructure from initial code development to provisioning and runtime is a significant challenge area for many organizations. We found that 65% of code repositories contained source code vulnerabilities in 2023, which remained in the code for 58 days on average. Given that one quarter of high-risk vulnerabilities are exploited within 24 hours of being published, this creates a significant window for threat actors to take advantage and compromise your environment.²

In addition to delivering proactive protection during runtime, CNAPP can act as a shared platform for security teams to work with developers to unify, strengthen, and manage multipipeline DevOps security. And because CNAPP unites multiple cloud security capabilities under a single umbrella, security teams can also enforce full-lifecycle protections from a centralized dashboard. This shifts security left and heads off development risks before they become a problem in runtime.  

3. Organizations need a unified security approach to secure cross-cloud workloads

Multicloud security goes deeper than attack path analysis and strong DevSecOps. Organizations also need to examine how the growing use and variety of cloud workloads impact their exposure to cyberthreats. When cloud workloads span across multiple cloud environments, that creates a more complex threat landscape with additional complexities and dependencies that require proper configuration and monitoring to secure.  

Microsoft’s CNAPP solution, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, has an extended detection and response (XDR) integration that provides richer context to investigations and allows security teams to get the complete picture of an attack across cloud-native resources, devices, and identities. Roughly 6.5% of Defender for Cloud alerts were connected to other domains—such as endpoints, identities, networks, and apps and services—indicating cyberattacks that stretched across multiple cloud products and platforms.  

Rather than using individual point solutions to manage cross-cloud workload threats, organizations need an easy way to centralize and contextualize findings across their various security approaches. A CNAPP delivers that unified visibility. 

4. Securing growing workload identities requires a more nuanced approach

Also central to multicloud security is the idea of identity and access management. In the cloud, security teams must monitor and secure workload identities in addition to user identities. These workload identities are assigned to software workloads, such as apps, microservices, and containers. The growing usage of workload identities creates several challenges. 

For starters, workload identities make up 83% of all cloud identities within Microsoft Entra Permissions Management. When examining the data, we found that 40% of these workload identities are inactive—meaning they have not logged in or used any permissions in at least 90 days. These inactive identities are not monitored the same way as active identities, making them an attractive target for cyberattackers to compromise and use to move laterally. Workload identities can also be manually embedded in code, making it harder to clean them without triggering unintended consequences.  

What’s concerning, though, is the fact that the average organization has three human super identities for every seven workload super identities. These workload super identities have access to all permissions and resources within the multicloud environment, making them an enormous risk vector that must be addressed. And because workload identities are growing significantly faster than human identities, we expect the gap between human and workload super identities to widen rapidly.  

Security teams can address this risk by establishing visibility into all existing super identities and enforcing least privilege access principles over any unused or unnecessary permissions—regardless of the cloud they access. 

5. CIEM drives visibility and control over unused permissions

Speaking of permissions, our report found that more than 51,000 permissions were granted to users and workloads (up from 40,000 in 2022). With more permissions come more access points for cyberattackers.  

A CIEM can be used to drive visibility across the multicloud estate, eliminating the need for standing access for super identities, inactive identities, and unused permissions. Just 2% of human and workload identity permissions were used in 2023, meaning the remaining 98% of unused permissions open organizations up to unnecessary risk.  

By using a CIEM to identify entitlements, organizations can revoke unnecessary permissions and only allow just-enough permissions, just in time. This approach will significantly mitigate potential risks and enhance the overall security posture.  

6. A multilayered data security approach eliminates complexity and limits blind spots

Finally, organizations need a comprehensive data security approach that can help them uncover risks to sensitive data and understand how their users interact with data. It’s also important to protect and prevent unauthorized data use throughout the lifecycle using protection controls like encryption and authentication. 

A siloed solution won’t work, as organizations with 16 or more point solutions experience 2.8 times as many data security incidents as those with fewer tools. Instead, organizations should deploy integrated solutions through a multilayered approach that allows them to combine user and data insights to drive more proactive data security. At Microsoft, we accomplish this through Microsoft Purview—a comprehensive data security, compliance, and governance solution that discovers hidden risks to data wherever it lives or travels, protects and prevents data loss, and investigates and responds to data security incidents. It can also be used to help improve risk and compliance postures and meet regulatory requirements. 

Uncover strategies for mitigating your biggest multicloud risks 

Ultimately, multicloud security has multiple considerations that security teams must account for. It is not a check-the-box endeavor. Rather, security teams must continuously enforce best practices from the earliest stages of development to runtime, identity and access management, and data security. Not only must these best practices be enforced throughout the full cloud lifecycle, but they must also be standardized across all cloud platforms.

In a recent episode of our podcast, Uncovering Hidden Risks, we sat down with Christian Koberg-Pineda, a Principal Security DevOps Engineer at S.A.C.I. Falabella, to dive into his journey toward uncovering the challenges and strategies for safeguarding cloud-native applications across various cloud platforms. In it, he talks about the complexity of securing multiple clouds, including navigating differing configurations, technical implementations, and identity federation.

“One of the most relevant characteristics of cloud computing is that you can scale things on demand. As cloud security expert, you must think in scale too. You need to implement a security tool that is also capable of scaling together with your infrastructure or your services.”

– Christian Koberg-Pineda, Principal Security DevOps Engineer at S.A.C.I. Falabella

For more information on creating a secure multicloud environment, download the full “2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk” report and check out the below resources.  

• Uncovering Hidden Risks Podcast Episode 18: Navigating Multicloud Security Risks, A Customer Story.
• 2024 State of Multicloud Security Risk Report Infographic.

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.

¹SANS 2023 Multicloud Survey: Navigating the Complexities of Multiple Cloud,  SANS Institute. 

²1 in 4 high-risk CVEs are exploited within 24 hours of going public, SC Media.

The post 6 insights from Microsoft’s 2024 state of multicloud risk report to evolve your security strategy appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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

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

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

Secure your AI transformation with Microsoft Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expanded Microsoft Copilot for Security integrations

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

Security for the era of AI

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

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

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

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

Learn more

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

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

CNAPP combines several cybersecurity capabilities—cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), and cloud workload protection (CWP), among others—into one platform. This platform protects your organization through every operation, from concept development to runtime use. And it’s tailored to applications native to a multicloud environment. As a result, you can both ensure management access and strengthen app-related defenses against potential vulnerabilities in multicloud setups.

Choosing CNAPP as your solution can help chief information security officers (CISOs) build impact.¹ When weighing the value of CNAPP, consider these numbers:

• 40% of organizations used a CNAPP in 2023 and an additional 45% expect to use one by the end of 2024.²
• 87% of organizations embrace multicloud.³
• 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud.⁴
• $4.45 million is the average cost of a data breach.⁵
• 54% of organizations do not include security in the development phase.⁶

Read on for five of the biggest insights found in the guide and download “From plan to deployment: implementing a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) strategy” to dive deeper into this important subject. Use it as a valuable resource to guide your CNAPP planning.

Implementing a CNAPP strategy

Learn how a cloud-native application protection platform can strengthen your organization's security strategy.

Get the guide

Insight #1: AI can tighten security and deliver insights

AI and machine learning play key roles in threat mitigation and security operations for cloud security. In fact, they could even be considered the backbone of these strategies because they give you the ability to analyze and respond to threats in real-time. Seconds matter in cybersecurity and could be the difference between minimal and major damage from a cyberattack.

AI and machine learning can also provide an assist by increasing predictive analysis and automating security tasks, helping your employees prioritize strategic security tasks. Manually managing today’s complex cloud infrastructures simply isn’t possible. The key is to include human oversight with human-in-the-loop monitoring of the technologies.

Insight #2: CNAPP can address challenges like alert overload and more

CNAPP holds day-to-day ease for security teams and strategic value for decision-makers. And there’s an urgent need for an end-to-end platform for cloud security—even better if powered by AI and machine learning. CNAPP helps you address some of the biggest challenges in cloud security, including:

• Building security into software during development: Security as code, which involves building security into software during development, will keep gaining momentum. CNAPP benefits the development process in several ways, including ensuring security is part of application development and forging collaboration between the developers and security teams.  
• Improving multicloud security posture: With CNAPP solutions, you can get an aggregation and analysis of data from multiple cloud platforms and services in a unified dashboard. These centralized insights can help security teams prioritize tasks more easily. Expanding multicloud visibility and enhancing multiplatform protection are two advantages of recent Microsoft Security innovations.
• Decreasing costs and tackling advanced cyberthreats: Security operations center (SOC) analysts and security admins could be easily overwhelmed by the modern digital threat landscape and frustrated by the number of signals. The predictive analytics of CNAPP solutions can make it easier for them to identify and mitigate potential risks while automating security responses to threats.

Insight #3: Effective cybersecurity takes a good partner  

Keeping user needs in mind, Microsoft has its own CNAPP solution—Microsoft Defender for Cloud. This comprehensive security solution has robust security features to safeguard a wide array of resources, including servers, containers, databases, applications, and, crucially, data storage solutions like Microsoft Azure Storage, across various cloud platforms. Implementing Microsoft Defender for Cloud can protect against current threats and position your organization to confidently address emerging security threats in the cloud.

Cybersecurity is a dual effort between cloud service providers and users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud models this collaborative approach with a more integrated and proactive strategy than is common with traditional security. Among other attributes, it aligns with DevOps, features rapid deployment capabilities, and offers two levels of CSPM functionality—foundational and premium from an offering called Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management. Deploying CSPM services should be a part of your CNAPP strategy.

It also integrates with other cybersecurity solutions. But given the way Microsoft embraces innovation, it’s probably no surprise that we’ll continue to evolve this solution to keep pace with fluid technological advancement. So, as usual, watch this space for exciting announcements to come.

Insight #4: Operationalizing CNAPP is a multipronged approach

With any solution, the benefits can’t be realized if your users aren’t adopting it. Operationalizing Microsoft Defender for Cloud takes both integrating it into daily operations and satisfying your users’ needs by continuously evolving cloud security. You want your users to manage it and use the platform’s capabilities. This includes its functionalities across Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform.

Other factors of operationalizing CNAPP include:

• Monitoring continuously, evaluating risk, and assessing status.
• Managing identity entitlement.
• Training employees to use security tools.
• Setting processes in place that can mitigate and remediate unhealthy resources.
• Fostering a culture of security awareness.

Insight #5: CNAPP is a critical part of a modern SOC

The SOC is critical and you strive for it to be efficient and effective. The insights from a CNAPP like Microsoft Defender for Cloud can dramatically transform SOC operations due to its total visibility, real-time monitoring, compliance and risk management tools, multiple integrations, and advanced analytics.

You can take a more proactive, strategic approach to cloud security with capabilities like:

• Detailed insights into threats and vulnerabilities, including their possible severity and impact.
• Automated compliance assessments based on industry standards.
• Post-incident analysis support through incident information.

Strengthening the SOC even further is a new Microsoft Defender for Cloud integration with Microsoft Defender XDR. You gain access to Defender for Cloud alerts and incidents within the Microsoft Defender portal for richer investigation context.

These highlights are just the beginning of what you can accomplish with CNAPP.

Explore the future of CNAPP and cloud security

Building a secure-first organization is critical to counter the continual stream of cyberthreats and the increasingly sophisticated nature of them. The future holds significant promise for CNAPP, and Microsoft is leading in this effort with solutions like Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Get details on CNAPP use case scenarios and Defender for Cloud’s integrations with other Microsoft products—and strategies for adopting and operationalizing it—in our guide “From plan to deployment: implementing a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) strategy.” Or, watch our podcast for an expert discussion on how CNAPP helps you address modern challenges. Learn more about how Defender for Cloud can help you protect your multicloud resources, workloads, and apps.

Learn more

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

¹Want to build impact as a CISO? Choose CNAPP as your solution, CSO. May 26, 2024. 

²The future of cloud security: Top trends to watch in 2024, InfoWorld. March 14, 2024. 

³2023 State of the Cloud Report, Flexera.

⁴Microsoft Enterprise DevOps Report. 

⁵Cost of a Data Breach Report, IBM. 2023. 

⁶Microsoft Cloud Security Priorities and Practices Research. 

The post 5 ways a CNAPP can strengthen your multicloud security environment appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

OpenMetadata is an open-source platform designed to manage metadata across various data sources. It serves as a central repository for metadata lineage, allowing users to discover, understand, and govern their data. On March 15, 2024, several vulnerabilities in OpenMetadata platform were published. These vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-28255, CVE-2024-28847, CVE-2024-28253, CVE-2024-28848, CVE-2024-28254), affecting versions prior to 1.3.1, could be exploited by attackers to bypass authentication and achieve remote code execution. Since the beginning of April, we have observed exploitation of this vulnerability in Kubernetes environments.

Microsoft highly recommends customers to check clusters that run OpenMetadata workload and make sure that the image is up to date (version 1.3.1 or later). In this blog, we share our analysis of the attack, provide guidance for identifying vulnerable clusters and using Microsoft security solutions like Microsoft Defender for Cloud to detect malicious activity, and share indicators of compromise that defenders can use for hunting and investigation.

Attack flow

For initial access, the attackers likely identify and target Kubernetes workloads of OpenMetadata exposed to the internet. Once they identify a vulnerable version of the application, the attackers exploit the mentioned vulnerabilities to gain code execution on the container running the vulnerable OpenMetadata image.

After establishing a foothold, the attackers attempt to validate their successful intrusion and assess their level of control over the compromised system. This reconnaissance step often involves contacting a publicly available service. In this specific attack, the attackers send ping requests to domains that end with oast[.]me and oast[.]pro, which are associated with Interactsh, an open-source tool for detecting out-of-band interactions.

OAST domains are publicly resolvable yet unique, allowing attackers to determine network connectivity from the compromised system to attacker infrastructure without generating suspicious outbound traffic that might trigger security alerts. This technique is particularly useful for attackers to confirm successful exploitation and validate their connectivity with the victim, before establishing a command-and-control (C2) channel and deploying malicious payloads.

After gaining initial access, the attackers run a series of reconnaissance commands to gather information about the victim environment. The attackers query information on the network and hardware configuration, OS version, active users, etc.

As part of the reconnaissance phase, the attackers read the environment variables of the workload. In the case of OpenMetadata, those variables might contain connection strings and credentials for various services used for OpenMetadata operation, which could lead to lateral movement to additional resources.

Once the attackers confirm their access and validate connectivity, they proceed to download the payload, a cryptomining-related malware, from a remote server. We observed the attackers using a remote server located in China. The attacker’s server hosts additional cryptomining-related malware that are stored, for both Linux and Windows OS.

The downloaded file’s permissions are then elevated to grant execution privileges. The attacker also added a personal note to the victims:

Next, the attackers run the downloaded cryptomining-related malware, and then remove the initial payloads from the workload. Lastly, for hands-on-keyboard activity, the attackers initiate a reverse shell connection to their remote server using Netcat tool, allowing them to remotely access the container and gain better control over the system. Additionally, for persistence, the attackers use cronjobs for task scheduling, enabling the execution of the malicious code at predetermined intervals.

How to check if your cluster is vulnerable

Administrators who run OpenMetadata workload in their cluster need to make sure that the image is up to date. If OpenMetadata should be exposed to the internet, make sure you use strong authentication and avoid using the default credentials.

To get a list of all the images running in the cluster:

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o=jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.spec.containers[*].image}{"\n"}{end}' | grep 'openmetadata'

If there is a pod with a vulnerable image, make sure to update the image version for the latest version.

How Microsoft Defender for Cloud capabilities can help

This attack serves as a valuable reminder of why it’s crucial to stay compliant and run fully patched workloads in containerized environments. It also highlights the importance of a comprehensive security solution, as it can help detect malicious activity in the cluster when a new vulnerability is used in the attack. In this specific case, the attackers’ actions triggered Microsoft Defender for Containers alerts, identifying the malicious activity in the container. In the example below, Microsoft Defender for Containers alerted on an attempt to initiate a reverse shell from a container in a Kubernetes cluster, as happened in this attack:

To prevent such attacks, Microsoft Defender for Containers provides agentless vulnerability assessment for Azure, AWS, and GCP, allowing you to identify vulnerable images in the environment, before the attack occurs.  Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) can help to prioritize the security issues according to their risk. For example, Microsoft Defender CSPM highlights vulnerable workloads exposed to the internet, allowing organizations to quickly remediate crucial threats.

Organizations can also monitor Kubernetes clusters using Microsoft Sentinel via Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) solution for Sentinel, which enables detailed audit trail for user and system actions to identify malicious activity.

Indicators of compromise (IoCs)

Hagai Ran Kestenberg, Security Researcher
Yossi Weizman, Senior Security Research Manager

Learn more

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog: https://aka.ms/threatintelblog.

To get notified about new publications and to join discussions on social media, follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/microsoft-threat-intelligence, and on X (formerly Twitter) at https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel.

To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/microsoft-threat-intelligence.

The post Attackers exploiting new critical OpenMetadata vulnerabilities on Kubernetes clusters appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

In attacks observed by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, threat actors launched phishing or password spraying attacks to compromise user accounts that did not have strong authentication mechanisms and had permissions to create or modify OAuth applications. The threat actors misused the OAuth applications with high privilege permissions to deploy virtual machines (VMs) for cryptocurrency mining, establish persistence following business email compromise (BEC), and launch spamming activity using the targeted organization’s resources and domain name.

Microsoft continuously tracks attacks that misuse of OAuth applications for a wide range of malicious activity. This visibility enhances the detection of malicious OAuth applications via Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and prevents compromised user accounts from accessing resources via Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Entra Identity Protection. In this blog post, we present cases where threat actors compromised user accounts and misused OAuth applications for their financially driven attacks, outline recommendations for organizations to mitigate such attacks, and provide detailed information on how Microsoft detects related activity:

• OAuth applications to deploy VMs for cryptomining
• OAuth applications for BEC and phishing
• OAuth applications for spamming activity
• Mitigation steps
• Detections for related techniques
• Hunting guidance

OAuth applications to deploy VMs for cryptomining

Microsoft observed the threat actor tracked as Storm-1283 using a compromised user account to create an OAuth application and deploy VMs for cryptomining. The compromised account allowed Storm-1283 to sign in via virtual private network (VPN), create a new single-tenant OAuth application in Microsoft Entra ID named similarly as the Microsoft Entra ID tenant domain name, and add a set of secrets to the application. As the compromised account had an ownership role on an Azure subscription, the actor also granted ‘Contributor’ role permission for the application to one of the active subscriptions using the compromised account.

The actor also leveraged existing line-of-business (LOB) OAuth applications that the compromised user account had access to in the tenant by adding an additional set of credentials to those applications. The actor initially deployed a small set of VMs in the same compromised subscriptions using one of the existing applications and initiated the cryptomining activity. The actor then later returned to deploy more VMs using the new application. Targeted organizations incurred compute fees ranging from 10,000 to 1.5 million USD from the attacks, depending on the actor’s activity and duration of the attack.

Storm-1283 looked to maintain the setup as long as possible to increase the chance of successful cryptomining activity. We assess that, for this reason, the actor used the naming convention [DOMAINNAME]_[ZONENAME]_[1-9] (the tenant name followed by the region name) for the VMs to avoid suspicion.  

One of the ways to recognize the behavior of this actor is to monitor VM creation in Azure Resource Manager audit logs and look for the activity “Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/write” performed by an OAuth application. While the naming convention used by the actor may change in time, it may still include the domain name or region names like “east|west|south|north|central|japan|france|australia|canada|korea|uk|poland|brazil”

Microsoft Threat Intelligence analysts were able to detect the threat actor’s actions and worked with the Microsoft Entra team to block the OAuth applications that were part of this attack. Affected organizations were also informed of the activity and recommended further actions.

OAuth applications for BEC and phishing

In another attack observed by Microsoft, a threat actor compromised user accounts and created OAuth applications to maintain persistence and to launch email phishing activity. The threat actor used an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing kit to send a significant number of emails with varying subject lines and URLs to target user accounts in multiple organizations. In AiTM attacks, threat actors attempt to steal session tokens from their targets by sending phishing emails with a malicious URL that leads to a proxy server that facilitates a genuine authentication process.

We observed the following email subjects used in the phishing emails:

• <Username> shared “<Username> contracts” with you.
• <Username> shared “<User domain>” with you.
• OneDrive: You have received a new document today
• <Username> Mailbox password expiry
• Mailbox password expiry
• <Username> You have Encrypted message
• Encrypted message received

After the targets clicked the malicious URL in the email, they were redirected to the Microsoft sign-in page that was proxied by the threat actor’s proxy server. The proxy server set up by the threat actor allowed them to steal the token from the user’s session cookie. Later, the stolen token was leveraged to perform session cookie replay activity. Microsoft was able to confirm during further investigation that the compromised user account was flagged for risky sign-ins when the account was used to sign in from an unfamiliar location and from an uncommon user agent.

For persistence following business email compromise

In some cases, following the stolen session cookie replay activity, the actor leveraged the compromised user account to perform BEC financial fraud reconnaissance by opening email attachments in Microsoft Outlook Web Application (OWA) that contain specific keywords such as “payment” and “invoice”. This action typically precedes financial fraud attacks where the threat actor seeks out financial conversations and attempts to socially engineer one party to modify payment information to an account under attacker control.

Later, to maintain persistence and carry out malicious actions, the threat actor created an OAuth application using the compromised user account. The actor then operated under the compromised user account session to add new credentials to the OAuth application.  

For email phishing activity

In other cases, instead of performing BEC reconnaissance, the threat actor created multitenant OAuth applications following the stolen session cookie replay activity. The threat actor used the OAuth applications to maintain persistence, add new credentials, and then access Microsoft Graph API resource to read emails or send phishing emails.

At the time of analysis, we observed that threat actor created around 17,000 multitenant OAuth applications across different tenants using multiple compromised user accounts. The created applications mostly had two different sets of application metadata properties, such as display name and scope:

• Malicious multitenant OAuth applications with the display name set as “oauth” were granted permissions “user.read; mail.readwrite; email; profile; openid; mail.read; people.read” and access to Microsoft Graph API and read emails.
• Malicious multitenant OAuth applications with the display name set as “App” were granted permissions “user.read; mail.readwrite; email; profile; openid; mail.send” and access to Microsoft Graph API to send high volumes of phishing emails to both intra-organizational and external organizations.

In addition, we observed that the threat actor, before using the OAuth applications to send phishing emails, leveraged the compromised user accounts to create inbox rules with suspicious rule names like “…” to move emails to the junk folder and mark them as read. This is to evade detection by the compromised user that the account was used to send phishing emails.

Based on the email telemetry, we observed that the malicious OAuth applications created by the threat actor sent more than 927,000 phishing emails. Microsoft has taken down all the malicious OAuth applications found related to this campaign, which ran from July to November 2023.

OAuth applications for spamming activity

Microsoft also observed large-scale spamming activity through OAuth applications by a threat actor tracked as Storm-1286. The actor launched password spraying attacks to compromise user accounts, the majority of which did not have multifactor authentication (MFA) enabled. We also observed the user agent BAV2ROPC in the sign-in activities related to the compromised accounts, which indicated the use of legacy authentication protocols such as IMAP and SMTP that do not support MFA.

We observed the actor using the compromised user accounts to create anywhere from one to three new OAuth applications in the targeted organization using Azure PowerShell or a Swagger Codegen-based client. The threat actor then granted consent to the applications using the compromised accounts. These applications were set with permissions like email, profile, openid, Mail.Send, User.Read and Mail.Read, which allowed the actor to control the mailbox and send thousands of emails a day using the compromised user account and the organization domain. In some cases, the actor waited for months after the initial access and setting up of OAuth applications before starting the spam activity using the applications. The actor also used legitimate domains to avoid phishing and spamming detectors.

In previous large-scale spam activities, we observed threat actors attempting to compromise admin accounts without MFA and create new LOB applications with high administrative permissions to abuse Microsoft Exchange Online and spread spam. While the activity of the actor then was limited due to actions taken by Microsoft Threat Intelligence such as blocking clusters of the OAuth applications in the past, Storm-1286 continues to try new ways to set a similar high-scale spamming platform in victim organizations by using non-privileged users.

Mitigation steps

Microsoft recommends the following mitigations to reduce the impact of these types of threats.

Mitigate credential guessing attacks risks

A key step in reducing the attack surface is securing the identity infrastructure. The most common initial access vector observed in this attack was account compromise through credential stuffing, phishing, and reverse proxy (AiTM) phishing. In most cases the compromised accounts did not have MFA enabled. Implementing security practices that strengthen account credentials such as enabling MFA reduced the chance of attack dramatically.

Enable conditional access policies

Conditional access policies are evaluated and enforced every time the user attempts to sign in. Organizations can protect themselves from attacks that leverage stolen credentials by enabling policies for User and Sign-in Risk, device compliance and trusted IP address requirements. If your organization has a Microsoft-Managed Conditional Access policy, make sure it is enforced.

Ensure continuous access evaluation is enabled

Continuous access evaluation (CAE) revokes access in real time when changes in user conditions trigger risks, such as when a user is terminated or moves to an untrusted location.

Enable security defaults

While some of the features mentioned above require paid subscriptions, the security defaults in Azure AD, which is mainly for organizations using the free tier of Azure Active Directory licensing, are sufficient to better protect the organizational identity platform, as they provide preconfigured security settings such as MFA, protection for privileged activities, and others.

Enable Microsoft Defender automatic attack disruption

Microsoft Defender automatic attack disruption capabilities minimize lateral movement and curbs the overall impact of an attack in its initial stages.

Audit apps and consented permissions

Audit apps and consented permissions in your organization ensure applications are only accessing necessary data and adhering to the principles of least privilege. Use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and its app governance add-on for expanded visibility into cloud activity in your organization and control over applications that access your Microsoft 365 data. 

Educate your organization on application permissions and data accessible by applications with respective permissions to identify malicious apps. 

Enhance suspicious OAuth application investigation with the recommended approach to investigate and remediate risky OAuth apps.

Enable “Review admin consent requests” for forcing new applications review in the tenant.

In addition to the recommendations above, Microsoft has published incident response playbooks for App consent grant investigation and compromised and malicious applications investigation that defenders can use to respond quickly to related threats.

Secure Azure Cloud resources

Deploy MFA to all users, especially for tenant administrators and accounts with Azure VM Contributor privileges. Limit unused quota and monitor for unusual quota increases in your Azure subscriptions, with an emphasis on the resource’s originating creation or modification. Monitor for unexpected sign-in activity from IP addresses associated with free VPN services on high privilege accounts. Connect Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps connector to ARM or use Microsoft Defender for ARM

With the rise of hybrid work, employees might use their personal or unmanaged devices to access corporate resources, leading to an increased possibility of token theft. To mitigate this risk, organizations can enhance their security measures by obtaining complete visibility into their users’ authentication methods and locations. Refer to the comprehensive blog post Token tactics: How to prevent, detect, and respond to cloud token theft. 

Check your Office 365 email filtering settings to ensure you block spoofed emails, spam, and emails with malware. Use for enhanced phishing protection and coverage against new threats and polymorphic variants. Configure Defender for Office 365 to recheck links upon time of click and delete sent mail in response to newly acquired threat intelligence. Turn on Safe Attachments policies to check attachments in inbound emails. 

Detections for related techniques

Leveraging its cross-signal capabilities, Microsoft Defender XDR alerts customers using Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Application governance add-on, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Microsoft Entra ID Protection to detect the techniques covered in the attack through the attack chain. Each product can provide a different aspect for protection to cover the techniques observed in this attack:

Microsoft Defender XDR

Microsoft Defender XDR detects threat components associated with the following activities:

• User compromised in AiTM phishing attack
• User compromised via a known AiTM phishing kit
• BEC financial fraud-related reconnaissance
• BEC financial fraud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps connectors for Microsoft 365 and Azure, Microsoft Defender XDR raises the following alerts:

• Stolen session cookie was used
• Activity from anonymous IP address
• Activity from a password-spray associated IP address
• User added or updated a suspicious OAuth app
• Risky user created or updated an app that was observed creating a bulk of Azure virtual machines in a short interval
• Risky user updated an app that accessed email and performed email activity through Graph API
• Suspicious creation of OAuth app by compromised user
• Suspicious secret addition to OAuth app followed by creation of Azure virtual machines
• Suspicious OAuth app creation
• Suspicious OAuth app email activity through Graph API
• Suspicious OAuth app-related activity by compromised user
• Suspicious user signed into a newly created OAuth app
• Suspicious addition of OAuth app permissions
• Suspicious inbox manipulation rule
• Impossible travel activity
• Multiple failed login attempts

App governance

App governance is an add-on to Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, which can detect malicious OAuth applications that make sensitive Exchange Online administrative activities along with other threat detection alerts. Activity related to this campaign triggers the following alerts:

• Entra Line-of-Business app initiating an anomalous spike in virtual machine creation
• OAuth app with high scope privileges in Microsoft Graph was observed initiating virtual machine creation
• Suspicious OAuth app used to send numerous emails

To receive this alert, turn on app governance for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 detects threat activity associated with this spamming campaign through the following email security alerts. Note, however, that these alerts may also be triggered by unrelated threat activity. We’re listing them here because we recommend that these alerts be investigated and remediated immediately.

• A potentially malicious URL click was detected
• A user clicked through to a potentially malicious URL
• Suspicious email sending patterns detected
• User restricted from sending email
• Email sending limit exceeded

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud detects threat components associated with the activities outlined in this article with the following alerts:

• Azure Resource Manager operation from suspicious proxy IP address
• Crypto-mining activity
• Digital currency mining activity
• Suspicious Azure role assignment detected
• Suspicious creation of compute resources detected
• Suspicious invocation of a high-risk ‘Execution’ operation by a service principal detected
• Suspicious invocation of a high-risk ‘Execution’ operation detected
• Suspicious invocation of a high-risk ‘Impact’ operation by a service principal detected

Microsoft Entra Identity Protection

Microsoft Entra Identity Protection detects the threats described with the following alerts:

• Anomalous Token
• Unfamiliar sign-in properties
• Anonymous IP address
• Verified threat actor IP
• Atypical travel

Hunting guidance

Microsoft 365 Defender

Microsoft 365 Defender customers can run the following query to find related activity in their networks:

OAuth application interacting with Azure workloads

let OAuthAppId = <OAuth app ID in question>;
CloudAppEvents
| where Timestamp >ago (7d)  
| where AccountId == OAuthAppId 
| where AccountType== "Application"
| extend Azure_Workloads = RawEventData["operationName"]
| distinct Azure_Workloads by AccountId

Password spray attempts

This query identifies failed sign-in attempts to Microsoft Exchange Online from multiple IP addresses and locations.

IdentityLogonEvents
| where Timestamp > ago(3d)
| where ActionType == "LogonFailed" and LogonType == "OAuth2:Token" and Application == "Microsoft Exchange Online"
| summarize count(), dcount(IPAddress), dcount(CountryCode) by AccountObjectId, AccountDisplayName, bin(Timestamp, 1h)

Suspicious application creation

This query finds new applications added in your tenant.

CloudAppEvents
| where ActionType in ("Add application.", "Add service principal.")
| mvexpand modifiedProperties = RawEventData.ModifiedProperties
| where modifiedProperties.Name == "AppAddress"
| extend AppAddress = tolower(extract('\"Address\": \"(.*)\",',1,tostring(modifiedProperties.NewValue)))
| mvexpand ExtendedProperties = RawEventData.ExtendedProperties
| where ExtendedProperties.Name == "additionalDetails"
| extend OAuthApplicationId = tolower(extract('\"AppId\":\"(.*)\"',1,tostring(ExtendedProperties.Value)))
| project Timestamp, ReportId, AccountObjectId, Application, ApplicationId, OAuthApplicationId, AppAddress

Suspicious email events

NOTE: These queries need to be updated with timestamps related to application creation time before running.

//Identify High Outbound Email Sender
EmailEvents 
| where Timestamp between (<start> .. <end>) //Timestamp from the app creation time to few hours upto 24 hours or more 
| where EmailDirection in ("Outbound") 
| project
    RecipientEmailAddress,
    SenderFromAddress,
    SenderMailFromAddress,
    SenderObjectId,
    NetworkMessageId 
| summarize
    RecipientCount = dcount(RecipientEmailAddress),
    UniqueEmailSentCount = dcount(NetworkMessageId)
    by SenderFromAddress, SenderMailFromAddress, SenderObjectId
| sort by UniqueEmailSentCount desc 
//| where UniqueEmailSentCount > <threshold> //Optional, return only if the sender sent more than the threshold
//| take 100 //Optional, return only top 100
 
//Identify Suspicious Outbound Email Sender
EmailEvents 
//| where Timestamp between (<start> .. <end>) //Timestamp from the app creation time to few hours upto 24 hours or more 
| where EmailDirection in ("Outbound") 
| project
    RecipientEmailAddress,
    SenderFromAddress,
    SenderMailFromAddress,
    SenderObjectId, 
    DetectionMethods,
    NetworkMessageId 
| summarize
    RecipientCount = dcount(RecipientEmailAddress),
    UniqueEmailSentCount = dcount(NetworkMessageId),
    SuspiciousEmailCount = dcountif(NetworkMessageId,isnotempty(DetectionMethods))
    by SenderFromAddress, SenderMailFromAddress, SenderObjectId
| extend SuspiciousEmailPercentage = SuspiciousEmailCount/UniqueEmailSentCount * 100 //Calculate the percentage of suspicious email compared to all email sent
| sort by SuspiciousEmailPercentage desc 
//| where UniqueEmailSentCount > <threshold> //Optional, return only if the sender suspicious email percentage is more than the threshold
//| take 100 //Optional, return only top 100

//Identify Recent Emails Sent by Restricted Email Sender
AlertEvidence
| where Title has "User restricted from sending email"
| project AccountObjectId //Identify the user who are restricted to send email
| join EmailEvents on $left.AccountObjectId == $right.SenderObjectId //Join information from Alert Evidence and Email Events
| project
    Timestamp,
    RecipientEmailAddress,
    SenderFromAddress,
    SenderMailFromAddress,
    SenderObjectId,
    SenderIPv4,
    Subject,
    UrlCount,
    AttachmentCount,
    DetectionMethods,
    AuthenticationDetails, 
    NetworkMessageId
| sort by Timestamp desc 
//| take 100 //Optional, return only first 100

BEC recon and OAuth application activity

//High and Medium risk SignIn activity
AADSignInEventsBeta
| where Timestamp >ago (7d)
| where ErrorCode==0
| where RiskLevelDuringSignIn >= 50
| project
    AccountUpn,
    AccountObjectId,
    SessionId,
    RiskLevelDuringSignIn,
    ApplicationId,
    Application

//Oauth Application creation or modification by user who has suspicious sign in activities
AADSignInEventsBeta
| where Timestamp >ago (7d)
| where ErrorCode == 0
| where RiskLevelDuringSignIn >= 50
| project SignInTime=AccountUpn, AccountObjectId, SessionId, RiskLevelDuringSignIn, ApplicationId, Application
| join kind=leftouter (CloudAppEvents | where Timestamp > ago(7d)
| where ActionType in ("Add application.", "Update application.", "Update application – Certificates and secrets management ")
| extend appId = tostring(parse_json(RawEventData.Target[4].ID))
| project
    Timestamp,
    ActionType,
    Application,
    ApplicationId,
    UserAgent,
    ISP,
    AccountObjectId,
    AppName=ObjectName,
    OauthApplicationId=appId,
    RawEventData ) on AccountObjectId
| where isnotempty(ActionType)

 
//Suspicious BEC reconnaisance activity 
let bec_keywords = pack_array("payment", "receipt", "invoice", "inventory"); 
let reconEvents = 
    CloudAppEvents
    | where Timestamp >ago (7d)
    | where ActionType in ("MailItemsAccessed", "Update")
    | where AccountObjectId in ("<Impacted AccountObjectId>")
    | extend SessionId = tostring(parse_json(RawEventData.SessionId))
    | project
        Timestamp,
        ActionType,
        AccountObjectId,
        UserAgent,
        ISP,
        IPAddress,
        SessionId,
        RawEventData;
reconEvents;
let updateActions = reconEvents
    | where ActionType == "Update" 
    | extend Subject=tostring(RawEventData["Item"].Subject)
    | where isnotempty(Subject)
    | where Subject has_any (bec_keywords)
    | summarize UpdateCount=count() by bin (Timestamp, 15m), Subject, AccountObjectId, SessionId, IPAddress;
updateActions;
let mailItemsAccessedActions = reconEvents 
    | where ActionType == "MailItemsAccessed" 
    | extend OperationCount = toint(RawEventData["OperationCount"])
    | summarize TotalCount = sum(OperationCount) by bin (Timestamp, 15m), AccountObjectId, SessionId, IPAddress;
mailItemsAccessedActions;
 
//SignIn to newly created app within Risky Session
AADSignInEventsBeta
| where Timestamp >ago (7d) 
| where AccountObjectId in ("<Impacted AccountObjectId>") and 
SessionId in ("<Risky Session Id>")
| where ApplicationId in ("<Oauth appId>") // Recently added or modified App Id
| project
    AccountUpn,
    AccountObjectId,
    ApplicationId,
    Application,
    SessionId,
    RiskLevelDuringSignIn,
    RiskLevelAggregated,
    Country

// To check suspicious Mailbox rules
CloudAppEvents
| where Timestamp between (start .. end) //Timestamp from the app creation time to few hours, usually before spam emails sent
| where AccountObjectId in ("<Impacted AccountObjectId>")
| where Application == "Microsoft Exchange Online"
| where ActionType in ("New-InboxRule", "Set-InboxRule", "Set-Mailbox", "Set-TransportRule", "New-TransportRule", "Enable-InboxRule", "UpdateInboxRules")
| where isnotempty(IPAddress)
| mvexpand ActivityObjects
| extend name = parse_json(ActivityObjects).Name
| extend value = parse_json(ActivityObjects).Value
| where name == "Name"
| extend RuleName = value 
| project Timestamp, ReportId, ActionType, AccountObjectId, IPAddress, ISP, RuleName

// To check any suspicious Url clicks from emails before risky signin by the user
UrlClickEvents
| where Timestamp between (start .. end) //Timestamp around time proximity of Risky signin by user
| where AccountUpn has "<Impacted User’s UPN or Email address>" and ActionType has "ClickAllowed"
| project Timestamp,Url,NetworkMessageId

// To fetch the suspicious email details
EmailEvents
| where Timestamp between (start .. end) //Timestamp lookback to be increased gradually to find the email received
| where EmailDirection has "Inbound"
| where RecipientEmailAddress has "<Impacted User’s UPN or Email address>" and NetworkMessageId == "<NetworkMessageId from UrlClickEvents>"
| project SenderFromAddress,SenderMailFromAddress,SenderIPv4,SenderFromDomain, Subject,UrlCount,AttachmentCount
    
    
// To check if suspicious emails sent for spamming (with similar email subjects, urls etc.)
EmailEvents
| where Timestamp between (start .. end) //Timestamp from the app creation time to few hours upto 24 hours or more
| where EmailDirection in ("Outbound","Intra-org")
| where SenderFromAddress has "<Impacted User’s UPN or Email address>"  or SenderMailFromAddress has "<Impacted User’s UPN or Email address>"
| project RecipientEmailAddress,RecipientObjectId,SenderIPv4,SenderFromDomain, Subject,UrlCount,AttachmentCount,NetworkMessageId

Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Sentinel customers can use the TI Mapping analytics (a series of analytics all prefixed with ‘TI map’) to automatically match the malicious domain indicators mentioned in this blog post with data in their workspace. If the TI Map analytics are not currently deployed, customers can install the Threat Intelligence solution from the Microsoft Sentinel Content Hub to have the analytics rule deployed in their Sentinel workspace.

Analytic rules:

• Phishing Link Execution Observed
• Possible AiTM Phishing Attempt Against AAD
• Successful Signins from a Phishing Link
• Signin Password Spray
• Malicious Inbox Rule
• BEC Mailbox Rule

Hunting queries:

• Open Email Link
• Creation of an anomalous number of resources
• Creation of expensive computes in Azure

Learn more

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog: https://aka.ms/threatintelblog.

To get notified about new publications and to join discussions on social media, follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/microsoft-threat-intelligence, and on X (formerly Twitter) at https://twitter.com/MsftSecIntel.

To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast: https://thecyberwire.com/podcasts/microsoft-threat-intelligence.

The post Threat actors misuse OAuth applications to automate financially driven attacks appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Securing the use of generative AI for safeguarding your organization

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

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

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

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

Expanding end-to-end security for comprehensive protection everywhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partner opportunities and news

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

Join us in creating a more secure future

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

Microsoft Ignite 2023

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

Watch the keynote

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

Learn more

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

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2023.

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

³Cybersecurity Workforce Study, ISC². 2022.

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

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

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