Partnering with governments to help protect democracy
Our partnerships help provide security and privacy for governments, campaigns, and democratic processes. Learn how to improve campaign security in five steps.
Why we partner with governments
Fighting global cybercrime
We help protect people through technology, forensics, civil actions, criminal referrals, and partnerships.
Upholding a free world
We help protect democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting technology.
Ensuring a secure society
We work to fill the gaps in international law to make cyberspace a safer place.
Defending Democracy
Threats to democracy from cyberenabled interference have become a critical concern. We’ve seen attempts by nation-states to exploit elements of our democratic system. These attempts include disrupting the voting process, and influencing political campaigns through the manipulation of social media. We believe technology companies have a responsibility to help protect democratic processes and institutions.
Microsoft 365 for Campaigns
Microsoft 365 for Campaigns is an offering created for the growing threats and real-world challenges political campaigns face online. It brings together the world-class productivity and security of Office 365, Windows 11, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Microsoft Teams. Microsoft 365 for Campaigns is available at a price of just $5 per person per month, the same price as offered to nonprofits, and includes streamlined enrollment into the Microsoft AccountGuard program. Microsoft setup wizards, intelligent default settings, and one-click configuration tasks simplify the process of achieving a strong security baseline. We'll help you apply our top cybersecurity recommendations in minutes.
AccountGuard
AccountGuard is a security service offered at no additional cost to Office 365 customers in the political space. The service is designed to help highly-targeted customers protect themselves from cybersecurity threats. The service launched in August 2018 in preparation for the 2018 US midterm elections. AccountGuard is now helping to secure the 2020 US general elections and broader political and think tank community.
ElectionGuard
ElectionGuard is a free, open-source software development kit (SDK). It can be used to protect the vote against tampering and improve the voting process for citizens and officials. ElectionGuard democratizes the ability to verify election results by enabling direct public confirmation of results, utilizes special encryption to keep voting records secure, and allows individual voters to confirm their votes were correctly counted.
The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit
An international team fighting cybercrime
Located in 20 countries, our Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) is an international team of attorneys, investigators, data scientists, engineers, analysts, and business professionals. We use advanced analytics and AI to identify, investigate, disrupt, and dismantle sophisticated online criminal networks. Working with law enforcement, we’ve rescued nearly 500 million devices from bot-nets, stopped fake websites linked to phishing campaigns, and fought online child exploitation. In addition, our image-matching PhotoDNA technology is available to law enforcement for free.
Going beyond borders to help protect everyone
Cybercrime is borderless and impacts victims globally, but law enforcement can be constrained by jurisdiction and limitations of legal processes beyond national borders. Fighting cybercrime requires strong partnerships with local and global law enforcement, security firms, researchers, NGOs, and customers. Through our partnerships we can act faster to stop harm to customers and develop evidence law enforcement can use to drive arrests and convictions.
Cybersecurity policy
To maintain global trust in technology and secure cyberspace against new and emerging threats, public policy must continue to evolve. Our security policy team produces thought leadership to help policymakers address security issues and provide a framework for cybersecurity policy. We also provide recommendations for building an effective cybersecurity agency and creating policies for state, regions, and countries.
In the news
CNET: Election hacking
The ubiquity of low-cost hacking tools means elections in the United States, and all over the world, are persistently threatened by a large and diverse set of hackers.
60 Minutes: Russia and cybercriminals
How the FBI unmasked two Russian hackers is a great detective story and a rare window into the partnership between Russian government spymasters and Russian cybercriminals.
GeekWire: Microsoft seized 99 websites
Microsoft helped stop the Iranian hacker group, Phosphorus, from stealing sensitive information from journalists, activists, government organizations, and businesses.
Russian hackers thwarted by Microsoft
Attackers created websites to mimic three United States Senate websites, the Microsoft Office 365 website, the International Republican Institute website, and the Hudson Institute website.
The digital detectives at Microsoft
Go behind the scenes at the new Microsoft headquarters for fighting cybercrime.
Follow Microsoft Security