Microsoft recently introduced Cyber Signals, a quarterly cyber threat intelligence brief informed by the latest Microsoft threat data and research. The content offers an expert perspective into the current thread landscape, discussing trending tactics, techniques, and strategies used by the world’s most prolific threat actors.
“Online threats are increasing in volume, velocity, and sophistication. From IoT to nation-state activity, new ransomware tactics to insights into the cybercriminal economy, Cyber Signals provides trend analysis and practical guidance to strengthen the first line of digital defense,” said Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Security, Compliance, and Identity of Microsoft. “We hope it’s a valuable resource to Chief Information Security Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Privacy Officers, and their teams, as they continue to evolve technologies, policies, and processes against the constantly changing threat landscape.”
The Cyber Signals brief aggregates insights from Microsoft’s research and security teams on the frontlines, including analysis from the company’s 24 trillion security signals combined with intelligence monitoring of more than 40 nation-state groups and 140 plus threat groups.
The first edition of Cyber Signals unpacks the topic of identity and maintaining good security hygiene to mitigate potential identity risks.
With increasing numbers of people working remotely and accessing their business apps and data from multiple locations, including home offices, coworking spaces, and other remote locations, threats have risen dramatically in the past two years. However, there has been low adoption of strong identity authentication such as multifactor authentication (MFA) and passwordless solutions.
Microsoft’s research shows that across industries, only 22 percent of Microsoft’s Cloud Identity Solution, Azure Active Directory (AAD), users have implemented strong identity authentication protection as of December last year. In 2021 alone, Microsoft blocked more than 25.6 billion AAD brute force authentication attacks, 9.6 billion malware threats targeting enterprise and consumer customer devices, and intercepted 35.7 billion phishing emails with Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
“MFA and passwordless solutions can go a long way in preventing a variety of threats and we’re committed to educating customers on solutions such as these to better protect themselves,” said Jakkal.
Every day, Microsoft analyzes over 6.5 trillion signals to identify emerging threats to protect customers and in response to the increasing cyber threats in the Philippines and globally, Microsoft will invest $20 billion over the next five years to accelerate efforts to integrate cyber security by design and to deliver advanced security solutions.