The security landscape has become increasingly challenging and complex for our customers.
By Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice-president: security, compliance, identity and management at Microsoft
Threats have grown at an alarming rate over the last year, and cybercrime is now expected to cost the world $10,5-trillion annually by 2025, up from $3-trillion a decade ago and $6-trillion in 2021.
As attacks increase in scale, so must our defenses. Last year, Microsoft Security blocked over 9,6-billion malware threats and more than 35,7-billion phishing and other malicious emails. Microsoft Security is actively tracking more than 35 ransomware families and 250 unique threat actors across observed nation-state, ransomware, and criminal activities, and our technology blocks more than 900 brute force password theft attempts every second.
But technology alone is not enough to defend against cybercrime. Technology is critical, but it’s the combination of leading technologies, comprehensive threat intelligence, and highly skilled people that makes for a truly effective security posture.
The challenge is that in this critical moment when cybersecurity has reached an inflection point, our nation is facing a cybersecurity talent shortage with nearly one in three – or 2,5-million – security jobs vacant in the US, pushing the time of detection for a breach to an alarming 287 days. And, even when talent is available, access to highly skilled expertise remains a challenge.
Our expertise is now your expertise
It’s getting harder every day for organisations to build and maintain a full security team, let alone one with the ever-expanding skillset required to meet the range of today’s security demands.
That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that Microsoft is expanding our existing service capabilities under a new service category called Microsoft Security Experts. Security Experts combines expert-trained technology with human-led services to help organisations achieve more secure, compliant, and productive outcomes.
Our vision is to deliver this new category of services across security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy. The first step on that journey is offering new and expanded services for security.
Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help our customers and their partners meet today’s security challenges. We secure devices, identities, apps, and clouds–the fundamental fabric of our customers’ lives–with the full scale of our comprehensive multicloud, multiplatform solutions. Plus, we understand today’s security challenges because we live this fight ourselves every single day.
Now, our world-class security expertise is your security expertise.
New managed services from Microsoft Security
With input from our incredible partner ecosystem, we’ve designed three new managed services that can help you scale your team of experts to fit your needs–without the challenges of hiring and training them.
Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting is for customers who have a robust security operations center but want Microsoft to help them proactively hunt for threats across Microsoft Defender data, including endpoints, Office 365, cloud applications, and identity. Our experts will investigate anything they find and then hand off the contextual alert information and remediation instructions so you can quickly respond. With Experts on Demand, you can consult a Microsoft expert about a specific incident, nation-state actor, or attack vector with the simple click of a button. You will also get specific recommendations to help you understand and improve your security posture. Defender Experts for Hunting will be generally available in summer 2022, and you can request to be part of the preview now.
Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR is for customers who need to extend the capacity of their security operations center. Defender Experts for XDR is a managed extended detection and response (XDR) service that extends beyond endpoints to provide detection and response across Microsoft 365 Defender, investigating alerts and using automation and human expertise to respond to incidents alongside your team. You stay in control and reduce costs, excess noise, and manual processes. Defender Experts for XDR will move into preview in fall 2022.
Large enterprises looking for more comprehensive, high-touch managed services from Microsoft experts will benefit from Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise. This comprehensive, expert-led service combines proactive threat hunting and managed XDR, leveraging Microsoft’s complete security information and event management (SIEM) and XDR stack to protect all cloud environments and all platforms. Dedicated Microsoft security experts manage onboarding, daily interactions, practice modernization, and incident response for you. Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise is sold through a custom statement of work and is available today. Interested enterprise customers should contact their Account Executive to learn more.
Existing security services
Through our Microsoft Industry Solutions group, we currently offer a broad set of services for incident response and advisory. These service offerings, designed to support customers in times of crisis and to help them modernize their security practices, are delivered by Microsoft’s global team of professional services experts, and will become part of the Microsoft Security Experts portfolio.
Microsoft Security Services for Incident Response supports customers before, during, and after a breach. Incident response and recovery experts will help you remove a bad actor from your environment, remediate your defenses after a breach, and build resilience against future attacks. Our global team of experts leverages Microsoft’s strategic partnerships with security organizations and governments around the world and with internal Microsoft product groups to respond to incidents and help customers secure their most sensitive, critical environments.
Microsoft Security Services for Modernisation is for customers that want to take advantage of Microsoft best practices and know-how as they embrace new modern security capabilities and embark on their security transformation. It provides consulting services that help customers at any stage of their security journey modernize their security posture and embrace a Zero Trust approach. Our modernization services utilise extensive cybersecurity knowledge and industry expertise gathered over 35 years to keep your business secure.