Microsoft has announced a new and expanded line of managed security services. Microsoft Security Experts combines expert-trained technology with human-led services to augment a customer’s existing security team or – alongside partners – manage security for them entirely. The company also announced the general availability of the standalone version of Microsoft Defender for Business. Defender for Business brings enterprise-grade endpoint security to SMBs, including endpoint detection and response capabilities to protect against ransomware and other sophisticated cyberthreats.
Threats have grown at an alarming rate over the last year, and cybercrime is now expected to cost the world USD 10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from USD 3 trillion a decade ago and USD 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 Microsoft’s 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. For example, the U.S. workforce is experiencing a security talent shortage with 1 in 3 security roles left unfilled. That’s why companies are seeking managed security services to fully run their security systems or support their in-house defense.
Microsoft sees this demand and with its partner ecosystem, wide range of signals, tech innovation and world class security talent, is uniquely positioned to meet it.
That’s why Microsoft is expanding its existing service capabilities under a new service category called Microsoft Security Experts. Security Experts combines expert-trained technology with human-led services to help organizations achieve more secure, compliant, and productive outcomes.
The company’s vision is to deliver this new category of services across security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy. With input from Microsoft experienced partner ecosystem, the corporation designed three new managed services that can help scale the client’s teams of experts to fit needs—without the challenges of hiring and training them.
- Microsoft Defender Experts for Huntingis 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. Microsoft’s experts will investigate anything they find and then hand off the contextual alert information and remediation instructions so you can quickly respond.
- 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 365Defender, investigating alerts and using automation and human expertise to respond to incidents alongside the company’s team.
- 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.
With Microsoft Defender for Business, SMBs get multi-layered protection, detection, and response to protect and remediate against known and unknown threats.
Defender for Business Product Features:
- Threat and vulnerability management helps prioritize and focus on weaknesses that pose the most urgent and the highest risk to business. Proactively build a secure foundation for your environment by discovering, prioritizing, and remediating software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
- Attack surface reduction options help minimize attack surface (i.e., places that your company is vulnerable to cyberattacks across your devices and applications), leaving bad actors with fewer ways to execute attacks.
- Next-generation protection helps prevent and protect against threats with antimalware and antivirus protection on devices and in the cloud.
- Endpoint detection and response provides behavioral-based detection and response alerts so you can identify persistent threats and remove them from your environment.
- Auto-investigation and remediation help scale security operations by examining alerts and taking immediate action to resolve attacks for customers. By reducing alert volume and remediating threats, Defender for Business enables customers to prioritize tasks and focus on more sophisticated threats.
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