During his keynote, Nadella talked about how innovations in Windows 10, Office 365, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite work together with partner products to deliver an agile security platform.
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The new Cyber Defense Operations Center on the other hand will be staffed with dedicated teams 24×7, the center has direct access to thousands of security professionals, data analysts, engineers, developers, program managers, and operations specialists throughout Microsoft to ensure rapid response and resolution to security threats.
While the security improvements that Microsoft made in the enterprise field are specifically aimed at customers running Windows 10 Enterprise, Home and Pro users benefit from Windows Hello, the new biometric authentication tool that makes passwords nearly a thing of the past. “It’s so important for us to not only improve the technology, but the security posture you have around the basics”, Nadella said. Crucial to this wasn’t only finding ways to ensure the essential elements of the Microsoft ecosystem – Windows, Azure and Office 365 – but finding ways to ensure the infrastructure, the personal mobile devices and the services a business uses, regardless of whether they were Microsoft’s or another vendors.
Digital technology is playing a positive role in retail, healthcare, and all facets of modern life, Nadella said, “but customers are not going to use this technology if they can’t trust it, and that’s why trust is central to our mission of empowering every person and organization”. “It is that security platform that we’re building across all of our products”.
The CDOC is in addition to the $1 billion Microsoft’s invests each year in security research and development (R&D).
The target is always moving and security is a giant chess match where companies like Microsoft make their move to protect their systems and customers and the hackers (or whatever you choose to call them), make theirs. Microsoft wants to keep the cloud safe first and foremost. Instead, usability was key to Microsoft’s security vision, encouraging adoption while helping reduce the potential for accidental, yet often still catastrophic, data leakage.
Another aspect of this initiative is a new Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), which will provide support for mobile app management without any need for devices to be enrolled.
This year alone it has bought three Israeli-based security firms including Active Directory security firm Aorato, cloud security firm Adallom and most recently, data and file protection firm Secure Islands.
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We think that goes back to the idea of evolving from one perimeter to [being a focus of] everything we do: “protect[ing] data, devices, and people”, Mr. Arsenault said. It is a war room that rivals few others in the world that Microsoft uses to detect threats in advance, and share the information with all of its related product and service groups as well as its partners.
