Microsoft highlights cyber threat landscape

Microsoft today demonstrated some of the most sophisticated detection and mitigation measures in the industry as it participated as a premier sponsor at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit in Dubai, UAE. The summit provides IT pros with insights on the latest cybersecurity standards which will help spur new ideas, fast-track project strategy and execution, advancing their skillset.

“The Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit holds incredible value as a venue for the cyber community to dive into the rich and relevant research content focused on the constantly evolving threat landscape,” said Diana Kelley, Cybersecurity Field CTO at Microsoft. ”Security is a full-time commitment that’s been part of Microsoft’s DNA for more than 15 years, and we embrace our responsibility as a security leader to help empower organizations by sharing our best practices.”

At the summit, Microsoft will deliver a series of keynotes and discuss the sweeping changes to corporate security postures across the Middle East, outlining the most recent strategies to deal with the latest cyberthreats.

Diana Kelley, delivered a talk titled “Shifting Sands – Shoring up Cyber defence in a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape”, explaining how Microsoft capitalises on deep data insights from the 6.5 trillion security signals it analyses daily, along with a decade spent tracking and analysing software vulnerabilities, exploits, malware, unwanted software, and attacker-groups’ methods and tactics.

“In 2018, attackers used a variety of approaches in the attempt to circumvent cyberdefenses of regional CISOs,” said Kelley. “We saw the new, in coin-mining, and the old, in phishing. Cyber-criminals are adapting as they have always done. Coin-mining rose after successful countermeasures against ransomware, while hybrid attacks, like the Ursnif campaign, started using both social and technical approaches.”

Microsoft’s Hesham Saad, Security and Threat Protection Specialist, talked about “Hunting the bad guys with Microsoft Threat Protection”, demonstrating how cloud intelligence and Microsoft 365 integrated security solutions provide wide-ranging protection through identity and access management, information protection, threat protection, and security management tools and expertise.