Cyberspace 2025 Student Essay Contest

Posted by: Kevin Sullivan, Principal Security Strategist, Trustworthy Computing When Sam Coxwell submitted his entry to last year’s Microsoft cybersecurity essay contest, he was focused on one thing, winning.  His entry “Cybercrime: Why does it pay, and what can we do about it?” centered on the future of cybersecurity policy research.  It was one of...

Apr 2016

Risk Meets Reward: Windows Phone 8.1 Security Overview

Flying cars, intergalactic travel, and transporters are not the commonplace items in 2014 that were envisioned for the future throughout the twentieth century. Still, when considering the shoe phone from the television series “Get Smart” through to the fairly limited functionality of the Star Trek communicator, mobile phones might be the single best...

Apr 2016

Industry Vulnerability Disclosures Trending Up

A vulnerability disclosure, as the term is used in the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, is the revelation of a software vulnerability to the public at large. Disclosures can come from a variety of sources, including publishers of the affected software, security software vendors, independent security researchers, and even malware creators. The...

Apr 2016

Topics from Cybersecurity Bootcamp #1 – Cyber Hygiene

This past week I was privileged to attend Stanford’s inaugural cybersecurity boot camp, where two dozen congressional staffers joined academic and industry experts to discuss ways to protect he government, the public and industry from cyber threats. For me, it was encouraging to see congressional staff members deeply engaged in security and threat...

Apr 2016

Major Rights Management Update to Office and Azure

For many of the CISOs I talk to regularly, data leakage prevention continues to be a topic of high interest. Whether using either a cloud service or an on premise solution there are a number of reasons that it is important to protect the workplace documents you share with others. To date, data protection technologies have become increasingly more complex...

Apr 2016

What will cybersecurity look like in 2025?, Part 3: How Microsoft is shaping the future of cybersecurity

Today’s post concludes our three-part series on Cyberspace 2025: Today’s Decisions, Tomorrow’s Terrain which presented three views of the world and cyberspace in 2025—Plateau, Peak, and Canyon. PEAK – the Peak scenario represents a world of innovation, where information and communications technology (ICT) fulfills its potential to strengthen governance...

Apr 2016

What will cybersecurity look like in 2025?, Part 2: Microsoft envisions an optimistic future

The future of cybersecurity will be influenced by more than just technical factors like the spread of malware, or even targeted cyber-attacks.  Global responses to social issues such as population growth, educational investments, or even trade liberalization will also play a significant role.  Continuing our series examining what cybersecurity will...

Apr 2016

IE increases protections, implements “out-of-date ActiveX control blocking”

Last week, Internet Explorer announced important changes it will be making to better protect customers from cybercriminal attacks.  Beginning on September 9, Internet Explorer will block out-of-date ActiveX controls, such as older versions of the Oracle Java Runtime Environment (JRE) as part of the August 2014 release of MS14-051 Cumulative Security...

Apr 2016

What will cybersecurity look like in 2025?, Part 1: The catalysts that will shape the future

Cybersecurity challenges are emerging not just from the commonly recognized sources – criminals, malware, or even targeted cyber-attacks – they can grow from public policies as well.  A research report we released last month, Cyberspace 2025: Today’s Decisions, Tomorrow’s Terrain, seeks to look over the horizon and beyond technical trends to anticipate...

Apr 2016

Now Available: Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) 5.0

Today we are pleased to announce  the general availability of our Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) 5.0.  It has been almost five years since we released the first version of the tool and so much has changed since then.  Thanks to the overwhelming support, feedback and demand from our community, the tool has evolved quite a bit and now includes...

Apr 2016