On Sept. 23, Microsoft launched a report detailing the progress of the Safe Future Initiative, the company-wide overhaul put in place in November 2023. The Safe Future Initiative exists to enhance safety within the wake of some high-profile vulnerabilities in 2023.
These vulnerabilities included a breach in Microsoft Trade On-line that allowed risk actors related to the Chinese language authorities to entry U.S. authorities emails in 2023. In April 2024, the U.S. Cyber Security Evaluate Board revealed “Evaluate of the Summer time 2023 Microsoft Trade On-line Intrusion,” which stated the hack “was preventable and may by no means have occurred.” The board discovered Microsoft had “a company tradition that deprioritized each enterprise safety investments and rigorous threat administration.”
How Microsoft is guarding in opposition to cyber threats
In mild of the cybersecurity points, Microsoft has applied a number of modifications. As a part of the initiative, CEO Satya Nadella and Government Vice President of Safety Charlie Bell appointed 13 deputy CISOs. Their jobs might be to supervise key safety capabilities both inside one in every of Microsoft’s engineering divisions or as a part of a foundational safety operate overseen by the CISO.
“We’ve devoted the equal of 34,000 full-time engineers to SFI — making it the biggest cybersecurity engineering effort in historical past,” Bell wrote.
Different steps Microsoft has taken embody:
- Deploying and performing on six key pillars of safety compliance.
- Creating a brand new Cybersecurity Governance Council answerable for cyber threat, protection, and compliance, comprising the brand new CISOs.
- Making safety a important a part of each worker’s efficiency evaluation.
- Linking safety efficiency to the senior management staff’s compensation.
- Mandating senior management to evaluate progress on the Safe Future Initiative each week and to supply updates to the board of administrators each quarter.
- Rolling out safety coaching company-wide.
SEE: Why Your Enterprise Wants Cybersecurity Consciousness Coaching (TechRepublic Premium)
Microsoft’s six key pillars of safety compliance embody:
- Defending identities and secrets and techniques. This consists of Updating Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Account (MSA) for public and U.S. authorities clouds to make it tougher to entry token signing keys. Signing keys allowed the China-affiliated risk actors to breach authorities electronic mail addresses final yr. Microsoft expanded adoption of ordinary identification SDKs, included measures to stop password sharing, and extra.
- Defending tenants and isolating manufacturing programs, eliminating unused apps and inactive tenants.
- Isolating sure digital networks and enriching possession and firmware compliance monitoring of bodily property.
- Enhancing governance of engineering programs.
- Adopting customary libraries for safety audit logs to raised monitor and detect threats.
- Accelerated Time to Mitigate for important cloud vulnerabilities.
What organizations can study from the Safe Future Initiative
The replace on the SFI serves as a well timed reminder for safety and engineering groups to uphold rigorous requirements and cling to business finest practices.
Notice that Microsoft added safety to the core of its efficiency opinions. Clear KPIs aligned with total firm tradition can affect the path of the group.
It’s additionally necessary to acknowledge the worth of adapting rapidly to an information breach. The dimensions and strategic significance of Microsoft’s U.S. authorities contracts made addressing the 2023 information significantly important. Microsoft has been cautious to border SFI as an initiative for the sake of enchancment, not an try and make up for its high-profile breaches — however a serious unstated aim of the mission is to reassure the U.S. authorities {that a} main electronic mail hack gained’t occur once more.
