Microsoft Ramping up Cybersecurity Service Offerings

Microsoft recently announced that it is launching dedicated cybersecurity services with its Microsoft Security Experts. The team will offer consulting-oriented solutions focused on security, identity, privacy, management and compliance.

The company is responding to a skyrocketing rise in cybercrime. Last year, the company blocked more than 35.7 billion phishing and other malicious emails and over 9.6 billion malware threats.

The company estimates that almost one in three security jobs is vacant. Without enough skilled help, it can hamper timely detection of breaches. Microsoft believes there are 2.5 million security jobs that need to be filled.

Microsoft’s security business is already worth $15 billion as of January 2022 and growing almost 45% year-over-year, expanding faster than any of its other services or products, according to CNBC.

There are three new managed services offered by Microsoft.

Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise is a complete cybersecurity service. Customers will have a dedicated expert who will lead onboarding, practice modernizations, daily interactions, and incident responses. They’ll also utilize Microsoft’s security tools to protect all platforms and cloud applications, manage XDR stacks, and hunt for threats. It is currently available.

Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR will be available for customers in the fall of 2022. This cybersecurity service complements a client’s existing security operations center. This operation manages extended detection and response beyond the company’s endpoints by examining alerts and assisting the company by actively defending against cyberthreats.

Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting is an added layer of protection for clients who already have a security operations center. The company will actively search for cybersecurity threats in cloud applications, Office 365, identity, and devices. Experts on Demand will be available as consultants to discuss attack vectors, nation-state actors, or singular incidents.

The new cybersecurity services will help make Microsoft a bigger player in the expanding security sector, which already includes Google, IBM, Ernst & Young, and PwC as competitors.

This article first appeared in IoT World Today’s sister publication AI Business.