When threat actors infiltrate a company to steal documents and other critical business information, Microsoft Incident Response - the Detection and Response Team (DART) responds. With more than 4,500 engagements in 2024 and more than a millennium of combined experience, these responders are the calm in the storm when a compromise occurs.
Whether they’re confronting ransomware, nation-state actors, or zero-day exploits, DART blends their knowledge and years of experience with agility, empathy, and storytelling to guide organizations from disruption to clarity.
This blog introduces the people behind DART, which includes forensic analysts, infrastructure specialists, and threat hunters whose mission is to contain attacks, restore trust, and build resilience for the future.
DART
DART isn’t just a lifeline during a crisis, they’re strategic partners in building cyber resilience before threat actors strike. Through a suite of proactive services, the team helps organizations identify vulnerabilities, harden critical systems, and prepare for the unexpected.
Proactive offerings like compromise assessments, identity reviews, and threat briefings allow customers to uncover hidden risks and receive tailored recommendations without the pressure of an active breach. By leveraging Microsoft’s vast threat intelligence and engineering access, organizations gain insights into emerging tactics and trends, ensuring their security posture evolves ahead of the threat landscape. In short, DART empowers defenders to out-think threat actors by mapping potential pathways, closing gaps, and rehearsing responses - so when the real thing happens, they’re ready.
Cyber Frontier: Real-World Insights from Microsoft & DART
The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, forcing defenders to rethink traditional security models. The past year, DART has observed shifts in tactics driven by the rise of AI and the relentless pursuit of identity compromise. Threat actors are no longer just exploiting vulnerabilities; they’re weaponizing automation, scaling social engineering, and monetizing stolen access in ways that blur the line between cybercrime and organized business models. In this new paradigm, resilience, global collaboration, and anticipatory defense aren’t optional; they’re survival.
Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025[1] ranks the largest causes of cyberattacks and prominent trends:
- Phishing remained the most common initial access method. While there were many changes in the threat landscape, multifactor authentication (MFA) still blocks over 99% of unauthorized access attempts, making it the single most important security measure an organization can implement.
- While phishing remains a common initial access method, campaigns are moving away from simple phishing as defense approaches evolve. Threat actors increasingly leverage multi-stage attack chains that mix technical exploits and social engineering to gain unauthorized access and maintain persistence.
- In more than 90% of cases where cyberattacks progressed to the ransom stage, the threat actor had leveraged unmanaged devices in the network. This highlights the impact of gaps in endpoint visibility on threat actor progression.
- Just as businesses are leveraging generative AI for productivity gains, threat actors are also using AI to augment traditional cyberattacks by automating activities from vulnerability discovery to deepfake content generation.
- As AI adoption becomes increasingly commonplace, these tools’ access to proprietary and sensitive data has also made AI systems an attractive target for malicious activity.
- Nation-state actor and ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) actor activity also evolved, moving away from centralized command-and-control servers and instead leveraging cover, peer-to-peer networks to avoid detection and survive through takedowns by redistributing workloads across participants.
Meet some of the DARTians
DART members are a diverse and highly skilled team of individuals with the depth of expertise and experience to solve problems quickly. They continually adjust their actions based on what they learn. They can lock down a network, isolate an endpoint, or remove a threat actor before damage is done. CISOs, security teams, and our IR people share this common passion, commitment, and goal - to protect organizations against threats. We recently interviewed several of our team members about how they got into IR work, their most memorable engagements, advice they have for customers, and more. Here are some key highlights from those interviews:
How did you get your start?
“My journey began in 2005 when I enlisted in the US Marines and was assigned to the data field, managing servers, routers, and switches, and ensuring the network kept running smoothly. That technical foundation soon led me to a cybersecurity role for the Marine Corps at Quantico, where I first tasted what it meant to defend against real threats. As a Security Operations Center (SOC) analyst, I quickly discovered that cybersecurity is both broad and deep. It opened my eyes to how vulnerabilities are exploited and how a simple oversight can become a major incident.” – Edwin
“My path into cybersecurity wasn’t exactly a straight line. During the early parts of my career, I worked in business advisory and enterprise sales and was pursuing a path to an MBA from one of the major business schools. While corporate strategy and incident response may feel worlds apart, being able to bridge both has been my tactical advantage in working with our customers to demystify the events that take place in the cyber trenches I now call home.” – Pru
“The idea of tracking digital adversaries and solving complex puzzles always fascinated me, so when an opportunity arose in 2014 to join a Cyber Warfare unit, I took it. It felt like stepping into a story told in the movies, only the stakes were real, and the learning was relentless.” – Max
Most memorable DART engagement moments
“We quickly gained trusted advisor status and were brought into the investigation. Together, we uncovered internet-facing servers with weak permissions that allowed the threat actor to pivot between on-premises and cloud environments using privileged accounts. In the end, we shut down the threat actor’s access, rebuilt compromised systems, reduced excessive permissions, and delivered a roadmap to strengthen defenses.” – Adrian
Advice for customers
"Nearly every major incident we see starts with compromised identity: weak credentials, stolen passwords, or missed phishing alerts. Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) is critical.” – Max
“Proactive defense pays off: Tools like Secure Score and strategies such as the tiering model can drastically reduce risk. Don’t wait until an incident to play catch up and try to fortify defenses while also putting out a fire, it is best to act now.” – Edwin
“It may sound simple or even boring, but over 99% of cyberattacks can be prevented with MFA in place. It’s the digital equivalent of locking your front door and having an alarm system, and it’s easy and inexpensive to implement.” – Pru
“Teamwork is essential: No one succeeds in cybersecurity alone. Collaboration, both within your team and across organizations, is often the deciding factor in a successful response.” – Adrian
“Tools powered by AI, like Microsoft Copilot, have become invaluable in helping to quickly analyze suspicious processes, understand command lines, and connect the dots in complex investigations.” – Max
Building a safer digital world, together
DART doesn’t just solve technical problems - they help people through some of the most challenging moments of their careers. Every compromise is a puzzle, every engagement a chance to restore trust and build resilience. What drives them isn’t just the scale or complexity of the work - it’s the impact they can make, one incident at a time.
Learn more
To learn more about Microsoft’s Incident Response capabilities and DART, please visit Microsoft Incident Response | Microsoft Security. Read the latest installment of the Cybersecurity Series. To read more about Microsoft Incident Response in action, read our latest installment of the Cyberattack Series, Retail at risk: How one alert uncovered a persistent cyberthreat.
Sources
Microsoft