Securing company data has always been a central concern for IT, and, in a cloud-first, mobile-first world , the massive challenges that accompany the maintenance of this security have become even more acute. Reports of increasingly invasive and sophisticated cyber security attacks have become a common story – and these stories weigh heavily on IT Pros everywhere.
I’ve written before about the source of so many cyber attacks: Compromised user credentials. In fact, compromised identity is the #1 cause of the breaches we hear about from organizations all over the world.
The reason for this problem is twofold:
- Many of the workers bringing their devices to work are still learning how to best ensure the security of their credentials.
- The existing security tools in the market are just too cumbersome – they create way too many false positives, they take years to fine tune, and the reports they generate are nearly impossible to read and understand quickly.
The biggest problem of all is, arguably, the question of how traditional IT security solutions operate once a breach occurs. Currently, the traditional infrastructure monitoring and security techniques have become less effective. There are also some very sophisticated security products that are ultimately ineffective because getting a massive data set in your inbox or console while trying to identify/isolate an intrusion can take far too long at a time when every second makes or breaks your organization. Who wants to be given a haystack when you’ve asked for a needle?
This is why a new approach to securing the enterprise is so important. Enterprises need a solution that is, at its core, based on some foundational elements:
- It uses identity as a control plane.
- It has the visibility and insights that only come from machine learning against vast datasets.
- Protection is offered multiple layers .
The Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) already delivers a comprehensive solution to help secure productivity across multiple layers (covering identity and access management, mobile device and application management, and persistent information protection at the level of the file itself), and, with Azure Active Directory, we provide identity-driven security capabilities that help customers identify attacks across a range of different vectors. Today we are excited to announce that we’re delivering similar capabilities to help protect our customers’ on-premises AD.
General Availability: Announcing Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics
Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), coming out next month, is an on-premises cyber security product that helps companies identify advanced persistent threats before they can cause damage. Since previewing ATA at Ignite in May , we have seen thousands of customers try the ATA preview every week.
ATA is based on technology from our recent acquisition of Aorato, and it is designed to help customers protect their organization from advanced targeted attacks by doing the following:
- It detects advanced security threats fast via behavioral analytics that leverage Machine Learning .
- Allows you to adapt to the changing nature of cyber-security threats with a technology that is continuously learning.
- It lets you narrow down the most important security factors using a simplified attack timeline.
- ATA’s innovative technology reduces false positive fatigue and raises red flags only when needed.
- ATA also helps to identify known malicious attacks, security issues and risks, and presents all of this information in an easy-to-consume, and simple-to-drill-down, social media-like feed.
That is a really impressive list of features – and I can’t wait for you to try ATA for yourself.
ATA will be available for customers to purchase standalone, as well as part of EMS and the Enterprise Client Access License (ECAL) in August 2015. More information is available at www.Microsoft.com/ATA and in our blog post here .
General Availability: Azure Rights Management Support for Office for iPad
Securing user productivity across a growing range of mobile devices is a key benefit of EMS via the Azure Rights Management service (RMS).
Millions of people have already experienced the benefits of the Office mobile apps for iPad – and, if you haven’t, you have really got to try out what’s been called the ” gold standard for mobile productivity .” As great as these Office for iPad apps already are, I am excited to further enhance and protect them with support from RMS. This support begins with Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
To learn more visit the blog from the Office 365 team here .
Momentum: Enterprise Mobility Suite
Over the last year we have brought new and innovative capabilities to EMS on a very rapid cadence – this is, obviously, one of the benefits of delivering enterprise mobility from the cloud.
Getting specific, we’ve enhanced EMS with features like:
- We’ve expanded our mobile application management (MAM) in Intune to include the new Outlook app.
- Our support for Android has been dramatically expanded.
- For identity and access management, we’ve added cloud app discovery to help organizations identify unauthorized SaaS usage.
- We have previewed privileged identity management to manage admin access.
- The connection of the cloud to on-premises AD with Azure AD Connect and Connect Health has been simplified and streamlined.
Wow!!!
With all of the new capabilities we’ve shipped this year in our cloud services, it’s interesting to reflect on the state of our industry at a time when we are managing and protecting so much of this new mobile productivity market. One thing is really clear: The market is definitely still emerging . As the value and necessity of EMM grows, we see customers evolving their approach, innovating, and bringing new needs and demands every day. On a really regular basis I see the traditional point solution MDM vendors, or the identity and access management vendors, struggling to keep up with these demands – customers are seeking more comprehensive and holistic solutions that are architected for (and can scale to) the cloud .
And this leads me to a big announcement: I am excited to announce that, as of our first full fiscal year of EMS sales, we have seen over 17,000 customers purchase our enterprise mobility services .
A recent example is ABM , one of the largest facility solution providers in the United States, they used Enterprise Mobility Suite to build a productive mobile work environment.
To see even more examples, as well as information about our solutions and access to trials, check out the Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility page.
