Today marks an exciting milestone in Microsoft’s AI journey. This morning, at an event in New York, we made several major announcements to empower people at work and in their personal lives. You can learn more about Microsoft Bing and Edge with Copilot, what’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Bing Chat Enterprise for work, Microsoft Designer and Copilot in Microsoft 365, Windows 11, and new Surface devices in Yusuf Medhi’s blog.
These innovations will redefine the way we live and work with AI, and it’s very exciting to see the progress we’re making to put AI and other capabilities in the hands of our customers in every aspect of their life.
As we rapidly iterate and improve technology, it is imperative that we do so with security first in mind. This means both creating secure-by-default products and ensuring we adopt and deploy new technologies, like AI, securely and responsibly.
Designing Windows Security for the New Era
Today we shared the next Windows 11 update which will be available on September 26, 2023. This update includes several important security features and updates that help make it the most personal and the smartest one to date. I want to take a moment to highlight some of the key security features you’ll hear more about next week:
Building a passwordless future
We have been talking for years about a passwordless future that we’re looking at here at Microsoft. We know that passwords are one of the most common entry points for attacks. In fact, there are more than 4,000 password attacks every second– a nearly three-fold increase since last year.1 That’s why it’s more important than ever for organizations and individuals to use passwordless options whenever possible. In Windows 11 Update, we are excited to introduce:
- Even more without a password: IT teams will now be able to remove the option to enter a password on day one for all Windows 11 devices equipped with Windows Hello for Business, directing employees to use more secure sign-in options.
- More with passwords: Over the past several years, we have been committed to working with our industry partners and the FIDO Alliance to promote a passwordless future through passkeys. Access keys are the cross-platform, cross-ecosystem future of website and application access. Today we are happy to share that Windows 11 users can enjoy passwords better. After creating a password with Windows Hello, you can access a website or app using your face, fingerprint, or your device’s PIN. You can manage the passkeys stored on your Windows PC and log in using the passkeys saved on your mobile phone for convenience. You can use passwords on various services like GitHub.com, DocuSign.com, etc.
Equipping IT with new security tools
The latest version of Windows 11 will also include powerful new tools that will enable IT teams to ensure better security for their organization and their employees, including:
- Custom App Control for Business policies with Microsoft Intune: Applications are the lifeblood of our digital experiences, but they can also become entry points for threats. With app control, apps must gain trust to operate, ensuring that only approved, secure, and trusted apps are allowed on devices. By preventing unwanted or malicious code from running, application control is an essential part of an overall security strategy. Application control is often cited as one of the most effective ways to defend against malware. Customers can now use App Control for Business (formerly Windows Defender Application Control) and its next-generation features to protect their digital assets from malicious code. With App Control for Business, IT teams can configure what runs in a business environment through Microsoft Intune or other MDMs in the admin console, including setting up Intune as a managed installer.
- Updating the configuration: We often have discover threat actors launching attacks designed to evade security measures by modifying system settings and configurations. Config Refresh allows you to reset Configuration Configuration Service Provider (CSP) settings on a Windows 11 device every 90 minutes by default, or every 30 minutes if you choose. This protects against any unexpected changes to configuration settings by malware or registry changes and ensures that your settings are kept as IT configured them.
We’ll share more details on these and other new Windows 11 features next week.
New advanced security for Microsoft 365 Personal, Home, and Basic subscribers
As a company, we are also thinking about how to equip individuals with tools and information to better protect themselves at home. Today, we’re excited to announce new advanced security benefits for Microsoft 365 Personal, Home, and Basic subscribers.
Microsoft Defender for Home brings credit monitoring and privacy protection to the United States
Today we shared two new additions to Microsoft Defender for Homes that will help individuals and families protect their personal data online:
- Credit monitoring: Defender’s identity theft monitoring capabilities will now be expanded with a new credit monitoring feature. Users will receive an alert whenever activity related to their credit could be malicious, allowing them to act quickly and help stop the activity while it is happening.
- Privacy protection: Privacy Protection protects sensitive data from threats when users are connected to open, public Wi-Fi networks. It reduces online tracking and protects against bad actors on an unsecured network and allows users to hide their IP address and location from websites, apps and advertisers who may attempt to track online activity to collect personal data. Privacy Protection also encrypts traffic and data through a VPN.
Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Homes.
OneDrive advanced security in Microsoft 365 Basic
Earlier this year, we launched our most affordable subscription plan, Microsoft 365 Basic. As promised, we’re now adding the advanced OneDrive security features from our Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans to the Microsoft 365 Basic plan at no additional cost. Starting October 12, 2023, Microsoft 365 Basic subscribers will have access to advanced OneDrive security features such as unlimited files in your personal vault, expiring share links, password-protected share links , file restoration, and ransomware detection and recovery. Microsoft 365 Basic continues to offer 100GB of cloud storage and incredible peace of mind benefits at an incredible price.
Use AI securely and responsibly
As we celebrate our progress in AI, it is important to reiterate our commitment to deploying these technologies securely and responsibly. I was fortunate to have a front-row seat as we built, tested, and iterated these amazing AI technologies. But as we observe this evolution, we recognize that, as Spider-Man would say: “With great power comes great responsibility.” That’s why we’re committed to building and deploying AI responsibly and ethically. You can find out more about our commitments on the Responsible AI Practice Center for Empowerment.
We’ve heard from customers and seen first-hand that employees are eager to use AI in the workplace. But many leaders are concerned about the use of AI in their organization. They worry that this could introduce unnecessary risks. That’s why we take a safe and secure approach for our customers, allowing them to feel confident in using AI at work. For example, Bing Chat Business helps employees harness the power of AI while ensuring that prompts and responses are not recorded or used to train the underlying model. Our commitments to enterprise-level security, privacy, identity, compliance, and responsible AI in Microsoft 365 Copilot remain unchanged. And finally, we will continue to use AI to drive a paradigm shift in security with Microsoft Security Copilot. We empathize with security and IT leaders trying to navigate a challenging environment and will continue to integrate security into our products to help them harness the power of AI with confidence.
As part of our stay in New York today, I am pleased to participate in a roundtable discussion on this topic. Thank you for being part of our journey and putting safety at the forefront of your lives.
Stay tuned for more exciting Windows details next week as we celebrate the availability of the new Windows 11 on September 26, 2023.
Learn more
To learn more about Microsoft security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark it Security Blog to follow our expert security coverage. Also follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest cybersecurity news and updates.
1Microsoft internal data.
