For over a decade and a half, the well-established technology providers in the field of cybersecurity have been under strict focus. The market leaders in the domain of cybersecurity have always been the ones who are already established and ruling in the industry for years. Substantially, the focus was not even ready to shift by an iota unless Microsoft came into play as a credible solution provider.
The cybersecurity era has been a play of assumptions as ever and Microsoft has been overlooked in this play for quite a long time due to its unreliability. But, guess what? That’s all changing now in a very beautiful fashion. What’s notable is that Microsoft has been investing USD 1 billion every year in cloud security and that’s not everything; in addition to strengthening its internal security, it has even bought three security firms in the last two years.
And this has made all the difference- as Microsoft has now become a pioneer in security across many of the technology areas. In terms of security, endpoint detection is one of the biggest concerns and has ample area for improvement. For all windows vulnerabilities, email malware, and phishing scams can now take a back seat as Microsoft enters the market, it isn’t a backup plan rather is now the main plan!
Digital Transformation and Need for Cloud Security
Last year, companies were forced to quickly adjust their technical methods. Many companies encouraged employees to work from home. And thus, during the pandemic, 60% of organizations switched even more to cloud-based activities. Switching to cloud demands better and ever at par world-class cybersecurity!
In Q3 2020, a Microsoft survey revealed that 58% of respondents increased their security budgets, 82% planned to add security staff, and 81% needed to lower security costs.
The survey was well perceived by businesses and leaders around the world and it became pretty clear how important cybersecurity is especially when there’s an all-in situation to go digital.
Evidently, in support of this in 2019, Gartner too did its study and named Microsoft as a leader in Endpoint Protection through their magic quadrant. Graph as shown below.
Image Source: Gartner
One look at the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms makes it clear that Microsoft deserves more than just a second look, outpacing the entire industry — now competing head-to-head with only industry darling CrowdStrike.
Microsoft Defender: A 360° EDR Solution
Endpoint detection and response(EDR) solution is not just limited to antivirus and Microsoft Defender provides that and more with a complete and user-friendly package for endpoint security.
Image Source: Microsoft
Providing full protection out-of-the-box required a lot of innovation, automation, and orchestration with other security products and services. In recent MITRE ATT&CK® evaluations, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint came out with a clear winner with broad detection capabilities which required the least configuration. This framework describes the techniques used by cyber threat groups or individuals to gain an initial hold and move accordingly to carry out their malicious activity, ultimately violating the confidentiality of the business systems.
By measuring EDR solutions’ detection coverage of tactics and techniques, we can better understand how they will perform in uncertain future situations in production environments.
Image Source: Microsoft
Quite surprisingly when compared to past years and with the existing leaders in the market, Microsoft seems to have achieved more than 95% of the technologies used in the test which when combined with the exquisite solutions that Microsoft offers, make it one power punch for any business looking to get serious towards their cybersecurity.
