Microsoft offers more cloud security at no additional cost

A Chinese threat actor hacked and gained access to email accounts affecting approximately 25 organizations.

by Flavius Floare

Flavius is a writer and a media content producer with a particular interest in technology, gaming, media, film and storytelling. He enjoys spending time in nature and at… read more

Updated on July 21, 2023

Microsoft has been under fire recently, regarding cybersecurity, when a Chinese threat actor the Redmond-based giant tech tracked as Storm-0558, hacked and gained access to email accounts affecting approximately 25 organizations. They were government agencies and consumer accounts of people associated with these organizations.

The attack happened in May and June, and Microsoft acknowledged the issue on June 16, 2023. That’s also when the company started an investigation.

Following the investigation, many users were upset about it to the point of criticizing Microsoft for charging them to protect themselves against Microsoft’s mistakes.

So, in retaliation, the Redmond-based tech giant announced that companies will get a cloud security expansion at no additional cost. As Microsoft is expanding its cloud security, you will be able to see the updates, changes, and improvements by using Microsoft Purview Audit.

Today we are expanding Microsoft’s cloud logging accessibility and flexibility even further. Over the coming months, we will include access to wider cloud security logs for our worldwide customers at no additional cost.

Microsoft

Microsoft cloud security expansion at no additional cost

Microsoft announced the cloud security expansion as a collaboration with CISA. If you remember, earlier this year, a new CISA tool was made available on Microsoft Cloud services across the board. The tool, Untitled Goose Tool, can prevent hacking attempts in cloud services, and it was well-received by the industry.

So now, the two entities are collaborating once again to strengthen cloud security for their customers. According to Microsoft’s announcement:

• Microsoft Purview Audit (Standard) customers will receive deeper visibility into security data, including detailed logs of email access and more than 30 other types of log data previously only available at the Microsoft Purview Audit (Premium) subscription level.
• Microsoft is also increasing the default retention period for Audit Standard customers from 90 days to 180 days.
• Commercial and government customers with E5/G5 licenses already using Microsoft Purview Audit (Premium) will continue to receive access to all available audit logging events, including intelligent insights, which help determine the scope of potential compromise by using the Audit log search in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal and the Office 365 Management Activity API.
• Additional Audit Premium features include longer default retention periods and automation support for importing log data into other tools for analysis. 

The Redmond-based tech giant will start rolling out these updates in September 2023 to all government and commercial customers.

You can visit the Microsoft Purview compliance portal and select Audit from the Solutions panel, to access the updates and the new logs as they become available.

It seems Microsoft is taking all measures to make sure a breach of the sort that happened in May, won’t happen again. We can hope, of course, and with everyone on board, such situations can be easily detected and dealt with without aggravating the situation.

What do you think about Microsoft’s latest cloud security expansion? Let us know in the comments section below.