Securing your digital estate with endpoint detection and response (EDR) across all platforms, devices, and Internet of Things (IoT) has never been more challenging. A rapidly evolving cyberthreat landscape has seen cyberattacks grow in sophistication, evolving from randomized single domain cyberattacks to targeted and methodical multidomain cyberattacks tailored to the specific vulnerabilities and unique attack surfaces within each organization.
In fact, over the last 18 months, our threat protection research teams have observed a 275% increase in ransomware encounters. In these cyberattacks, threat actors tend to target identities and devices for gaining initial access. Microsoft disrupts 35,000 such incidents each month. But not only has the volume of cyberattacks increased, so too has the speed of execution. Cyberattacks used to take days before affecting organizations, but today thousands of devices can be encrypted in less than five minutes.
Fortunately, the likelihood of a Microsoft Defender for Endpoint customer getting encrypted over the past 18 months has also decreased by 300%. Microsoft disabled and contained 120,000 compromised user accounts and saved more than 180,000 devices in the last six months alone.
Microsoft delivers comprehensive endpoint protection
Not only does Microsoft have the largest market share in modern endpoint security worldwide, we see more attack data than any other security vendor. We process more than 84 trillion signals every day across data sources like novel cyberattacks, malware, ransomware, and fraud while leveraging dynamic insights from 10,000 full-time security experts. This gives us early signal into emerging threat vectors that we refactor into our detection and response systems.
Powered by AI and built on the broadest global threat and human intelligence, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides comprehensive protection across all platforms, from mobile to servers to IoT—including Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android. This empowers the security operations center (SOC) with industry-leading threat protection to stay one step ahead of the evolving cyberthreat landscape.
Defender for Endpoint is part of the Microsoft Defender XDR platform, natively integrated with the full breadth of security solutions that comprise our unified security operations platform.
Why do CISOs prefer Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
Defender for Endpoint is purpose-built for the SOC and offers a series of capabilities that help you reduce your attack surface, accelerate your security workflows, and respond quicker and more effectively than ever before. These are just a few of the reasons most chief information security officers (CISOs) choose Microsoft to protect their device estate.
- Reduce your attack surface: With built-in posture management, you can monitor vulnerabilities and security configuration issues, receive prioritized alerts, and take corrective actions to mitigate risk and reduce your exposure. Auto-deployed deception techniques allow you to create an artificial attack surface in minutes, sniffing out bad actors early in the cyberattack chain.
- Accelerate your workflow with AI: Defender for Endpoint’s native integration with Microsoft Security Copilot allows you to use natural language to speed up daily tasks such as investigating and responding to incidents and prioritizing alerts. As the industry’s first generative AI, Security Copilot helps analysts by providing enriched context for faster and smarter decisions in addition to prescriptive step-by-step remediation guidance.
- Respond automatically: Automatic attack disruption is an industry-first, always-on security response capability exclusive to Microsoft. It is offered only by Microsoft Defender XDR and available within Defender for Endpoint. Powered by advanced machine learning, it can identify when a cyberattack is occurring with high confidence and block the attack.
This makes it possible to contain an active breach quickly and effectively while preventing lateral movement from the cyberattacker. It accomplishes this using high confidence signals collected from our unified platform—including endpoints, hybrid identities, apps, email, collaboration tools, cloud workloads, data security insights and third-party data. It can protect against advanced attacks like ransomware, business email compromise (BEC), and Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) attacks.
Automatic attack disruption doesn’t kick in until Defender for Endpoint has reached above 99.99% confidence in the presence of a cyberattack. It dynamically responds to in-progress, hands-on-keyboard attacks—isolating compromised entities, stopping cyberattackers in their tracks, and halting ransomware attacks in three minutes on average. Unlike traditional solutions that periodically scan for known malware and solely rely on endpoint signals, attack disruption uses AI and cross-domain signals to predict an attacker’s next move and adapt its response. This means we can block lateral movement early in the cyberattack chain and stop the attacker from progressing.
For more on why CISOs prefer Defender for Endpoint, read our latest e-book or watch the video.
Defender for Endpoint in action: Thwarting ransomware when another security solution couldn’t
Here is a real-life example that demonstrates just how critical it is to have Defender for Endpoint securing your devices.
In early 2024, a multinational organization was targeted by cyberattackers. They attempted to encrypt about 2,100 user devices and about 1,000 servers. The organization had mixed deployment of endpoint vendors with Microsoft on user devices and another leading EDR vendor on their servers. There were two cyberattack waves.
- In the first attack wave, within two minutes of Microsoft recognizing that an attack was underway, automatic attack disruption kicked in and prevented the cyberattacker from encrypting more than 2,000 devices and held steady for about three hours.
- In the second attack wave, Microsoft held strong and thwarted encryption for more than 99% of devices, whereas the cyberattacker successfully encrypted 100% of the servers that were on another vendor.
The customer has since onboarded all of their servers to Microsoft.
How to transform endpoint security at your organization
Microsoft makes it easy to secure your device estate and stay one step ahead of the cyberattackers. If you’re looking to supercharge endpoint security at your organization and keep up with the evolving cyberthreat landscape, you can get started with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint today. Begin a free trial, read the e-book, watch the video, or speak to the Microsoft Security sales team.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.