Building a safer world together with our partners—introducing Microsoft Security Experts
Update August 11, 2022: Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting is now generally available. Learn more about the product offering and how to apply, set up, and use the service.
More threats—not enough defenders
The security landscape has become increasingly challenging and complex for our customers. Threats have grown at an alarming rate over the last year, and cybercrime is now expected to cost the world USD10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from USD3 trillion a decade ago and USD6 trillion in 2021.1
As attacks increase in scale, so must our defenses. Last year, Microsoft Security blocked over 9.6 billion malware threats and more than 35.7 billion phishing and other malicious emails. Microsoft Security is actively tracking more than 35 ransomware families and 250 unique threat actors across observed nation-state, ransomware, and criminal activities, and our technology blocks more than 900 brute force password theft attempts every second.
But technology alone is not enough to defend against cybercrime. Technology is critical, but it’s the combination of leading technologies, comprehensive threat intelligence, and highly skilled people that makes for a truly effective security posture. The challenge is that in this critical moment when cybersecurity has reached an inflection point, our nation is facing a cybersecurity talent shortage with nearly one in three—or 2.5 million—security jobs vacant in the United States,2 pushing the time of detection for a breach to an alarming 287 days.3 And, even when talent is available, access to highly skilled expertise remains a challenge.
Our expertise is now your expertise
It’s getting harder every day for organizations to build and maintain a full security team, let alone one with the ever-expanding skillset required to meet the range of today’s security demands.
That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that Microsoft is expanding our existing service capabilities under a new service category called Microsoft Security Experts. Security Experts combines expert-trained technology with human-led services to help organizations achieve more secure, compliant, and productive outcomes.
Our vision is to deliver this new category of services across security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy. The first step on that journey is offering new and expanded services for security.
Video description: Microsoft Security Experts is a line of managed security solutions that combines human-led services with expert-trained technology to help organizations achieve better security outcomes. In this brief overview video, we highlight how this new suite of services delivers solutions across Microsoft’s security, compliance, identity, management, and privacy product categories.
Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help our customers and their partners meet today’s security challenges. We secure devices, identities, apps, and clouds—the fundamental fabric of our customers’ lives—with the full scale of our comprehensive multicloud, multiplatform solutions. Plus, we understand today’s security challenges because we live this fight ourselves every single day.
Now, our world-class security expertise is your security expertise.
New managed services from Microsoft Security
With input from our incredible partner ecosystem, we’ve designed three new managed services that can help you scale your team of experts to fit your needs—without the challenges of hiring and training them.
Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting is for customers who have a robust security operations center but want Microsoft to help them proactively hunt for threats across Microsoft Defender data, including endpoints, Office 365, cloud applications, and identity. Our experts will investigate anything they find and then hand off the contextual alert information and remediation instructions so you can quickly respond. With Experts on Demand, you can consult a Microsoft expert about a specific incident, nation-state actor, or attack vector with the simple click of a button.
“Defender Experts for Hunting is like the tip of an iceberg. It is supported by all of the Microsoft applications, technologies, and cloud services overlaid with security tools that connect the entire system together, then powered by machine learning.”
—Igor Tsyganskiy, Chief Technology Officer, Bridgewater Associates
Video description: Bridgewater Associates goes all-in on Microsoft Defender Experts, heralding a new age in managed security services.
Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR is for customers who need to extend the capacity of their security operations center. Defender Experts for XDR is a managed extended detection and response (XDR) service that extends beyond endpoints to provide detection and response across Microsoft 365 Defender, investigating alerts and using automation and human expertise to respond to incidents alongside your team. You stay in control and reduce costs, excess noise, and manual processes. Defender Experts for XDR will move into preview in fall 2022.
“Our engineers and security team are very pleased with results and learning they get from the Defender Experts for Hunting service. Our clients are happy that we have such a robust service in place, and our management team is happy with its high return on investment and our increased security posture.”
—Chad Ergun, Chief Information Officer, DGS Law
Video description: DGS Law raises the security bar and levels the playing field with Microsoft Defender Experts.
Large enterprises looking for more comprehensive, high-touch managed services from Microsoft experts will benefit from Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise. This comprehensive, expert-led service combines proactive threat hunting and managed XDR, leveraging Microsoft’s complete security information and event management (SIEM) and XDR stack to protect all cloud environments and all platforms. Dedicated Microsoft security experts manage onboarding, daily interactions, practice modernization, and incident response for you. Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise is sold through a custom statement of work and is available today. Interested enterprise customers should contact their Account Executive to learn more.
Existing security services
Through our Microsoft Industry Solutions group, we currently offer a broad set of services for incident response and advisory. These service offerings, designed to support customers in times of crisis and to help them modernize their security practices, are delivered by Microsoft’s global team of professional services experts, and will become part of the Microsoft Security Experts portfolio. Watch the mechanics video to learn more.
Microsoft Security Services for Incident Response supports customers before, during, and after a breach. Incident response and recovery experts will help you remove a bad actor from your environment, remediate your defenses after a breach, and build resilience against future attacks. Our global team of experts leverages Microsoft’s strategic partnerships with security organizations and governments around the world and with internal Microsoft product groups to respond to incidents and help customers secure their most sensitive, critical environments.
Microsoft Security Services for Modernization is for customers that want to take advantage of Microsoft best practices and know-how as they embrace new modern security capabilities and embark on their security transformation. It provides consulting services that help customers at any stage of their security journey modernize their security posture and embrace a Zero Trust approach. Our modernization services utilize extensive cybersecurity knowledge and industry expertise gathered over 35 years to keep your business secure.
Security for all, together with Microsoft partners
One of our core principles at Microsoft Security is security for all. Meeting the needs of all kinds of organizations means offering choice—not only in the types of services customers buy but in who they buy them from. At the end of the day, we know that a single provider can’t meet the unique needs of every organization.
That’s why Microsoft is fully committed to working with an ecosystem of partners and technologies that provide customers the flexibility to choose what works for them—and to leverage those trusted relationships for the best outcomes and returns on their investment. Founded in 2018 with 26 charter members, our Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) has more than 300 members that include more than 100 service partners.
“This collaboration with Microsoft highlights their commitment to the partner community. The transparency and visibility provided by Microsoft, coupled with the feedback given by Critical Start during the design phase, allowed us to focus on driving value and providing the best outcome for customers.”
—Randy Watkins, CTO, Critical Start
As an industry-leading security company with more than 785,000 global customers, we believe that Microsoft Security service partners offer an important path for customers to get the services they need, and we rely on these partners to help us scale.
Our goal is simple: we want to empower customers, not only by offering world-class security products but also by providing access to critical human expertise when they need it from the best cybersecurity experts in the world. As some of the best defenders in the industry, our partners are essential for this vision.
An invitation to our managed XDR partners
Gartner® predicts that 50 percent of organizations will be using managed detection and response (MDR) services to contain threats by 2025.4 We want to invite all our managed detection and response partners to expand their offerings to help meet the critical customer need for managed detection and response services that go beyond the endpoint.
To help enable you to meet this growing demand, we will be making an incremental multimillion-dollar financial investment this coming year in our managed XDR partner community in three key areas. These new investments will expand the way we integrate with our managed XDR partners and create exciting new go-to-market opportunities. Microsoft is committed to showcasing verified partners and their managed XDR solutions on our marketing websites, through our commerce marketplaces, and in direct sales conversations with customers. We will do that in a few ways:
- A new managed XDR partner designation within MISA will unlock an expanded set of co-marketing benefits to ensure partner offerings are front and center in each customer conversation.
- We are launching a new co-sell benefit for managed XDR partners. This worldwide investment represents millions of dollars that can help you build your business around Microsoft’s advanced security products.
- Based on input from our design partners, our engineering teams are building new APIs to help ensure partners have access to Microsoft threat intelligence.
“We are thrilled to have been an initial design partner for Microsoft Security Experts. The future of managed services will rely on the unique combination of threat intelligence, product leadership, and human expertise aligned under Microsoft Security Experts. We are looking forward to providing security services to our mutual customers tailored to their needs through deep integration with Microsoft threat intelligence through APIs, co-sell, and marketing opportunities.”
—Milan Patel, Global Head of MSS, BlueVoyant
More information on the new partner investments will be available during Microsoft Inspire, our worldwide partner conference taking place in July 2022. There, we’ll share specifics on how to integrate with the new APIs and take advantage of the expanded program benefits and go-to-market (GTM) opportunities. You can also find more information on our Microsoft Security Experts Partner page.
“Our partnership with Microsoft to create this new category of services will enable organizations to get ahead of cyberthreats, deepen their security resiliency and minimize the impact of incidents. At a time when the need for detection and response capabilities has never been greater, our collaboration will make a genuine human impact for all.”
—Rajiv Sagar, Cybersecurity Lead, Avanade
Looking to the future
Wherever you are in your security journey, Microsoft Security Experts will meet you there, whether you need additional security expertise, help with specific technologies, or guidance in navigating new security challenges. Leveraging industry-leading technology, the best defenders from Microsoft and our partner community, and the most comprehensive threat intelligence in the world, we can build a safer world for everyone, together.
To learn more, join me and Satya at Microsoft Security Summit on May 12, 2022, or come see us in a few weeks at RSA—spoiler alert: cool things will be happening at the Microsoft Security Hub!
Partners, please join us at Microsoft Inspire, where we will share specifics on how to integrate with the new APIs and take advantage of the expanded program benefits and go-to-market (GTM) opportunities. You can also find more information on our Microsoft Security Experts Partner page.
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 at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
1Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually By 2025, Steve Morgan, Cybercrime Magazine. November 13, 2020.
2America faces a cybersecurity skills crisis: Microsoft launches national campaign to help community colleges expand the cybersecurity workforce, Brad Smith, Official Microsoft Blog, Microsoft. October 28, 2021.
3Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021, IBM.
4Gartner, Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response Services, Pete Shoard, Craig Lawson, Mitchell Schneider, John Collins, Mark Wah, Andrew Davies, 25 October 2021.
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