The world’s largest seller of cybersecurity products has a problem with its own cybersecurity.
In recent years, Microsoft has been hit with a series of embarrassing hacks that have exposed corporate and government customers. Earlier this month, the US Cyber Safety Review Board issued a scathing report documenting the company’s inability to stop hackers tied to the Chinese government from pilfering the e-mail boxes of US officials. The report’s authors called on Microsoft to institute urgent reforms.
Citing Microsoft’s “shambolic cybersecurity”, US senator Ron Wyden introduced draft legislation on 8 April that would require the government to set mandatory cybersecurity standards for collaboration software. The Democrat said “vendor lock-in, bundling and other anticompetitive practices” result in the government spending “vast sums” on insecure software.
“There are certain sorts of watershed moments or changes in the environment that make you rethink how you want to go do it,” he said, later adding that company officials are “energised and focused” on executing the initiative’s commitments, “which align to much of what the government is calling for”.
The company now requires a video call between managers and employees or vendors who are creating digital IDs and is issuing short-lived credentials to new workers or vendors — steps designed to make it harder for attackers to impersonate someone or steal their ID. Even users with high-level administrator privileges can no longer turn off multifactor authentication when creating new accounts, Arsenault said.
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