What’s important is countermeasures against vulnerability, with visibility of security issues being a key

Cyberattacks are evolving with each new day. Shoji Kawano of Microsoft Japan warned that the crime threat demanding the most attention is that involving government assistance. That’s because with government assistance, huge amounts of money can be invested without regard to profit. Today’s criminals have been shifting their target from ordinary corporations to educational and research institutions. Kawano noted that while such institutions store valuable information for building the future, the people involved are from multiple organizations, making security control difficult, as it is easy to highjack an account.

He said that in such an environment, it is important to take vulnerability countermeasures, plugging the “holes” exploited by criminals to hack into a system. He went on to introduce how Microsoft eliminated approximately 730,000 applications in the company that anyone could use without an account, and a test environment of around 575,000,000 sites. He explained that the company has begun to offer Microsoft Security Exposure Management for visualizing recommended security items so that industry as a whole can take practical measures of the same kind for getting rid of vulnerabilities.

Microsoft Security Exposure Management visualizes security problems that are among the attack paths. It makes it easier to get an overall view of internal systems, enabling more targeted system repairs.

Kawano talked also about the usefulness of AI for raising the efficiency of security tasks. “At Microsoft, as well, we were able to improve operational efficiency so that it takes just a few minutes from the occurrence of an incident to writing a report,” he said.

He indicated an eagerness for an ecosystem in which information is gathered from each environment and used in a group effort against cyber criminals. He then concluded by calling for participants in such an effort. “The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), made up of partners providing solutions integrated with Microsoft security products, is a group for that purpose. We ask for your cooperation.”