Microsoft has been the victim of several high-profile hacker attacks on its services in recent months. Today, a new report says Microsoft is making a much bigger effort to improve its security features and services as it fears it could lose customers to the latest cyberattacks.
One of them was reported back in July 2023. A hacker group from China used a purchased MSA key to forge its own tokens, which allowed the group to access Outlook email accounts in the US and Europe.
In January 2024, another hacker group based in Russia managed to access the email accounts of some of Microsoft’s top executives. The company later admitted that the hackers used the information in those emails to gain access to some of its source code. Earlier in April, a security group discovered that one of its Azure storage servers was open to anyone who might know how to access it because it was not password protected.
All these incidents and others reportedly caused Microsoft to make a major change in its projects. the border It is reported, via unnamed sources, that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith addressed these issues at an internal leadership conference earlier in April. The report says Nadella and Smith told people at the conference that security improvements are now Microsoft’s top priority.
The report says this means Microsoft teams are now focusing on security improvements over adding new features or trying to ship new products ahead of schedule.
Even with this new push to increase security, some people also believe Microsoft shouldn’t be making customers pay more for security features. Veteran journalist and Microsoft analyst Mary Jo Foley Wrote an article this week This topic. She stated that the company should include essential security options as part of its basic subscription plans, rather than offering them for an additional fee.
With Microsoft now announcing its security flaws, it remains to be seen if its efforts to step up its activity in this area will bear fruit and keep its customers from leaving.