Post-Breach Protection for Windows 10

Bracing itself for an unexpected cyber threat in the near future Microsoft on Wednesday, announced a new Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection designed to help tech industry detect threats to Windows 10 machines after a threat has penetrated the network. This new tool will help the Windows 10 machines to both track and detect a threat after it has affected the computer.

According to Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s executive Vice President of the Windows and Device group- “We’re seeing increasingly brazen cyber-attacks. Cybercriminals are well organized with an alarming emergence of state-sponsored attacks, cyber-espionage and cyber terror. Even with the best defense, sophisticated attackers are using social engineering and zero-day vulnerabilities to break-in to corporate networks”.

The Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection will mainly guide IT professionals to know which Windows 10 devices need to be checked and monitored. It can detect, investigate, and respond to advanced attacks on their networks. The protection tool scans the systems to find security issues using machine learning based on Microsoft’s Security Graph and its accumulated security intelligence information over the years. The tool works not only when something has happened, but also notifies if it finds the probability of something wrong. The professionals can then decide on their plan of actions as per the situation.

According to Microsoft, the ever-increasing cyber threats needed “a full-fledged advanced threat protection solution that identifies attacks quicker with comprehensive intelligence, and provides actionable remediation.” The company found that it currently takes an enterprise more than 200 days to detect a security breach, and 80 days to contain it. When there is such a breach, the attackers can steal company data, find private information, and damage the brand and customer trust in the company.

With a long list of security guards like Credential Guard, Device Guard, Windows Hello, and Enterprise Data Protection already in place for Window 10, the present Advanced Threat Protection raises the defenses of the system a notch higher.

Hailed by the industry experts, the security tool, however, has a limitation. The protection mechanism doesn’t work with older versions of Windows and neither does it detect these types of breaches across the broader network.