Microsoft 365 Will Get Enhanced Insider Risk Management Tools

Microsoft is updating Microsoft 365 to allow admins to better manage insider security threats in their environments with improvements to risky activity detection and visibility.

Insider Risk Management enables Microsoft 365 cloud services platform customers to detect, investigate, and remediate insider security threats within their organizations across Office, Windows, Azure, and third-party apps like HR systems.

It connects signals, including file activity and abnormal user behavior, to detect concealed patterns and risks that other, more traditional methods could miss.

Insider risks can be either malicious and accidental. Still, both types can have a high impact on the affected organization, given the level of damages they can inflict if not detected in time.

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Improved insider risk management

As the company revealed on the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the compliance center will get policy customization enhancements that allow fine-tuning policies to trigger on specific exfiltration events, in preview starting with November 2021.

Redmond engineers will also begin previewing triage and investigation improvements the same month, including Activity explorer ingest triggering events and Exchange Online historical insight.

In February 2022, Microsoft 365 users will also get better visibility of risky activity in their tenants via browsers and associated insider risk policy templates.

Last but not least, the company will start previewing new machine learning (ML) powered detections in April 2022 to help security operations (SecOps) teams spot hidden insider risks easier and faster.

Microsoft first announced the addition of Insider Risk Management to Microsoft 365 private preview in November 2019 at the Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida.

The company also rolled out Insider Risk Management Analytics in public preview in March 2021, allowing customers to audit logs daily to detect potentially malicious insider activity.

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CISA warns of insider threat risks

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned public and private sector organizations of the risk stemming from insider threats.

CISA also released a new tool allowing orgs to assess their vulnerability to insider threats and devise their own defense plans against such risks

The tool is also designed to make it easier to understand the nature of insider threats and expedite creating prevention and mitigation programs.

“While security efforts often focus on external threats, often the biggest threat can be found inside the organization,” said David Mussington, CISA’s Executive Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security.

“CISA urges all our partners, especially small and medium businesses who may have limited resources, to use this new tool to develop a plan to guard against insider threats.”

Further information and tools to help mitigate insider threat risks can be found on CISA’s infrastructure security website.