One in four small to
medium-sized businesses has experienced a security
breach1 in the past year and lacks the resources of
large enterprises to protect themselves
REDMOND,
Wash., May 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday,
Microsoft Corp. announced the general availability (GA) of the
stand-alone version of Microsoft Defender for Business. Defender
for Business brings enterprise-grade endpoint security to SMBs,
including endpoint detection and response capabilities to protect
against ransomware and other sophisticated cyberthreats.
In April 2022, Microsoft surveyed
more than 150 small and medium businesses in an online quantitative
survey in the U.S. to better understand changing SMB security
needs. The survey found that more than 70% of SMBs think
cyberthreats are becoming more of a business risk. That concern is
well-founded — nearly one in four SMBs surveyed reported
experiencing a security breach in the past year.
Despite facing similar risks as enterprises, SMBs often lack
access to the right resources and tools, including specialized
security staff. Many SMBs still rely on traditional antivirus
solutions for their security. Although 80% of SMBs state they have
some form of antivirus solution, 93% continue to have concerns
about increasing and evolving cyberattacks.
"Microsoft believes in security for all," said Vasu Jakkal, CVP, security, compliance &
identity at Microsoft. "We are proud to further deliver on that
vision today. With the GA of Defender for Business, SMBs will get
greater protection with simplified security to help them better
protect, detect and respond to threats."
With Defender for Business, SMBs get multilayered protection,
detection and response, spanning the five phases of the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity
framework — identify, protect, detect, respond and recover —
to protect and remediate against known and unknown
threats.
Defender for Business comes with built-in policies to get
customers up and running quickly. The automated investigation and
remediation capabilities in Defender for Business help automate the
type of work handled by dedicated SecOps teams, by continuously
detecting and automatically remediating various threats.
"Automated investigation and remediation are a huge part of the
product," said Adam Atwell, cloud
solutions architect at consulting firm Kite Technology Group. "It's
just happening in the background. Defender for Business makes our
security so simple."
Defender for Business is also included in Microsoft 365 Business
Premium, our comprehensive security and productivity solution for
businesses with up to 300 employees. Customers can also choose to
buy it stand-alone for $3 per user,
per month. Additional support for servers is planned later this
calendar year with an add-on solution.
Microsoft Defender for Business product
features:
- Threat and vulnerability management helps prioritize and
focus on weaknesses that pose the most urgent and highest risk to
business. Proactively build a secure foundation for your
environment by discovering, prioritizing and remediating software
vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
- Attack surface reduction options help minimize attack
surface (i.e., places where your company is vulnerable to
cyberattacks across your devices and applications), leaving bad
actors with fewer ways to execute attacks.
- Next-generation protection helps prevent and protect
against threats with antimalware and antivirus protection on
devices and in the cloud.
- Endpoint detection and response provides
behavioral-based detection and response alerts so that you can
identify persistent threats and remove them from your
environment.
- Auto-investigation and remediation help scale security
operations by examining alerts and taking immediate action to
resolve attacks for customers. By reducing alert volume and
remediating threats, Microsoft Defender for Business enables
customers to prioritize tasks and focus on more sophisticated
threats.
Defender for Business and Microsoft 365 Business Premium give
partners new opportunities to help secure customers at scale with
value-add managed services. Both solutions integrate with
Microsoft 365 Lighthouse, which was made generally available on
March 1, 2022, so Microsoft cloud
service providers can view security incidents across tenants in a
unified portal.
Additional resources
- Sign up for Microsoft Defender for Business
- Microsoft Partner blog
- Microsoft Defender for Business partner kit and Microsoft 365
Business Premium Partner Playbook
- Partner webinar
- TechCommunity blog
- Customer case study: Martin & Zerfoss and Kite Technology
Group optimize business advantages of Microsoft Defender for
Business
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital
transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an
intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.
1 In April 2022,
Microsoft surveyed more than 150 small and medium businesses in an
online quantitative survey in the U.S. to better understand
changing SMB security needs.
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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.