Billions of brute-force, phishing incidents thwarted by Microsoft

Microsoft reported that it was able to avert over 25.6 billion brute-force authentication attacks in Azure Active Directory, as well as 35.7 billion phishing emails using Microsoft Defender for Office 365, according to BleepingComputer. While breach attempts have been increasing since 2020, most Microsoft users continue still fail to implement multi-factor authentication and passwordless authentication, which could strengthen defenses against brute-force attacks, according to Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Security, Compliance, and Identity Vasu Jakkal. "For example, our research shows that across industries, only 22 percent of customers using Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), Microsoft's Cloud Identity Solution, have implemented strong identity authentication protection as of December 2021," Jakkal said. Microsoft Director of Identity Security Alex Weinert previously said that MFA usage would reduce compromise risk by over 99.9%. MFA has also been associated with thwarting up to 100% of automated bots, as well as 99% of phishing attacks and nearly 66% of targeted attacks, according to a Google, University of Caifornia San Diego, and New York University study.