Vasu Jakkal (Microsoft)
Microsoft has launched new managed security services aimed at security operation centres and enterprises.
Released under the portfolio of Microsoft Security Experts, two of the new services — Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting and Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR — focus on security operations centres, while the aptly-named third service — Microsoft Security Services for Enterprises — focuses on large enterprises.
According to Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft corporate vice president of security compliance, identity and management, these services were designed “with input from our incredible partner ecosystem”.
“We’ve designed three new managed services that can help you scale your team of experts to fit your needs—without the challenges of hiring and training them,” she said.
Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting offers security operations centre users help from Microsoft to proactively hunt for threats across Microsoft Defender data, including endpoints, Office 365, cloud applications and identity.
Through the service, Microsoft experts will investigate and hand off contextual alert information and remediation instructions, with consultations available on demand to discuss specific incidents, nation-state actors, attack vectors and recommendations for security improvement.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR is, as the name suggests, a managed XDR service that provides detection and response across Microsoft 365 Defender, alert investigations and incidence response via automation and human expertise.
As for Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise, this service contains both proactive threat hunting and managed XDR, through the tech giant's security information and event management (SIEM) and XDR stack to protect cloud environments and platforms.
Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting is in preview now, with general availability expected for the US’ summer period. Meanwhile, Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR will enter preview in the US’ autumn period and Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise is sold through a custom statement of work and is available now.
According to Jakkal, the move to kick off the Microsoft Security Experts category will see, over time, the tech giant include compliance, identity, management and privacy in addition to the newly added security features.
Set apart from its own managed services announcements, Microsoft briefly mentioned partners would be receiving “an incremental multimillion-dollar financial investment this coming year in our managed XDR partner community in three key areas”.
These three areas include a new managed XDR partner designation within its Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) with expanded co-marketing benefits; a new co-sell benefit for managed XDR partners and new APIs for partners to have access to Microsoft threat intelligence.
More partner-related details are to come during its Inspire partner conference, which is taking place in July.
The last major Microsoft partner shake-up took place in March, which saw it announce its plans to rebrand its Microsoft Partner Network to the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program as of October this year, putting Azure on centre stage.
The partner response to this, as seen in comments made in the Australia and New Zealand region, was mixed.
