The Groundedteam and Obsidian Entertainment are very happy to announce that over 15 million players have entered the backyard. When Grounded hit its full release just a couple of months ago, the backyard was swarmed by players looking to see what life was like on a micro level. Whether you’ve been with us from the very beginning, or have only recently taken on your first mite, we want to thank you for being a part of this impressive community.
Since its early access launch, Grounded has been a game that has been built by the community and the full release has not changed that. Thanks to the feedback from newcomers and old friends alike, the team has a special update ready just in time for the holidays. A Holiday Treat will bring in a host of quality-of-life features as well as some exciting new gameplay features and content to help those explore the backyard.
Of the new gameplay features that will make a lot of people happy is the ability for the ZIP.R lines to go up. No longer will players only be able to descend on their ziplines placed throughout the yard as they will now have the ability to ascend as well, helping get to places they want to explore even quicker. There is also a new trap that will help protect your base against invading creatures. When it comes to the base, there are also a host of new base decoration and vanity items coming in this update like new chairs, dressers, half stairs, and even a holiday “tree” that can be displayed during the month of December.
The real big changes come in the quality-of-life updates that the community has asked for. The big one is an additional row of space in the player inventory. This will help for those who like to carry multiple weapon types and armor sets depending on the situation, but also want to harvest and collect everything they can find. And speaking of carrying weapons for different situations, there are now multiple hotpouches that can be cycled through so players will have even more access to items in their inventory without having to open the menu.
For those who don’t want to deal with waking up in the middle of the night, we have changed the way sleeping works so that you will be able to wake up after the sun rises. Fans of spicy weapons can pre-cook their meals as creatures will now drop cooked meat instead of raw. Toasty! And players can now toggle off their own nameplates for everyone else, so games of hide and seek can now commence. But that’s not all! Everyone can now name trailer markers, build from nearby chests and pallets, and labs have received a new “Water Cooler” building so thirst can be quenched on those long lab excursions.
Grounded is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows 10/11, and Steam for $39.99. It’s also available with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta). To learn more about Grounded and for full details on the Holiday Treat update, check out the latest Developer Vlogs on the Obsidian YouTube Channel or visit the official website.
Grounded
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The world is a vast, beautiful, and dangerous place – especially when you have been shrunken to the size of an ant. Explore, build, and survive together in this cooperative survival-adventure. Can you thrive alongside the hordes of giant insects, fighting to survive the perils of the backyard? Uncover the mysteries while playing through the story!
How did you wind up so small? Who did this to you? How do you go home? These are all answers you will uncover as you play through the story. Solo or with friends – anytime!
You can face the backyard alone or together, online, with up to three friends. Not only that, but with the Shared Worlds feature, you can continue to play in your shared world even if the original host is not on, with all your progression saving! (Online console multiplayer requires Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Xbox Live Gold, sold separately.) Nowhere is safe – not even your base.
Creatures can be found roaming the yard in a multitude of environments, such as the depths of the pond, the caverns of the termite den, and even the sweltering heat found in the sandbox. You can even attract them to different places in the yard by activating the MIX.R devices. However, the more you interfere with the creatures in the yard, the higher the chance that they come knocking at your own door, so you better prepare. Play true to your playstyle!
Use the in-game customization systems such as Mutations and Milk Molars to activate the bonuses and perks you want for your character. Not only that, but craft and upgrade your armor and weapons to give your character the stats and advantages you need in order to take on the perils of the backyard. It’s time to go big, or never go home!
Earlier tonight, the creative and technical excellence of the video game industry was on full display during The Game Awards. Hosted by Geoff Keighley and featuring guest presenters like Al Pacino, Rahul Kohli, Halsey, Keegan-Michael Key, and many others, it proved to be an exciting event where we were all able to take a moment and celebrate all thing gaming.
This evening’s show honored a unique group of game developers, celebrated players, and recognized excellence with many awards being handed out in categories like Game of the Year, Best Sim/Strategy Game, Best Action/Adventure Game, Best Sports/Racing Game, and others. Xbox is grateful to have had As Dusk Falls winning for Games for Impact and nominated for Innovation in Accessibility, and Starfield for Most Anticipated Game. You can see the full list of winners and nominees here on the official site for The Game Awards.
Tunic Nominated: Best Indie, Best Action/Adventure, Best Debut Indie
It was also an exciting night of news and reveals of upcoming games that are coming in 2023 and beyond. Below is a recap of some of the most notable news to come out of tonight’s show:
The Force is strong in Star Wars: Jedi Survivor with explosive new trailer We were treated to an explosive new trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: Jedi Survivor tonight at The Game Awards, along with the confirmation that Cal Kestis will return March 17, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S! Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play members can catch up on Cal’s previous adventures in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and get all the Deluxe Edition content as a Perk from December 9 through January 20.
You can pre-order Star Wars Jedi: Survivor now on the Xbox Store to receive exclusive cosmetic items to outfit Cal with, like the Obi-Wan Kenobi inspired Jedi Survival Cosmetic Pack. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and EA Play members can enjoy a 10% discount on pre-orders. Check out our latest preview here on Xbox Wire and stay tuned for even more information in the lead up the launch of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on Xbox Series X|S.
Fall Guys and Fortnite kick off celebration featuring Gears of War characters Fall Guys is set to welcome another set of legends from the video game pantheon into the Blunderdome. Developed in conjunction with The Coalition, Marcus Fenix and Gears of War franchise favorites Kait Diaz and General RAAM are set to proudly take their place among the Bean Horde. In addition, Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz will be returning to the Fortnite Battle Royale Island this week alongside more items from the Delta One Set. Check out our Xbox Wire article from earlier today here for full details.
Company of Heroes III is bringing the battle home to console Relic Entertainment and Sega announced they’re bringing the acclaimed tactical gameplay of Company Heroes III to Xbox Series X|S next year. Built from the ground up for console, it will feature a unique tactical pause feature (think XCOM: Enemy Unknown) along with a dynamic campaign map featuring theaters of war in Italy and North Africa. As big fans of the original games on PC, we’re extremely excited to see more of this in action. We’ll have more to share soon about Company Heroes III here on Xbox Wire.
Remnant II emerges from the ashes with first-look trailer Gearbox SF (formally Perfect World) and Gunfire Games revealed that a sequel is in the works to the best-selling game, Remnant: From the Ashes, that pits the last remnants of humanity against the harrowing forces of evil. Remnant II aims to evolve the co-op survival shooter formula with new unseen worlds filled with deadly surprises and encounters when it comes to Xbox Series X|S in 2023. We’ll have more to share soon on Xbox Wire about Remnant II so stay tuned.
First gameplay reveal of Dune: Awakening We got to witness the epic scale of the upcoming Dune: Awakening in a world-first reveal. The new gameplay trailer showcased the open world survival MMO taking place within the rich universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune, where players can look forward to searching for water, building shelters to withstand deadly storms, and battle for control of spice on the planet Arrakis. If this sounds fun to you, sign up for the beta here at duneawakening.com.
Retro-futuristic sci-fi platformer Replaced coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2023 Earlier this year, Coatsink and Thunderful made the difficult decision to postpone Replaced. Since the announcement, Sad Cat Studios have been able to regroup and resume work on the game. Tonight, the team shared a glimpse of what they’ve been up to with a brand-new trailer that took a closer look at the game’s world, combat, and music. We’re also excited to reveal that Replaced will be coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2023. Learn more about this exciting new title here on Xbox Wire.
Crash Team Rumble Announced Heroes and villains of the Crash Bandicoot universe will converge in Crash Team Rumble, facing off in an epic 4v4, team-vs-team Wumpa-collecting, island-hopping championship. Check out the reveal here, which aired during The Game Awards.
Prepare to explore the dangerous world of Regnas in Blue Protocol Become the hero of your very own fantasy adventure in Bandai Namco and Amazon Games’ Blue Protocol, an upcoming free-to-play online action RPG arriving in 2023. Explore the beautiful and dangerous world of Regnas in an immersive experience with deep character customization and action-packed combat. Learn more about Blue Protocol here on Xbox Wire.
New gameplay reveal of Space Marine 2 Hard to believe it has already been a year since the big reveal of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Tonight, we were served the first extended look at all that gloriously violent Space Marine goodness that made the original game such a thrill to play.
Focus Entertainment shows off Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Following the success of narrative RPG Vampyr, Focus Entertainment and Don’t Nod revealed a new collaboration tonight to bring one of their most ambitious projects to date with the announcement of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. The world premiere reveal trailer showcased the hallmarks of a striking art direction, strong characters and plot, as well as a unique fantasy world. Check out the trailer here.
Get ready to get down with Party Animals in early 2023 with Xbox Game Pass Get ready to join the party in early 2023 on Xbox and Windows! Party Animals is a physics-based multiplayer game where you’ll face off against your friends as one of several fuzzy fighters, brawling across multiple modes and maps using a variety of hilarious, over-the-top weapons. Check out the latest trailer here from The Game Awards and stay tuned to Xbox Wire for more details in the lead-up to its day one launch with Xbox Game Pass in 2023.
Wild Hearts kicks off pre-orders alongside the reveal of the Deathstalker Ready to try your skills and your luck against giant beasts like Wild Hearts’ Deathstalker? Join the hunt on February 17, 2023, by pre-ordering the Karakuri Edition now on the Xbox Store and you’ll be sure to leave a lasting impression on your fellow hunters. It includes the base game and six exclusive items. We’ll have more to share soon here on Xbox Wire about Wild Hearts and the Deathstalker.
Enter a ‘90s action movie with Crime Boss: Rockay City 505 Games showed off Crime Boss: Rockay City, an organized crime game, which centers around one Travis Baker (Michael Madsen) who attempts to claim the underworld throne of Rockay City through a series of turf wars, robberies, side stories, playable solo or with friends. The game also looks to be channeling ‘90s action movies by landing a stellar cast that includes Michael Rooker, Kim Basinger, Danny Glover, Damion Poitier, Danny Trejo, and Vanilla Ice (what?!) and the legendary Chuck Norris. We’ll have more to share soon about Crime Boss: Rockay City here on Xbox Wire.
New Hellboy game revealed Revealed tonight at The Game Awards, Hellboy Web of Wyrd is a rogue-lite action-adventure game with an original story created in partnership with Dark Horse Comics and creator Mike Mignola. Featuring monstrous toe-to-toe brawling, you can look forward to chaining together hard-hitting melee and ranged attacks to fight a diverse array of increasingly nightmarish enemies. Check out the reveal trailer above.
Meet Your Maker starts construction in spring 2023 Meet Your Maker is nearly ready to hand over the keys to its post-apocalyptic wasteland with its just-revealed launch of Spring 2023.This building-and-raiding game will be completely driven by user-generated content. Rather than designing a standard FPS experience, Behaviour Interactive is offering up a devious toolbox of blocks, traps, guards, and more, inviting players to create their own experiences and challenge each other. We’ll have more to share soon about Meet Your Maker here on Xbox Wire.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II shows off Raid Episode 01, Coming December 14 We got our first look at Raid tonight, set to make its debut in Modern Warfare II starting mid-season on December 14. A squad of three players will need to work as one to successfully infiltrate a hidden submarine dock within the borders of Urzikstan and Al Mazrah. Complete the first episode to unlock the new operator, Gaz. You can check out the Raid Episode 1 Trailer reveal trailer above.
The secret to holiday shopping is finding the right gift – and the secret to finding the right gift online is using the right tool, like Microsoft Bing. Bing gives back time and value, making it faster and easier for you to go from searching to finalizing your holiday shopping.
Looking for some inspiration? Search for “Gift ideas” with Bing and – like many search engines – you will be rewarded with millions of results. But from there, Bing helps you cut through the clutter by providing categories of trending products that can help guide your search for that perfect gift. Looking for something for Ages 2-5 years, or for Preteens? Something for Techies or Travelers? Animal Lovers, or Cooks & bakers? Explore any of these topics to find subgroups to help you refine your search even further (phone tripods, for example, under the Travelers category.) These, and other, Bing categories can save you time and provide some much-needed inspiration when millions of gift ideas are just too much to handle.
Need more? Click the “See more” button to see gift guides from top publishers or go directly to the popular stores’ holiday departments.
If you are in the US, click on “Holiday Deals” (2nd card on top) to check the extracted deals from your favorite brands’ Holiday Catalogs.
And Bing can save you time by enabling users to explore the catalog before jumping over to the merchant’s website. We’ve also added hot spots within the flyers themselves which will take you directly to the merchant to make a purchase!
Last but not least, Bing can help save you money by making it easy to find and use online coupons. Bing provides coupon information neatly nested within your search results, without the need to install a browser extension or plugin (third-party cookies must be enabled.) Being visible within the search results is a great reminder for those of us that sometimes forget. And for those who never forget, no more scrambling to find a coupon when you are ready to check out!
The holiday season is a busy time for everyone. Rather than taking the time to visit individual online retailers, shoppers can find inspiration, in one place, with Microsoft Bing. Bing’s built-in search features not only help you save time and money, they will also help you find the gift that you didn’t know you were looking for!
* Illustrations depict previously captured search results which may contain expired pricing and expired promotional offers. Sellers participating in our shopping program provide product information including pricing and features, but Microsoft is not compensated for the search results. To learn more about product listings across Microsoft go to https://account.microsoft.com/privacy.
Microsoft is home to a diverse team of researchers focused on supporting a healthy global society, including finding ways technology can address human rights problems affecting the most vulnerable populations around the world. With a multi-disciplinary background in human-computer interaction, data science, and the social sciences, the research team partners with community, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations to create open technologies that enable scalable responses to such challenges.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) provides direct assistance and support to migrants around the world, as well as victims and survivors of human trafficking. IOM is dedicated to promoting humane and orderly migration by providing services to governments and migrants in its 175 member countries. It recently reported 50 million victims of forced labor globally, including 3.3 million children, 6.3 million in commercial sexual exploitation, and 22 million trapped in forced marriages. Understanding and addressing problems at this scale requires technology to help anti-trafficking actors and domain experts gather and translate real-world data into evidence that can inform policies and build support systems.
On-Demand Watch now to learn about some of the most pressing questions facing our research community and listen in on conversations with 120+ researchers around how to ensure new technologies have the broadest possible benefit for humanity.
Today, using software developed by Microsoft researchers, IOM released its second synthetic dataset from trafficking victim case records, the first ever public dataset to describe victim-perpetrator relations. The synthetic dataset is also the first of its kind to be generated with differential privacy, providing an additional security guarantee for multiple data releases, which enables the sharing of more data and allows more rigorous research to be conducted while protecting privacy and civil liberties.
The new data release builds on several years of collaboration between Microsoft and IOM to support safe data sharing of victim case records in ways that can inform collective action across the anti-trafficking community. This collaboration began in July 2019 when IOM joined the accelerator program of the Tech Against Trafficking (TAT) coalition, with the goal of advancing the privacy and utility of data made available through the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC) data hub – the first global portal on human trafficking case data. Since then, IOM and Microsoft have collaborated to improve the ways data on identified victims and survivors—as well as their accounts of perpetrators—can be used to combat the proliferation of human trafficking.
“We are grateful to Microsoft Research for our partnership over almost four years to share data while protecting the safety and privacy of victims and survivors of trafficking.”
– Monica Goracci, IOM’s Director of Programme Support and Migration Management
The critical importance of data privacy when working with vulnerable populations
When publishing data on victims of trafficking, all efforts must be taken to ensure that traffickers are wholly prevented from identifying known victims in published datasets. It is also important to protect individuals’ privacy to avoid stigma or other potential forms of harm or (re)traumatization. Data statistics accuracy is another concern: the statistics must simultaneously enable researchers and analysts to guarantee victims’ privacy and extract useful insights from the dataset containing personal information. This is critically important: if a privacy method were to over- or under-report a given pattern in victim cases, it could mislead decision makers to misdirect scarce resources and therefore fail to tackle the originating problem.
The collaboration between IOM and Microsoft was founded on the idea that rather than redacting sensitive data to create privacy, synthetic datasets can be generated in ways that accurately capture the structure and statistics of underlying sensitive datasets, while remaining private by design. But not all synthetic data comes with formal guarantees of data privacy or accuracy. Therefore, building trust in synthetic data requires communicating how well the synthetic data represents the actual sensitive data, while ensuring that these comparisons do not create privacy risks themselves.
From this founding principle, along with the need to accurately report case counts broken down by different combinations of attributes (e.g., age range, gender, nationality), a solution emerged: to release synthetic data alongside privacy-preserving counts of cases, matching all short combinations of case attributes. The aggregate data thereby supports both evaluation of synthetic data quality and retrieval of accurate counts for official reporting. Through this collaboration and the complementary nature of synthetic data and aggregate data—together with interactive interfaces with which to view and explore both datasets—the open-source Synthetic Data Showcase software was developed.
In September 2021, IOM used Synthetic Data Showcase to release its first downloadable Global Synthetic Dataset, representing data from over 156,000 victims and survivors of trafficking across 189 countries and territories (where victims were first identified and supported by CTDC partners). The new Global Victim-Perpetrator Synthetic Dataset, released today, is CTDC’s second synthetic dataset produced using an updated version of Synthetic Data Showcase with added support for differential privacy. This new dataset includes IOM data from over 17,000 trafficking victim case records and their accounts of over 37,000 perpetrators who facilitated the trafficking process from 2005 to 2022. Together, these datasets provide vital first-hand information on the socio-demographic profiles of victims, their accounts of perpetrators, types of exploitation, and the overall trafficking process—all of which are critical to better assist survivors and prosecute perpetrators.
“Data privacy is crucial to the pursuit of efficient, targeted counter-trafficking policies and good migration governance.”
– Irina Todorova, Head of the Assistance to Vulnerable Migrants Unit at IOM’s Protection Division
A differentially private dataset
In 2006, Microsoft researchers led the initial development of differential privacy, and today it represents the gold standard in privacy protection. It helps ensure that answers to data queries are similar, whether or not any individual data subject is in the dataset, and therefore cannot be used to infer the presence of specific individuals, either directly or indirectly.
Existing algorithms for differentially private data synthesis typically create privacy by “hiding” actual combinations of attributes in a sea of fabricated or spurious attribute combinations that don’t specifically reflect what was in the original sensitive dataset.
This can be problematic if the presence of these fabricated attribute combinations misrepresents the real-world situation and misleads downstream decision making, policy making, or resource allocation to the detriment of the underlying population (e.g., encouraging policing of trafficking routes that have not actually been observed).
When the research team encountered these challenges with existing differentially private synthesizers, they engaged fellow researchers at Microsoft to explore possible solutions. They explained the critical importance of reporting accurate counts of actual attribute combinations in support of statistical reporting and evidence-based intervention, and how the “feature” of fabricating unobserved combinations as a way of preserving privacy could be harmful when attempting to understand real-world patterns of exploitation.
Those colleagues had recently solved a similar problem in a different context: how to extract accurate counts of n-gram word combinations from a corpus of private text data. Their solution, recently published at the 2021 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, significantly outperformed the state of the art. In collaboration with the research team working with IOM, they adapted this solution into a new approach to generating differentially private marginals—counts of all short combinations of attributes that represented a differentially-private aggregate dataset.
Because differentially private data has the property that subsequent processing cannot increase privacy loss, any datasets generated from such aggregates retain the same level of privacy. This enabled the team to modify their existing approach to data synthesis—creating synthetic records by sampling attribute combinations until all attributes are accounted for—to extrapolate these noisily reported attribute combinations into full, differentially-private synthetic records. The result is precisely what IOM and similar organizations need to create a thriving data ecosystem in the fight against human trafficking and other human rights violations: accurate aggregate data for official reporting, synthetic data for interactive exploration and machine learning, and differential privacy guarantees that provide protection even over multiple overlapping data releases.
This new synthesizer is now available to the community via Microsoft’s SmartNoise library within the OpenDP initiative. Unlike existing synthesizers, it provides strong control over the extent to which fabrication of spurious attribute combinations is allowed and augments synthetic datasets with “actual” aggregate data protected by differential privacy.
Access to private-yet-accurate patterns of attributes characterizing victim-perpetrator relationships allows stakeholders to advance the understanding of risk factors for vulnerability and carry out effective counter-trafficking interventions, all while keeping the victims’ identities private.
“The new dataset represents the first global collection of case data linking the profiles of trafficking victims and perpetrators ever made available to the public, while enabling strong privacy guarantees. It provides critical information to better assist survivors and prosecute offenders.” – Claire Galez-Davis, Data Scientist at IOM’s Protection Division.
An intuitive new interface and public utility web application
Solving problems at a global scale requires tools that make safe data sharing accessible wherever there is a need and in a way that is understandable by all stakeholders. The team wanted to construct an intuitive interface to help develop a shared evidence base and motivate collective action by the anti-trafficking community. They also wanted to ensure that the solution was available to anyone with a need to share sensitive data safely and responsibly. The new user interface developed through this work is now available as a public utility web application in which private data aggregation and synthesis are performed locally in the web browser, with no data ever leaving the user’s machine.
“I find the locally run web application incredibly interactive and intuitive. It is a lot easier for me to explain the data generation process and teach others to use the new web interface. As the data is processed locally in our computers, I don’t need to worry about data leaks.” – Lorraine Wong, Research Officer at IOM’s Protection Division.
What’s next for the IOM and Microsoft collaboration
Microsoft and IOM have made the solution publicly accessible for other organizations, including central government agencies. It can be used by any stakeholder who wants to collect and publish sensitive data while protecting individual privacy.
Through workshops and guidance on how to produce high-quality administrative data, the organizations plan to share evidence on exploitation and abuse to support Member States, other UN agencies, and counter-trafficking organizations around the world. This kind of administrative data is a key source of information providing baseline statistics that can be used to understand patterns, risk factors, trends, and modus operandi that are critical for policy response formulation.
For example, IOM has been collaborating with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to establish international standards and guidance to support governments in producing high-quality administrative data. It has also been collaborating with the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) to index policy-oriented research on trafficking in a bibliography. Finally, IOM is producing an online course, including a module that includes guidance on synthetic data, to encourage safe data sharing from governments and frontline counter-trafficking agencies.
“Being able to publish more data than we have done in the past, and in an even safer way, is a great achievement,” explained Phineas Jasi, Data Management and Research Specialist at IOM’s Protection Division. He added that “The aim is for these data to inform the evidence base on human trafficking, which in turns helps devise efficient and targeted counter-trafficking policies and achieve good migration governance.”
Translating data into evidence is the goal of the related ShowWhy application from the same Microsoft research team, which guides domain experts through the end-to-end process of developing causal evidence from observational data. Just like Synthetic Data Showcase, it makes advanced data science capabilities accessible to domain experts through a suite of interactive, no-code user interfaces.
“Driving a coordinated global response against human trafficking requires removing traditional barriers to both data access and data analysis,” said Darren Edge, Director at Microsoft Research. “With our Synthetic Data Showcase and ShowWhy applications, we are aiming to empower domain experts to develop causal evidence for themselves, from sensitive data that couldn’t otherwise be shared, and use this to inform collective action with a precision and scale that couldn’t otherwise be imagined.”
Today, we are glad to release the third version of the threat matrix for Kubernetes, an evolving knowledge base for security threats that target Kubernetes clusters. The matrix, first released by Microsoft in 2020, was the first attempt to systematically cover the attack landscape of Kubernetes. Since then, the project has received great attention and interest from the Kubernetes security community and was updated last year to keep up with the evolving threat landscape. The latest version of the matrix comes in a new format that simplifies usage of the knowledge base and with new content to help mitigate threats. The new matrix is available at: http://aka.ms/KubernetesThreatMatrix.
What’s new
Mitigations methods
Understanding the attack surface of containerized environments is the first step of building security solutions for these environments. In addition to helping organizations measure and assess coverage of threats with matching detections, the updated threat matrix for Kubernetes can now also help organizations with a systematic approach to apply mitigation techniques that prevent attacks from being successfully launched.
In this third version of the threat matrix, we introduce a collection of mitigations specific to Kubernetes environments and associate each with relevant threat techniques. Those mitigations, as displayed below in Figure 1, provide practical tools to prevent the various attack techniques, using built-in Kubernetes and cloud tools.
Figure 1. A technique page with a mitigation section
When reviewing the different threat techniques in the matrix, a list of relevant mitigations is provided so that organizations can see if they are taking all the necessary steps to prevent a threat. Additionally, when looking at a specific mitigation, a list of relevant threat techniques is displayed and can help organizations prioritize their mitigation implementation plan according to their threat assessment and detection coverage in each area.
Mapping to MITRE ATT&CK techniques
Last year, MITRE added a container matrix to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. MITRE ATT&CK for containers matrix, inspired by Microsoft threat matrix for Kubernetes, is a result of a joint effort between MITRE, Microsoft, and additional companies in the industry. The differences between Microsoft’s and MITRE’s matrices are described in this blog. In the new version of the Microsoft threat matrix for Kubernetes, we include a mapping between the Microsoft matrix and MITRE ATT&CK techniques and mitigations, as displayed below in Figure 2. This can help organizations to efficiently use the two frameworks.
Figure 2. Mapping to MITRE ATT&CK techniques
MITRE ATT&CK matrix for containers does not have an equivalent technique for each of the techniques in the Microsoft threat matrix for Kubernetes. When there is no equivalent technique in the MITRE matrix, the Microsoft techniques might be mapped to a MITRE technique that is not part of MITRE’s containers matrix but shares the same principle. For example, the Backdoor Container (MS-TA9012) technique explains that attackers can use Kubernetes controllers (such as daemonsets) to run their code and survive reboots of the pods\nodes. This is very similar to MITRE’s Create or Modify System Process technique (T1543), which is about using services\daemons for the exact same purpose. Another example is the mapping between Malicious Admission Controller (MS-TA9015) and MITRE’s Event Triggered Execution. Although MITRE doesn’t talk about containerized environment, those two techniques share the same idea. In cases when there is no matching MITRE technique with the same principle, the Microsoft technique will not point back to a MITRE technique.
New techniques
The new version of the matrix also introduces two new techniques and additional re-categorization of existing techniques:
New technique: Static pods
A persistence technique which allows attackers to deploy pods that aren’t managed by the Kubernetes API server.
New technique: Collecting data from pod
Kubernetes-native technique which allows attackers to extract data from running pods.
Extending existing technique: Container service account
Attackers may create new service accounts or steal tokens of existing service accounts for future use from inside and outside the cluster. Therefore, we also added this technique to the persistence tactic.
Attackers may use management interfaces for discovery purposes, after gaining initial access to the cluster. By using the network reachability between pods, attackers can connect to management interfaces from the internal network, allowing them to get valuable information about the workload. Thus, we also added this technique to the discovery tactic.
Figure 3. New techniques and re-categorization of existing techniques
New web interface
As new threats were added to the Kubernetes matrix and additional content was introduced, it became increasingly harder to effectively deliver the breadth of information included in the matrix as a blog post. Looking for ways to make it easier to use the Kubernetes threats and mitigations matrix as reference material for day-to-day security operations, we are releasing the matrix as a web site, shown in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. The new interface of the threat matrix for Kubernetes
The threat matrix for Kubernetes can help organizations to have visibility to the unique attack surface of Kubernetes and help them to measure their coverage to those threats. With the new mitigation section, organizations can now understand the measures required to prevent those threats.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud can help detect and mitigate threats in your Kubernetes environments. Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Cloud support for container security.
This fall, I had the opportunity to attend the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s annual Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference, which convenes law firms, in-house counsel and thought leaders to discuss diversity and inclusion topics and issues within the legal profession. Though I was there to humbly accept MCCA’s Employer of Choice award on behalf of Microsoft, I also had the opportunity to hear first-hand about challenges and successes legal professionals are experiencing as they look to grow and support their diverse legal talent. I was impressed by the commitment and sense of urgency displayed and, while the industry has a long way to go, I left the conference with renewed hope that, by working together, we can make meaningful progress to achieve a truly diverse legal profession.
As we focus on furthering this important work, for the 14th year in a row, today we are publishing the results of Microsoft’s Law Firm Diversity Program (LFDP) for 2022 and recognizing the progress of our law firm partners in advancing diversity and inclusion within their organizations.
The benefits of diversity enable Microsoft to accomplish its mission to empower every organization and every person on the planet to achieve more. With an increasingly diverse workforce, it is imperative that the law firms that work with our business and legal teams reflect that diversity and remain committed to creating inclusive environments where lawyers and legal professionals from all backgrounds can thrive. Diverse teams bring a range of lived experiences and unique insights, and are more creative, more innovative and drive greater customer and client engagement.
The LFDP is an incentive-based program that provides bonuses to participating firms, calculated as a percentage of their annual fees, for achieving and/or exceeding diversity representation goals. Every year, Microsoft reviews and iterates on the LFDP diversity goals to enable and ensure continued progress. Since the program was established in 2008, there have been three significant changes:
In 2015, we shifted the focus of the program to tracking progress in leadership; namely partner diversity and diversity on law firm executive and management committees.
In 2020, we expanded the number of firms in the program to include not only those firms in our strategic partner program but also those firms who do a substantial amount of work for us in the U.S. In this same year, we also put a greater focus on the growth of African American, Black, Hispanic and Latinx lawyers in leadership.
In 2021, we increased partner-level growth targets for all diverse categories within the program to include diverse representation of women, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ, veteran and disabled lawyers.
Our most recent changes in 2020 and 2021 reflect an urgency to advance diversity in the legal profession overall. For too long, the pace of growth in diverse representation has been too slow and not at pace with the diversity of the clients and communities the profession serves.
2022 Law Firm Diversity Program results
For the 2022 program term, there were 33 participating firms which included 12 strategic partner firms and 21 firms with whom Microsoft does a substantial amount of work within the U.S. Firms participating in the program include international firms, domestic and regional firms, boutique firms and one woman-owned firm. All firms have an opportunity to earn a 2-3% bonus based on meeting goals within the program.
Diversity on the teams that work for Microsoft
The strongest area of performance continues to be diverse representation on teams that work on Microsoft matters. We continue to see gains year over year. All firms in our strategic partner panel met the benchmark goal of 50% diverse representation on our matters or increased growth from last year. For all other firms in the program, 76% met these goals as well.
Diversity in leadership
The program continued to see improvement in diverse representation in partnership ranks though progress slowed overall across categories measured in 2022. The past two years have been challenging for the legal industry in the United States with significant attrition within the associate ranks, a competitive lateral market and an increasing number of lawyers making career changes or leaving the profession entirely. This year’s program results appear to show that our law firm partners were not immune to these market factors.
Growth in overall diversity in the partnership ranks was flat; however, 73% of firms met or exceeded the benchmark goals of 36%. Collectively, firms report partnerships that are 40.6% diverse.
Representation of women in the partnership grew 0.8% to 27.4%, resulting in a net percentage change of 3%.
Representation of racial and ethnic minorities in the partnership grew 0.9% to 14.4%, resulting in a net percentage change of 6%.
For partners in other diverse categories, including partners that identify as LGBTQ+, disabled, or hold veteran status, growth was flat with representation of these groups collectively at 6% of the partnership.
For Microsoft’s strategic partner firms, for whom diversity on executive or management committees is tracked, representation grew 4% to 50.6%, resulting in a net percentage change of 8.8%.
Recognizing law firms achieving diversity goals
While overall program numbers show modest increases from the previous year, there are some bright spots among individual firm performance. We would like to recognize those firms that achieved at least 60% of the program metrics. The firms in this group were able to not only maintain benchmark goals for representation but also grew diversity in their partnerships (overall) through increased representation of African American, Black, Hispanic, Latinx, Asian, women and/or LGBTQ, veterans, and disabled lawyers in their partnerships. All met goals of increasing diversity on the teams that work on Microsoft matters.
“At ArentFox Schiff, diversity, equity and inclusion are part of our DNA. Microsoft’s Law Firm Diversity Program has been a catalyst for change, driving the legal industry to make diversity, equity and inclusion a priority, and we are proud to partner with Microsoft on these initiatives.”
“The LFDP meaningfully moves the DE&I needle forward both by partnering with Microsoft’s outside firms to better understand the firms’ DE&I footprint generally and for Microsoft matters specifically, and by rewarding success based on clear metrics.”
“At Fish, we believe that diversity is the fuel of innovation, and diversity of experience and background enhances the quality and ingenuity of the legal services that we provide,” said Fish & Richardson principal Betty Chen. “It is incumbent upon us as a partner law firm to accelerate diversity within our own ranks in order to drive the pace of progress within the legal industry as a whole, and we’re proud to once again partner with Microsoft in that effort.”
“Greenberg Traurig is a proud partner in Microsoft’s Law Firm Diversity Program. Diversity equity, and inclusion undergird everything we do at Greenberg Traurig and we are excited to be recognized. A more just world only happens by design, intention and commitment and our clients are best served by teams that can provide diverse experiences and points of view. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Microsoft as we work together to move the needle now and for the generations to come.”
“We are proud to share Microsoft’s steadfast commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Microsoft’s Law Firm Diversity Program is a shining example of how in-house legal departments and outside counsel can partner together to keep DEI top of mind throughout the year and hold ourselves accountable in terms of the diversity of our teams and the impact of our overall DEI efforts.”
“Today, more than ever, our D&I efforts are focused on tailoring our approach to the interests and needs of each diverse Team Member. This of course begins with a flexible talent model, but our progress is accelerated when we have the opportunity to partner with a client like Microsoft that shares our belief that diversity and inclusion must be a core value of our legal profession.”
Industry progress
Our emphasis on diversity in law firm leadership is intentional. While certainly not the only path, for many new lawyers, a law firm is likely the first step in their careers. According to the American Bar Association’s 2022 Profile of the Legal Profession, in 2021 roughly half of law school graduates were employed with law firms at least 10 months after graduation. And industry data indicates that the pipeline to firms and to the partnership is becoming more diverse.
The 2021 NALP Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms reports that the representation of associates of color has continued to increase since 2010 (from 19.53% to 27.60%). The percentage of women associates has also grown to 48.21%, which is the highest the percentage has been in nearly three decades. The NALP survey also highlighted historic gains for women (55.06%) and people of color (41.34%) in summer associate ranks in 2021. LBGTQ representation also continued to grow in the 2021 summer associate class (8.41%). Even with these gains, the NALP report highlighted that “clos[ing] the outcome gaps in the pipeline from summer associate to law firm partner remains the biggest challenge facing the profession.” In fact, closing those gaps has implications not just for law firm partnerships, but for the profession at large.
The path to partnership is a system contingent on mentorship, training, professional development and sponsorship. For lawyers on this path, a firm often makes investments to advance not only their skills but also their access to resources, exposure to clients and participation on firm leadership committees – creating a space at the table to share the pool of influence, available work and, potentially, credit and compensation. Moreover, the path to partnership creates a launching pad to opportunities in the judiciary, government and politics, business, and non-profit and other service agencies. A lack of diverse representation either in the partnership or on the path to partnership undercuts our collective interest in a more diverse profession overall and the ability of the profession to innovate and adapt to an increasingly complex global landscape.
Going forward
We are maintaining Law Firm Diversity Program metrics from last year. We recognize that additional time is needed to track performance against our growth metrics as well as follow that pipeline to partnership. However, we remain committed to measuring results, acknowledging progress and finding ways to partner with our law firms through our other aligned commitments on pro bono and volunteer service.
One change we will make is asking all our participating firms to provide us with a copy of their MCCA Diversity Scorecard. The scorecard results allow both clients and firms to look beyond numbers and understand what additional efforts may be needed to advance more diverse and inclusive organizations. You can learn more about the MCCA Diversity Scorecard at www.mcca.com.
Thank you
We thank all our firms for their commitment to this program and efforts outside of it with agencies and initiatives dedicated to diversity and inclusion such as the American Bar Association, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, Diversity Lab and many others – organizations we are also deeply committed to at Microsoft.
Although we are excited about the ongoing impact of this year’s Law Firm Diversity Program, our work is not done. Opportunities remain to make greater progress across all diverse communities. There are no true wins, only progress to acknowledge and a call for greater investment and focus on diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.
Three years ago, I began a soul-searching journey involving my own mental wellness. As Quality of Life Program Manager with 343 Industries, I have the privilege to engage in work coordinating the Halo team’s cultural and philanthropic efforts as well as working with Team Xbox and Microsoft to develop diversity and inclusion initiatives. As much as I love my job, at the end of busy days filled with meetings and thoughtful conversations, I can find myself worn down. Depleted. At first, I thought I was just peopled-out because I am an introverted person, but when I started talking to a therapist about it, I discovered that I experience clinical depression.
For the first time in my life, I finally had the words to describe the wet, heavy blanket I had been carrying all this time. With this awareness, I’m working on how to better care for myself. I talk with my therapist about what triggers my depression and how I can deal with my day-to-day life. Depression is not an end-level boss to beat; it is a part of me that I work to accept and manage. I take medication as part of my treatment, now, and I’ve never felt more balanced in my life! Initially, I had a lot of apprehension about taking medication, but it’s a change I’m glad I talked through and eventually made. With medication, my brain started doing something that it seemed everyone else was able to do. So, now I take medicine for heartburn and heartache, what’s the difference?
Gaming is one of the main ways that I feed my soul or my spirit. I love all kinds of gaming: board games, card games, and party games. But especially video games. I have been Cloud Strife taking on Shinra. I have been an adventurer and taken an arrow to the knee. I have lived a thousand lives over and over again through the stories of video games. When I am really in the depths of my depression, I often turn to Katamari Damacy. That game makes no sense at all, but it’s such a delight. You are tasked with rolling up all the things in the world into a ball, everything from fruit to furniture to buildings to people, and somehow…make new stars out of it? I have no idea. But, when the world doesn’t make sense, I can just roll up all the junk into a ball and keep going.
Gaming can be such a great source of release. And, while I love competition as much as the next gamer, the times when gaming has helped me the most is when I am using it to relax and explore. As a Black man, spaces where I feel that security can be hard to find. Moreover, I know that that’s not something out of the ordinary, which is why I’m adamant about playing games that bring me joy and encouraging others to do the same. I have Minecraft caves and Stardew Valley farms that I have enjoyed as much as some of my plasma-scorched battlefields. Ultimately, I just like seeing people, myself included, play what makes them happy (minus any toxicity)!
Gaming is fun and, honestly, I just want to say to other men out there, and especially to other Black men, it’s okay to have fun with gaming and not take it so seriously. It’s okay for it to not be a competition and just have a relaxing time planting crops in a cozy game. You do you.
Games also have the potential to be this transformative experience that can connect us with other people and experiences. Spiritfarer, which is a management simulator that tells a story about grief through relationships, straight-up made me cry as I connected with my own experiences of grief. I once attended an in-game funeral for a real person I have never met because I felt so connected to them through the relationship we developed over gaming. I think it’s mind-blowing that games have the power to connect us like that. Because, really, it’s not what we are going through that is so difficult, but that we often try to go through it alone.
Life is not a single-player game. To anyone out there feeling alone, just know this: someone cares. Someone, most likely someone you know and love, is willing to hear you out. Whether or not you have the privilege to seek out therapy right now, finding someone to talk to about what you are going through is always a great first step.
If you need some support and aren’t sure where to turn, start with one of the resources below. Join the Team Xbox community as we embrace the power of play as one of many tools to encourage mental wellness throughout the year.
Discover
Xbox Ambassadors Feature Stories about How Video Games Helped Them through Stress and Burn Out
To promote Mental Health Awareness, Xbox Ambassadors shared how video games have helped them through times of stress and burn out.
v Amarie v She/Her. United States.
“The Elder Scrolls Online has my heart when it comes to stress relief. The biggest reason for this is the music that the game offers and the amazing landscapes. Tamriel is the most beautiful place to escape too, and I can spend hours exploring. I am so grateful to this game and the community has been amazing. In a very strange way Tamriel feels like a 2nd home to most [of] us who really immerse ourselves. I am truly, truly grateful.”
CutePixiestik She/Her. United States.
“My gaming was placed on back burner when I became a parent. However, as my child grew up and financial stresses lessened, I got back into gaming with playing with my son and convincing my husband to try also. Gaming was there to give me a special time to share with my family and provide an outlet for stress and stiff fingers and eye-hand coordination. From playing Fortnite, Halo, Call of Duty and Asphalt 9, they all seem to give me an outlet to put the stresses of the day away and enjoy gaming with friends and family.”
Microsoft Rewards members can earn and donate points to organizations supporting mental wellness with Xbox. The organizations below will be featured on console:
Crisis Text Line – Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, high-quality text-based mental health support and crisis intervention in English and Spanish by empowering a community of more than 55,000 trained volunteers to support people in their moments of need. Text PAUSE to 741741 to connect with a volunteer crisis counselor. (US)
The Games and Online Harassment Hotline (Feminist Frequency) – The Games and Online Harassment Hotline is a free, text message-based, confidential emotional support hotline. This Hotline was created specifically for the gaming community. Whether you’re a player, a developer, a streamer, a competitor — any part of this community — they are here for you, whether that means offering emotional support or finding the referrals and resources that you need. (US)
Take This – Take This is a mental health advocacy organization with a focus on the game industry and community. They provide resources, training, and support individuals and companies that help the gaming community improve its mental well-being and resilience. The organization addresses the underlying conditions that can create and perpetuate mental health challenges: stigma, harmful studio culture, harassment and toxicity, lack of diversity and accessibility, and problematic game and community design. Take This also runs the AFK Room Program at game conventions. (US)
Lifeline– Lifeline is a national charity providing all Australians experiencing emotional distress with access to 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention services. They are committed to empowering Australians to be suicide-safe through connection, compassion and hope. (AUS) – Coming soon!
Xbox gamers can earn Microsoft Rewards points in various ways when they join, such as playing games and completing Game Pass Quests, completing offers in the Microsoft Rewards app on Xbox, and select purchases at the Microsoft Store (exclusions apply). Earn points and redeem them for real rewards. Join us today and donate through Xbox.
Play
Take a Break and Recharge Your Way with Games Curated by Staff at Microsoft
Games allow us to immerse ourselves in fantasy realms and experience different perspectives in a powerful way. In a world where we could all benefit from additional ways to rest and reset regularly, more games are being designed with the opportunity to recharge in mind. As a common tool for relaxation, comfort, and cultivating positive feelings, games can help us create supportive communities in which we can relate to each other’s experiences and share stories of how games have impacted our lives.
We want to highlight a collection of games that provide an escape from the trials of life, give us ways to connect to our unique identities, and share stories that explore the significance and strength of mental health awareness. We understand that people play games for a variety of reasons, ranging from wanting to relax to wanting to dive deep into emotional stories they can empathize with. As part of our ongoing work to create more inclusive gaming ecosystems and elevate content that resonates with communities, we are including a diverse set of games, allowing people to engage with content that appeals to their personal gaming needs. This collection is available on Xbox, Windows, Mobile, and the Cloud year-round.
Persona 5 Royal (Available with Xbox Game Pass and Rated M) — Persona 5 Royal steps up an already incredible story that navigates the cross-section of mental health and heroism by introducing the character Dr. Takuto Maruki. As the guidance counselor of Shujin Academy, Dr. Maruki supports the Phantom Thieves’ by listening to their traumatic pasts, validating their emotions, and providing them with empathy and encouragement. Not only does this game elegantly portray the complex feelings that come with common human struggles like grief, trauma, dissociation, and depression, but now it also provides a prime example of the positive impact that therapy can have on our lives. Content warning: suicide.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Available with Xbox Game Pass and Rated M) — Senua, a Celtic warrior, embarks on a haunting vision quest into Viking Hell to save the soul of her dead lover. Developer Ninja Theory collaborated closely with neuroscientists and people with lived experiences of psychosis to bring Senua’s story to life with authenticity.
Disney Dreamlight Valley (Available with Xbox Game Pass) — In this unique hybrid of adventure games and life-simulators, Disney Dreamlight Valley allows players to be a hero in a Disney-themed universe of their own creation. Filled with iconic Disney and Pixar characters, storylines in the form of quests, and seemingly endless customization options, this game provides a calming atmosphere for open exploration, free from any form of combat, while engaging fans in a captivating story that they can complete at their leisure.
Unpacking (Available with Xbox Game Pass) — This zen puzzle game allows you to unweave the coming-of-age story of a queer woman moving through a variety of stages in life. Decorate and organize each new interior living space in a meditative way while contemplating what we hold on to and let go of through the sentimental meaning of our personal belongings.
Stardew Valley (Available with Xbox Game Pass) — Winner of the Dr. Mark Award from Take This for excellent portrayal of mental health, healing, and hope, Stardew Valley is a calming game full of farming, building relationships, and task completion that provides a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. Complete with a relaxing soundtrack, this game is all about slowing down.
View this collection on the Microsoft Store on Xbox and the Microsoft Store on Windows in all Xbox regions. Visitors can find this collection at any time by searching within the Stores for “Mental Health” and related terms.
Find a Save Point
Perhaps you enjoy cozy games with cartoon graphics and chill play options? Or perhaps you prefer an RPG with retro graphics and an engaging story? Whatever way you choose to recharge, we wanted to share this beautiful nighttime camping scene, which is reminiscent of save points in many games which you can use as your profile theme or gamerpicas a reminder to take a pause, breathe, and rest on your journey.
Never Fight Alone with Gears of War
Gears of War has always told stories about belonging and brotherhood. The rapidly rising rates of suicide, depression, and loneliness concern us deeply and we believe in the opportunity to come together to reduce and prevent further suffering.
The Coalition has made a multi-year commitment to donate 1% of net revenue from all Gears of War games and merchandise to organizations working to prevent suicide and combat loneliness. This year, all proceeds benefit Crisis Text Line.
To show your support, you can purchase the 2022 Benefit Tee from the Xbox Gear Shop.
New Gamerpics, Profile Theme, and Avatar Items
In honor of mental health awareness, we’re introducing a new gamerpic, profile themes, and avatar items featuring Xbox logos inspired by relaxing, cozy games! We hope you will be inspired to take a break and relax in the world of your favorite cozy game, perhaps by crafting, decorating, building relationships, or enjoying the view of a star-filled sky. These gamerpics and profile themes will be available on console and the Xbox PC app. Get your avatar items here. Content is subject to availability by country.
Tune in
Xbox Plays Celebrates Mental Health Awareness
In December, the Xbox Plays team will feature some great guest streamers who will take over the Xbox Twitch channel and share their favorite feel-good games, stress relief tips, and more! Follow us on Xbox Twitchand don’t miss any of these cozy streams!
Monday, December 5 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. PT – Phedranplaying Minecraft
Monday, December 5 from 3 p.m.-6 p.m. PT – sheilurplaying Disney Dreamlight Valley
Wednesday, December 14 from 3 p.m.-6 p.m. PT – emmeplaying Stardew Valley
Xbox Partners with Calm
The holidays can be a time of joy and connection, but for many, they can negatively affect mental health. One place people are turning to destress and re-energize is through gaming, according to a recent survey conducted in six countries by YouGov, and commissioned by Xbox. Of the survey respondents who play video games, 54% turn to video games to relieve stress.
Now, players everywhere will have a new tool to improve their general wellness, all within two video game universes. Calm, the #1 app for sleep, meditation and relaxation is partnering with Xbox to bring the first-ever video game-themed soundscapes to the platform. Officially available on December 7, players can immerse themselves and enjoy the meditative sounds of whirling waves and chattering birds from the ocean expanse of Sea of Thieves and the ambient alien sounds of Zeta Halo from Halo Infinite both available through Calm Premium. To ensure players can listen to the new soundscapes with ease, we’re also announcing a new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perk. Starting today, Ultimate members can receive three months of Calm Premium for free, and then 50% off their first year subscription, when they sign up (new Calm Premium members only). Calm also offers a 7-day free trial to Calm Premium subscription content via www.calm.com/freetrial.
The partnership with Calm is part of Xbox’s ongoing commitment to supporting players’ mental health and connecting them with resources to support their well-being. According to Calm, 81% of people who use Calm 5 or more times per week reported an improvement in their stress levels, as did 68% of people who engaged with the app only once or twice per week.
Check out the new Sea of Thieves and Halo Infinite soundscapes through Calm Premium by taking advantage of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perk today.
About Calm
Calm is the leading mental health brand, on a mission to support everyone on every step of their mental health journey. With the #1 app for sleep, meditation and relaxation, Calm’s transformational content supports users across seven languages in more than 190 countries. Calm Business, Calm’s enterprise-level solution, helps employees improve their mental health to stay productive in the workplace. Over 3,000 organizations around the world trust and choose Calm Business as their mental health partner. Calm Health, Calm’s mental health care solution for payers, providers and self-insured employers, connects mental and physical healthcare to drive positive patient outcomes through clinical, condition-specific mental health programs, caregiver communication tools and more. Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2020 and Time100’s Most Influential Companies of 2022. For more information, please visitwww.calm.com.
The ways in which we interact with one another have certainly shifted over the last few years. Thanks to technology, we have the ability to work from almost anywhere and minimize nonessential face-to-face appointments. But some things haven’t changed in a hybrid world: our need for human connection and community.
Today, we’re excited to announce communities in Microsoft Teams—a new experience that enables people to come together, connect, share, and collaborate. Whether your group is a recreational sports team, event planning committee, parent-teacher association, or even a small business, this new experience gives groups of all kinds a digital space to stay connected before, during, and after gatherings. Communities is currently rolling out in the free version of Microsoft Teams.1
Share information, organize events, and keep your community groups in sync
In addition to everything you can already do in Microsoft Teams—including sending chats, calling people, and sharing photos or files—you can now create a space for community groups to come together, organize, and share ideas.
Communities in Microsoft Teams
Easily bring together your communities in one place.
With this new community experience, you’ll be able to:
Easily post messages to everyone in the group.
Organize events and add them to the community calendar for everyone to see.
Share and store documents dedicated to group activity.
Filter content to quickly access photos, videos, events, and links.
Get started with your community
It’s easy to get started. Simply create a community with our suggested community types on the home screen.2 You can also add branding elements like a group picture for your community. Then, invite group members through their email address or phone number, or by sharing a link or QR code so they can join directly.3
You’ll be able to easily manage the online community, too. Community owners have the ability to manage settings, set community guidelines, and moderate content by adding or removing participants and posts as needed to help community members feel safe.
Organize and host community events
Communities in Teams includes a new events experience for organizing virtual, hybrid, or in-person events. For instance, you can add new events or meetings to your community calendar, invite guests, track attendance, and follow up with attendees through direct private chats. When it comes to online events, you can easily add dial-in details and a link so your participants can join seamlessly. And for in-person events, you can add a location and give attendees precise directions with a visual map.
Hybrid and virtual guests can join events from any device through audio or video. And features such as adding an event cover image, together mode, and screen sharing can help you foster a sense of unity and engagement during meetings—no matter where everyone’s located.
Learn how others are using Teams to connect as a community
Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re working with organizations such as the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO); USA Hockey; California School for the Deaf, Riverside; Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT Madras); and AISECT.
AYSO plans to use Teams to help connect volunteers, centralize communications, and create a single location for its 500,000-member community group off the field. Coaches can learn more about their players, set practice schedules and field availability, make announcements about upcoming practices, and discuss enrollments for next season.
USA Hockey, the largest youth-based hockey organization in the US, plans to use communities in Teams to advance and grow the game of ice hockey beginning at the youth grassroots level. Their vast coast-to-coast network of volunteers, coaches, officials, and parents will use Teams to ease the coordination of games, trainings, and development programs, on and off the ice.
California School for the Deaf, Riverside uses Teams to connect staff, students, and families. The staff uses Teams to share ASL vocabulary videos, weekly events, and details about upcoming classes, and to conduct Q&A sessions. Teams is helping families bridge the gap and stay connected.
IIT Madras will be using Teams to enable mentorship-led communities for its data science program. Mentors will be able to help students with course curriculum and technical questions, both asynchronously and with live online office hours, in one place.
AISECT is one of India’s leading social enterprises and aims to upskill women, job seekers, people with disabilities, and nano entrepreneurs to improve workforce participation. With Teams, AISECT will be able to publish training calendars, schedule and share details about recurring classes, broadcast announcements pre- and post-sessions, run surveys on training quality, and address other needs in real-time.
Coming soon
In 2023, people can access SignUpGenius within Teams to recruit volunteers, coordinate events, and manage a variety of sign ups. SignUpGenius is a leading solution within the Lumaverse Technologies platform, which empowers people to change the world together by simplifying scheduling, volunteer and member management, event planning, and fundraising.
We look forward to partnering with more organizations and communities in 2023 and beyond as we continue to build out new and exciting experiences in Teams.
Use the communities in Teams features for your small business
A tight-knit small business with a dedicated following can function similarly to a community group. Help nurture and support these more friendly working relationships by enabling your team and customers to come together in shared spaces online.
With communities in Teams, your small business can move seamlessly from customer calls to team events and everything in between. You can create a virtual community group with diehard customers to announce a new sale, or just as easily create a Carpool Community for coworkers who want to share a ride to the office.
Whatever you need to collaborate on, communities in Teams allows you to create different places and organize groups to meet, chat, share, and plan—together.
How to access communities in Teams
The new community experience empowers communities to come together to achieve more—whether you’re a virtual, hybrid, or in-person community, Teams can help you connect simply and securely. Communities in Teams is available for all iOS and Android customers using the free version of Microsoft Teams.1 It’s also coming soon to desktop.
When signed in with a Microsoft account, you can access communities in Teams through the Home tab in the mobile app. To switch between accounts, tap on your profile picture and add your Microsoft account.4
To create a community, click on Home to get started. If you already use Microsoft Teams for work or school on mobile, simply switch accounts. There’s no need to download another app, and no data is shared with your employer.
1Communities is available in Microsoft Teams (free), Teams Essentials when you sign in with a Microsoft account, Microsoft 365 Personal, and Microsoft 365 Family.
Microsoft’s longest-running franchise commemorates community accomplishments.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is thrilled to mark another momentous milestone made possible by our tremendous community. Since the introduction 27 months ago of the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, we have released 27 robust updates to simmers. All completely free!
We would not have reached any of these milestones without the continued support of our amazing community and their ongoing engagement and contributions. Because it’s a day for celebrating numbers, we want to share a few more impressive accomplishments of our community:
500 million flights
40 billion miles flown
Equivalent of 10 million trips around the Earth
Equivalent of 200 round trips from the Earth to the Sun
And we’re just getting started! We have exciting plans for 2023 and beyond. Join the 10 million pilots in Microsoft Flight Simulator today! The sky is calling!
Microsoft Flight Simulator is available for Xbox Series X|S and PC with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Windows, and Steam, and on Xbox One and supported mobile phones, tablets, and lower-spec PCs via Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Microsoft Flight Simulator Premium Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition
Xbox Game Studios
☆☆☆☆☆68
★★★★★
$119.99$95.99
From light planes to wide body jets to gliders and helicopters, fly highly detailed and accurate aircraft in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition. The world is at your fingertips. The Premium Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition includes everything from the Deluxe Edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports. Premium Deluxe Additional Aircraft
• Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner
• Cirrus Aircraft SR22
• Pipistrel Virus SW 121
• Textron Aviation Cessna Citation Longitude
• Zlin Aviation Shock Ultra Premium Deluxe Additional Airports
• Denver International Airport (USA)
• Dubai International Airport (United Arab Emirates)
• Frankfurt Airport (Germany)
• Heathrow Airport (United Kingdom)
• San Francisco International Airport (USA) Explore Your World
• Vivid and Detailed Landscapes – Immerse yourself in the vast and beautiful world that is our planet with over 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, roads, rivers and more.
• Living World – The Earth is vibrant and ever-changing and so is the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which includes live traffic, real-time weather, and animals. Earn Your Wings
• Aircraft – Hone your pilot skills in a variety of aircraft from light planes to commercial jets with comprehensive flight models. Every aircraft includes highly detailed and accurate cockpits with realistic instrumentation.
• Checklist System – From pro to beginner, scale your level from full manual to full assist with interactive and highlighted instrument guidance and checklist. Test Your Skill
• Live Weather -The weather engine enables users to switch on the live weather mode to experience real-time weather including accurate wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain and more.
• Day and Night Engine – Experience flight at any time of day or year allowing for night VFR, visual flight rules, navigation.
• Aerodynamic Modeling – A state-of-the-art physics engine with over 1000 control surfaces per plane allows for a truly realistic experience. Microsoft Flight Simulator has fulfilled the aspirations of aviators worldwide for 40 years. Celebrate the award-winning franchise with the 40th Anniversary Edition, loaded with all-new features, aircraft and content that span the history of aviation. The 40th Anniversary Edition update introduces:
• 1 true-to-life Airbus A310 Airliner
• 2 helicopters and 14 heliports
• 2 gliders and 15 glider airports
• 7 famous historical aircraft including the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose)
• 4 classic commercial airports
• 24 classic missions from the franchise’s past
Microsoft Flight Simulator Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition
Xbox Game Studios
☆☆☆☆☆41
★★★★★
$89.99$71.99
From light planes to wide body jets to gliders and helicopters, fly highly detailed and accurate aircraft in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition. The world is at your fingertips. The Deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition includes everything from the Standard Edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports. Deluxe Additional Aircraft
• Diamond Aircraft DA40-TDI
• Diamond Aircraft DV20
• Textron Aviation Beechcraft Baron G58
• Textron Aviation Cessna 152 Aerobat
• Textron Aviation Cessna 172 Skyhawk Deluxe Additional Handcrafted Airports
• Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (Netherlands)
• Cairo International Airport (Egypt)
• Cape Town International Airport (South Africa)
• O’Hare International Airport (USA)
• Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (Spain) Explore Your World
• Vivid and Detailed Landscapes – Immerse yourself in the vast and beautiful world that is our planet with over 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, roads, rivers and more.
• Living World – The Earth is vibrant and ever-changing and so is the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which includes live traffic, real-time weather, and animals. Earn Your Wings
• Aircraft – Hone your pilot skills in a variety of aircraft from light planes to commercial jets with comprehensive flight models. Every aircraft includes highly detailed and accurate cockpits with realistic instrumentation.
• Checklist System – From pro to beginner, scale your level from full manual to full assist with interactive and highlighted instrument guidance and checklist. Test Your Skill
• Live Weather -The weather engine enables users to switch on the live weather mode to experience real-time weather including accurate wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain and more.
• Day and Night Engine – Experience flight at any time of day or year allowing for night VFR, visual flight rules, navigation.
• Aerodynamic Modeling – A state-of-the-art physics engine with over 1000 control surfaces per plane allows for a truly realistic experience. Microsoft Flight Simulator has fulfilled the aspirations of aviators worldwide for 40 years. Celebrate the award-winning franchise with the 40th Anniversary Edition, loaded with all-new features, aircraft and content that span the history of aviation. The 40th Anniversary Edition update introduces:
• 1 true-to-life Airbus A310 Airliner
• 2 helicopters and 14 heliports
• 2 gliders and 15 glider airports
• 7 famous historical aircraft including the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose)
• 4 classic commercial airports
• 24 classic missions from the franchise’s past
Microsoft Flight Simulator Standard 40th Anniversary Edition
Xbox Game Studios
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From light planes to wide body jets to gliders and helicopters, fly highly detailed and accurate aircraft in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition. The world is at your fingertips. Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition features 37 airplanes, gliders, and helicopters with unique flight models, 25 handcrafted airports, 4 classic commercial airports, 14 heliports and 15 glider airports. Explore Your World
• Vivid and Detailed Landscapes – Immerse yourself in the vast and beautiful world that is our planet with over 1.5 billion buildings, 2 trillion trees, mountains, roads, rivers and more.
• Living World – The Earth is vibrant and ever-changing and so is the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which includes live traffic, real-time weather, and animals. Earn Your Wings
• Aircraft – Hone your pilot skills in a variety of aircraft from light planes to commercial jets with comprehensive flight models. Every aircraft includes highly detailed and accurate cockpits with realistic instrumentation.
• Checklist System – From pro to beginner, scale your level from full manual to full assist with interactive and highlighted instrument guidance and checklist. Test Your Skill
• Live Weather -The weather engine enables users to switch on the live weather mode to experience real-time weather including accurate wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, rain and more.
• Day and Night Engine – Experience flight at any time of day or year allowing for night VFR, visual flight rules, navigation.
• Aerodynamic Modeling – A state-of-the-art physics engine with over 1000 control surfaces per plane allows for a truly realistic experience. Microsoft Flight Simulator has fulfilled the aspirations of aviators worldwide for 40 years. Celebrate the award-winning franchise with the 40th Anniversary Edition, loaded with all-new features, aircraft and content that span the history of aviation. The 40th Anniversary Edition update introduces:
• 1 true-to-life Airbus A310 Airliner
• 2 helicopters and 14 heliports
• 2 gliders and 15 glider airports
• 7 famous historical aircraft including the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose)
• 4 classic commercial airports
• 24 classic missions from the franchise’s past
Through the partnership, seven industry leaders commit to making their data more open and accessible to help solve the world’s biggest problems
REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 7, 2022 — On Wednesday, a new Industry Data for Society Partnership (IDSP) was launched by GitHub, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), LinkedIn, Microsoft, Northumbrian Water Group, R2 Factory and UK Power Networks. The IDSP is a first-of-its-kind cross-industry partnership to help advance more open and accessible private-sector data for societal good. The founding members of the IDSP agree to provide greater access to their data, where appropriate, to help tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges in areas such as sustainability and inclusive economic growth.
In the past few years, open data has played a critical role in enabling faster research and collaboration across industries and with the public sector. As we saw during COVID-19, pandemic data that was made more open enabled researchers to make faster progress and gave citizens more information to inform their day-to-day activities. The IDSP’s goal is to continue this model into new areas and help address other complex societal challenges. The IDSP will serve as a forum for the participating companies to foster collaboration, as well as a resource for other entities working on related issues.
IDSP members commit to the following:
To open data or provide greater access to data, where appropriate, to help solve pressing societal problems in a usable, responsible and inclusive manner.
To share knowledge and information for the effective use of open data and data collaboration for social benefit.
To invest in skilling a broad class of professionals to use data effectively and responsibly for social impact.
To protect individuals’ privacy in all these activities.
The IDSP will also bring in other organizations with expertise in societal issues. At launch, The GovLab’s Data Program based at New York University and the Open Data Institute will both be partnership Affiliates to provide guidance and expertise for partnership endeavors.
As part of their work together, participating IDSP companies will launch a Data for Local Environments Challenge with the Open Data Institute. Using publicly available datasets and datasets shared or curated by the private sector, participants will explore how officials in cities, counties and municipalities can use these datasets to generate insights and solutions to improve their local environments, such as reaching their net zero goals. More about the data challenge can be found here. Registration will open in early 2023.
The IDSP will also foster connections between industry and the public sector, researchers and academics to better understand how industry data can improve their work. The partnership’s first engagement is with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the United States National Committee for CODATA (USNC/CODATA) to plan a Summit that will convene scholars, government, industry and nonprofit research organizations to surface opportunities to work together across disciplines, leverage the strengths of individuals organizations and move common agendas forward more rapidly. More information about the planning process can be found at Association of Research Libraries (ARL).
IDSP founders supporting statements:
GitHub – “GitHub is the global home for all developers, including data scientists and ML engineers who are increasingly using the platform for data sharing and collaboration. We’re proud to join the Industry Data for Society Partnership to help make private-sector data more broadly available. This will empower developers to work together across industry, academia and the public sector to address some of the world’s most pressing social challenges.” –Shelley McKinley, Chief Legal Officer, GitHub
HPE– “HPE is proud to be a part of this initiative because we support open data and the goals of the Industry Data for Society Partnership. At HPE, we want to democratize the access to data and provide guidance on how to approach this form of data sharing to solve big problems. For example, our work with sustainable agriculture has enabled farmers in developing countries to find the right data, at the right time, to be more productive producers. It is this kind of collaboration and sharing that can help overcome some of society’s most difficult challenges.” –Glyn Bowden, Chief Architect for AI and Data Science, HPE
LinkedIn– “Joining the Industry Data for Society Partnership is perfectly aligned with exactly what LinkedIn is all about — creating economic opportunity for the global workforce. The data we make available to partners for research and development purposes, what we call the Economic Graph, provides a vibrant representation of the global activity of more than 850 million professionals, as they connect, learn new skills, explore jobs, and gain the knowledge and insights needed to successfully pursue economic opportunity. We can’t think of a better time than now, or a more necessary moment, to use data to address the immediate needs of a changing world.” – Sue Duke, Vice President Global Public Policy, LinkedIn
Microsoft– “Making data more open and accessible can aid in the progress of solving today’s most urgent societal challenges, and that’s why we are a founding member of the Industry Data for Society Partnership. Over two years ago, Microsoft launched the Open Data Campaign to help close the data divide and extend the benefits of open data to organizations of all sizes. We know we can accomplish that by working together and make real progress toward addressing today’s most pressing societal challenges.” – Burton Davis, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Intellectual Property Group, Microsoft
Northumbrian Water Group – “At Northumbrian Water, we firmly believe in the power of data and have a long track record of using data to fuel innovation. Since our first open, annual Innovation festival back in 2017, we have run almost 200 sprints, hackathons and data dashes and most of these have been powered by data from our own company along with that of our peers and partners. We know there is more we can do and so we are incredibly excited to be an active member of this new partnership. We are looking forward to not only increasing the impact we can have together in addressing societal and environmental challenges but also to share our learning to help others do the same.” –Nigel Watson, Group Information Services Director, Northumbrian Water Group
R2 Factory– “Systemwide problems require systemwide collaboration. R2 Factory exists to foster collaboration between industry partners, to unlock the hidden value from data. Taking the lessons we learned from convening the Emergent Alliance — where over 50 corporates, individuals, NGOs and governments collaborated with data to aid pandemic recovery — and continuing to pursue that shared expertise for social good is really important to us. We’re delighted to be founding members of the Industry Data for Society Partnership and are excited to find out what we can achieve together.” –Ian Whitford, CTO, R2 Factory
UK Power Networks– “The power of data for any organization is in looking beyond its own boundaries and combining it with information from other sectors and developing fresh insights that will ultimately lead to action and long-lasting change. At a time when the global energy crisis is impacting us all, especially the most vulnerable, the IDSP has the potential to be a powerful tool for positive change.” – Matt Webb, Head of Enterprise Data Management, UK Power Networks
Affiliate organizations supporting statements:
The GovLab– “One important lesson we’ve learned about using data for good is the importance of collaboration and partnerships. There is an exponential return when organizations align their goals and pool their data resources and expertise. Collaboration also improves trust in how data is handled, as well as the legitimacy of the projects initiated. In other words, data partnerships are critical to unlocking data’s potential for societal benefit while limiting its risks and potential harm.”–Stefaan G. Verhulst, Co-Founder of The GovLab and Director of its Data Program
Open Data Institute– “The ODI is proud and excited to be an affiliate of the Industry Data for Society Partnership. The program represents the ambition and duty of the private sector to be at the forefront of driving positive social change through open data.
It is well known that businesses can create value by using third-party data to develop new products and services. But at the ODI, our research has shown that they can unlock more value for society by opening up the data they have collected. This will help address global issues, such as the climate crisis and the COVID pandemic.
As an affiliate, we will use our expertise to help shape the partnership’s plans and approach, and we look forward to offering guidance and support to its partners as they embark on new data sharing projects.” –Jack Hardinges, Head of Programmes at the Open Data Institute
To learn more about the partnership and keep up to date with our projects and initiatives, visit www.IndustryDataforSociety.com. To contact the partnership, please email us at [email protected].
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.
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