Category: Microsoft news

Today, Microsoft is sharing information and issuing guidance about increased activities from a sophisticated threat actor that is focused on high value targets such as government agencies and cybersecurity companies. We believe this is nation-state activity at significant scale, aimed at both the government and private sector. While we aren’t sharing any details specific to individual organizations, it is important for us to share greater detail about some of the threat activity we’ve uncovered over the past weeks, along with guidance that security industry practitioners can use to find and mitigate potential malicious activity.

We also want to reassure our customers that we have not identified any Microsoft product or cloud service vulnerabilities in these investigations.

As part of our ongoing threat research, we monitor for new indicators that could signal attacker activity.  As we recently shared in our 2020 Digital Defense Report, we’ve delivered over 13,000 notifications to customers attacked by nation states over the past two years and have observed a rapid increase in sophistication and operational security capabilities. FireEye’s recent disclosure is consistent with the attacks that we’ve observed, and we commend FireEye’s disclosure and sharing, as we strongly believe this industry sharing is critical to protecting the internet.

Because of the sophistication of the techniques and operational security capabilities of the actor, we want to encourage greater scrutiny by the broader community. While these elements aren’t present in every attack, these techniques are part of the toolkit of this actor.

• An intrusion through malicious code in the SolarWinds Orion product. This results in the attacker gaining a foothold in the network, which the attacker can use to gain elevated credentials. Microsoft Defender now has detections for these files. Also, see SolarWinds Security Advisory.
• An intruder using administrative permissions acquired through an on-premises compromise to gain access to an organization’s trusted SAML token- signing certificate. This enables them to forge SAML tokens that impersonate any of the organization’s existing users and accounts, including highly privileged accounts.
• Anomalous logins using the SAML tokens created by a compromised token-signing certificate, which can be used against any on-premises resources (regardless of identity system or vendor) as well as against any cloud environment (regardless of vendor) because they have been configured to trust the certificate. Because the SAML tokens are signed with their own trusted certificate, the anomalies might be missed by the organization.
• Using highly privileged accounts acquired through the technique above or other means, attackers may add their own credentials to existing application service principals, enabling them to call APIs with the permission assigned to that application.

Please see customer guidance on recent nation-state cyberattacks for specific details and guidance.

We believe it’s important to share significant threat activity like what we’re announcing today. We think it’s critical that governments and the private sector are increasingly transparent about nation-state activity so we can all continue the global dialogue about protecting the internet. We also hope publishing this information helps raise awareness among organizations and individuals about steps they can take to protect themselves.

As we recommend to our customers, we are also actively looking for indicators in the Microsoft environment and, to date, have not found evidence of a successful attack.

Even with all the resources we dedicate to cybersecurity, our contribution will be only a small piece of what’s needed to address the challenge. It requires policymakers, the business community, government agencies and, ultimately, individuals to make a real difference, and we can only have significant impact through shared information and partnerships. We hope this contribution will help us all work together better to improve the security of the digital ecosystem.

Santa Lucia was already working on finding ways to make sure underserved people around the world could participate in the increasingly digital economy when the pandemic hit. The initial effort grew out of recognition that a third of the new jobs created in the U.S. in the past 25 years have been in occupations that didn’t exist before, and that 1.1 billion jobs may be radically transformed by 2030. The pandemic’s impact on the global workforce magnified the situation.

“COVID-19 was like pouring gasoline on the digital transformation, along with a great loss of jobs, so we knew we had to help displaced people immediately,” Santa Lucia says.

In the U.S. alone, tens of millions of people have filed for unemployment benefits this year due to lost jobs during the pandemic, and most have been on assistance for six months or longer. The hardest hit have been people of color, those who lack college degrees, and low-wage workers who earn $50,000 or less a year, says Sonya Francis, the senior director of career navigation for Goodwill Industries International, a nonprofit that supports people in finding jobs.

“Many of these positions won’t even exist post-COVID,” Francis says. “In order to be considered employable and marketable, you have to have digital skills.”

The organization serves many who have never used a computer, so it started focusing on entry level digital skills about three years ago. This year it partnered with Microsoft to provide advanced training, testing and certifications in Atlanta and San Francisco, as well as Seattle and Tacoma in Washington.

“There’s a lot of excitement around particular Microsoft certifications because they’re enhancing employability quicker,” says Elizabeth McCombs, a project manager who works with Francis.

The pandemic proved a barrier to classes, since many Goodwill participants don’t have access to devices or the internet, McCombs says. But the organization still allows a small number of students to learn at career centers and also is offering mobile labs now, with Goodwill staffers taking devices and training to students’ homes.

“A graduate degree may be out of reach, but this training Microsoft is offering is really accessible,” says Carlos Galeana, the instructional tech trainer for Seattle Goodwill. Since the courses are online, students can complete them without having to purchase or install software, he says.

The LinkedIn modules have proven particularly helpful in giving students the fundamentals of digital literacy and showing them how it relates to all jobs and careers, whether they want to be an entrepreneur or a barista, says Eileen Aparis, vice president of job training for Seattle Goodwill. The classes give students the confidence to find jobs in administrative positions, medical fields, data science, manufacturing and more, she says.

“This opportunity with Microsoft isn’t just about being in IT or software or an app developer but to be successful in the workplace today,” Aparis says, “and the workplace of the 21^st century is all technology.”

The program also is helping people who already have a firm grasp of technology and strong job skills, but want to make sure their career holds a promising future.

Deepa Govindasamy, 36, followed her husband to Germany when his company transferred him there from India in 2018. After getting settled into her new country, Govindasamy wanted to return to her software-testing career, but she felt like something was missing as she looked for jobs. She’d studied civil engineering at university so only had on-the-job training in her chosen profession, and she knew there were things she needed to learn – especially cloud computing.

“Technology is growing and evolving so fast, I’ve seen it changing at warp speed, and the cloud is the future,” Govindasamy says. “Learning cloud computing is not a choice — it’s a must if you want to flourish in the IT industry.”

She heard about the nonprofit ReDI School of Digital Integration at a tech talk she attended late last year, and in February — just as the pandemic was taking hold in Germany — she began a Microsoft Learn software development course with classes in Java, Microsoft Azure and more. She earned her first certification in July and then started a data science program that built on it, along with soft-skills classes such as managing a LinkedIn profile for networking.

“This was how my COVID pandemic lockdown was for me, so busy with so much learning,” she laughs.

Govindasamy will be done with her training soon and plans to volunteer teach at ReDI while looking for a job, giving back to others what she’s learned herself — just as those who taught her this year had done.

“Data science will be additional knowledge I’ll be able to implement,” she says. “It’ll definitely help me out because software testing has evolved very much, and data is the heart of testing now. And now I can go a lot further in my career with these external certifications.”

ReDI School Chief Executive Officer Anne Kjaer Bathel founded the organization after a chance encounter in 2015 with a refugee in Berlin. The man was from Iraq and had a bachelor’s degree in computer science, but he didn’t have a computer in Germany and was afraid of losing ground in the fast-moving industry.

“You’ve heard the story about teaching a man to fish, well what does that story look like in a digital world?” Kjaer Bathel, herself an immigrant from Denmark, recalls pondering. “You need hardware, internet access, you need tech skills, soft skills, language, and a professional network to help open doors to the industry.”

Kjaer Bathel put up a post on her Facebook page and the next day had a couple dozen responses with people offering equipment, space, expertise and even cake, “because food always brings people together.” Now ReDI — a shortening of “ready for digital integration” — relies on 500 volunteers from the tech and startup industries to provide free training to refugees, immigrants and marginalized Germans.

“More companies are aware that to survive, they need to attract more tech talent,” Kjaer Bathel says. “And we have seen with COVID-19 that the awareness of the need for digital skills isn’t just in the tech industry but is for everything, to work remotely or do school.”

Germany is an accreditation-driven society, so ReDI’s ability to provide free certification programs through Microsoft’s skills initiative “ticks those boxes” and assures prospective employers that ReDI graduates will be able to perform, she says.

It’s also motivational for students like Idlir Islamaj.

Islamaj, 34, grew up in Albania and followed his passion for technology to a master’s degree in computer science and a job, but he didn’t see many opportunities to advance or improve — and he wasn’t making enough money to support a family. So when he read in 2018 that Germany was in need of IT experts, he and his wife decided to make the move.

It wasn’t easy to leave his seaside home and learn a new language near landlocked Munich, but Islamaj quickly found a position as a system administrator. He heard about ReDI last year and signed up for a Java course, having seen the need for it in creating different architecture. That led to an Azure certification program from Microsoft Learn that strengthened Islamaj’s knowledge of the cloud.

Now he’s a consultant for Beck et al, providing support to large global companies that use Microsoft 365 products.

“I feel really valued in what I do now, and I do my job with joy,” says Islamaj, who now makes enough to not only support his family — he and his wife had a baby last year — but to take them on vacations as well. “I see that I grow every day professionally and mentally. I see a lot of opportunities. And I’m very motivated for the next certification as well.”

Top photo: Lutendo Mabogo in front of Afrika Tikkun’s learning center in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg. (Photo by Roy Potterill)

As a society, we continue through the journey of this global pandemic, but there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. There are currently two COVID-19 vaccines under accelerated review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European regulatory authorities that have reported safety and efficacy data in phase three clinical trials.¹ Unlike the common flu vaccine, each of these COVID-19 vaccines poses similar and unique challenges in terms of procurement, distribution, administration and management. At Microsoft, we have been working with public- and private-sector organizations around the world to help support this monumental task of delivering vaccines as quickly as possible, but also in a secure and equitable manner. Technology plays an essential role in the secure, safe and equitable distribution of the vaccine and strategic partnerships will enable us to achieve our goals and meet the challenges ahead. In this blog, we will go into more detail on some strategic partnerships that are enabling the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Partnering towards better outcomes

With COVID-19 vaccines soon to be available, Microsoft and its partners are actively working with customers to deploy vaccine management solutions that enable registration capabilities for patients and providers, phased scheduling for vaccinations, streamlined reporting, and management dashboarding with analytics and forecasting. These offerings are helping public health agencies and healthcare providers to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine to individuals in an efficient, equitable and safe manner. The underlying technologies and approach have been tested and deployed with prior COVID-19 use cases, including contact tracing, COVID-19 testing, and return to work and return to school programs.

Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) has deployed over 230 emergency COVID-19 response missions globally since the pandemic began in March, including recent engagements to ensure the equitable, secure and efficient distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. MCS has developed an offering, the Vaccination Registration and Administration Solution (VRAS), which advances the capabilities of their COVID-19 solution portfolio and enables compliant administration of resident assessment, registration and phased scheduling for vaccine distribution. It enables the tracking and reporting of immunization progress through secure data exchange that utilizes industry standards, such as Health Level Seven (HL7), Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and open APIs. Health providers and pharmacies can monitor and report on the effectiveness of specific vaccine batches, and health administrators can easily summarize the achievement of vaccine deployment goals in large population groups.

Additionally, several of our partners have leveraged the Microsoft cloud to provide customers with additional offerings to support vaccine management. These offerings also apply APIs, HL7 and FHIR to enable interoperability and integration with existing systems of record, artificial intelligence to generate accurate and geo-specific predictive analytics, and secure communications using Microsoft Teams.

Meeting the needs of a global population for fair and equitable vaccine distribution, administration and monitoring calls upon the very best that the Accenture, Avanade and Microsoft partnership has to offer. Using our strategic consulting, industry and implementation expertise, coupled with Microsoft’s cutting-edge data, cloud and technology capabilities, means we are building robust, scalable and dependable solutions for vaccination authorities around the world.

EY has partnered with Microsoft to provide a comprehensive, end-to-end solution that helps manage the manufacture and distribution process of the vaccine. The EY Vaccine Management Solution is built on multiple Microsoft technologies: Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, Power BI and Power Platform to enable patient-provider engagement, supply chain visibility, and Internet of Things (IoT) real-time monitoring of the vaccines. Additionally, the EY Vaccine Analytics Solution is an integrated COVID-19 data and analytics tool supporting stakeholders in understanding population and geography-specific vaccine uptake.

Mazik Global has leveraged its expertise in the healthcare industry and technology solutions to create MazikCare Vaccine Flow. Vaccine Flow is built on Power Apps and utilizes pre-built templates to implement scalable solutions to accelerate the mass distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Providers will be able to seek out specific populations based on at-risk criteria to prioritize distribution. Patients can self-monitor and have peace of mind to head-off adverse reactions. Most importantly, the ability to monitor inventory levels as well as the temperature of the vials will enable providers to help get the vaccine to patients quickly. MazikCare Vaccine Flow is available in Microsoft AppSource.

Microsoft and its partners utilize robust capabilities of Microsoft’s highly secure cloud-based technologies to deliver solutions that address the most urgent challenges the healthcare industry is facing today. Learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and the breadth of our partner capabilities.

Collaborating toward a successful outcome

To achieve the goal of an efficient, equitable and safe delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine, close collaboration across agencies and partners will be the key to success. It is imperative that implementations be delivered on time and customized to meet the needs of every government and healthcare customer. As much as possible, newly introduced technologies should integrate with existing systems of record to keep workflow changes and costs to a minimum.

Microsoft and its partners are committed to doing our part to help the global community address this historic challenge. Together, we look forward to helping our customers embrace the power of digital, and the power of human innovation to deliver a safe and effective vaccine in a prioritized manner.

Learn more about Microsoft’s response to COVID-19 on a global level and Crisis Response and Recovery Resources for state and local governments.

¹ Vaccine candidates produced by (1) Pfizer and BioNTech, and (2) Moderna are currently in regulatory review for Emergency Use Authorization (as of Dec. 2, 2020).

Tags: COVID-19, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Microsoft Consulting Services