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Microsoft Ignite: Will Managed Cybersecurity Services Steal the Show?

Microsoft Ignite, the company's massive customer conference in Orlando, certainly emphasizes cloud, machine learning, and software-as-a-service offerings. But managed cybersecurity services could wind up stealing the show.

Right off the top, Microsoft said it will improve Office 365’s Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) capabilities with new features to fight phishing, impersonation and domain spoofing. In addition, Windows Defender ATP will also now be able to fix some security issues, an upgrade from just alerting users. Also, Azure ATP will be able to quicken security incident investigation.

Microsoft has scheduled 345 sessions with security-related content covering both products and expertise. In a blog post, the company called out five sessions in particular targeting Microsoft 365, Azure and the Cloud. Microsoft’s not the only one with security news to showcase at Ignite.

Rackspace Managed Security Services

Managed service provider Rackspace has announced PCI compliance and cloud replication for Microsoft Hyper-V to help businesses meet compliance, data assurance and security needs.

Here’s what Rackspace rolled out:

  • Support for extending Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance to managed Azure workloads.
  • Cloud replication for Hyper-V, powered by Azure Site Recovery, to provide replication and failover service to help ensure businesses have access to data in the case of an unexpected disruption. It’s Rackspace's first release of the Azure Site Recovery feature and the company said it will continue to build out additional features related to Azure-powered Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service.
  • Rackspace managed security services is also now available for Microsoft Hyper-V for advanced threat detection and remediation.

Meanwhile, unrelated to Rackspace’s Ignite news, the company has struck a deal with SAP to provide a subscription-based offering of SAP solutions in its private hosted cloud.

Microsoft, Accenture, Avanade Tout Security

In another alliance, Accenture (a Top 100 MSSP for 2017) and Avanade said they will collaborate with Microsoft to build out and market a set of cyber defense solutions that covers managed security operations, incident response support and integrated threat hunting. The three companies have been working together in one form or another since 2000.

Here’s all you need to know on the Accenture/Avanade/Microsoft tie-up: Joint threat intelligence will be backed into the solutions in three core areas:

  • Managed security operations: Existing Accenture managed security services will be integrated with Microsoft security products and services to combat security breaches aimed at on-premises, cloud and hybrid systems.
  • Incident response support: The partners will work together to leverage tools and integrate processes to help clients return to normal operations after a security breach.
  • Integrated threat hunting: The resulting technology will feature each company’s incident response experience to locate previously undetected breaches.
  • No specific dollar amounts were disclosed other than to say it’s a “multi-year, multi-million dollar” collaboration.
D. Howard Kass

D. Howard Kass is a contributing editor to MSSP Alert. He brings a career in journalism and market research to the role. He has served as CRN News Editor, Dataquest Channel Analyst, and West Coast Senior Contributing Editor at Channelnomics. As the CEO of The Viewpoint Group, he led groundbreaking market research.