Microsoft AccountGuard is evolving this week as the company brings the cybersecurity identity and access management features to 31 new democracies around the world. According to the company, “enterprise-grade” tools are now coming to other nations:
“The addition of new features to AccountGuard provides new ways to protect online accounts for political parties, candidates and their staff, health care workers, human rights defenders, journalists and certain other customers who are at greatest risk from nation-state hackers.”
AccountGuard was launched in August 2017. Available in Office 365, the service helps Microsoft Account holders running elections campaigns, in political committees, or politician staff. The tool provides more threat monitoring capabilities by regularly monitoring accounts for security breaches. Journalists, human rights workers, and more have been using AccountGuard successfully.
Those industries can use the tool following Microsoft's expansion of the service in April 2020.
During its checks, AccountGuard scans attachments for malware, phishing, and failed login attempts. If something is found, a notification is sent to the account holder. If a genuine cyber threat is uncovered, Microsoft provides remediation and ongoing support to stop the threat.
Rolling Out Now
New features coming to 31 democracies were first used during the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Microsoft says customers enjoyed an 18% improvement in its Identity Protection Security Score thanks to AccountGuard. This is score is an automatic review of an organization's ability to hold off security attacks.
“These identity protection offerings help ensure only authorized people can log on to an organization's systems and make it more difficult for hackers to impersonate legitimate staff.”
Among the countries receiving the features are the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Germany, Denmark, and Canada. You can check out the full list of supported nations here.
Tip of the day:
Did you know that as a Windows 10 admin you can restrict user accounts by disabling settings or the control panel? Our tutorial shows how to disable and enable them via Group Policy and the registry.
