Posted on 03/23/2019 6:57:33 AM PDT by dayglored
Redmond's anti-malware now coming to a Mac near you
Microsoft nudged the Windows brand further out of the limelight today by thwacking its anti-malware package with the rebranding stick. Behold, Microsoft Defender ATP.
The change is necessary, as Microsoft is unleashing its endpoint protection platform onto the hitherto virgin territory of macOS.
Windows Defender first put in an appearance in Windows XP as an anti-malware component, evolving over the years until being renamed Windows Defender Antivirus as the software dug itself deeper into the Windows 10 operating system.
The Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) incarnation extended the functionality for Microsoft 365 customers, adding in detection and exploration over devices and identities, as well as automation to clean up the messes inflicted by miscreants where possible.
In February the gang added "Microsoft Threat Experts" into the mix, to speed up the response to threats.
According to Microsoft 365 head honcho, Brad Anderson, around 27 per cent of Windows 7 users actually use thing. The figure rises to 55 per cent of all commercial PCs on Windows 10 either because, as Anderson said, "It's built in. It's a great experience. It's always up to date. It's always compatible" or maybe just because it is hard to avoid it, and IT admins like an easy life.
To be fair, in my experience, Windows Defender is far less of a resource hog than the products of certain other vendors, although customers have plenty of choice. A report by Statista put AVAST as the number one Windows anti-malware application vendor followed by Malwarebytes. The latter also enjoys quite a bit of love in the Apple community, according to one enterprise specialist we spoke to.
As part of Microsoft's ongoing effort to move beyond Windows with the likes of Microsoft 365, it is extending this protection to other operating systems, starting with macOS. After all, once you're paying for Office, what's a little extra anti-malware between friends?
The newly renamed Microsoft Defender ATP is available for macOS now in a limited preview.
The Defender ATP team has also pushed out to preview additional technology to deal with known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that can be exploited by miscreants. Dubbed 'Threat and Vulnerability Management', the tech is geared up to scan the endpoints of an organisation and flag up weaknesses.
Anderson told us that technology was agentless (Defender having been built into the operating system for a while now). "It's constantly monitoring the configuration and the settings of the device and when it sees that there is anything that is a known threat or a known vulnerability that is exposed, it automatically brings that to the attention of IT and IT can take automated action on that to clean it."
Players of the Redmond drinking game will be delighted to spot the acronym "AI" in the announcement of the technology as an aid to identify nefarious activity. Admins should, however, be aware that in order to do the magic, Microsoft does need to suck telemetry from devices into its cloud.
According to Anderson, "It is just diagnostic data that allows us to make sure that we're giving the direction to IT to take action."
While Microsoft has published the definition for the data it is collecting, Anderson stated the obvious, "When you sign up to use this threat and vulnerability management, that does get commensurate with a level of that telemetry. And so it ties into a level of telemetry that you have to enable on Windows that is published."
In other words, if you want to use Microsoft's new smarts, you're going to have hand over some data.
Wary perhaps of the notoriously litigious world of anti-virus, Microsoft stated that the new toys would be "in addition to the existing partner integrations already available."
Handy, because only this week anti-virus vendor McAfee was trumpeting its own integration in Microsoft Teams.
The Teams app will, of course, be a standard part of Office 365 ProPlus as default by the end of March. ®
Hey Swordmaker, get a load of this!
WTF is the diff between Window and Microsoft, I thought they were the same?
They’ve produced some Mac software in the past, notably the MS-Office suite, and Remote Desktop connection applications.
But this is notable because Defender was always tighttly integrated with Windows. Now, not so much, apparently.
They are infiltrating and will soon claim them as their own. Based on history... They got something up their sleeve and can’t be trusted.
Naturally anything Microsoft comes at a price. In this case it’s more intrusion into things none of its business:
“In other words, if you want to use Microsoft’s new smarts, you’re going to have hand over some data.”
geeze...for the love of God, don’t wake him...
The ultimate price paid by using Microsoft products is American jobs.
Company I now work for is proudly American-managed still and H1B Indians can never pass the cultural fit part of pre-employment hiring screening.
I’ll second that. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Windows! Spit!
Turned my win 10 work computer on today and yet again I can’t input the password but can input anything else as I try to get it going. From now on I’m going with Mac. I’m done with that douchbag and his OS.
I made the switch whole-hog for my personal use in 2009 and have never regretted it.
Linux is nice to keep your legacy Win boxes running.
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