Introducing Microsoft Defender for Business

Security remains one of the biggest concerns and most challenging responsibilities facing businesses today. With an increase in cyber-attacks targeting small and medium-sized businesses, threats are becoming increasingly automated and indiscriminate, striking at a significantly faster rate. In the past year we have seen a 300% increase in ransomware attacks, with over 50% reaching small businesses¹. To address this, Microsoft is investing in security solutions that are purposefully designed to help protect them.

We are excited to introduce Microsoft Defender for Business, a new endpoint security solution that will be available in preview soon. Microsoft Defender for Business is purpose-built to provide enterprise-grade endpoint security for businesses with up to 300 employees, in an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution.

Let’s take a closer look at Defender for Business.

Increase your security with Microsoft Defender for Business

Today’s top security threats are ransomware extortion or disruption. Your business needs more protection against these and other threats at an affordable price, so you can have peace of mind.

Defender for Business takes security from traditional antivirus to next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response, threat and vulnerability management, and more. It offers simplified configuration and management with intelligent, automated investigation and remediation. Defender for Business helps protect against cybersecurity threats, including malware and ransomware on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices.

Enterprise Endpoint Security

We bring capabilities from our industry-leading Microsoft Defender for Endpoint solution and optimize it for businesses with up to 300 employees.Figure 1: Microsoft Defender for Business provides enterprise-level capabilities to protect your business.

Defender for Business includes the following capabilities:

• Threat and Vulnerability Management – Helps you prioritize and focus on the vulnerabilities that pose the most urgent and greatest risk to your business. By discovering, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in software, you can proactively build a secure foundation for your environment.
• Attack surface reduction – Shrinks your attack surface (places where your business is vulnerable to cyber-attacks) across all your devices and applications using capabilities such as ransomware mitigation, application control, web protection, network protection, network firewall, and attack surface reduction rules.

Figure 2: The Threat and Vulnerability Management Dashboard helps you proactively discover, prioritize, and remediate software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

• Next Generation Protection – Helps prevent and protect against threats at your doorstep with antimalware and antivirus protection – on your devices and in the cloud.
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) – Receive behavior-based detection and response alerts that help you identify and remove persistent threats from your environment. Manual response actions within Defender for Business let you take action on processes and files, while live response puts you in direct control of a device to ensure it is recovered, secured and ready to use.
• Automated Investigation and Recovery – Helps scale your security operations by investigating alerts and taking immediate action to resolve attacks for you. By reducing alert volume and remediating threats, Defender for Business allows you to prioritize tasks and focus on more advanced threats.
• APIs and Integration – Automate workflows and integrate security data into your existing security platforms and reporting tools. For example, you can pull detections from Defender for Business into your security intelligence and event management tool.

Figure 3: Endpoint Detection and Response Dashboard helps identify persistent threats and remove them from your environment.

Easy to use, manage and configure

No specialist security knowledge is required to install and manage Defender for Business. It provides streamlined experiences that guide you to action with recommendations and insights into the security of your endpoints. This allows you to secure endpoints with less complexity and fewer loopholes that can be exploited by malicious parties.

The product includes a simplified client configuration with wizard-driven installation and recommended security policies enabled out-of-the-box, allowing you to quickly protect devices. Easy-to-use management options and actionable insights help you save time and prioritize tasks.

Figure 4: Simplified device onboarding and easy-to-use management options allow you to add clients with recommended security policies activated out of the box in a few easy steps.

Cost efficient

Defender for Business is designed to deliver maximum security value at a price that’s right for your business. Its simplicity allows you to build and manage endpoint security with low operational overhead and less burden to learn complex cybersecurity concepts to secure your business.

Defender for Business protects your endpoints, whether your email and productivity is on-premises, Microsoft 365, or any other solution. That’s why we made the licensing model flexible and simple. Upon general availability, you can purchase directly from Microsoft and through Microsoft Partner Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) channels. It will be for sale:

• As a standalone offering, priced at $3 per user per month.
• Included as part of Microsoft 365 Business Premium, our comprehensive security and productivity solution that brings together Microsoft Teams and Office 365 with the essential security tools for small and medium businesses.

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse integration for IT partners

If you’re an IT partner serving small and medium businesses, you can use Microsoft 365 Lighthouse to protect your customers at scale. Microsoft 365 Lighthouse integration with Defender for Business gives you an overview of security incidents and alerts for customers who are on board with Lighthouse. Additional management capabilities for Defender for Business in Lighthouse are also on the roadmap.

Figure 5: Security incident queue in Microsoft 365 Lighthouse helps IT partners identify security incidents and alerts across multiple customers.

Learn more

We’re excited to introduce you to Microsoft Defender for Business and deliver these powerful endpoint security capabilities to help keep your business secure.

IT partners, join a webinar on November 18^e, 8 hours peacefully for more information about the product and partner opportunities. Click here to register now.

Soon we will have more details about the public preview experience and the sign-up process for customers and partners. For more information, visit https://aka.ms/DefenderforBusiness

References

^1.Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ABC Report of 06 May 2021