Microsoft Expands Free Safety Tools for Customers in Response to Criticism
Microsoft Corp has announced an expansion of its set of free safety tools for customers, following criticism that it charged a fee for protection from its own mistakes.
The decision by Microsoft comes amid reports of a large-scale hacker attack allegedly perpetrated by Chinese spies, who were able to steal electronic letters of senior American officials. Additionally, security specialists and legislators have voiced their complaints about the costs associated with security instruments.
In a post on the Microsoft blog on Wednesday, the company announced that advanced functions in its audit set, known as Microsoft Purview, will be made available to all customers over the next few months.
While these tools may not be able to prevent hacker attacks, they play a crucial role in enabling organizations to identify and understand the presence of attackers within their networks, as well as develop strategies to remove them.
The previous practice of charging fees for advanced versions of these tools was met with widespread criticism, particularly after the recent hacker attack on the US Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It was only through the vigilance of one of the victims, who noticed an anomaly while viewing her digital magazines, that the attack – later acknowledged by Microsoft as a security breach and coding error – was discovered.
In a statement published alongside the Microsoft post, Eric Goldstein, an official from the agency for cybersecurity and infrastructure security, expressed support for providing these safety tools free of charge. He emphasized that “everyone wins” when such tools are made accessible to all.
Goldstein further added that charging for these tools “is a recipe for insufficient visibility when investigating cyber incidents.”