Redmond Rolls Out 2 Desktop Security Initiatives
Microsoft is touting changes to Windows meant to ensure better runtime security and user prompts when apps access sensitive desktop resources such as files, a camera or microphone.
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The computing giant said Monday that the Windows operating system will now only run properly signed apps, services and drivers. The restriction is part of what Microsoft calls Baseline Security Mode, a slew of security controls that include measures such as stopping desktops from opening files so long as HTTP or FTP is enabled.
Other controls include blocking legacy authentication protocols to ensure use of multifactor authentication and stopping users from creating new custom scripts on SharePoint sites. System administrators can override the new default settings.
New user prompts are part of what Microsoft dubs “User Transparency and Consent.” It establishes “a more robust security model that advances app transparency and user consent, with features that make app behavior more visible and app permissions easier to understand and manage,” Microsoft wrote, likening the coming wave of notifications to smartphone prompts about apps requesting access to data.
Microsoft also said that AI agents will “be expected to meet higher transparency standards, giving both users and IT administrators better visibility into their behaviors.”
Redmond tied the two initiatives to company efforts to make security and resiliency a higher priority (see: Microsoft Overhauls Security Practices After Major Breaches).
Microsoft software was at the center of a spate of recent nation-state hacking, including an incident disclosed in January 2024 in which Russian hackers compromised source code repositories and internal systems. A Chinese threat actor known as Storm-0558 gained access to Microsoft Outlook systems in July 2023, stealing emails from 25 organizations.
A federally empaneled board blamed the Storm-0558 intrusion on the company’s “corporate culture that deprioritized enterprise security investments” for allowing preventable security breaches.
Microsoft in response launched a “Secure Future Initiative” and pledged to put cybersecurity at the center of its work. Former Microsoft senior threat intelligence analyst Kevin Beaumont posted earlier this month that company fervor for the initiative may be waning.
Although Microsoft said it would make cybersecurity part of annual Connect employee performance reviews, “it’s been watered down now to the point where it basically doesn’t exist anymore, I’m told,” Beaumont wrote. Information Security Media Group has asked Microsoft for comment.
With reporting by Information Security Media Group’s David Perera in Northern Virginia.