Microsoft's Operational Security Posture a 'Sea Change' for Enterprise Security, says Nadella

It was one part State of the Union address, one part battle plan and one part manifesto. Perhaps it was both a dig at ISIS  and at the worldwide hacker group Anonymous (which this week declared a digital war on ISIS), telling both, "We're on it, and we're uniquely qualified."

This morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivered an impassioned keynote about what he is calling Microsoft's Operational Security Posture, which he describes as a "sea change" in how the company approaches security.

He went on to describe how this new posture actively protects a Microsoft environment, regardless of size; demonstrated the technologies in real-time; and described how Microsoft protects itself using this new approach.

"Customers are not going to use this stuff if they can't trust it"

Nadella began by describing the history of computing and information technology; how with mail came mail fraud, wire fraud over telegraph, radio and television, and finally, cybercrime. In each instance, individuals, companies, organizations and governments have responded collectively to use the very technology to attack the challenge, "And that's what [Microsoft] is doing with cybersecurity," he promises.

He went on to describe Microsoft's mission to "empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more...there isn't a part of the economy from retail to healthcare to energy that is not using digital technology to drive information and transform itself. But customers are not going to use this technology if they can't trust it."

And, perhaps they don't trust it. Nadella described 2015 as a "tough year around cybersecurity," with just the top eight or so data breaches leading to 160 million data records being compromised. Part and parcel are the typically long delays between detection and response (...