AccountGuard accesses dozens of countries ahead of elections
Microsoft has expanded the advanced features in the AccountGuard service ahead of the upcoming election.
AccountGuard is a selective program for individuals and organizations who may face higher risks of an attack or account hack due to their participation in politics.
The service includes cybersecurity advice, access to webinars, notifications of a threat or hack from a known nation-state actor against an Office 365 account associated with a member, alerts about Hotmail and Outlook accounts, and damage control recommendations if the cyberattacks are successful.
Participants also get a point of contact with Microsoft's Advocacy Program team.
This week, Microsoft expanded the offer to include all AccountGuard members in 31 democracies, including protection for identity management and access at no additional cost.
The company said: Adding new features to AccountGuard provides new ways to protect online accounts for political parties, candidates, employees, healthcare workers, human rights defenders, journalists, and some other clients at greater risk from nation-state hackers.
The company's expansion includes multi-factor authentication, single sign-on services for cloud applications, conditional access policy implementation, and PIM management to create time-based and consent-based access policies for sensitive and critical resources.
Microsoft's accessibility options were made available to political parties ahead of the 2020 US elections.
With similar events coming in countries such as: the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Estonia and the Czech Republic, the company’s offering aims to stop hacking and diversion attempts and protect against disinformation campaigns.
In addition, the software giant announced an expansion of its existing partnership with Yubico, which manufactures physical keys for YubiKey multi-factor authentication designed to reduce the risk of phishing attempts and account hijacking.
As of now, accountGuard members are offered up to 25,000 YubiKeys, and a number of free keys may be available depending on the size of the organization or organization.
In April of last year, Microsoft made the service available to health care entities and human rights groups, saying: These organizations are maintaining their access during the Coronavirus pandemic.