In today’s evolving digital landscape, businesses must face two new paradigm shifts: remote work and its link to escalating data breaches. For organizations navigating this, IT Asset Management (ITAM) has quickly become important in bridging the gap between remote work and cybersecurity.

Businesses that fall victim to a data breach can expect a financial hit of nearly $5 million on average — a 10% increase compared to last year — according to IBM’s annual report on cybersecurity incidents.

The tech giant worked with the Ponemon Institute to study 604 organizations affected by data breaches between March 2023 and February 2024. The breaches — affecting 17 industries across 16 countries and regions — ranged from 2,100 to 113,000 individuals records leaked. The researchers also interviewed 3,556 security and C-suite business leaders with firsthand knowledge of the data breach incidents at their organizations.

What stood out most to IBM was the jump in the global average cost of a data breach, which reached $4.88 million and was the biggest jump since the pandemic. In 2023 the cost was $4.45 million.

A security researcher has issued a warning to all 400 million users of Microsoft Outlook after discovering an email bug that could allow anyone to impersonate official Microsoft accounts.

Vsevolod Kokorin, a security researcher at SolidLab, posted a message on X, formerly known as Twitter, expressing frustration with Microsoft after he had uncovered and responsibly disclosed a serious vulnerability impacting Outlook email, only to be told it couldn’t be reproduced.

The bug, which Kokorin rightly refuses to provide the technical details needed to exploit it at this time, enables anyone sending an email to another Outlook user to impersonate official Microsoft corporate accounts. As shown in the example posted to X, this means an email can appear to come from Microsoft’s security team, with all the implications for phishing, malware distribution and cybercrime that brings with it.

Microsoft is making security its number one priority for every employee, following years of security issues and mounting criticisms. After a scathing report from the US Cyber Safety Review Board recently concluded that “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul,” it’s doing just that by outlining a set of security principles and goals that are tied to compensation packages for Microsoft’s senior leadership team.

Last November, Microsoft announced a Secure Future Initiative (SFI) in response to mounting pressure on the company to respond to attacks that allowed Chinese hackers to breach US government email accounts. Just days after announcing this initiative, Russian hackers managed to breach Microsoft’s defenses and spy on the email accounts of some members of Microsoft’s senior leadership team. Microsoft only discovered the attack nearly two months later in January, and the same group even went on to steal source code.

These recent attacks have been damaging, and the Cyber Safety Review Board report added fuel to Microsoft’s security fire recently by concluding that the company could have prevented the 2023 breach of US government email accounts and that a “cascade of security failures” led to that incident.

“We are making security our top priority at Microsoft, above all else – over all other features,” explains Charlie Bell, executive vice president for Microsoft security, in a blog post. “We will instil accountability by basing part of the compensation of the company’s Senior Leadership Team on our progress in meeting our security plans and milestones.”

Microsoft now has three security principles that form a big part of these goals: secure by design; secure by default; secure operations. These principles are designed to put security first during the design phases of products and services, place a greater focus on protections that are enabled by default, and improve controls and monitoring for current and future threats.

The broader goals are underlined by “six prioritized security pillars,” which is corporate speak for stuff Microsoft needs to greatly improve: