Microsoft supports the efforts of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) with free resources and research about how each of us—individuals, families, schools, organizations, industry, and government—can do our part to help create a safer digital world.
Some of the resources:
Get more information about National Cyber Security Awareness Month, plus six foundational steps that you can take to help protect your information, family, devices, and online safety.
We get lots of questions about hacked email accounts, telephone scams, spyware, and viruses.
The community at Microsoft Answers might have already asked and answered your questions.
Microsoft Answers is a free forum where Microsoft engineers and security experts from all over the world answer technical and not-so-technical questions from people like you.
If you have a security or privacy question:
Find answers to some of our most frequently asked questions:
If you still can’t find an answer, try Microsoft Consumer Security Support Center or Microsoft Support.
You probably already know how to help keep your personal information safe on the Internet. But what about everything that’s stored on your smart phone?
If your Windows Phone is stolen or if you lose it, you can make your phone ring, you can lock it, erase the contents, or show your phone on a map from any Internet-connected computer. This feature can help you recover the phone or at least prevent someone from accessing the personal information on it.
More information about the Windows Phone Find My Phone feature.
Learn other ways to secure your smart phone.
MSNBC’s Herb Weisbaum reports that cybercriminals use fake text messages to lure people in the into giving away bank account and credit card information.
This particular scam involves scare tactics to make you believe that your account has been compromised. Cybercriminals use fear to make you act quickly and without thinking.
Read more about the scam.
Never give sensitive information (like an account number or password) in response to a request in a text message, email message, unsolicited phone call, instant message (IM), or on a social network.
More information:
Microsoft releases security updates on the second Tuesday of every month. Today Microsoft released 8 security updates.
Get the updates.
Watch a video about the updates.
To get more information about security updates and other privacy and security issues delivered to your email inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
Research in the newly released Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Volume 11 reveals how social engineering techniques contribute to the spread of computer infections. Attacks that require user-interaction (social engineering) to spread accounted for 45% of the attacks analyzed in the report. In addition, old or out-of-date browsers are easier targets for attacks than browsers that are current.
According to data from Net Applications, 25% of all browsers are not up to date. This means approximately 340 million computers worldwide might be at increased risk of infection as a result of malware spread via social engineering techniques.
Today Microsoft launched the website, YourBrowserMatters.org, to show how updated browsers can help to keep you safer online and why a browser is the first line of defense against infection.
Today the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) posted details about the September security updates. On Tuesday, October 11 2011, at approximately 10 AM Pacific Time, Microsoft will release eight bulletins.
The easiest way to get security updates when they're available is to turn on Windows automatic updating. For more information about how this works, see Understanding Windows automatic updating.
The Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification Service offers details about security updates approximately three business days before they are released, which allows customers (especially IT professionals) to plan for effective deployment of security updates.
Advanced Notification includes information about:
For more information about the security updates that will be released on October 11, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for October 2011.
For official risk and impact analysis, as well as deployment guidance, visit the MSRC blog. If you are on Twitter, you can follow @MSFTSecResponse.
At Microsoft, we are committed to serving communities and working responsibly, both globally and locally. Through our partnerships, our technology innovations, our people, and our resources we strive to help solve societal challenges and create economic opportunities.
Our 2011 Citizenship Report outlines some of the important work we’re doing in our communities, and our efforts to manage a responsible business. The report includes a section on Privacy & Security, which discusses how Microsoft helps to keep computing—including cloud computing—more secure, develops user education in online safety, fights online crime with law enforcement, and contributes to policy decisions.
The report also takes a look forward to the challenges and opportunities in Privacy & Security and how Microsoft will continue working to create safer products that help keep customers more secure.
Read more about Privacy & Security in the Microsoft 2011 Citizenship Report.
You might have heard that Microsoft is in the process of buying Skype, the popular Internet video and voice communications company. We thought this would be a good time to show you how to be more secure and help protect your privacy when you use Skype.
Here are our top tips:
More information about how Skype helps protect your online safety, security, and privacy.