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Microsoft’s message to CISOs at Black Hat USA in August 2024 was that stronger security depends on defenders working together—not only on technology. In a discussion about AI and cybersecurity, Microsoft leaders pointed to collaboration among customers, researchers, vendors, industry peers and public-sector partners as part of both incident response and prevention. Their remarks offer a useful perspective, but they are attributed opinions from an event, not a measured assessment of how much collaboration or AI improves security.
What Microsoft said CISOs should learn from the CrowdStrike outage
At Black Hat USA, Ann Johnson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy CISO, described the response to the July 19, 2024 CrowdStrike Falcon configuration update that caused Windows systems to fail. As reported by Dark Reading, Johnson said she had understood a separate Azure issue to be resolved before customer reports of blue screens began arriving. She recalled Microsoft personnel and people across the industry mobilizing in shifts: “The industry was working around the clock.”
That account illustrates how an operational technology failure can quickly require coordination across organizations. It is Johnson’s description of the response, not a technical postmortem of the outage. The event report does not establish the precise causes, measure the contribution of each responding organization, or provide a verified basis for a monetary-loss estimate.
Why the CISO community matters beyond incident response
Johnson and Sherrod DeGrippo, Microsoft’s director of threat intelligence strategy, described security work as connected across organizational boundaries. DeGrippo said Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center works closely with customers through intelligence briefings and operates within a broader community of independent researchers, vendors and colleagues in other sectors, including healthcare. Johnson also emphasized collaboration among industry peers and public-sector partners who share tactics and defensive strategies.
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The value of that network, in their framing, is not limited to reacting after a disruption or attack becomes public. Johnson argued that many malicious actions are stopped before they turn into news. She told the audience: “For everything you see in the news, there are thousands of [malicious] things that haven’t happened because all the people in this room stopped it from happening.” That is a characterization of prevention, not a measured count of attacks stopped.
The report also mentions Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit and law-enforcement cooperation in efforts against Scattered Spider. It does not provide enough detail to assess the results of that work independently, but it reinforces the speakers’ broader point: defending systems can involve technical teams, outside researchers and public institutions, not only a company’s security department.
How Microsoft says AI should help defenders
Johnson presented AI and other emerging technologies as tools that could help defenders work more effectively and reduce burnout. She said: “We want to use technology like AI or whatever the latest technology is to make you more effective, so you can take that time off.” Her emphasis was on technology supporting the people doing security work, rather than replacing the human and community dimensions of defense.
She also said AI has “a very meaningful role in the world of the CISO and in the world of cyber defenders,” while stressing the importance of “the human beings, the community, the defenders.” These are Johnson’s views on the role of AI. The Dark Reading event report does not test particular AI systems or demonstrate that using them reduces workload, prevents incidents or improves security outcomes.
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Kristina Beek’s Dark Reading report, published August 8, 2024, covers remarks made at Black Hat USA and events from July 2024. Read it as a snapshot of how two Microsoft security leaders described collaboration, resilience and AI—not as a current incident update or a technical analysis.
Quick Recap
Best Value
- Operational resilience: Johnson’s account shows how customer reports and a widespread technology failure can prompt a cross-industry response.
- Cyber defense: The speakers described intelligence sharing and collaboration as part of work with customers, researchers, vendors and public-sector partners.
- Prevention: Johnson argued that effective defense can prevent malicious activity from becoming a public incident, but gave no independently verified count.
- AI: Johnson framed AI as a possible aid to defender effectiveness and workload; the report provides no measured evidence of those outcomes.
Read Kristina Beek’s report in Dark Reading.
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