Microsoft in motion to secure billions of connected 'Edge' devices

Seattle (Washington), May 9: As the world prepares to see billions of connected devices in the next few years, Microsoft is busy creating a right mix of first responders — putting a robust Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in place to safeguard Cloud-powered “Edge” devices against cyber attacks, a top company executive has emphasised.

The company expects 20 billion connected devices globally by 2020.

While “Intelligent Cloud”, “Intelligent Edge” and the Internet of Things (IoT) present enormous opportunities, the ever-growing threat of hackers breaking into those devices — be in office or at home — is for real.

The “Edge” broadly means when end users interact with Cloud, such devices can be anything — from drones to PCs, from smartphones to cameras, from refrigerators to TVs and so on.

“We see attacks coming from all sides — via passwords, emails, spam, malicious links or websites and so on — targeting millions of end-point devices and Cloud infrastructure at any given point of time.

“What sets us apart from the others are our AI algorithms and a full-time team of 35,000 engineers — working round-the-clock to spot bad actors, analyse and mitigate those. They are our first responders to cyber threats,” Julia White, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Azuresaid.

Microsoft uses advanced analytics — processing more than 450 billion authentications per month, scanning 400 billion emails for malware and phishing and updating one billion devices — to deliver actionable insights. IANS