"Protecting healthcare and human rights organizations from cyberattacks", 14 Apr 2020

We’re deeply concerned about cyberattacks impacting workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 fight. News reports have shown recent criminal or nation-state attacks targeting Brno University Hospital in the Czech Republic, Paris’ hospital system,... and even international bodies such as the World Health Organization. [At] Microsoft  [we] have also detected and responded to attacks targeting the healthcare sector in many countries, and we know they are coming from criminals and multiple nation-states. [O]ur threat intelligence teams have identified nation-state attacks against human rights organizations around the world..., both prior to and during the...pandemic. That’s why, starting today, we’re making our AccountGuard threat notification service available at no cost to healthcare providers on the front lines as well as human rights and humanitarian organizations... Human rights and humanitarian organizations can sign up here... While cybersecurity threats are not new to human rights defenders, these groups have been increasingly under attack, even before the pandemic arose. In the past year, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center...has tracked five separate nation-state activity groups that have attempted nearly nine hundred times to target or compromise hundreds of accounts belonging to employees of nine prominent human rights organizations around the world. Protecting these organizations has never been more important...