An increasing amount of cybercrime is making news these days, including a rather notable hack of the Adobe database that revealed data for millions of the company’s customers. Microsoft is no stranger to security issues, as the company is forced to release patches on a monthly basis to thwart the constant influx of holes in its software. But, this constant battle has hardened the software maker, and at least taught it to stay vigilant, as hacked customers are rather bad for business.
To ease the fears of its millions of worldwide customers, the company has created a web site that shows its security center in real time — well, not really, it’s a video loop, but it does give a bit of insight into why this glass-walled room exists. “Last year, an army of five million zombie computers began taking marching orders from an Eastern European cybercriminal kingpin.”
The company also points out a few rather scary stats, including that roughly half of adults have been victim to cybercrime in the past year, it has cost the global economy approximately $500 billion and that one in five small and medium businesses have been targeted. “We wanted to protect our customers,” says Richard Boscovich, assistant general counsel for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit. “As a result, we’re hopefully identifying or producing evidence that we can provide to national and international law enforcement so they can not only identify these criminals but apprehend them.”
The new site, reveled by the company today via its Facebook page, shows off, not only the video loop, but also still images of the unit. You can check out the site by visiting the VIA link below. There are also a wrath of statistics and information included. Microsoft concludes by stating that it believes “that the work at the Cybercrime Center gives the company a great opportunity to do good for the world and do well for ourselves at the same time.”
Further reading: Cybersecurity, Microsoft, Security
