Microsoft is expanding its Defending Democracy Program with a new initiative called Microsoft AccountGuard, to provide cybersecurity protection at no extra cost to all candidates and campaign offices in the US, as well as think tanks and political organizations.
The initiative became necessary following recently discovered espionage attempts stemming from the Russian-backed hacking group, Fancy Bear with several fake websites created by the group that mimic two of American institutions: Hudson Institute and International Republican Institute, with three domains that looks like the official US Senate websites.
The company claims that its Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) had successfully executed a court order to disrupt and transfer control of six internet domains created by the group, and haven used the approach 12 times in two years to shut down about 84 fake websites associated with the hacking group.
Microsoft AccountGuard will provide three basic services that will cover both organizational and personal email accounts: first, it will serve threat notification across the connected accounts, secondly provide security guidance and ongoing education and lastly, it will provide preview releases of new security features on par with the services offered to large corporate and government account customers.
The Defending Democracy Program was launched in April with focus on four priorities: protecting voting and electoral campaigns from hacking, and securing the electoral process; coupled with increasing political advertising transparency, and defending against disinformation campaigns.
The technology is currently available free of charge to US candidates, campaigns and related political institutions using Office 365. Albeit, Microsoft promises to extend AccountGuard to additional countries in the coming months, as they continue to invest in and evolve other aspects of the Defending Democracy Program worldwide.
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