Microsoft to provide AccountGuard malware detector free to healthcare and humanitarian organizations

To protect healthcare providers and front line workers in the fight against COVID-19, Microsoft announced today that they are making their AccountGuard threat notification service available to healthcare providers and humanitarian organizations worldwide at no cost.   Organizations can begin signing up today using the links below.

Health organizations can sign up here

Humanitarian organizations can sign up here

Today’s announcement was a direct result of recent news reports that showed criminal and nation-state actors targeting organizations such as Paris’ hospital system, medical clinics in Texas and even international entities like the World Health Organization.  In the past year, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, or MSTIC, has also 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.

AccountGuard works by monitoring nation-state threat actors who are targeting enterprise email boxes and personal email boxes of employees or volunteers being monitored.  When an activity is seen, Microsoft’s team will notify the users, so they can proactively work to protect themselves.  The AccountGuard team also helps organizations to harden their defenses against all forms of cyberattacks.  Today, organizations that include Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Humans Rights are already using AccountGuard through an initial pilot program.

Microsoft AccountGuard has a proven track record having been used previously to protect high-profile political campaigns, members of the US Congress and just last year AccountGuard was used to prevent election meddling in Europe in 14 different countries.  Today supports close to 100,000 email accounts across 29 different countries.

AccountGuard will be available to all healthcare and humanitarian organizations until the COVID-19 pandemic ends.