Redmond wants to provide firms with enhanced security

Dec 7, 2016 07:10 GMT  ·  By

The upcoming Creators Update will bring lots of improvements for Windows 10 devices, and now Microsoft is revealing that it’s paying particular attention to the security offered to businesses with this new release.

In a lengthy blog post today, Microsoft provides an in-depth look at some of the security improvements in the next Windows 10 OS update, explaining that the company’s goal is to help IT admins “to better protect, defend and respond to threats on their networks and devices.”

First and foremost, Microsoft will introduce new tweaks for the Windows Security Center (first launched in the Anniversary Update in August), so it will link to Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection as well.

New actions and insights in Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) will also be added in the Creators Update, and Microsoft says that this should help investigate and respond to network attacks.

“With the Creators Update we will expand Windows Defender ATP sensors to detect threats that persist only in memory or kernel level exploits. This will enable IT administrators to monitor loaded drivers and in-memory activities, and to detect various patterns of injection, reflective loading, and in-memory modifications indicating potential kernel exploits,” Microsoft explains.

UEFI improvements

The Windows Defender ATP will also be updated with new post-infection tools, so IT admins will have more tools to isolate systems, collect forensics, kill and clean running processes.

Microsoft will also debut a new UEFI conversation tool that will be integrated into management solutions such as the System Center Configuration Manager to ease the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

“For those customers who have already provisioned modern Windows PCs that support UEFI but installed Windows 7 using legacy BIOS, converting a device to UEFI required an IT manager to repartition the disc and reconfigure the firmware. This meant they would need to physically touch each device in their enterprise,” the company said.

The Windows 10 Creators Update will go live in the spring of 2017, and sources familiar with the matter have said the target date is March with Windows 10 version 1703.