Microsoft’s Vasu Jakkal on how gen AI is redefining cybersecurity

VentureBeat recently sat down (virtually) with Vasu Jakkalcorporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, governance and privacy at Microsoft, to gain insight into how AI, machine learning (ML), generative AI, and emerging technologies are redefining cybersecurity.

The jackal leads Microsoft securityone of Microsoft’s fastest-growing divisions that achieved 20 billion dollars in income at the beginning of last year. She previously served as executive vice president and chief marketing officer at FireEye and as vice president of enterprise marketing at Brocade.

The key takeaway from her interview with VentureBeat is that AI is at the core of Microsoft’s security DNA, and she and the senior management team see next-generation AI as an indispensable technology for lowering barriers to a more inclusive, productive and diverse industry. For them last fiscal year, Microsoft achieved record annual revenue of more than $245 billion, up 16 percent year-over-year, and operating income of more than $109 billion, up 24 percent.

CEO Nadella: Security is Microsoft’s top priority

During Microsoft’s fiscal year 25 earnings for the first quarter are tellingchairman a CEO Satya Nadella stated that “we continue to prioritize safety above all else. Nadella continued: “For example, Security Copilot is used by companies in every industry, including Clifford Chance, Intesa Sanpaolo and Shell, to perform SecOps tasks faster and more accurately. And we also help customers protect their AI deployments. Customers have used Defender to discover and secure more than 750,000 instances of AI applications; and used Purview to audit over a billion Copilot interactions to meet their compliance obligations.”

He writes his letter in this year’s annual reportNadella emphasized how important security is to Microsoft’s future, saying that “security is at the core of every layer of our technology stack.” Nadella emphatically writes, “We are doubling down on our Secure Future Initiative as we implement our principles of secure by design, secure by default, and secure operations. We focus on continuous progress across the initiative’s six pillars: tenant protection and isolation of production systems; protect identities and secrets; protect networks; protect engineering systems; monitor and detect threats; and speed up response and remediation.

Nadella says: “As part of this commitment, all Microsoft employees now have security as a ‘top priority,’ making each of us responsible for creating secure products and services.”

The following is an excerpt from VentureBeat’s interview with Jakkal.

VentureBeat: Can you start by sharing how Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI) has changed the company’s approach to cybersecurity and culture?

Jackal: The The Safe Future initiative is more than just technology – it’s about transformation. With more than 34,000 equivalent engineers dedicated to the effort, it is one of the largest engineering moves in cybersecurity. We aim to be Secure by Design, Secure by Default and Secure in Operations. However, it is also a change in our way of thinking – everyone at Microsoft is now responsible for security, not just a specialized team. This is how we make progress.

I think it is our role and duty to provide these platforms. I came to Microsoft because of our mission and empowering all possibilities, and I love security because I think it’s a great place for everyone to make an impact. When we launched our Secure Future Initiative last November, yes, it was about protecting Microsoft and creating a resilient Microsoft, but it’s about so much more. It’s about securing the world in this age of AI, creating equity, equality and opportunity for everyone to participate. Because when I go around and meet not only women, men, women, all people, all aspects, and they say, look, you can have a great meaningful career that’s tied to purpose. You can have a great career.

VB: How does generative AI empower defenders and what role does Security Copilot play?

Jackal: I feel that gen AI will be a game changer in this industry. I will share some statistics with you. Three years back in 2021, we saw 567 identity-related attacks that were password-related attacks; that’s a lot of attacks per second. Today, that number is 7,000 password attacks per second and over 1,500 monitored threat actors. Security Copilot helps level the playing field. It uses Microsoft security data and GPT OpenAI models to simplify tasks, whether it’s incident analysis or reporting automation. For early career defenders, this improved speed by 26% and accuracy by 35%. For experienced professionals, it is 22% faster and 7% more accurate. But the most meaningful statistic for me? Over 90% of users said they would use it again. This is what we call the “joy status”. That’s why I like gen AI because I think this tool will make it easier for everyone to become a defender. And that’s a game changer for me.

VB: Could you elaborate on how exposure management and how the combination of AI, human collaboration and threat management orchestrated in your new exposure management direction will streamline the performance of the Security Operations Center (SOC)?

Jackal: For several years now, we’ve been moving towards what we call a unified SOC or unified SecOps, which was one of our visions, that it’s difficult for defenders when there are too many alerts. I mean the noise to signal ratio is pretty high. And so the idea behind our SOC was to take advanced detection and response, our XDR capabilities, which is really Defender, that’s our tool, and take our SIEM capabilities, which is Sentinel, and bring them together. So we have a unified pane of glass, and exposure management really fits in there because along with our extended detection response, so we’re not just looking at endpoints, but endpoints and identities and data security and cloud security, all of these things, exposure management is just integrated into it. So you can go into Defender and your SOC teams have our exposure management capabilities and it helps your teams just as much as threat protection tools help you detect and respond. Our exposure management tools help you map out all the potential paths that attackers take because I think defense is great, but I think the best defense is prevention.

VB: Why has Microsoft made exposure management a cornerstone of its proactive defense strategy?

Jackal: Attackers think in charts, defenders in lists or silos. Defenders have to think in charts. For gen AI, this is super critical, and that’s what exposure management is. We are actively incorporating graphing capabilities into our security products. Exposure management is our first product, along with of course gen AI, to take advantage of these charting capabilities. And now, for the first time, it allows you to bring attack surface management, attack path analysis, how to see your digital assets as an attacker would see them, and start looking at all the potential paths and how an attacker can get in. also have this cool thing where you find choke points. Are there many attack paths passing through one point and what does it look like? And that uses these charting capabilities. We already have 70,000 tenants in which exposure management is activated. And we work with an ecosystem of third parties because security is a team sport.

VB: How does exposure management enhance defender capabilities within a unified SOC?

Jackal: Exposure management fits perfectly into our vision of a unified security operations center (SOC). It combines tools like Defender for detection and Sentinel for response into one cohesive system. Integrating exposure information gives defenders a clear map of attack paths and risks. The idea is to make prevention as seamless as detection and response, giving defenders a single, actionable view.

VB: What role does diversity play in Microsoft’s cybersecurity vision?

Jackal: We talk about graphs that are critical and the generation of AI, but ultimately cybersecurity is about people and how to empower people to use these technologies so that we can change cultures. The Secure Future Initiative, graph-based capabilities, artificial intelligence, and all other initiatives are leading to a massive cultural transformation that involves everyone. I think you’ve heard me say that security should be for everyone and should be for everyone. And that is the purpose we are fulfilling. Cybersecurity thrives from diverse perspectives because attackers are diverse and our defenders should be as well. It’s about creating opportunities and making sure everyone can be part of the solution.

VB: How does Microsoft make AI tools accessible and fair to defenders?

Jackal: Accessibility is key. We design tools like Security Copilot to be intuitive so defenders of all skill levels can use them effectively. By democratizing advanced capabilities, we ensure that even smaller organizations have access to the same powerful tools as large enterprises.
Because imagine how many people will have access to all these tools, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, you can start. And our attackers are quite diverse. Our world is quite diverse. So if our defenders don’t reflect the diversity in our world, how can we expect to stay ahead? So I think these tools, whether it’s generative AI or the graph that we create or the platform, will also help us do the same.

VB: What is your ultimate vision for Microsoft’s cybersecurity initiatives?

Jackal: Our goal is to empower defenders and build a safer digital world. With tools like Security Copilot and Exposure Management, we’re changing the way organizations approach cyber security, ensuring they stay ahead of evolving threats. It’s about making cybersecurity accessible to everyone and creating a resilient and inclusive future.