Enhancing Cybersecurity Resilience: Proactive Strategies Utilizing Microsoft Defender XDR Tools

Abstract

The continuous change and development of the cyber landscape and the technologies used necessitate the development of different approaches against increasing threats. Organizations can-not protect themselves against these complicated attacks and remain vulnerable to attacks when traditional approaches and technologies are not sufficient. Integrating proactive strategies into defense processes provides organization great advantages in cyber defense. Microsoft Defender XDR provides various tools to the organizations. These tools and technologies can be utilized to implement proactive strategies into processes and eliminate threats before they occur. Strategies that will increase organizations' cyber resilience using these tools offered by Microsoft Defender XDR are discussed with sample case studies. Technologies and tools like Exposure management, Attack path analysis, security posture management and attack simulation training are discussed, and best practices are explained and implemented to the processes. In this thesis, a framework has been tried to be presented. Organizations can use all these tools and technologies, or they can use some of them due to reasons such as license limitations or they can create their own models. As a result, the findings show that there are different and effective models for organizations to utilize Microsoft Defender XDR tools proactively.