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SECURE FUTURE INITIATIVE

Security above all else

"Microsoft runs on trust, and trust must be earned and maintained. Our pledge to our customers and our community is to prioritize your cybersafety above all else."

Charlie Bell, EVP Security, Microsoft

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Explore actionable patterns and practices from
the Secure Future Initiative (SFI)

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SFI patterns and practices

Secure access at scale with phishing-resistant MFA

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SFI patterns and practices

Build security into your complete production infrastructure

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SFI patterns and practices

Strengthen compliance with clear log-retention practices

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SFI patterns and practices

Detect and respond to threats in real time

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SFI patterns and practices

Retire outdated systems before they become liabilities

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SFI patterns and practices

Block identity-based attacks before they spread

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SFI patterns and practices

Cut risk exposure time with rapid vulnerability fixes

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SFI patterns and practices

Build securely at scale with standardized pipelines

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Principles

Microsoft Secure Future Initiative

Three principles anchor our approach to the Secure Future Initiative (SFI). We’re continuously applying what we’ve learned from incidents to improve our methods and practices, ensuring that security is paramount in everything we create and provide.

Foundations

Foundations of the Secure Future Initiative

Successful business operations and change management are predicated on people, process, and technology working in harmony. These are the foundations of SFI.

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Security-first culture

Culture is reinforced through daily behaviors. Regular meetings between engineering executive vice presidents, SFI leaders, and all management levels ensure bottom-up, end-to-end problem-solving that ingrains security thinking into our everyday actions.

Security governance

We're elevating security governance with a new framework led by the chief information security officer. This will introduce a partnership with engineering teams to oversee SFI, manage risks, and report progress to leadership.

Continuous security improvement

SFI empowers every employee at Microsoft to prioritize security, driven by a growth mindset of continuous improvement. We integrate feedback and learnings from incidents into our standards, enabling secure design and operations at scale.

Paved paths and standards

Paved paths are best practices that optimize productivity, compliance, and security. These become standards when they enhance security or the developer experience. With SFI, we set and measure standards across all six prioritized security pillars.

Pillars

Secure Future Initiative pillars

The six SFI pillars include goals and actions that define our approach to security.

FAQ

The Microsoft Secure Future Initiative, launched in November of 2023, is a multiyear commitment that advances the way we design, build, test, and operate our Microsoft technology to ensure that our solutions meet the highest possible standards for security.
Microsoft launched SFI to prepare for the increasing scale and high stakes of cyberattacks. SFI brings together every part of Microsoft to advance cybersecurity protection across our company and products. We carefully considered what we saw across Microsoft and what we heard from customers, governments, and partners to identify our greatest opportunities to impact the future of security. For more information on our initial announcement about SFI, see our blog post.
We plan to keep ourselves accountable and provide the latest SFI news to customers, partners, and the security community through regular updates.

RESOURCES

Explore Secure Future Initiative resources

Keep up with the latest SFI information.

IDC

SFI in action

IDC highlights Microsoft’s efforts to reduce attack surfaces and modernize.

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Blog

Explore our progress with SFI

Read the latest SFI report (April 2025), which discusses our advancements in this multiyear journey to bolster cybersecurity for Microsoft, our customers, and the industry at large.

Read the blog

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Blog

Our commitment to Secure by Design

We’re proud to share our progress one year after signing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “Secure by Design Pledge,” reinforcing our commitment to embed security at every stage of product development.

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Tech Tips

Watch SFI Tech Tips

The SFI Tech Tips show provides bite-sized technical tips from Microsoft security experts. Learn how to uplift the security posture in your own environment by implementing recommendations from one of the six engineering pillars of the SFI.

Watch the show