Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Itay Argoety

Idan Yehoshua Hen

Amir Harar

Tomer Haimovich

Dror Cohen

Jonathan Moshe Monsonego

Michael Shlomo Navat

Sridhar Periyasamy

Efrat Reef Guttman

Payal Rani

Techniques are described herein that are capable of using weighted peer groups to selectively trigger a security alert. A determination is made that an entity performs an operation. The entity has peers that are categorized among peer groups. For each peer group, an extent to which the peers in the peer group perform the operation is determined. Weights are assigned to the respective peer groups. For each peer group, the extent to which the peers in the peer group perform the operation and the weight that is assigned to the peer group are combined to provide a respective weighted group value. A risk score, which is based at least in part on the weighted group values of the peer groups, is assigned to the operation. The security alert regarding the operation is selectively triggered based at least in part on the risk score.

Using weighted peer groups to selectively trigger a security alert

Techniques for user impact potential based security alert management in computer systems are disclosed. One example technique includes receiving an alert indicating that a security rule has been violated by a user. The example technique can also include, in response to receiving the data representing the alert, determining an impact score of the user based on the profile of the user. The impact score represents a deviation of an assigned value to the profile of the user and a mean value of assigned values of profiles of all users in the organization. The example technique can further include calculating a ranking value of the alert in relation to other alerts based on the determine impact score and other impacts scores corresponding to the other alerts and selectively surfacing the alert to a system analyst based on the calculated ranking value in relation to other alerts.

User impact potential for security alert management

A dormant account identifier is disclosed. An inactive account can be determined based on whether a user activity of the account is outside a threshold amount. A determination can be made as to whether the inactive account is a dormant account based on account activity of a peer account to the inactive account.

Dormant account identifier

Conditionally initiating a security measure in response to an estimated increase in risk imposed related to a particular user of a computing network. The risk is determined using a rolling time window. Accordingly, sudden increases in risk are quickly detected, allowing security measures to be taken quickly within that computing network. Thus, improper infiltration into a computing network is less likely to escalate or move laterally to other users or resources within the computing network. Furthermore, the security measure may be automatically initiated using settings pre-configured by the entity. Thus, the security measures go no further than what the entity instructed, thereby minimizing risk of overreaching with the security measure.

Conditional security measures using rolling set of risk scores

Distributed computing system (DCS) performance is enhanced by caching optimizations. The DCS includes nodes with local caches. Resource accessors such as users are clustered based on their similarity, and the clusters are assigned to nodes. Then processing workloads are distributed among the nodes based on the accessors the workloads implicate, and based on which nodes were assigned to those accessors' clusters. Clustering may place security peers together in a cluster, and hence place peers together on a node. Security peers tend to access the same resources, so those resources will more often be locally cached, improving performance. Workloads implicating peers also tend to access the same resources, such as peers' behavior histories, so those resources will likewise tend to be cached locally, thus optimizing performance as compared for example to randomly assigning accessors to nodes without clustering and without regard to security peer groupings.

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Tel Aviv, Israel

Itay Argoety