All democracies are vulnerable to foreign malign influence, particularly during periods of heightened geopolitical competition. Over the past year, foreign state actors such as Russia and China have attempted to unduly influence political outcomes throughout Africa by spreading conspiracy theories, creating fake news sites, and exacerbating existing social divisions.
Microsoft recently released this year’s Microsoft Digital Defense Report, which outlines the evolving threat landscape. The report highlights that NGOs and think tanks are the fourth most-targeted sector globally by state-sponsored threat groups.
In response to increasingly sophisticated digital threats, Microsoft is enhancing its commitment to cybersecurity in Africa through the introduction of Microsoft AccountGuard to the continent.
Protecting African democratic institutions
Microsoft AccountGuard, which is part of our Democracy Forward Initiative, is a cybersecurity service that adds an extra layer of protection to high-risk, highly targeted organizations. Microsoft AccountGuard is available for free to organizations using Microsoft 365 and can help secure their online accounts.
AccountGuard is designed to protect organizations that support a healthy democracy – entities in the political, electoral, journalism, think tank, human rights and nonprofit sectors – from nation–state cyberattacks. The program will initially be available in three new markets in Africa: Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, while we actively explore future expansion opportunities in Ghana and elsewhere. Moreover, expanding AccountGuard will broaden access to Microsoft’s cybersecurity solutions, including enhanced threat detection and notification services, helping African organizations manage evolving digital threats.
Malicious actors often choose the path of least resistance. That’s why integrating Microsoft AccountGuard into existing security measures provides an additional layer of defense, helping to detect and mitigate state-sponsored attacks.
AccountGuard provides the ability to deliver proactive threat notification alerts to help ensure eligible institutions are quickly informed of potential security risks and cyber threats including attacks by known nation-state actors. These protections extend not only to organizational accounts but also to personal accounts (e.g., Hotmail, Outlook, Skype, and Xbox accounts) of employees and affiliates, including the personal accounts of political campaign staff, IT admins, board members, or their immediate family members. Access to incident response services can provide expert guidance on security incidents, helping organizations understand the nature of attacks and recovery processes. Additionally, security trainings, best practice resources, workshops, and webinar access, and a direct line of support to Microsoft’s Democracy Forward team help organizations and individuals understand how to better protect themselves from future attacks.
AccountGuard also works with a range of trusted security partners should organizations need additional support, including Yubico for highly secure authentication solutions, and Quorum Cyber for cybersecurity assessments and incident response.
Expanding the impact of Microsoft AccountGuard
In this era of AI, we unfortunately witness many malicious actors using large language models (LLMs) to execute phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, and password spray attacks to name a few. To protect against these threats, it is imperative that we ensure customers are supported to defend against the various avenues that attackers may attempt to exploit.
Microsoft’s expansion of AccountGuard to Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa adds to the 36 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania where the service is currently available. It marks the beginning of further investments across the region as the service continues to become more widely accessible.
We encourage all AccountGuard-eligible customers in Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria to learn more and enroll today by visiting the website at accountguard.microsoft.com.