Subj : Who says crime doesn't pa
To   : All
From : Mike Powell
Date : Mon Sep 01 2025 10:51 am

Hmmmmm......

Who says crime doesn't pay? Microsoft has deployed its own security chip on
all Azure servers to protect its customers from $10 trillion cybercrime
'pandemic'

Date:
Sun, 31 Aug 2025 19:04:00 +0000

Description:
Microsoft unveils Windows Resiliency Initiative in a bid to avoid another
CrowdStrike-like disruption in enterprise environments.

FULL STORY

Microsoft has revealed more on the custom-built security chip it deploys
across every Azure server, aiming to counter what it calls a cybercrime
pandemic now costing $10 trillion annually.

The Azure Integrated HSM , which was first announced in late 2024, is the
centerpiece of a wider security architecture the company outlined at the
recent Hot Chips 2025 event.

A slide Microsoft showed there claims the global cost of cybercrime is
currently $10.2 trillion - meaning it now ranks as the equivalent of the
third-largest economy in the world.

Azure security measures

The trillion-dollar estimate places cybercrime behind the United States and
China, but ahead of Germany and Japan, and also far bigger than the entire AI
market.

Microsoft said the scale of the threat requires both architectural and
operational changes.

As ServeTheHome reports, the company listed a number of statistics at the
event, including that Azure already spans more than 70 regions and 400 data
centers, supported by 275,000 miles of fiber and 190 network points of
presence, along with employing 34,000 engineers dedicated to security.

To take on the cybersecurity problem at a hardware level, Microsoft moved
from a centralized hardware security module model to its own Azure Integrated
HSM.

The custom ASIC is designed to meet FIPS 140-3 Level 3 requirements,
providing tamper resistance and local key protection within servers.

By embedding the chip in each system, cryptographic functions no longer need
to pass through a centralized cluster, reducing latency while enabling tasks
such as AES, PKE and intrusion detection locally.

ServeTheHome noted building an in-house chip required trade-offs. Instead of
scaling hardware security modules at a cluster level, Microsoft had to size
them for individual servers.

The result, the company argued, was a balance between performance, efficiency
and resilience.

The tech giant also presented its Secure by Design architecture at Hot Chips,
part of its Secure Future Initiative.

This includes Azure Boost, which offloads control plane services to a
dedicated controller and isolates them from customer workloads, and the
Datacenter Secure Control Module, which integrates Hydra BMC, and enforces a
silicon root of trust on management interfaces.

Confidential computing, backed by trusted execution environments, extends
protection to workloads in multi-tenant environments.

Caliptra 2.0, developed in collaboration with AMD, Google and Nvidia, anchors
security in silicon and now incorporates post-quantum cryptography through
the Adams Bridge project.

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/who-says-crime-doesnt-pay-microsoft-has-deployed
-its-own-security-chip-on-all-azure-servers-to-protect-its-customers-from-usd1
0-trillion-cybercrime-pandemic

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