In my latest posting on Geekwire, “Microsoft unleashes ‘Death Star’ on SolarWinds hackers in extraordinary response to breach” I draw on my past experiences being on the teams running the biggest incidents at Microsoft. In this I give what I think is the fullest picture ever on what Microsoft has done in a major incident, in this case the ongoing SolarWinds incident.
Microsoft doesn’t do this for all incidents, but this isn’t the only incident they’ve pulled out the stops like this. Unfortunately no one outside of the teams has ever really understood how much they can and do do at times.
In that way, this article is dedicated to the literally hundreds if not thousands of people who have worked these incidents at Microsoft over the years, many of whom I had the true honor and pleasure of working with.
Update 12/28/2020: As a follow up I’m happy to say I’ve heard from several people that this has been making the rounds internally at Microsoft and has made people who otherwise haven’t gotten credit for work feel they got some credit. That makes me very happy.
Also, I’m told that about two weeks after posting, this has racked up around 800,000 page views, making it one of the best performing article ever for Geekwire.