Microsoft to add Defender antivirus software to Linux, iOS and Android

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection antivirus software will soon be available on Linux, with plans to push it to Android and iOS soon, the tech giant has said. 

The company will make the announcement for Linux at the RSA Conference, which starts on Monday 24 February in San Francisco. 

The feature was actually previewed at Microsoft's Ignite conference last year. It will be supported on Linux server versions RHEL 7+, CentOS Linux 7+, Ubuntu 16 LTS, or higher LTS, SLES 12+, Debian 9+, and Oracle EL 7.

What's more, the investment will extend to mobile platforms, namely Android and iOS, which will be seen in a preview. The aim is for these to be available by the end of the year. 

Microsoft also announced the general availability of its Threat Protection service, which is a security system that automates defence by "hunting" for issues across users, email, applications and other endpoints. This also includes Mac and Linux, Microsoft noted. 

"It brings together alerts and takes action using AI and automation," Ann Johnson, Microsoft corporate VP of cyber security solutions wrote in a blog post. 

"Microsoft Threat Protection breaks down security silos so security professionals can automatically detect, investigate and stop coordinated multi-point attacks. It weeds out the unimportant and amplifies signals that might have been missed, freeing defenders to work on the incidents that need their attention."

Microsoft also announced the general availability of Azure Sentinel connect for IoT, which included a service for importing AWS CloudTrail logs at no extra cost, starting on 24 February and ending 30 June 2020.

What's more, the company has also announced that Insider Risk Management will be rolled out to customers over the next few days.