Education and Awareness

Helping Customers Protect Themselves Online Is a Top Priority

Published: February 15, 2005 | Updated: July 25, 2007

The Internet and e-mail are vibrant resources, powerful tools, and a critical part of the world's communications and business infrastructure. They are also under constant attack. The spam, phishing, and online threats have evolved from an annoyance into a threat that challenges the viability of electronic communications for users worldwide. Most spam contains misleading information designed to generate an online purchase or, worse, to trick recipients into disclosing sensitive personal information or confidential corporate data or downloading malicious software. At Microsoft, we believe we must not only deliver strong technology to address online problems, but also provide information and resources to empower individuals and organizations to better understand how they can help protect themselves.

Helping Users Know Where to Start

Nothing can guarantee complete safety in cyberspace, but much can be done to help users understand and minimize their exposure to risk. We make available a wide range of resources to help users protect their computers and their personal information.

•	Find guidance about minimizing your exposure to risk Instructions, advice, tools, and videos are available to help protect children online, combat online fraud, reduce spam, avoid phishing scams, and preserve privacy.

Top of page

Helping Businesses Protect Their Brands Online

Spammers and scammers are increasingly exploiting well-known brands to trick e-mail filters and e-mail users into thinking that their messages are legitimate. Microsoft offers the following resources to help businesses protect their brands online.

•

Sender ID This site provides information, tools, and an implementation wizard, which allows you to easily create a Sender ID record to protect your domain from phishing and forged e-mail messages. Microsoft encourages organizations looking to protect their domains to consider using the Sender ID e-mail authentication framework.

•	Microsoft Small Business Center This site provides an overview of security issues affecting small businesses and discusses preventative solutions.

•	Microsoft TechNet Security This site gives IT professionals the information they need to help secure their systems.

•	Microsoft Security Developer Center This site provides guidance and tools for software developers.

•	Office Online This site provides guidance for productivity software users, including information about how to try to avoid junk mail.

•	Find tips for avoiding junk mail in Outlook

Promoting Industry and Partner Progress

To help implement key technology solutions, we are working with industry partners, standards organizations, and governmental agencies to develop implementation guides, tools, and other resources to help our customers and partners more easily deploy and integrate emerging solutions. These assets are available through sponsored customer summits, participation at industry events, and online. Microsoft works with key stakeholders who have a common objective of improving online safety, confidence, and productivity throughout the Internet ecosystem.

•	Read about how the industry is collaborating to improve online safety

Top of page