Information integrity
An environment without trustworthy information is one in which democracy cannot flourish.
Preserving journalism
Healthy democracies require healthy journalism. Technology has played a role in the disruption of news, but it can also be an important part of the rebuilding effort.
Trusted sources
Today, information operations pose one of the most serious cyber threats and risks weakening the foundations of democracies worldwide. Technology and the Internet have played a part in the rise of this threat and should also be significant tools in combatting it.
Information literacy
Being an informed citizen is critical to participatory democracy; however, navigating the modern digital landscape for trusted news and information is complex. Finding, consuming, and sharing trusted information is an important skill, so more resources, tools, and educational efforts are required.
Freedom of expression
We will respect freedom of expression and uphold our customers’ ability to create, publish, and search for information via our platforms, products, and services.
Authoritative content
We will prioritize surfacing content to counter foreign cyber influence operations by utilizing internal and trusted third-party data on our products.
Demonetization
We will not willfully profit from foreign cyber influence content or actors.
Proactive efforts
We will proactively work to prevent our platforms and products from being used to amplify foreign cyber influence sites and content.
Fighting foreign influence: Ukraine and beyond
Our intelligence report, Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War, details Russian cyber aggression against Ukraine and its allies, including cyber enabled influence operations designed to support its war aims. The freedom of expression is an important tenet to counter foreign cyber influence operations.
Microsoft suspends new sales in Russia
We have suspended all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia —a concrete step in compliance with governmental sanctions decisions and in lockstep with the US, UK, and European Union.
The hybrid war in Ukraine
Learn about the destructive Russian cyberattacks targeting civilians and critical institutions they rely on in Ukraine.
Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War
The latest findings in our ongoing threat intelligence efforts in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and a series of conclusions from its first four months reinforces the need for ongoing and new investments in technology, data, and partnerships to support governments, companies, NGOs, and universities.
Extending our vital technology support for Ukraine
Microsoft has extended tech support free of charge for Ukraine through 2023 to ensure government, critical infrastructure, and other sectors in Ukraine can continue to serve citizens through the Microsoft Cloud.
AccountGuard
A cybersecurity service that adds an extra layer of protection to the high-risk, highly-targeted organizations that underpin a healthy democracy. Free for Microsoft 365 customers.
Election Security Advisors
This offering provides affordable access to world-class cyber incident responders. Highly targeted, critical organizations can receive either reactive cyber incident response services or proactive security assessments of their environments. Election Security Advisors (ESA) is made possible via a partnership with the Microsoft Detection & Response Team.
Preserving and protecting journalism
Partnering with Davis Wright Tremaine, Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Knight Foundation, we're piloting the Protecting Journalists Pro Bono Program. It provides free legal support to journalists and small news organizations across three workstreams: pre-publication review, access to public records, and defending journalists against subpoenas.
Supporting local newsrooms
Working directly in five communities across the country, Microsoft, in partnership with community foundations and other organizations, is providing new tools, technology, and capacity to explore hybrid business models for sustainable journalism to journalists and newsrooms.
Community journalism matters
The Western Iowa Journalism Foundation's mission is to support community journalism that ensures long-term access to accurate local news and investigative reporting throughout western Iowa.
Building Americans' trust in voting
The Council of State Governments recently announced the formation of a new Election Technology Initiative, of which Microsoft’s ElectionGuard will be its first project. This is an exciting inflection point for ElectionGuard, an effort that Microsoft has been developing and investing in for over five years.
Democracy depends on information literacy
Microsoft is committed to strengthening news and media literacy because of the central role it plays in a healthy information ecosystem. We firmly believe that information literacy is essential and critical to preserving and strengthening democracy.
A partnership to increase trust in voting
Hart InterCivic is the first private vendor to partner with Microsoft on using its open-source ElectionGuard system. ElectionGuard will make voting secure, more accessible, and more efficient anywhere it's used in the United States or in democratic nations around the world.
Project Providence
Project Providence is a collaboration between Truepic and Microsoft to authenticate digital media captured on smartphones by verifying the origin, time, date, location, and source. The platform can detect any modifications since the media was captured and provides a record of its provenance and authenticity. It is being utilized by the Ukrainian NGO Anti-Corruption Headquarters (ACHQ) as part of the USAID ENGAGE program to capture secure photo evidence of cultural heritage site destruction in Ukraine to increase accountability, transparency, and advocacy for ACHQ's efforts.
Nota
Nota and Microsoft have teamed up to bring AI-enabled tools to publishers, particularly small or medium sized minority-owned publishers or those located near news deserts, that help cut pain points and build efficiency. Nota’s tools help publishers and journalists focus on creating and sharing meaningful content, and help build a more robust news ecosystem.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems: IFES
Microsoft and IFES partner on projects related to strengthening investigative journalism and threat detection in elections worldwide.
NewsGuard
Microsoft and NewsGuard partner on news literacy efforts, offering all users of Microsoft Edge Browser free access to NewsGuard's ratings and nutrition labels and providing data to Microsoft Bing search engine.
Defending Digital Campaigns
Microsoft and Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) are partnering to secure political parties and campaigns from cyberattacks by making world-class security products and services available at a lower cost.
Yubico
Yubico and the Microsoft AccountGuard team are increasing the security of online identity and logins by providing phishing-resistant hardware security keys and security trainings to AccountGuard customers.
C2PA
Microsoft is an active member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authority, working to further define and standardize an end-to-end process for publishing, distribution, and attaching signals to a piece of content to demonstrate its integrity.
Report for America
An initiative of the GroundTruth project, RFA places emerging journalists into five local rural newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. We're working to provide capacity, technology, training, and extra support.
ie University
The Center for the Governance of Change at IE University and Microsoft partnered to launch AI4Democracy - a global initiative that seeks to create knowledge and mobilize democratic governments, companies, and civil society to promote action for a responsible use of artificial intelligence to defend and strengthen democracy.