Emily Hacker did not expect to become a threat intelligence analyst at Microsoft after studying journalism in college. Her first job in cybersecurity was as a technical writer at an oil and gas firm. “I was editing intelligence reports, intelligence presentations, and helping with incident metrics. Over the course of that first year, I became absolutely enthralled with the work that intelligence analysts do.”
Emily’s work at Microsoft began in 2020 as an analyst for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for Office. One of the focus areas for these teams is to protect customers from threats associated with ransomware. Emily is directly involved in many of the investigations that built Microsoft’s knowledge of the RaaS economy and the access broker/operator/affiliate relationship, actively hunting for evidence of pre-ransomware signals.
“Following trends and techniques used by RaaS operators and their affiliates in the pre-ransom phase of an incident is critical to protecting customers from these types of threats” she said. “My job is to spot these pre-ransomware actors as early as possible. If you are only looking for the ransomware payload, itself – you’re too late.”
Follow Microsoft