Microsoft is going to make cloud logs available for free to business customers. The company does this after a stir earlier this week, when Microsoft made logs only available to certain paying customers, while the company also warned of state hackers.
Microsoft writes in a blog post that it will make cloud logs generally available to all business customers, regardless of their plan, in the coming months. These are logs that are created in cloud services such as Exchange Online or Microsoft 365. Administrators of these must pay extra if they want to see extensive logs; that required Microsoft Purview Audit , or a package that included it, such as Enterprise E5 or G5 for Microsoft 365.
Purview Audit is now available for free to all cloud subscription customers. The package will be split up. The free version is called Standard and includes email access logs and “thirty other types of log data previously available only to paying customers.” The default retention period is also going up. It used to be 90 days, but it will be 180.
In addition, a paid version of Purview Audit will be released. It’s called Premium. That package is available for E5 and G5 customers. It has the same options as Standard, but also has extra analyzes and can be integrated into Office 365 with an API. The retention period is also longer with one year as standard, but optionally even ten years.
Microsoft says it is working with the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, for the offering. It is not known what form this collaboration will take. It is therefore not clear whether the US government is paying money to fund the program.
The step is taken after a fuss about Microsoft’s logging policy last week. The company then warned that the suspected Chinese state hacker group Storm-0558 had penetrated customer inboxes. Customers who wanted to know if they were a potential victim could look it up in logs, but they were only available if they paid. CISA says it is happy with the move . “Asking companies to pay for necessary logging creates insufficient visibility when investigating cybersecurity incidents.” Hackers could thus achieve “dangerous successes in attacking American organizations,” says the government agency.
