BeyondTrust Microsoft Vulnerability Report 2024

Keypoints

• Annual cybersecurity reports by major vendors, such as Microsoft, typically include sections like executive summaries, key data highlights, vulnerability overviews, expert insights, risk mitigation strategies, and methodological notes, providing a comprehensive view of the threat landscape.
• These reports often present key statistics, such as total vulnerabilities, critical vulnerabilities, and the distribution across products, revealing evolving trends such as plateauing vulnerability counts and decreasing critical flaws over time.
• Notable findings include a slight decrease in total vulnerabilities in 2023, stabilization of numbers over four years, and significant reductions in specific areas like Azure, Dynamics 365, and legacy products nearing end-of-life.
• Recurring themes involve the dominance of Elevation of Privilege attacks, the rise of Denial of Service and Spoofing vulnerabilities, and shifting attacker focus toward identity and credential theft as vulnerabilities stabilize.
• The reports highlight how improvements in security practices, such as migration to newer codebases (e.g., Chromium-based Edge), EOL policies, and proactive patching, contribute to a downward trend in critical vulnerabilities.
• Nevertheless, ongoing risks remain from legacy systems, unpatched software, and sophisticated attack vectors like supply chain issues, emphasizing continuous vigilance and strategic vulnerability management.