How Microsoft Integrates AI into Security | Binil Pillai

**Binil Pillai** (0:00)
Overall, ransomware attacks have been up almost 300 percent in the past year, and over 50 percent targeting small businesses.
The economic cost of these attacks for small and medium business can be catastrophic. With over 60 percent of small businesses are not being able to operate after they have been experienced a cyber attack. This is a painful reality, and this is where Microsoft as a company, together with our partner ecosystem, want to reach out to the SMB customers and engage them to accelerate their digital transformation journey with security.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:39)
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Welcome back to Dev Interrupted, everyone. I'm your host, Conor Bronsdon, and I'm here today with Binil Pillai. Binil is the worldwide SMB Security Strategy Head at Microsoft. Thanks so much for joining me, Binil.

**Binil Pillai** (1:37)
Thanks for having me here. Thank you.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:39)
Yeah, it's great to catch up with you. We've had some amazing conversations on security in the past, and I'm so glad to have you on this show because this conversation's importance continues to grow. The evolving threat landscape that we're seeing in cybersecurity today can be really concerning, and it's hard to know how AI is going to impact that. And we're really seeing that change how security functions in today's digital space. The space is changing so rapidly, and the threats, but also opportunities for businesses, are evolving.
And this is a topic that I don't think we address often enough here on Dev Interrupted. It's an area of risk for many companies that are hyper-focused on building new features and delivering customer value, but maybe underestimating the risks of their security posture.
And with that in mind, Binil, I'd love to ask you to introduce yourself so the audience gets to know you before we dive into the meat of why this matters so much.

**Binil Pillai** (2:31)
Absolutely. Again, thank you so much for having me here. My name is Binil Pillai, and I lead Microsoft Security Business for small and medium customer segments worldwide.
I've been with Microsoft for almost 12 years, helping customers transform digitally with security value proposition.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:50)
Fantastic. And Binil, I know this is something you're really passionate about because you've seen, and I know Microsoft has seen this, where security in SMB has not always been a priority, and it seems like that's a major concern for you and the work you've done.

**Binil Pillai** (3:06)
Absolutely. So this is an area for a high interest, not only from a Microsoft as a company point, if you add from a worldwide stand, this is a combined responsibility, including Microsoft, to address the need for the customer and help them to improve their security posture. So we took it as a mission, how we can help customers to improve the security posture.
At the same time, how we can help the community to understand much about security, so their position is much better in terms of ensuring as a consumer, as an enterprise, or as a small and medium business owners. So that's a big mission that we have in place in Microsoft today.

**Conor Bronsdon** (3:45)
Why is it that you see SMB as particularly a risk for security compared to other segments?

**Binil Pillai** (3:52)
Yeah, I think you see small and medium business account for the maturity of businesses worldwide, and are important contributors to job creation and global economic development. They represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide. If you look at in the US, we have nearly 32 million small businesses, which account 99% of all US businesses. So in this small and medium business driven world, things are rapidly changing due to an urgency in digital transformation enabled by cloud and AI services.
After COVID-19, majority of SMBs are following a hybrid work environment where their workers are increasingly distributed, able to work on kind of more flexible schedules in a variety of places with increased mobility and across more and more devices that might be company provided or personal devices, for example, iPhone. All this newfound freedom is refreshing and great for the workforce, but this distributed landscape can also pose security challenges. A couple of statistics. Overall, ransomware attacks have been up almost 300% in the past year and over 50% targeting small businesses. The economic cost of these attacks for small and medium business can be catastrophic.