A More Secure Microsoft Edge, and Other News from Ignite 2016

In the wake of highly publicized cyberattacks on big companies, Microsoft on Monday rolled out new security features for its Edge browser. Windows Defender Application Guard, developed for the company’s enterprise customers, will use Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology to isolate potential security threats.

“The threat landscape has changed significantly in recent years,” reads a Microsoft blog post on the new security package, announced at the company’s Ignite conference for IT professionals. “Today, over 90% of attacks use a hyperlink to initiate the attack to steal credentials, install malware, or exploit vulnerabilities.”

Application Guard kicks in when a user visits a site not trusted or recognized by the network administrator, creating a separate copy of Windows 10 that blocks access to sensitive resources including memory, local storage and other installed applications.

The new feature was just one of a number of announcements in the first two days of the Atlanta conference. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a partnership with Adobe that will bring together Redmond’s Azure cloud infrastructure with the former’s marketing software.

Nadella also spoke in detail about Microsoft’s artificial intelligence projects, which now rely on specialized, reprogrammable chips—known as field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs—designed in-house. He demonstrated how the lightning-fast processing capacity of the chips can translate 3 billion words in less than a tenth of a second.

“We want to democratize AI just like we brought information to your fingertips,” said Nadella, according to TechCrunch. He provided examples of how developers are using the Cortana Intelligence Suite to incorporate AI into their apps—from the NFL’s fantasy football bot to Uber’s use of facial recognition to verify drivers and passengers.

Microsoft also announced that Windows 10 is now on 400 million devices, up from 350 million in June but a slower pace of adoption than in previous quarters.