Windows 11 Security: Makes your PC easier and safer to use for everyone

Online safety, data privacy, and security are top concerns for people and their families. Windows 11 is the most secure version of Windows yet. Users shouldn't have to worry about someone stealing their stuff when using a computer. It's important that security is something that's invisible and makes it easier for users to just use a computer without fear.

Smart Application Control

“Every day, there are about half a million new malware variants. The entire security industry is like playing this Whac-A-Tag game, but you don’t have to hunt for them anymore because we lock down the perimeter and only allow the safe stuff to run,” Karen, senior director of security data science, says.

“Intelligent application control is intelligent technology controlled by the cloud. It is learning and creating logic that understands which applications are safe to run and which ones should be blocked,” Mr. Kash, a product designer, explains.

Based on the 43 trillion security signals collected daily, the feature creates an AI model with intelligence to predict whether an app is safe. By enabling the predicted apps to be safe to run on your Windows PC, it gives you a sense of peace of mind and reassurance when downloading and installing apps on your PC.

Karen,Principal Security Data Science Manager

Kash,Senior Product Designer

Enhanced protection against phishing

“Naturally, people create bad passwords. They tend to start their password with a capital letter and end it with a special character. For example, in Seattle, one of the most popular passwords was Seahawks, regardless of the year they created the password.” Product Manager II, Sinclaire retrieved from research analysis of password behavior.

There are more than 800 password attacks every second of the day. Weak passwords, password spraying, and phishing are just a few of the different ways these attacks happen. As Microsoft Chief Information Security Officer Bret Arsenault says, “Hackers don’t break in, they get in.” But don’t worry. Windows 11 is making changes to help.

“If someone types their password into a phishing site, enhanced phishing protection will alert them and prompt them to change their password. It will also warn if they reuse their password or type their password into an application they shouldn’t.”

“It’s to prevent you from leaving passwords on documents you don’t want exposed,” Sinclaire says.

Sinclaire,Product Manager II

Memory integrity

“Memory integrity is also called hypervisor-protected code integrity. Code integrity checks to make sure that all the components running on the system haven’t been tampered with. And the hypervisor-protected part means that there’s an isolated environment within Windows where all this checking is done.” Program Manager II, Rob says.

With memory integrity, it is difficult for malicious programs to use low-level drivers to hijack your computer. It works by creating an isolated environment using hardware virtualization.

Think of it as a security protection inside a locked cockpit. This isolated environment (the locked cockpit in our analogy) prevents an attacker from manipulating the memory integrity feature. A program that wants to run a potentially dangerous piece of code has to pass the code to the memory integrity inside that virtual cockpit so that it can be checked. When the memory integrity feels comfortable that the code is safe, it hands the code over to Windows to run. Typically, this happens very quickly.

Without memory integrity in place, the "security protection" shines directly on the open end, where it is much easier for an attacker to interfere with or sabotage the protection, making it easier for malicious code to sneak in and cause problems.

Rob,Program Manager II

source: https://www.microsoft.com/es-es/windowsinsider/insidewindows11/article/windows-11-security