Over $1 billion annually on cyber security research and development in the coming years would continue to be invested by the U.S. software firm Microsoft Corp.

Bharat Shah, Microsoft vice president of security, said on the sidelines of the firm’s BlueHat cyber security conference in Tel Aviv that this amount does not include acquisitions Microsoft may make in the sector.

“As more and more people use cloud, that spending has to go up,” Shah said.

According to Microsoft data, the number of attempted cyber attacks had now risen to 600,000-700,000 while it was 20,000 a week two or three years ago.

to control the still fledgling market, Microsoft is dueling with larger rival Amazon.com in the could computing market which has been its focus for some time now even as the company has been long known for its Windows software.

There was a rise of 116 percent in the quarterly sales from its flagship cloud product Azure, which businesses can use to host their websites, the company said in October.

Enterprise security startup Aorato, cloud security firm Adallom, and Secure Islands, whose data and file protection technology has been integrated into cloud service Azure Information Protection are the three security firms, all in Israel, that the company had bought in a little over two years in addition to its internal security investments.

Financial details of these deals were not disclosed.

“If you are talking about an ecosystem with more than 400 start-ups it’s not really a coincidence. Israel is huge in security,” said Secure Islands founder Yuval Eldar.

Including this week an undisclosed amount in Illusive Networks, which uses deception technology to detect attacks and has been installed at banks and retailers, Microsoft’s venture arm has also made three cyber security investments in Israel.

It invested in Israel’s Team8, which created Illusive Networks, Microsoft said earlier this month.

Shah said that “we look at lots of different technologies that might be of use in the future,” even though Microsoft does not have any near-term plans to implement deception technology.

progress should be made in moving toward broader implementation of user authentication without need for a password in the next year or so, Shah believes.

Windows Hello, which allows users to scan their face, iris or fingerprints to verify their identity and sign in is a part of the Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system.

(Adapted from Reuters)

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