In a cybersecurity landscape increasingly dominated by AI-augmented threats, industry giants Accenture and Microsoft announced on July 10, 2025, a strategic expansion of their longstanding partnership to develop next-generation security solutions powered by generative AI.
The timing is critical, as Accenture's recent State of Cyber Resilience 2025 report reveals that 90% of organizations globally are inadequately prepared to defend against AI-enhanced cyber threats. This vulnerability exists despite the rapid acceleration in the speed, sophistication, and scale of attacks targeting businesses across sectors.
"Global cyber threats, now leveraging AI, are intensifying in speed, sophistication and scale," said Paolo Dal Cin, global lead of Accenture Security. "By adopting automation and gen AI solutions, organizations can reimagine their SecOps and outpace rising adversarial cyber threats."
The partnership focuses on four strategic areas. First, SOC Modernization integrates Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, and Accenture's Adaptive MxDR with AI tools like Microsoft Security Copilot, enabling analysts to investigate threats faster and potentially increasing SOC efficiency by up to 30%. Second, their Automated Data Protection solution uses Microsoft Purview and Accenture's framework to automatically classify sensitive data across Microsoft 365 platforms. Third, their Security-Centric Migration approach streamlines legacy systems, potentially delivering cost savings of 35-50%. Finally, Enhanced Identity Management leverages Microsoft Entra Suite to implement passwordless authentication and governance at scale.
The collaboration has already demonstrated success with Nationwide Building Society in the UK. Through a large-scale migration to Microsoft Sentinel, Nationwide achieved a streamlined, unified security infrastructure that accelerates cyber threat detection. The project utilized a gen AI security information and event management capability co-developed by both companies that accelerated the migration of hundreds of terabytes of data.
"In a dynamic and complex threat environment, it's important that we continue to build on our existing cybersecurity operations to stay ahead of the game," said David Boda, chief security & resilience officer at Nationwide. "The use of generative AI to enable the migration allowed us to deliver the change more efficiently, in turn freeing up capacity for wider improvement activities."
This partnership represents part of a broader industry trend, as major tech firms increasingly collaborate to develop AI-powered security solutions that can match the evolving threat landscape.