CrowdStrike Launches Falcon OverWatch for Defender BLOG Featured Now Live: The CrowdStrike 2026 Financial Services Threat Landscape Report May 14, 2026 Falcon AIDR Detects Threats at the Prompt Layer in Kubernetes AI Applications May 13, 2026 May 2026 Patch Tuesday: 30 Critical Vulnerabilities Among 130 CVEs May 12, 2026 Inside CrowdStrike Automated Leads: A Transformative Approach to Threat Detections May 11, 2026 Recent Video Video Highlights the 4 Key Steps to Successful Incident Response Dec 02, 2019 Helping Non-Security Stakeholders Understand ATT&CK in 10 Minutes or Less [VIDEO] Feb 21, 2019 Analyzing Targeted Intrusions Through the ATT&CK Framework Lens [VIDEO] Jan 22, 2019 Qatar’s Commercial Bank Chooses CrowdStrike Falcon®: A Partnership Based on Trust [VIDEO] Aug 20, 2018 Category Agentic SOC How Charlotte AI AgentWorks Fuels Security's Agentic Ecosystem 03/25/26 CrowdStrike Services and Agentic MDR Put the Agentic SOC in Reach 03/24/26 4 Ways Businesses Use CrowdStrike Charlotte AI to Transform Security Operations 03/12/26 Inside the Human-AI Feedback Loop Powering CrowdStrike’s Agentic Security 02/10/26 Cloud & Application Security 05/13/26 CrowdStrike Named a Leader in Frost & Sullivan 2026 Radar for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms 04/27/26 CrowdStrike Expands Real-Time Cloud Detection and Response to Google Cloud 04/22/26 CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security Delivered 264% ROI Through Unified Cloud Protection Threat Hunting & Intel 05/14/26 CrowdStrike Named a Leader in the First-Ever Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cyberthreat Intelligence Technologies 05/06/26 05/05/26 Tune In: The Future of AI-Powered Vulnerability Discovery 05/01/26 Endpoint Security & XDR 05/11/26 CrowdStrike Falcon Platform Achieves 441% ROI in Three Years 04/21/26 Falcon for IT Supports Windows Secure Boot Certificate Lifecycle Management 04/01/26 Enhanced Network Visibility: A Dive into the Falcon macOS Sensor's New Capabilities 03/11/26 Engineering & Tech EMBER2024: Advancing the Training of Cybersecurity ML Models Against Evasive Malware 09/03/25 Falcon Platform Prevents COOKIE SPIDER’s SHAMOS Delivery on macOS 08/20/25 CrowdStrike’s Approach to Better Machine Learning Evaluation Using Strategic Data Splitting 08/11/25 CrowdStrike Researchers Develop Custom XGBoost Objective to Improve ML Model Release Stability 03/20/25 Executive Viewpoint Frontier AI Is Collapsing the Exploit Window.
Here’s How Defenders Must Respond. 04/20/26 Frontier AI for Defenders: CrowdStrike and OpenAI TAC 04/16/26 Anthropic Claude Mythos Preview: The More Capable AI Becomes, the More Security It Needs 04/06/26 The Architecture of Agentic Defense: Inside the Falcon Platform 01/16/26 From The Front Lines CrowdStrike Technical Risk Assessments Reveal Common Exposure Patterns 05/04/26 Introducing the CrowdStrike Shadow AI Visibility Service CrowdStrike Flex for Services Expands Access to Elite Security Expertise From Scanner to Stealer: Inside the trivy-action Supply Chain Compromise 03/20/26 Next-Gen Identity Security Detecting CVE-2026-20929: Kerberos Authentication Relay via CNAME Abuse 03/31/26 CrowdStrike FalconID Brings Phishing-Resistant MFA to Falcon Next-Gen Identity Security 02/26/26 CrowdStrike Named a Customers’ Choice in 2026 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for User Authentication 02/12/26 CrowdStrike to Acquire Seraphic to Secure Work in Any Browser 01/13/26 Next-Gen SIEM & Log Management Falcon Next-Gen SIEM Supports Third-Party EDR Tools, Starting with Microsoft Defender 03/23/26 Falcon Next-Gen SIEM Simplifies Onboarding with Sensor-Native Log Collection 03/06/26 Exposing Insider Threats through Data Protection, Identity, and HR Context 02/18/26 How to Scale SOC Automation with Falcon Fusion SOAR 02/11/26 Public Sector CrowdStrike Innovates to Modernize National Security and Protect Critical Systems 03/18/26 Falcon Platform for Government Now Offers Falcon for XIoT to Secure Connected Assets CrowdStrike Achieves FedRAMP® High Authorization 03/19/25 NHS Matures Healthcare Cybersecurity with NCSC’s CAF Assurance Model 03/13/25 Exposure Management 05/12/26 April 2026 Patch Tuesday: Two Zero-Days and Eight Critical Vulnerabilities Among 164 CVEs 04/14/26 How CrowdStrike Is Accelerating Exposure Evaluation as Adversaries Gain Speed 04/05/26 March 2026 Patch Tuesday: Eight Critical Vulnerabilities and Two Publicly Disclosed Among 82 CVEs Patched 03/10/26 Securing AI CrowdStrike Expands ChatGPT Enterprise Integration with Enhanced Audit Logging and Activity Monitoring 04/28/26 New CrowdStrike Innovations Secure AI Agents and Govern Shadow AI Across Endpoints, SaaS, and Cloud Secure Homegrown AI Agents with CrowdStrike Falcon AIDR and NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails 03/19/26 Introducing "AI Unlocked: Decoding Prompt Injection," a New Interactive Challenge Data Security Falcon Data Security Secures Data Wherever It Lives and Moves Falcon Data Protection for Cloud Extends DSPM into Runtime 11/20/25 CrowdStrike Stops GenAI Data Leaks with Unified Data Protection 09/18/25 Q&A: How Mastronardi Produce Secures Innovation with CrowdStrike 02/14/25 Start Free Trial CrowdStrike Falcon® OverWatch for Defender delivers continuous, expert-led threat hunting to support stronger outcomes for Microsoft Defender.
May 05, 2026 Counter Adversary Operations CrowdStrike is excited to announce Falcon OverWatch for Defender, a new offering that extends our elite managed threat hunting to Microsoft Defender environments. The need for proactive threat hunting is increasingly urgent as adversary operations evolve: 82% of intrusions observed in 2025 were malware-free, the CrowdStrike 2026 Global Threat Report revealed, and the fastest eCrime breakout time was a mere 27 seconds.
Adversaries using AI increased their attacks 89% year-over-year. Security tools remain essential, but not every sophisticated intrusion can be reliably detected through automation alone. Techniques including credential abuse, hands-on-keyboard activity, misuse of legitimate tools, and in-memory tradecraft are too subtle, novel, or context-dependent to automate high-fidelity detections for them without generating too much noise.
This is where Falcon OverWatch for Defender comes in. Powered by the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® platform, Falcon OverWatch for Defender adds continuous, expert-led threat hunting to Microsoft Defender environments. It helps organizations uncover stealthy attacker behavior, escalate high-confidence threats, and guide response before an intrusion becomes a breach. Threat Hunting In the Era of Frontier AI Frontier AI models are poised to accelerate vulnerability discovery and exploitation, sparking concerns of a surge in vulnerabilities adversaries can target.
But exploits shouldn’t be the extent of their concerns — after all, they’re only one step in the attack chain. Adversaries using an exploit to gain initial access must take additional steps, such as privilege escalation or lateral movement, to achieve their goals. This is why post-exploit threat hunting is essential: It focuses on the critical window after entry, when attackers are in the environment but haven’t yet made an impact.
In the frontier AI era, stopping a vulnerability exploit is ideal, but stopping post-exploitation activity is vital. The problem is, adversaries are becoming harder to catch. Many blend into legitimate business activity by abusing trusted identities, admin tools, remote access software, and native system processes. They’re using AI to scale phishing attacks, automate reconnaissance, and quickly generate malicious scripts.
In this environment, important signals are often new, too subtle, or lack key context to convert into reliable detections right away. This is why continuous, intelligence-driven hunting is indispensable. The Falcon OverWatch team is built for this mission. Our combination of real-time intelligence, expert human hunters, and AI at scale uncovers post-exploit activity to stop attackers before an intrusion becomes a breach.
Extending CrowdStrike’s Open Approach to Microsoft Environments Falcon OverWatch for Defender builds on CrowdStrike’s open approach to Microsoft environments. With the lightweight Falcon sensor running alongside Microsoft Defender, organizations can strengthen security outcomes without disrupting existing protections or operations. This added visibility enables Falcon OverWatch hunters to uncover subtle patterns of attack that might otherwise remain hidden, validate suspicious activity, and escalate high-confidence threats.
The result is a stronger security outcome for Microsoft Defender customers without requiring them to replace their endpoint deployment. Below are the differentiated capabilities it provides: Threat hunting informed by deep adversary intelligence : CrowdStrike tracks more than 280 sophisticated nation-state, eCrime, and hacktivist adversaries. Falcon OverWatch hunters use this intelligence to identify threat actor behavior, investigate subtle indicators, and deliver high-confidence escalations.
AI-powered hunting at machine speed and scale : Falcon OverWatch uses AI, proprietary hunting patterns, and adversary expertise to analyze up to 6.2 trillion events per day and uncover stealthy and novel threats. Visibility across millions of endpoints : With visibility across CrowdStrike’s broad global customer base and millions of endpoints, Falcon OverWatch can identify uncommon activity at scale and quickly operationalize new discoveries.
When hunters identify a new technique in one environment, that knowledge is turned into new hunting patterns and applied across others. This improves detection posture and helps customers find evidence of both current and prior adversary activity. Real Outcomes, Proven at Scale Falcon OverWatch operationalizes the latest threat intelligence to improve detection, analyzes 14 million detection leads annually, adds more than 1,800 new hunting patterns each year, and detects 100 high- to critical-severity intrusions every day.
With Falcon OverWatch for Defender, CrowdStrike extends our proven hunting model to Microsoft Defender customers to deliver the expertise, scale, and intelligence required to identify and stop sophisticated threats earlier. Additional Resources Dive deeper into topics like this at Fal.Con 2026 with expert-led sessions, hands-on training, and real-world insights. Read the CrowdStrike 2026 Global Threat Report for the latest insights on adversaries, tradecraft, and activity.
Visit the webpage to learn about CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence and hunting solutions. Related Content Categories CONNECT WITH US FEATURED ARTICLES May 06, 2026 SUBSCRIBE Sign up now to receive the latest notifications and updates from CrowdStrike. Sign Up See CrowdStrike Falcon ® in Action Detect, prevent, and respond to attacks— even malware-free intrusions—at any stage, with next-generation endpoint protection.
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