April 27, 2022: -In January 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveiled the size of the cybersecurity business of the company for the first time. The number was significant.

Nadella said to analysts on an earnings call that the operation had hit $10 billion in annual revenue and was “up to over 40%” year by year. In other words, it was outpacing every other primary Microsoft product.

Nadella was famous for reviving Microsoft, overseeing a fivefold expansion in market cap by that point in his seven years at the helm. That growth was based to turn Microsoft’s cloud business into a serious threat to Amazon Web Services in a big market.

By letting investors in on the enormity of Microsoft’s security business, Nadella was uncovering a powerful growth engine. The final revenue across the company was up just 14%.

“Nobody had any idea it was a $10 billion business,” said Andrew Rubin, CEO of cybersecurity software start-up Illumio, speaking of Microsoft’s security revenue. In the previous year, Rubin, whose company was valued at $2.75 billion, was surprised by the growth and scale of what Microsoft had assembled, which spans several markets and all three reporting segments.

On Tuesday, Microsoft is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results, and investors might get one more glimpse into what’s happening inside the company’s security unit. Ransomware attacks have increased late, leading to increased spending by enterprises, smaller companies, and the public sector. And the U.S. government has then given a warning of more significant cybersecurity threats following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

Security provides to be a competitive advantage for Azure over AWS because the most prominent enterprises have always been big Microsoft customers, and there’s a trust factor.