What’s new in Azure SRE Agent: October Update

sonjagu

Microsoft

Oct 20, 2026

A roundup of new Azure SRE Agent guidance and resources, from security and enterprise guidance to plugins and practical setup tips, and Azure SRE Agent Canvas

There’s been a lot happening with Azure SRE Agent lately, with new guidance, examples, and resources to help teams get more out of the service. Whether you’re thinking through security and architecture, connecting tools like Splunk, or looking for practical ways to improve how your agents work, there’s plenty to dig into.

So, we’ve pulled the latest updates together in one place. Here’s a look at what’s new and what to start.

Understand how Azure SRE Agent handles security and data

Security questions often come first when teams evaluate Azure SRE Agent: What can it access? Where does data go? How are actions controlled? Our updated security overview and data residency guidance answer those questions in one place.

Our latest guidance brings those answers together. It explains how Azure SRE Agent approaches security through execution isolation, secretless credential management, customer separation, encryption, network controls, and logging. It also covers how data such as prompts, responses, conversation history, and resource analysis is stored and processed, including important data residency considerations when choosing a model provider.

Explore the guidance docs: Security overview for Azure SRE Agent, Data residency and privacy in Azure SRE Agent and If you want a secure AI agent, start restricting its environment.

Plan a governed enterprise deployment

Get more from your agent from day one

Creating an agent is the easy part. The real value comes from giving it the right scope, data, and operational context. Our new practical setup guide explains the choices that make the biggest difference. The guidance covers how to start with a focused set of resources, connect code and telemetry, configure incident integrations, and add the runbooks and knowledge your team already relies on. These steps help ground the agent in your environment so it can support real investigations, not just generic questions.

Read the practical guide: Getting the best out of Azure SRE Agent.

Enterprise Adoption Guide

Getting started with Azure SRE Agent is one thing. Figuring out how to expand it across teams and make it part of the way your organization operates is another. In this two-part guide, we share practical lessons for both ends of that journey: how to get your first SRE Agent up and running, and how to build on that foundation as more teams and use cases come on board. The guides walk through resource design, identity, connec?tivity, governance, and integration patterns so platform and architecture teams can build an approach that fits and scale in their environment.

Read the guidance: Part 1: deploying your SRE Agent and Part 2: from one team to enterprise-wide adoption.

Connect operations and development with Azure SRE Agent Canvas in GitHub Copilot

We are also introducing Azure SRE Agent Canvas in GitHub Copilot Apps and Copilot CLI, a new collaborative experience that brings operational findings and context into GitHub Copilot. It gives developers and operators a shared place to review evidence, work through an issue, and decide what to do next.

To help you see how the experience works, we have put together three resources:

Documentation: Learn how to use Azure SRE Agent Canvas in GitHub Copilot during an investigation. https://aka.ms/sreagent/canvas/doc
Blog: Read more about how the experience helps operations and development teams work from the same context. https://aka.ms/sreagent/canvas/blog
Demo: Watch Azure SRE Agent Canvas in GitHub Copilot support an investigation from initial findings through team handoff. https://aka.ms/sreagent/canvas/demo

Azure SRE Agent Canvas in GitHub Copilot brings cloud operations context into a familiar developer workflow, helping teams investigate and resolve issues together without starting over in another tool.

Extend Azure SRE Agent with plugins and response plans

If your Splunk Enterprise environment is private, two new MCP samples can help you connect it to Azure SRE Agent without opening Splunk to inbound internet traffic. Each sample provides a starting point that you can adapt to your own network and production requirements. Both samples could be useful for anyone who uses SRE Agent and Splunk together. Choose the pattern that matches your setup:

Same-region deployment: Run Azure SRE Agent and the private Splunk workload in the same Azure region and virtual network, with isolated subnets and private MCP traffic. Private Splunk MCP—same region
Cross-region deployment: Keep Splunk in another Azure region and route private MCP traffic through Global VNet Peering and private DNS. Private Splunk MCP—cross region.

You can now use a private Azure DevOps repo as a plugin marketplace for Azure SRE Agent. This gives your team one place to manage and share plugins and skills built around the tools, processes, and knowledge you already use. The Azure DevOps plugins blog shows how to connect a repo and install those capabilities in Azure SRE Agent.

If your team uses ServiceNow, you can also create more advanced response plans based on the type of incident you are handling. The ServiceNow response plans blog walks through how to set up targeted plans that trigger the right investigation workflow while fitting into the ServiceNow processes your team already has in place.

Where to start

Not sure which resource to open first? Start with the question you are trying to answer:

Evaluating security or compliance? Start with the security overview, data residency guidance, and Security and Governance white paper.
Designing for production? Use the Enterprise Architecture Guide to align platform, identity, networking, and governance decisions.
Configuring a new agent? Follow the practical setup guide to add the context that improves investigation quality.
Want to connect operational work with developer collaboration? Explore the documentation, blog, and demo for Azure SRE Agent Canvas in GitHub Copilot.
Connecting with plugins? Choose the right Splunk MCP sample and learn more from the Azure DevOps plugins blogs and ServiceNow responses plan blog.