Suggestion: Centralize Microsoft Defender XDR Role Management into Microsoft Entra ID
Microsoft Entra ID has evolved into a strong, centralized identity and access management solution. Likewise, the Defender XDR portal (formerly Microsoft 365 Defender) provides a unified experience for security monitoring, investigation, and response across endpoints, email, identities, and more. These tools are critical to modern SecOps. However, managing access across them is still more complex than it needs to be. Key challenges: Dual RBAC confusion: Defender for Endpoint uses its own RBAC system, separate from Entra ID. This leads to misunderstandings — for example, assigning a user the Security Reader role in Entra ID might not grant expected access in Defender once Defender RBAC is enabled. Hidden roles: Roles like Defender for Endpoint Administrator aren’t visible in the Entra portal, making centralized management harder. Access risks: Enabling Defender RBAC can revoke access for some users unless they’re added manually to MDE role groups — often without clear warning. Admin overhead: Managing permissions separately in Entra and Defender adds duplication, friction, and potential for misconfiguration. Suggestions Let’s build on the strength of Microsoft Entra ID by moving all Defender role assignments into Entra, where identity and access is already managed securely and consistently. Goal: Use only Entra ID roles to manage access to the Defender XDR portal — eliminating the need for custom RBAC roles or portal-based configurations in MDE, MDO, or MDI. Benefits of this change: Centralized, consistent access management across Microsoft security solutions Simplified admin experience with reduced configuration errors Better alignment with Zero Trust and least-privilege principles Clear, discoverable roles for Security and SOC teams Seamless experience during role onboarding/offboarding Suggested new Entra built-in roles for Defender XDR: Defender Endpoint Security Administrator Defender Email Security Administrator Defender Cloud Security Administrator SOC L1 Analyst (read-only) SOC L2 Analyst (response) SOC L3 Analyst (hunting) Defender XDR Administrator / Engineer Vulnerability Analyst Microsoft has done a fantastic job modernizing Entra and unifying security visibility in Defender XDR — and this would be a great next step forward. #MicrosoftEntraID #MicrosoftDefenderXDR #SecurityOperations #IAM #RBAC #CloudSecurity #ZeroTrust #MicrosoftSecurity #SecOps #SOC
Secure Score - gMSA not recognized ("Change service account to avoid cached password in registry")
Hello, we have several SQL Servers who were marked as "exposed devices" in the secure score recommendation "Change service account to avoid cached password in windows registry". The remediation option called for the use of "group Managed Service Accounts" ("gMSA"). We implemented those gMSAs. However, the servers are still marked as exposed. What did we do wrong? Is this a false-positive? I already did some checks with the help of Microsoft Copilot - there are no cached credentials for the gMSAs present, the Accounts are correctly set up (they are working for SQL Server services), and we don't use Microsoft Defender for Identity (if that is needed). Any advises? Thank you very much!Investigation state Queued
I see a number of messages in our Defender XDR Incidents with a status of Queued. What does this status mean? This appears to only be related to Defender for Office 365 incidents, usually email reported as junk/phish/notjunk etc type of incidents. Regardless of whether I investigate or change the status of the incident, in remains in the Incidents list as queued. I cannot find clear documentation on what this state means or what action is required to resolve/close the incident. Can anyone shed any light on the what the queued state means and how to resolve a queued incident.Monthly news - May 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news May 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from April 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025 New blog post: Empowering SOC Analysts: Investigating Identity Threats with Microsoft Defender XDR. (GA) Multi Tenant Organizations (MTO) expanded support for up to 100 tenants per view per user is now generally available! We are delighted to announce that Microsoft Defender MTO now supports the ability, for each user, to add up to 100 tenants to their view. We extended the number of tenants you can see in one single pane of glass – from 50 to 100. You can now view incidents, investigate, view device inventory and vulnerabilities on a larger number of tenants at the same time. Expanding Cross Cloud Multitenant Security Operations for Government Customers. This blog post summarizes a new capability that enhances multitenant security operations for government cloud customers, enabling cross-cloud visibility and centralized security management. We invite you to give this new capability a try! (Public Preview) The OAuthAppInfo table is now available for preview in advanced hunting. The table contains information about Microsoft 365-connected OAuth applications registered with Microsoft Entra ID and available in the Defender for Cloud Apps app governance capability. The OnboardingStatus and NetworkAdapterDnsSuffix columns are now available in the DeviceNetworkInfo table in advanced hunting. Automatic attack disruption: Enhanced containment for critical assets and shadow IT. This blog post introduces new, extended capabilities in automatic attack disruption. Announcing Rich Text for Case Management. In the dynamic world of SecOps, managing and communicating information efficiently is vital. Rich Text for Case Management introduces capabilities that allow you to enrich your case documentation with various formatting options, including bold, italics, underlining, code blocks, links, tables, and more. (Public Preview) You can now create data security investigations in the Microsoft Defender portal with the integration of Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations (preview) and Microsoft Defender XDR. This integration allows security operations center (SOC) teams to enhance their investigation and response to potential data security incidents like data breaches or data leaks. Learn more in our docs. (Public Preview) Containing IP addresses associated with devices that are undiscovered or are not onboarded to Defender for Endpoint is now in preview. Containing an IP address prevents attackers from spreading attacks to other non-compromised devices. Learn more in our docs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Updated documentation Schedule antivirus scans using Group Policy Schedule antivirus scans using PowerShell Two new ASR rules are now generally available: Block rebooting machine in Safe Mode: This rule prevents the execution of commands to restart machines in Safe Mode. Block use of copied or impersonated system tools: This rule blocks the use of executable files that are identified as copies of Windows system tools. These files are either duplicates or impostors of the original system tools. (General Available) Defender for Endpoint supports ARM64-based Linux servers across various Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, RHEL, Debian, SUSE Linux, Amazon Linux, and Oracle Linux. All product capabilities that are supported on AMD64 devices are now supported on ARM64-based Linux servers. For more information, see the following articles: Tech Community Blog: Defender for Endpoint extends support to ARM-based Linux servers Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Announcing the Public Preview of Auto-Remediation of Malicious Entity Clusters Identified in Automated Investigation and Response (AIR). Defender for Office 365 automated investigation and response is being enhanced to enable AIR to automatically remediate malicious entity clusters. AIR currently recommends actions for SecOps to approve or decline and this enhancement will allow customers the option to configure auto-remediation for AIR to automatically execute the soft deletion of messages included in malicious URL or malicious file clusters. Options to "tune" controls within Defender for Office 365 for an organization to maximize protection and efficacy. We are pleased to announce that if you are using third-party report message solutions in Microsoft Outlook, such as Knowbe4, Hoxhunt, and Cofense, you can now configure Defender for Office 365 to automatically forward these suspicious messages to Microsoft for analysis. The Outlook.com consumer email service will require compliance with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email authentication standards for domains sending more than 5000 messages to outlook.com, hotmail.com, and yahoo.com recipients as of 5 May, 2025. Learn more in this blog post.. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Enhanced alert source accuracy. This update, applicable to new alerts only, are reflected across various experiences and APIs, including the Defender XDR portal, Advanced hunting, and Graph API. (Public Preview) Investigate OAuth application attack paths in Defender for Cloud Apps Microsoft Defender for Identity (General available) Identities guided tour New attack paths tab on the Identity profile page New and updated events in the Advanced hunting IdentityDirectoryEvents table Identity page enhancements such as user timeline side panel, password last change field on the UI, devices tab filters and others. Deprecation of Defender for Identity alert email notifications (Public Preview) Defender for Identity integration with Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) Privileged Access Management (PAM) vendors integration with Defender for Identity – CyberArk, Delinea and BeyondTrust Microsoft Security Blogs Threat actors leverage tax season to deploy tax-themed phishing campaigns As Tax Day approaches in the United States on April 15, Microsoft has detected several tax-themed phishing campaigns employing various tactics. These campaigns use malicious hyperlinks and attachments to deliver credential phishing and malware including RaccoonO365, AHKBot, Latrodectus, BruteRatel C4 (BRc4), and Remcos. Exploitation of CLFS zero-day leads to ransomware activity Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) have discovered post-compromise exploitation of a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) against a small number of targets. Microsoft released security updates to address the vulnerability, tracked as CVE 2025-29824, on April 8, 2025. Stopping attacks against on-premises Exchange Server and SharePoint Server with AMSI Exchange Server and SharePoint Server are business-critical assets and considered crown-jewels for many organizations, making them attractive targets for attacks. Threat actors misuse Node.js to deliver malware and other malicious payloads Since October 2024, Microsoft Defender Experts has observed and helped multiple customers address campaigns leveraging Node.js to deliver malware and other payloads that ultimately lead to information theft and data exfiltration. Understanding the threat landscape for Kubernetes and containerized assets The dynamic nature of containers can make it challenging for security teams to detect runtime anomalies or pinpoint the source of a security incident, presenting an opportunity for attackers to stay undetected. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors taking advantage of unsecured workload identities to gain access to resources, including containerized environments. Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Activity profile: Tax and IRS-themed phishing campaigns [TA update] Tool profile: Grandoreiro banking trojan Activity profile - Threat actors using fake Chrome updates to deliver Lumma Stealer Actor profile: Storm-2256 Actor Profile - Storm-1877 [TA update] Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-26633 Vulnerability profile - CVE-2025-29824 Activity profile: Cryptomining infection by malicious AutoIT scripts uses masqueraded Ncat for C2 communications Technique profile: ClickFix technique leverages clipboard to run malicious commands [TA update] Actor profile: Storm-1249 Tool profile - XCSSET Tool profile: ReedBed Quarterly cyber threat report: MITRE ATT&CK framework trends in OSINT (January to March 2025) Actor Profile - Storm-1125 Activity profile: Sapphire Sleet using GoLang files to download malware Technique Profile: Device Code Phishing
Secure Score - identifying actions marked as Resolved through Third Party
At the moment we have some recommendations that are addressed through a third party application (e.g. we use a third party to assess email for impersonation risk). I can mark this in secure score as resolved through Third Party which is great (we've found that email flow is too slow if we 'double' up the protection). What I'm trying to work out is that, if we decide to stop using the third party software, is there a way I can find the recommendations that have been marked as Resolved through Third Party? I can see that tagging the recommendation with the name of the Third Party might help identify them - but I can't see any way to filter or find the recommendations in Secure Score that do not have a Status of 'To address'? Can you filter on Status in the Secure Score section of Defender? If not, is there another way to access this underlying data and update it?Importing Purview roles into XDR RBAC
I want to activate Email & collaboration into XDR RBAC, so in XDR RBAC, I go and "choose roles to import" and I see the built-in Purview eDiscovery Manager role. Ok, fine, so I choose to import it into XDR RBAC and assume that my two groups of users in that role group (eDiscovery Managers (Sally and Sue) and eDiscovery Admins (Bob)) would be different. Sally and Sue can only manage their own cases and Bob can manage all cases. Different roles. But after it imports, there's only 1 role: eDiscovery Manager and all my users are in there - Sally, Sue and Bob with "Raw data (Email & collaboration) " - both read permissions are selected. But that's it. Question 1) I'm confused on why the eDiscovery role is being imported into XDR RBAC and if that means that over in Purview, after I activate the "Defender for Office365" workload in XDR RBAC - will something change with what Sally and Sue and Bob can do in Purview eDiscovery? Will I still be managing my eDiscovery users in Purview roles for when I need to add Billy to the list of eDiscovery Admins? Question 2) I see that the other Purview role groups I have users assigned (Audit Manager and Organization Management as well as a custom "Search and Purge" role group) were also imported into XDR RBAC permissions and roles but yet aren't applicable until I activate the workload. Wondering what exactly will happen when I activate the Email & collaboration workload. Will anything negative happen to the PIM groups I gave the Purview role groups to? Would I then need to clean anything up over in Purview roles after I activate the workload in XDR RBAC? This isn't clear at all what to do after I activate the email and collaboration workload and can I just undo it if it messes anything up?
SecureScore bugs
There needs to be a way to submit feedback for SecureScore. There's so many outdated links within the 'implementation' tab, and so many quirks. For example, the 'enable safe attachments' policy will fail if you use a custom Quarantine policy, even if it IS admin-only. Feels kinda sketchy to be setting these to 'Resolved through Alternate Mitigation' when you actually haven't. Another example - the Outbound Spam filter specifies no limits for emails. However the documentation DOES. This should be part of the SecureScore recommendation, no? Not sure if this is the right hub - but this is where the doc links for feedback.Learn more about Microsoft Security Communities.
In the last five years, Microsoft has increased the emphasis on community programs – specifically within the security, compliance, and management space. These communities fall into two categories: Public and Private (or NDA only). In this blog, we will share a breakdown of each community and how to join.
How to get access to Move or Delete e-mail?
So this week I had some phishing e-mails that made it past Defender's filtering and were delivered to user mailboxes. I wanted to pull them back, so I found the relevant message the Defender XDR portal, and clicked on Take Action, but the only option available to me there was Submit to Microsoft for review. All the others, including Move or Delete, which is what I wanted, were grayed out. I'll add that was doing this using my Global Admin account. Did some research and supposedly assigning my account the Data Investigator role or creating a custom role with Search and Purge capability would provide the desired access So I put my account into both of those groups, and I still can't access Move or Delete. Anybody know what I am missing here? I’d be grateful for any information.Monthly news - April 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news April 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from March 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. ⏰ April 9th & 10th is Microsoft Secure! Make sure you join this virtual event to hear about our latest product announcements. Three broadcast times are available, offering opportunities to get your questions answered by subject matter experts at a time that suits you best. April 9, 2025 | 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PT (UTC-7) | Americas broadcast April 10, 2025 | 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CET (UTC+1) | Europe, Middle East, Africa broadcast April 10, 2025 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM SGT (UTC+8) | Asia broadcast Microsoft Secure - Home - Microsoft Secure registration home page. New episodes of the Virtual Ninja Show has been published, covering various products and scenarios. Microsoft's Zero Trust approach Resolving high CPU utilization in Microsoft Defender Antivirus Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer overview Mastering onboarding issues with Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer Mastering endpoint security settings issues with Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer Connecting your Apps to Defender for Cloud Apps Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025 (Webinar) Microsoft Sentinel Repositories: Manage Your SIEM Content as code Like a Pro (GA Announcement) The content hub offers the best way to find new content or manage the solutions you already installed, now with granular AI search. (Public Preview) The Microsoft Sentinel agentless data connector for SAP and related security content is now included, as public preview, in the solution for SAP applications. Blog post: Transforming public sector security operations in the AI era Discover how Microsoft's AI-powered, unified SecOps can revolutionize public sector security operations and safeguard multiplatform, multi-cloud environments with industry-leading innovation and seamless integration. Ready to elevate your cyber defense? (Public Preview) The incident description has moved within the incident page. The incident description is now displayed after the incident details. For more information, see Incident details. The Microsoft 365 alert policies can now only be managed in the Microsoft Defender portal. For more information, see Alert policies in Microsoft 365. You can now link Threat analytics reports when setting up custom detections. Learn more Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Update to the Microsoft Defender Antivirus group policies documentation. Learn more Addition of the default settings for Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUA) documentation. Learn more New video (9 mins): How Microsoft is redefining endpoint security New documentation: Troubleshoot Microsoft Defender Antivirus scan issues Microsoft Defender for Office 365 User reported messages by third-party add-ins can be sent to Microsoft for analysis: In user reported settings, admins can select Monitor reported messages in Outlook > Use a non-Microsoft add-in button. In the Reported message destination section, select Microsoft and my reporting mailbox, and then provide the email address of the internal Exchange Online mailbox where user-reported messages by the third-party add-in are routed to. Microsoft analyzea these reported messages and provides result on the User reported tab of Submissions page at https://security.microsoft.com/reportsubmission?viewid=user. Create allow entries directly in the Tenant Allow/Block List: You can now create allow entries for domains & addresses and URLs directly in the Tenant Allow/Block List. This capability is available in Microsoft 365 Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD, and Office 365 operated by 21Vianet. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (GA) Unified Identity inventory now general available. Learn more Defending against OAuth based attacks with automatic attack disruption. Microsoft’s Automatic attack disruption capabilities disrupt sophisticated in-progress attacks and prevent them from spreading, now including OAuth app-based attacks. Attack disruption is an automated response capability that stops in-progress attacks by analyzing the attacker’s intent, identifying compromised assets, and containing them in real time. Level Up Your App Governance With Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Workshop Series. Join one of these workshops to learn: Real-world examples of OAuth attacks New pre-built templates and custom rules to simplify app governance How to quickly identify and mitigate risks from high-risk or suspicious apps Best practices for operationalizing app governance to improve your security posture These workshops are designed to accommodate global participation, with flexible date and time options. Protecting SaaS apps from OAuth threats with attack path, advanced hunting and more. Read this blog post to learn about various new capabilities rolling out over the next few weeks. Microsoft Defender for Identity Blog post: Discover and protect Service Accounts with Microsoft Defender for Identity Microsoft Defender for Identity now includes a Service Account Discovery capability, offering you centralized visibility into service accounts across your Active Directory environment. New health issue for cases where sensors running on VMware have network configuration mismatch. The Identities page under Assets has been updated to provide better visibility and management of identities across your environment. New LDAP query events were added to the IdentityQueryEvents table in Advanced Hunting to provide more visibility into additional LDAP search queries running in the customer environment. Microsoft Security Blogs Silk Typhoon targeting IT supply chain Malvertising campaign leads to info stealers hosted on GitHub New XCSSET malware adds new obfuscation, persistence techniques to infect Xcode projects Phishing campaign impersonates Booking .com, delivers a suite of credential-stealing malware StilachiRAT analysis: From system reconnaissance to cryptocurrency theft Analyzing open-source bootloaders: Finding vulnerabilities faster with AI Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Vulnerability Profile: CVE-2024-40711 – Veeam Backup Activity profile: Moonstone Sleet using Qilin ransomware [TA update] Actor Profile: Secret Blizzard Actor profile: Berry Sandstorm Activity profile: DarkGate malware samples delivered through fake Notion websites followed by ClickFix technique Activity profile: Secret Blizzard and Aqua Blizzard collaborate to target Ukrainian military devices [TA update] Actor profile - Swirl Typhoon Vulnerability profile: CVE-2024-57726 Multiple vulnerabilities found in SimpleHelp Remote Support Software Activity profile: Lumma Stealer spreads via YouTube video descriptions [TA update] Actor profile: Aqua Blizzard Tool profile: Latrodectus Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-26633 Tool profile: WinRing0 Activity profile: Storm-0485 phishing activity Activity profile: Silk Typhoon targeting IT supply chain Activity profile: Storm-1877 evolving tactics to target users with ClickFix attacks Threat overview: Business Email Compromise [Snapshot] Actor profile: Storm-2372 [TA update] Actor profile: ZigZag Hail Actor profile: Storm-0287 Activity profile: Secret Blizzard abusing Visual Studio Code tunneling service Activity Profile: Clickfix and Malvertising campaigns leveraging node.exe application Actor profile: Yulong Flood Vulnerability profile: CVE-2024-43451- NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability Tool profile: FrostyStash [TA update] Tool profile: Mimikatz Tool profile: Mamba 2FA Activity profile: Phishing campaign deploying PureLogStealer targets users in Central America [TA update] Vulnerability profile: CVE 2025-0282: Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateway [TA update] Actor profile: Silk Typhoon Seamless SSO Abuse via AADInternals [TA update] SystemBC Tool Profile Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-22224 – VMware
