JSON Web Token (JWT) Validation in Azure Application Gateway: Secure Your APIs at the Gate
Hello Folks! In a Zero Trust world, identity becomes the control plane and tokens become the gatekeepers. Recently, in an E2E conversation with my colleague Vyshnavi Namani, we dug into a topic every ITPro supporting modern apps should understand: JSON Web Token (JWT) validation, specifically using Azure Application Gateway. In this post we’ll distill that conversation into a technical guide for infrastructure pros who want to secure APIs and backend workloads without rewriting applications. Why IT Pros Should Care About JWT Validation JSON Web Token (JWT) is an open standard token format (RFC 7519) used to represent claims or identity information between two parties. JWTs are issued by an identity provider (Microsoft Entra ID) and attached to API requests in an HTTP Authorization: Bearer <token> header. They are tamper-evident and include a digital signature, so they can be validated cryptographically. JWT validation in Azure Application Gateway means the gateway will check every incoming HTTPS request for a valid JWT before it forwards the traffic to your backend service. Think of it like a bouncer or security guard at the club entrance: if the client doesn’t present a valid “ID” (token), they don’t get in. This first-hop authentication happens at the gateway itself. No extra custom auth code is needed in your APIs. The gateway uses Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) as the authority to verify the token’s signature and claims (issuer/tenant, audience, expiry, etc.). By performing token checks at the edge, Application Gateway ensures that only authenticated requests reach your application. If the JWT is missing or invalid, the gateway could deny the request depending on your configuration (e.g. returns HTTP 401 Unauthorized) without disturbing your backend. If the JWT is valid, the gateway can even inject an identity header (x-msft-entra-identity) with the user’s tenant and object ID before passing the call along 9 . This offloads authentication from your app and provides a consistent security gate in front of all your APIs. Key benefits of JWT validation at the gateway: Stronger security at the edge: The gateway checks each token’s signature and key claims, blocking bad tokens before they reach your app. No backend work needed: Since the gateway handles JWT validation, your services don’t need token‑parsing code. Therefore, there is less maintenance and lower CPU use. Stateless and scalable: Every request brings its own token, so there’s no session management. Any gateway instance can validate tokens independently, and Azure handles key rotation for you. Simplified compliance: Centralized JWT policies make it easier to prove only authorized traffic gets through, without each app team building their own checks. Defense in depth: Combine JWT validation with WAF rules to block malicious payloads and unauthorized access. In short, JWT validation gives your Application Gateway the smarts to know who’s knocking at the door, and to only let the right people in. How JWT Validation Works At its core, JWT validation uses a trusted authority (for now it uses Microsoft Entra ID) to issue a token. That token is presented to the Application Gateway, which then validates: The token is legitimate The token was issued by the expected tenant The audience matches the resource you intend to protect If all checks pass, the gateway returns a 200 OK and the request continues to your backend. If anything fails, the gateway returns 403 Forbidden, and your backend never sees the call. You can check code and errors here: JSON Web Token (JWT) validation in Azure Application Gateway (Preview) Setting Up JWT Validation in Azure Application Gateway The steps to configure JWT validation in Azure Application Gateway are documented here: JSON Web Token (JWT) validation in Azure Application Gateway (Preview) Use Cases That Matter to IT Pros Zero Trust Multi-Tenant Workloads Geolocation-Based Access AI Workloads Next Steps Identify APIs or workloads exposed through your gateways. Audit whether they already enforce token validation. Test JWT validation in a dev environment. Integrate the policy into your Zero Trust architecture. Collaborate with your dev teams on standardizing audiences. Resources Azure Application Gateway JWT Validation https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/application-gateway/json-web-token-overview Microsoft Entra ID App Registrations https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/active-directory/develop/quickstart-register-app Azure Application Gateway Documentation https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/application-gateway/overview Azure Zero Trust Guidance https://learn.microsoft.com/security/zero-trust/zero-trust-overview Azure API Management and API Security Best Practices https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/api-management/api-management-key-concepts Microsoft Identity Platform (Tokens, JWT, OAuth2 https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/active-directory/develop/security-tokens Using Curl with JWT Validation Scenarios https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/active-directory/develop/v2-oauth2-client-creds-grant-flow#request-an-access-token Final Thoughts JWT validation in Azure Application Gateway is a powerful addition to your skills for securing cloud applications. It brings identity awareness right into your networking layer, which is a huge win for security and simplicity. If you manage infrastructure and worry about unauthorized access to your APIs, give it a try. It can drastically reduce the “attack surface” by catching invalid requests early. As always, I’d love to hear about your experiences. Have you implemented JWT validation on App Gateway, or do you plan to? Let me know how it goes! Feel free to drop a comment or question. Cheers! Pierre Roman
Security as the core primitive - Securing AI agents and apps
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we shared our vision for Microsoft security -- In the agentic era, security must be ambient and autonomous, like the AI it protects. It must be woven into and around everything we build—from silicon to OS, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and clouds—and throughout everything we do. In this blog, we are going to dive deeper into many of the new innovations we are introducing this week to secure AI agents and apps. As I spend time with our customers and partners, there are four consistent themes that have emerged as core security challenges to secure AI workloads. These are: preventing agent sprawl and access to resources, protecting against data oversharing and data leaks, defending against new AI threats and vulnerabilities, and adhering to evolving regulations. Addressing these challenges holistically requires a coordinated effort across IT, developers, and security leaders, not just within security teams and to enable this, we are introducing several new innovations: Microsoft Agent 365 for IT, Foundry Control Plane in Microsoft Foundry for developers, and the Security Dashboard for AI for security leaders. In addition, we are releasing several new purpose-built capabilities to protect and govern AI apps and agents across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. Observability at every layer of the stack To facilitate the organization-wide effort that it takes to secure and govern AI agents and apps – IT, developers, and security leaders need observability (security, management, and monitoring) at every level. IT teams need to enable the development and deployment of any agent in their environment. To ensure the responsible and secure deployment of agents into an organization, IT needs a unified agent registry, the ability to assign an identity to every agent, manage the agent’s access to data and resources, and manage the agent’s entire lifecycle. In addition, IT needs to be able to assign access to common productivity and collaboration tools, such as email and file storage, and be able to observe their entire agent estate for risks such as over-permissioned agents. Development teams need to build and test agents, apply security and compliance controls by default, and ensure AI models are evaluated for safety guardrails and security vulnerabilities. Post deployment, development teams must observe agents to ensure they are staying on task, accessing applications and data sources appropriately, and operating within their cost and performance expectations. Security & compliance teams must ensure overall security of their AI estate, including their AI infrastructure, platforms, data, apps, and agents. They need comprehensive visibility into all their security risks- including agent sprawl and resource access, data oversharing and leaks, AI threats and vulnerabilities, and complying with global regulations. They want to address these risks by extending their existing security investments that they are already invested in and familiar with, rather than using siloed or bolt-on tools. These teams can be most effective in delivering trustworthy AI to their organizations if security is natively integrated into the tools and platforms that they use every day, and if those tools and platforms share consistent security primitives such as agent identities from Entra; data security and compliance controls from Purview; and security posture, detections, and protections from Defender. With the new capabilities being released today, we are delivering observability at every layer of the AI stack, meeting IT, developers, and security teams where they are in the tools they already use to innovate with confidence. For IT Teams - Introducing Microsoft Agent 365, the control plane for agents, now in preview The best infrastructure for managing your agents is the one you already use to manage your users. With Agent 365, organizations can extend familiar tools and policies to confidently deploy and secure agents, without reinventing the wheel. By using the same trusted Microsoft 365 infrastructure, productivity apps, and protections, organizations can now apply consistent and familiar governance and security controls that are purpose-built to protect against agent-specific threats and risks. gement and governance of agents across organizations Microsoft Agent 365 delivers a unified agent Registry, Access Control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security capabilities for your organization. These capabilities work together to help organizations manage agents and drive business value. The Registry powered by the Entra provides a complete and unified inventory of all the agents deployed and used in your organization including both Microsoft and third-party agents. Access Control allows you to limit the access privileges of your agents to only the resources that they need and protect their access to resources in real time. Visualization gives organizations the ability to see what matters most and gain insights through a unified dashboard, advanced analytics, and role-based reporting. Interop allows agents to access organizational data through Work IQ for added context, and to integrate with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Word, and Excel so they can create and collaborate alongside users. Security enables the proactive detection of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, protects against common attacks such as prompt injections, prevents agents from processing or leaking sensitive data, and gives organizations the ability to audit agent interactions, assess compliance readiness and policy violations, and recommend controls for evolving regulatory requirements. Microsoft Agent 365 also includes the Agent 365 SDK, part of Microsoft Agent Framework, which empowers developers and ISVs to build agents on their own AI stack. The SDK enables agents to automatically inherit Microsoft's security and governance protections, such as identity controls, data security policies, and compliance capabilities, without the need for custom integration. For more details on Agent 365, read the blog here. For Developers - Introducing Microsoft Foundry Control Plane to observe, secure and manage agents, now in preview Developers are moving fast to bring agents into production, but operating them at scale introduces new challenges and responsibilities. Agents can access tools, take actions, and make decisions in real time, which means development teams must ensure that every agent behaves safely, securely, and consistently. Today, developers need to work across multiple disparate tools to get a holistic picture of the cybersecurity and safety risks that their agents may have. Once they understand the risk, they then need a unified and simplified way to monitor and manage their entire agent fleet and apply controls and guardrails as needed. Microsoft Foundry provides a unified platform for developers to build, evaluate and deploy AI apps and agents in a responsible way. Today we are excited to announce that Foundry Control Plane is available in preview. This enables developers to observe, secure, and manage their agent fleets with built-in security, and centralized governance controls. With this unified approach, developers can now identify risks and correlate disparate signals across their models, agents, and tools; enforce consistent policies and quality gates; and continuously monitor task adherence and runtime risks. Foundry Control Plane is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s security portfolio to provide a ‘secure by design’ foundation for developers. With Microsoft Entra, developers can ensure an agent identity (Agent ID) and access controls are built into every agent, mitigating the risk of unmanaged agents and over permissioned resources. With Microsoft Defender built in, developers gain contextualized alerts and posture recommendations for agents directly within the Foundry Control Plane. This integration proactively prevents configuration and access risks, while also defending agents from runtime threats in real time. Microsoft Purview’s native integration into Foundry Control Plane makes it easy to enable data security and compliance for every Foundry-built application or agent. This allows Purview to discover data security and compliance risks and apply policies to prevent user prompts and AI responses from safety and policy violations. In addition, agent interactions can be logged and searched for compliance and legal audits. This integration of the shared security capabilities, including identity and access, data security and compliance, and threat protection and posture ensures that security is not an afterthought; it’s embedded at every stage of the agent lifecycle, enabling you to start secure and stay secure. For more details, read the blog. For Security Teams - Introducing Security Dashboard for AI - unified risk visibility for CISOs and AI risk leaders, coming soon AI proliferation in the enterprise, combined with the emergence of AI governance committees and evolving AI regulations, leaves CISOs and AI risk leaders needing a clear view of their AI risks, such as data leaks, model vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and unethical agent actions across their entire AI estate, spanning AI platforms, apps, and agents. 90% of security professionals, including CISOs, report that their responsibilities have expanded to include data governance and AI oversight within the past year. 1 At the same time, 86% of risk managers say disconnected data and systems lead to duplicated efforts and gaps in risk coverage. 2 To address these needs, we are excited to introduce the Security Dashboard for AI. This serves as a unified dashboard that aggregates posture and real-time risk signals from Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. This unified dashboard allows CISOs and AI risk leaders to discover agents and AI apps, track AI posture and drift, and correlate risk signals to investigate and act across their entire AI ecosystem. For example, you can see your full AI inventory and get visibility into a quarantined agent, flagged for high data risk due to oversharing sensitive information in Purview. The dashboard then correlates that signal with identity insights from Entra and threat protection alerts from Defender to provide a complete picture of exposure. From there, you can delegate tasks to the appropriate teams to enforce policies and remediate issues quickly. With the Security Dashboard for AI, CISOs and risk leaders gain a clear, consolidated view of AI risks across agents, apps, and platforms—eliminating fragmented visibility, disconnected posture insights, and governance gaps as AI adoption scales. Best of all, there’s nothing new to buy. If you’re already using Microsoft security products to secure AI, you’re already a Security Dashboard for AI customer. Figure 5: Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a unified view of their AI risk by bringing together their AI inventory, AI risk, and security recommendations to strengthen overall posture Together, these innovations deliver observability and security across IT, development, and security teams, powered by Microsoft’s shared security capabilities. With Microsoft Agent 365, IT teams can manage and secure agents alongside users. Foundry Control Plane gives developers unified governance and lifecycle controls for agent fleets. Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a consolidated view of AI risks across platforms, apps, and agents. Added innovation to secure and govern your AI workloads In addition to the IT, developer, and security leader-focused innovations outlined above, we continue to accelerate our pace of innovation in Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender to address the most pressing needs for securing and governing your AI workloads. These needs are: Manage agent sprawl and resource access e.g. managing agent identity, access to resources, and permissions lifecycle at scale Prevent data oversharing and leaks e.g. protecting sensitive information shared in prompts, responses, and agent interactions Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities e.g. managing unsanctioned applications, preventing prompt injection attacks, and detecting AI supply chain vulnerabilities Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance e.g. ensuring AI development, operations, and usage comply with evolving global regulations and frameworks Manage agent sprawl and resource access 76% of business leaders expect employees to manage agents within the next 2–3 years. 3 Widespread adoption of agents is driving the need for visibility and control, which includes the need for a unified registry, agent identities, lifecycle governance, and secure access to resources. Today, Microsoft Entra provides robust identity protection and secure access for applications and users. However, organizations lack a unified way to manage, govern, and protect agents in the same way they manage their users. Organizations need a purpose-built identity and access framework for agents. Introducing Microsoft Entra Agent ID, now in preview Microsoft Entra Agent ID offers enterprise-grade capabilities that enable organizations to prevent agent sprawl and protect agent identities and their access to resources. These new purpose-built capabilities enable organizations to: Register and manage agents: Get a complete inventory of the agent fleet and ensure all new agents are created with an identity built-in and are automatically protected by organization policies to accelerate adoption. Govern agent identities and lifecycle: Keep the agent fleet under control with lifecycle management and IT-defined guardrails for both agents and people who create and manage them. Protect agent access to resources: Reduce risk of breaches, block risky agents, and prevent agent access to malicious resources with conditional access and traffic inspection. Agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, and Security Copilot get an Entra Agent ID built-in at creation. Developers can also adopt Entra Agent ID for agents they build through Microsoft Agent Framework, Microsoft Agent 365 SDK, or Microsoft Entra Agent ID SDK. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. Prevent data oversharing and leaks Data security is more complex than ever. Information Security Media Group (ISMG) reports that 80% of leaders cite leakage of sensitive data as their top concern. 4 In addition to data security and compliance risks of generative AI (GenAI) apps, agents introduces new data risks such as unsupervised data access, highlighting the need to protect all types of corporate data, whether it is accessed by employees or agents. To mitigate these risks, we are introducing new Microsoft Purview data security and compliance capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot and for agents and AI apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, providing unified protection, visibility, and control for users, AI Apps, and Agents. New Microsoft Purview controls safeguard Microsoft 365 Copilot with real-time protection and bulk remediation of oversharing risks Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365 Copilot deliver a fully integrated solution for protecting sensitive data in AI workflows. Based on ongoing customer feedback, we’re introducing new capabilities to deliver real-time protection for sensitive data in M365 Copilot and accelerated remediation of oversharing risks: Data risk assessments: Previously, admins could monitor oversharing risks such as SharePoint sites with unprotected sensitive data. Now, they can perform item-level investigations and bulk remediation for overshared files in SharePoint and OneDrive to quickly reduce oversharing exposure. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for M365 Copilot: DLP previously excluded files with sensitivity labels from Copilot processing. Now in preview, DLP also prevents prompts that include sensitive data from being processed in M365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and Copilot agents, and prevents Copilot from using sensitive data in prompts for web grounding. Priority cleanup for M365 Copilot assets: Many organizations have org-wide policies to retain or delete data. Priority cleanup, now generally available, lets admins delete assets that are frequently processed by Copilot, such as meeting transcripts and recordings, on an independent schedule from the org-wide policies while maintaining regulatory compliance. On-demand classification for meeting transcripts: Purview can now detect sensitive information in meeting transcripts on-demand. This enables data security admins to apply DLP policies and enforce Priority cleanup based on the sensitive information detected. & bulk remediation Read the full Data Security blog to learn more. Introducing new Microsoft Purview data security capabilities for agents and apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends the same data security and compliance for users and Copilots to agents and apps. These new capabilities are: Enhanced Data Security Posture Management: A centralized DSPM dashboard that provides observability, risk assessment, and guided remediation across users, AI apps, and agents. Insider Risk Management (IRM) for Agents: Uniquely designed for agents, using dedicated behavioral analytics, Purview dynamically assigns risk levels to agents based on their risky handing of sensitive data and enables admins to apply conditional policies based on that risk level. Sensitive data protection with Azure AI Search: Azure AI Search enables fast, AI-driven retrieval across large document collections, essential for building AI Apps. When apps or agents use Azure AI Search to index or retrieve data, Purview sensitivity labels are preserved in the search index, ensuring that any sensitive information remains protected under the organization’s data security & compliance policies. For more information on preventing data oversharing and data leaks - Learn how Purview protects and governs agents in the Data Security and Compliance for Agents blog. Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities AI workloads are subject to new AI-specific threats like prompt injections attacks, model poisoning, and data exfiltration of AI generated content. Although security admins and SOC analysts have similar tasks when securing agents, the attack methods and surfaces differ significantly. To help customers defend against these novel attacks, we are introducing new capabilities in Microsoft Defender that deliver end-to-end protection, from security posture management to runtime defense. Introducing Security Posture Management for agents, now in preview As organizations adopt AI agents to automate critical workflows, they become high-value targets and potential points of compromise, creating a critical need to ensure agents are hardened, compliant, and resilient by preventing misconfigurations and safeguarding against adversarial manipulation. Security Posture Management for agents in Microsoft Defender now provides an agent inventory for security teams across Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio agents. Here, analysts can assess the overall security posture of an agent, easily implement security recommendations, and identify vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations and excessive permissions, all aligned to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Additionally, the new agent attack path analysis visualizes how an agent’s weak security posture can create broader organizational risk, so you can quickly limit exposure and prevent lateral movement. Introducing Threat Protection for agents, now in preview Attack techniques and attack surfaces for agents are fundamentally different from other assets in your environment. That’s why Defender is delivering purpose-built protections and detections to help defend against them. Defender is introducing runtime protection for Copilot Studio agents that automatically block prompt injection attacks in real time. In addition, we are announcing agent-specific threat detections for Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry agents coming soon. Defender automatically correlates these alerts with Microsoft’s industry-leading threat intelligence and cross-domain security signals to deliver richer, contextualized alerts and security incident views for the SOC analyst. Defender’s risk and threat signals are natively integrated into the new Microsoft Foundry Control Plane, giving development teams full observability and the ability to act directly from within their familiar environment. Finally, security analysts will be able to hunt across all agent telemetry in the Advanced Hunting experience in Defender, and the new Agent 365 SDK extends Defender’s visibility and hunting capabilities to third-party agents, starting with Genspark and Kasisto, giving security teams even more coverage across their AI landscape. To learn more about how you can harden the security posture of your agents and defend against threats, read the Microsoft Defender blog. Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance Global AI regulations like the EU AI Act and NIST AI RMF are evolving rapidly; yet, according to ISMG, 55% of leaders report lacking clarity on current and future AI regulatory requirements. 5 As enterprises adopt AI, they must ensure that their AI innovation aligns with global regulations and standards to avoid costly compliance gaps. Introducing new Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager capabilities to stay ahead of evolving AI regulations, now in preview Today, Purview Compliance Manager provides over 300 pre-built assessments for common industry, regional, and global standards and regulations. However, the pace of change for new AI regulations requires controls to be continuously re-evaluated and updated so that organizations can adapt to ongoing changes in regulations and stay compliant. To address this need, Compliance Manager now includes AI-powered regulatory templates. AI-powered regulatory templates enable real-time ingestion and analysis of global regulatory documents, allowing compliance teams to quickly adapt to changes as they happen. As regulations evolve, the updated regulatory documents can be uploaded to Compliance Manager, and the new requirements are automatically mapped to applicable recommended actions to implement controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Foundry. Automated actions by Compliance Manager further streamline governance, reduce manual workload, and strengthen regulatory accountability. Introducing expanded Microsoft Purview compliance capabilities for agents and AI apps now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends its compliance capabilities across agent-generated interactions, ensuring responsible use and regulatory alignment as AI becomes deeply embedded across business processes. New capabilities include expanded coverage for: Audit: Surface agent interactions, lifecycle events, and data usage with Purview Audit. Unified audit logs across user and agent activities, paired with traceability for every agent using an Entra Agent ID, support investigation, anomaly detection, and regulatory reporting. Communication Compliance: Detect prompts sent to agents and agent-generated responses containing inappropriate, unethical, or risky language, including attempts to manipulate agents into bypassing policies, generating risky content, or producing noncompliant outputs. When issues arise, data security admins get full context, including the prompt, the agent’s output, and relevant metadata, so they can investigate and take corrective action Data Lifecycle Management: Apply retention and deletion policies to agent-generated content and communication flows to automate lifecycle controls and reduce regulatory risk. Read about Microsoft Purview data security for agents to learn more. Finally, we are extending our data security, threat protection, and identity access capabilities to third-party apps and agents via the network. Advancing Microsoft Entra Internet Access Secure Web + AI Gateway - extend runtime protections to the network, now in preview Microsoft Entra Internet Access, part of the Microsoft Entra Suite, has new capabilities to secure access to and usage of GenAI at the network level, marking a transition from Secure Web Gateway to Secure Web and AI Gateway. Enterprises can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, empowering employees to experiment with new AI tools safely. The new capabilities include: Prompt injection protection which blocks malicious prompts in real time by extending Azure AI Prompt Shields to the network layer. Network file filtering which extends Microsoft Purview to inspect files in transit and prevents regulated or confidential data from being uploaded to unsanctioned AI services. Shadow AI Detection that provides visibility into unsanctioned AI applications through Cloud Application Analytics and Defender for Cloud Apps risk scoring, empowering security teams to monitor usage trends, apply Conditional Access, or block high-risk apps instantly. Unsanctioned MCP server blocking prevents access to MCP servers from unauthorized agents. With these controls, you can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, so employees can experiment with new AI tools safely. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. As AI transforms the enterprise, security must evolve to meet new challenges—spanning agent sprawl, data protection, emerging threats, and regulatory compliance. Our approach is to empower IT, developers, and security leaders with purpose-built innovations like Agent 365, Foundry Control Plane, and the Security Dashboard for AI. These solutions bring observability, governance, and protection to every layer of the AI stack, leveraging familiar tools and integrated controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. The future of security is ambient, autonomous, and deeply woven into the fabric of how we build, deploy, and govern AI systems. Explore additional resources Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Agent 365 Learn more about Microsoft Entra Agent ID Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Get started with Microsoft Copilot Studio Get started with Microsoft Foundry Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Get started with Microsoft Entra Get started with Microsoft Purview Get started with Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager Sign up for a free Microsoft 365 E5 Security Trial and Microsoft Purview Trial 1 Bedrock Security, 2025 Data Security Confidence Index, published Mar 17, 2025. 2 AuditBoard & Ascend2, Connected Risk Report 2024; as cited by MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2025. 3 KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey | Q3 2025. September 2025. n= 130 U.S.-based C-suite and business leaders representing organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more 4 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, , Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400 5 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400Cloud Native Identity with Azure Files: Entra-only Secure Access for the Modern Enterprise
Azure Files introduces Entra only identities authentication for SMB shares, enabling cloud-only identity management without reliance on on-premises Active Directory. This advancement supports secure, seamless access to file shares from anywhere, streamlining cloud migration and modernization, and reducing operational complexity and costs.Microsoft BizTalk Server Product Lifecycle Update
For more than 25 years, Microsoft BizTalk Server has supported mission-critical integration workloads for organizations around the world. From business process automation and B2B messaging to connectivity across industries such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and government, BizTalk Server has played a foundational role in enterprise integration strategies. To help customers plan confidently for the future, Microsoft is sharing an update to the BizTalk Server product lifecycle and long-term support timelines. BizTalk Server 2020 will be the final version of BizTalk Server. Guidance to support long-term planning for mission-critical workloads This announcement does not change existing support commitments. Customers can continue to rely on BizTalk Server for many years ahead, with a clear and predictable runway to plan modernization at a pace that aligns with their business and regulatory needs. Lifecycle Phase End Date What’s Included Mainstream Support April 11, 2028 Security + non-security updates and Customer Service & Support (CSS) support Extended Support April 9, 2030 CSS support, Security updates, and paid support for fixes (*) End of Support April 10, 2030 No further updates or support (*) Paid Extended Support will be available for BizTalk Server 2020 between April 2028 and April 2030 for customers requiring hotfixes for non-security updates. CSS will continue providing their typical support. BizTalk Server 2016 is already out of mainstream support, and we recommend those customers evaluate a direct modernization path to Azure Logic Apps. Continued Commitment to Enterprise Integration Microsoft remains fully committed to supporting mission-critical integration, including hybrid connectivity, future-ready orchestration, and B2B/EDI modernization. Azure Logic Apps, part of Azure Integration Services — which includes API Management, Service Bus, and Event Grid — delivers the comprehensive integration platform for the next decade of enterprise connectivity. Host Integration Server: Continued Support for Mainframe Workloads Host Integration Server (HIS) has long provided essential connectivity for organizations with mainframe and midrange systems. To ensure continued support for those workloads, Host Integration Server 2028 will ship as a standalone product with its own lifecycle, decoupled from BizTalk Server. This provides customers with more flexibility and a longer planning horizon. Recognizing Mainframe modernization customers might be looking to integrate with their mainframes from Azure, Microsoft provides Logic Apps connectors for mainframe and midrange systems, and we are keen on adding more connectors in this space. Let us know about your HIS plans, and if you require specific features for Mainframe and midranges integration from Logic Apps at: https://aka.ms/lamainframe Azure Logic Apps: The Successor to BizTalk Server Azure Logic Apps, part of Azure Integration Services, is the modern integration platform that carries forward what customers value in BizTalk while unlocking new innovation, scale, and intelligence. With 1,400+ out-of-box connectors supporting enterprise, SaaS, legacy, and mainframe systems, organizations can reuse existing BizTalk maps, schemas, rules, and custom code to accelerate modernization while preserving prior investments including B2B/EDI and healthcare transactions. Logic Apps delivers elastic scalability, enterprise-grade security and compliance, and built-in cost efficiency without the overhead of managing infrastructure. Modern DevOps tooling, Visual Studio Code support, and infrastructure-as-code (ARM/Bicep) ensure consistent, governed deployments with end-to-end observability using Azure Monitor and OpenTelemetry. Modernizing Logic Apps also unlocks agentic business processes, enabling AI-driven routing, predictive insights, and context-aware automation without redesigning existing integrations. Logic Apps adapts to business and regulatory needs, running fully managed in Azure, hybrid via Arc-enabled Kubernetes, or evaluated for air-gapped environments. Throughout this lifecycle transition, customers can continue to rely on the BizTalk investments they have made while moving toward a platform ready for the next decade of integration and AI-driven business. Charting Your Modernization Path Microsoft remains fully committed to supporting customers through this transition. We recognize that BizTalk systems support highly customized and mission-critical business operations. Modernization requires time, planning, and precision. We hope to provide: Proven guidance and recommended design patterns A growing ecosystem of tooling supporting artifact reuse Unified Support engagements for deep migration assistance A strong partner ecosystem specializing in BizTalk modernization Potential incentive programs to help facilitate migration for eligible customers (details forthcoming) Customers can take a phased approach — starting with new workloads while incrementally modernizing existing BizTalk deployments. We’re Here to Help Migration resources are available today: Overview: https://aka.ms/btmig Best practices: https://aka.ms/BizTalkServerMigrationResources Video series: https://aka.ms/btmigvideo Feature request survey: https://aka.ms/logicappsneeds We encourage customers to engage their Microsoft account team early to assess readiness, identify modernization opportunities, and explore assistance programs. Your Modernization Journey Starts Now BizTalk Server has played a foundational role in enterprise integration success for more than two decades. As you plan ahead, Microsoft is here to partner with you every step of the way, ensuring operational continuity today while unlocking innovation tomorrow. To begin your transition, please contact your Microsoft account team or visit our migration hub. https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/logic-apps/biztalk-server-migration-overview Thank you for your continued trust in Microsoft and BizTalk Server. We look forward to partnering closely with you as you plan the future of your integration platforms. Frequently Asked Questions Do I need to migrate now? No. BizTalk Server 2020 is fully supported through April 11, 2028, with paid Extended Support available through April 9, 2030, for non-security hotfixes. CSS will continue providing their typical support. You have a long and predictable runway to plan your transition. Will there be a new BizTalk Server version? No. BizTalk Server 2020 is the final version of the product. What happens after April 9, 2030? BizTalk Server will reach End of Support, and security updates or technical assistance will no longer be provided. Workloads will continue running but without Microsoft servicing. Is paid support available past 2028? Yes. Paid extended support will be available through April 2030 for BizTalk Server 2020 customers looking for non-security hotfixes. CSS will continue to provide the typical support. What about BizTalk Server 2016 or earlier versions? Those versions are already out of mainstream support. We strongly encourage moving directly to Logic Apps rather than upgrading to BizTalk Server 2020. Will Host Integration Server continue? Yes. Host Integration Server (HIS) 2028 will be released as a standalone product with its own lifecycle and support commitments. Can I reuse BizTalk Server artifacts in Logic Apps? Yes. Most of BizTalk maps, schemas, rules, assemblies, and custom code can be reused with minimal effort using Microsoft and partner migration tooling. We welcome feature requests here: https://aka.ms/logicappsneeds Does modernization require moving fully to the cloud? No. Logic Apps supports hybrid deployments for scenarios requiring local processing or regulatory compliance, and fully disconnected environments are under evaluation. More information of the Hybrid deployment model here: https://aka.ms/lahybrid. Does modernization unlock AI capabilities? Yes. Logic Apps enables AI-driven automations through Agent Loop, improving routing, decisioning, and operational intelligence. Where do I get planning support? Your Microsoft account team can assist with assessment and planning. Migration resources are also linked in this announcement to help you get started. Microsoft CorporationKey AI announcements for software developers from Microsoft Ignite 2025
At Microsoft Ignite 2025, Microsoft unveiled a series of AI innovations that signal a significant evolution in how software developers build, deploy, and scale intelligent solutions. Central to these announcements is Microsoft Foundry, a unified platform designed to simplify the development, orchestration, and governance of AI agents across Microsoft’s cloud and application ecosystem. The announcements also introduced Foundry IQ, enabling secure, compliant access to enterprise data for AI agents, along with a new Foundry Control Plane that provides centralized visibility and operational control. Together, these capabilities help reduce complexity while supporting enterprise-grade security, compliance, and scalability requirements. Additional highlights include expanded model choice and flexibility through enhanced Model Router support and deeper integration of third-party models, as well as new capabilities that allow developers to publish and distribute AI agents directly into Microsoft 365 and Teams, creating powerful new go-to-market opportunities. Read the full article to learn more about these Microsoft Ignite announcements, what they mean for software developers, and how to take advantage of Microsoft’s rapidly evolving AI and Marketplace ecosystem.Healthcare Agent Orchestrator: Multi-agent Framework for Domain-Specific Decision Support
At Microsoft Build, we introduced the Healthcare Agent Orchestrator, now available in Azure AI Foundry Agent Catalog . In this blog, we unpack the science: how we structured the architecture, curated real tumor board data, and built robust agent coordination that brings AI into real healthcare workflows. Healthcare Agent Orchestrator assisting a simulated tumor board meeting. Introduction Healthcare is inherently collaborative. Critical decisions often require input from multiple specialists—radiologists, pathologists, oncologists, and geneticists—working together to deliver the best outcomes for patients. Yet most AI systems today are designed around narrow tasks or single-agent architectures, failing to reflect the real-world teamwork that defines healthcare practice. That’s why we developed the Healthcare Agent Orchestrator: an orchestrator and code sample built around Microsoft’s industry-leading healthcare AI models, designed to support reasoning and multidisciplinary collaboration -- enabling modular, interpretable AI workflows that mirror how healthcare teams actually work. The orchestrator brings together Microsoft healthcare AI models—such as MedImageParse for image recognition, CXRReportGen for automated radiology reporting, and MedImageInsight for retrieval and similarity analysis—into a unified, task-aware system that enables developers to build an agent that reflects real-word healthcare decision making pattern. This work was led by Yu (Aiden) Gu, Principal Applied Scientist at Microsoft Research, who conceived the study, defined the research direction, and led the design and development of the Healthcare Agent Orchestrator proof-of-concept. Healthcare Is Naturally Multi-Agent Healthcare decision-making often requires synthesizing diverse data types—radiologic images, pathology slides, genetic markers, and unstructured clinical narratives—while reconciling differing expert perspectives. In a molecular tumor board, for instance, a radiologist might highlight a suspicious lesion on CT imaging, a pathologist may flag discordant biopsy findings, and a geneticist could identify a mutation pointing toward an alternate treatment path. Effective collaboration in these settings hinges not on isolated analysis, but on structured dialogue—where evidence is surfaced, assumptions are challenged, and hypotheses are iteratively refined. To support the development of healthcare agent orchestrator, we partnered with a leading healthcare provider organization, who independently curated and de-identified a proprietary dataset comprising longitudinal patient records and real tumor board transcripts—capturing the complexity of multidisciplinary discussions. We provided guidance on data types most relevant for evaluating agent coordination, reasoning handoffs, and task alignment in collaborative settings. We then applied LLM-based structuring techniques to convert de-identified free-form transcripts into interpretable units, followed by expert review to ensure domain fidelity and relevance. This dataset provides a critical foundation for assessing agent coordination, reasoning handoffs, and task alignment in simulated collaborative settings. Why General-Purpose LLMs Fall Short for Healthcare Collaboration While general-purpose large language models have delivered remarkable results in many domains, they face key limitations in high-stakes healthcare environments: Precision is critical: Even small hallucinations or inconsistencies can compromise safety and decision quality Multi-modal integration is required: Many healthcare decisions involve interpreting and correlating diverse data types—images, reports, structured records—much of which is not available in public training sets Transparency and traceability matter: Users must understand how conclusions are formed and be able to audit intermediate steps The Healthcare Agent Orchestrator addresses these challenges by pairing general reasoning capabilities with specialized agents that operate over imaging, genomics, and structured EHRs—ensuring grounded, explainable results aligned with clinical expectations. Each agent contributes domain-specific expertise, while the orchestrator ensures coherence, oversight, and explainability—resulting in outputs that are both grounded and verifiable. Architecture: Coordinating Specialists Through Orchestration Healthcare Agent Orchestrator. Healthcare Agent Orchestrator’s multi-agent framework is built on modular AI infrastructure, designed for secure, scalable collaboration: Semantic Kernel: A lightweight, open-source development kit for building AI agents and integrating the latest AI models into C#, Python, or Java codebases. It acts as efficient middleware for rapidly delivering enterprise-grade solutions—modular, extensible, and designed to support responsible AI at scale. Model Context Protocol (MCP): an open standard that enables developers to build secure, two-way connections between their data sources and AI-powered tools. Magentic-One: Microsoft’s generalist multi-agent system for solving open-ended web and file-based tasks across domains—built on Microsoft AutoGen, our popular open-source framework for developing multi-agent applications. Each agent is orchestrated within the system and integrated via Semantic Kernel’s group chat infrastructure, with support for communication and modular deployment via Azure. This orchestration ensures that each model—whether interpreting a lung nodule, analyzing a biopsy image, or summarizing a genomic variant—is applied precisely where its expertise is most relevant, without overloading a single system with every task. The modularity of the framework also future-proofs: as new health AI models and tools emerge, they can be seamlessly incorporated into the ecosystem without disrupting existing workflows—enabling continuous innovation while maintaining clinical stability. Microsoft’s healthcare AI models at the Core Healthcare agent orchestrator also enables developers to explore the capabilities of Microsoft’s latest healthcare AI models: CXRReportGen: Integrates multimodal inputs—including current and prior X-ray images and report context—to generate grounded, interpretable radiology reports. The model has shown improved accuracy and transparency in automated chest X-ray interpretation, evaluated on both public and private data. MedImageParse 3 : A biomedical foundation model for imaging parsing that can jointly conduct segmentation, detection, and recognition across 9 imaging modalities. MedImageInsight 4 : Facilitates fast retrieval of clinically similar cases, supports disease classification across broad range of medical image modalities, accelerating second opinion generation and diagnostic review workflows. Each model has the ability to act as a specialized agent within the system, contributing focused expertise while allowing flexible, context-aware collaboration orchestrated at the system level. CXRReportGen is included in the initial release and supports the development and testing of grounded radiology report generation. Other Microsoft healthcare models such as MedImageParse and MedImageInsight are being explored in internal prototypes to expand the orchestrator’s capabilities across segmentation, detection, and image retrieval tasks. Seamless Integration with Microsoft Teams Rather than creating new silos, Healthcare Agent Orchestrator integrates directly into the tools clinicians already use—specifically Microsoft Teams. Developers are investigating how clinicians can engage with agents through natural conversation, asking questions, requesting second opinions, or cross-validating findings—all without leaving their primary collaboration environment. This approach minimizes friction, improves user experience, and brings cutting-edge AI into real-world care settings. Building Toward Robust, Trustworthy Multi-Agent Collaboration Think of the orchestrator as managing a secure, structured group chat. Each participant is a specialized AI agent—such as a ‘Radiology’ agent, ‘PatientHistory’ agent, or 'ClinicalTrials‘ agent. At the center is the ‘Orchestrator’ agent, which moderates the interaction: assigning tasks, maintaining shared context, and resolving conflicting outputs. Agents can also communicate directly with one another, exchanging intermediate results or clarifying inputs. Meanwhile, the user can engage either with the orchestrator or with specific agents as needed. Each agent is configured with instructions (the system prompt that guides its reasoning), and a description (used by both the UI and the orchestrator to determine when the agent should be activated). For example, the Radiology agent is paired with the cxr_report_gen tool, which wraps Microsoft’s CXRReportGen model for generating findings from chest X-ray images. Tools like this are declared under the agent’s tools field and allow it to call foundation models or other capabilities on demand—such as the clinical_trials tool 5 for querying ClinicalTrials.gov. Only one agent is marked as facilitator, designating it as the moderator of the conversation; in this scenario, the Orchestrator agent fills that role. Early observations highlight that multi-agent orchestration introduces new complexities—even as it improves specialization and task alignment. To address these emergent challenges, we are actively evolving the framework across several dimensions: Mitigating Error Propagation Across Agents: Ensuring that early-stage errors by one agent do not cascade unchecked through subsequent reasoning steps. This includes introducing critical checkpoints where outputs from key agents are verified before being consumed by others. Optimizing Agent Selection and Specialization: Recognizing that more agents are not always better. Adding unnecessary or redundant agents can introduce noise and confusion. We’ve implemented a systematic framework that emphasizes a few highly suited agents per task —dynamically selected based on case complexity and domain needs—while continuously tracking performance gains and catching regressions early. Improving Transparency and Hand-off Clarity: Structuring agent interactions to make intermediate outputs and rationales visible, enabling developers (and the system itself) to trace how conclusions were reached, catch inconsistencies early, and intervene when necessary. Adapting General Frameworks for Healthcare Complexity Generic orchestration frameworks like Semantic Kernel provide a strong foundation—but healthcare demands more. The stakes are higher, the data more nuanced, and the workflows require precision, traceability, and regulatory compliance. Here’s how we’ve extended and adapted these systems to help address healthcare demands: Precision and Safety: We introduced domain-aware verification checkpoints and task-specific agent constraints to reduce inappropriate tool usage—supporting more reliable reasoning. To help uphold the high standards required in healthcare, we defined two complementary metric systems (Check Healthcare Agent Orchestrator Evaluation for more details): Core Metrics: monitor health agents selection accuracy, intent resolution, contextual relevance, and information aggregation RoughMetric: a composite score based on ROUGE that helps quantify the precision of generated outputs and conversation reliability. TBFact: A modified version of RadFact 2 that measures factuality of claims in agents' messages and helps identifying omissions and hallucination Domain-Specific Tool Planning: Healthcare agents must reason across multimodal inputs—such as chest X-rays, CT slices, pathology images, and structured EHRs. We’ve customized Semantic Kernel’s tool invocation and planning modules to reflect clinical workflows, not generic task chains. These infrastructure-level adaptations are designed to complement Microsoft Healthcare AI models—such as CXRReportGen, MedImageParse, and MedImageInsight—working together to enable coordinated, domain-aware reasoning across complex healthcare tasks. Enabling Collaborative, Trustworthy AI in Healthcare Healthcare demands AI systems that are as collaborative, adaptive, and trustworthy as the clinical teams they aim to support. The Healthcare Agent Orchestrator is a concrete step toward that vision—pairing specialized health AI models with a flexible, multi-agent coordination framework, purpose-built to reflect the complexity of real clinical decision-making. By aligning with existing healthcare workflows and enabling transparent, role-specific collaboration, this system shows promise to empower clinicians to work more effectively—with AI as a partner, not a replacement. Healthcare Multi-Agent Orchestrator and the Microsoft healthcare AI models are intended for research and development use. Healthcare Multi-Agent Orchestrator and the healthcare AI models not designed or intended to be deployed in clinical settings as-is nor is it intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health or medical condition, and its performance for such purposes has not been established. You bear sole responsibility and liability for any use of Healthcare Multi-Agent Orchestrator or the healthcare AI models, including verification of outputs and incorporation into any product or service intended for a medical purpose or to inform clinical decision-making, compliance with applicable healthcare laws and regulations, and obtaining any necessary clearances or approvals. 1 arXiv, Universal Abstraction: Harnessing Frontier Models to Structure Real-World Data at Scale, February 2, 2025 2 arXiv, MAIRA-2: Grounded Radiology Report Generation, June 6, 2024 3 Nature Method, A foundation model for joint segmentation, detection and recognition of biomedical objects across nine modalities, Nov 18, 2024 4 arXiv, Medimageinsight: An open-source embedding model for general domain medical imaging, Oct 9, 2024 5 Machine Learning for Healthcare Conference, Scaling Clinical Trial Matching Using Large Language Models: A Case Study in Oncology, August 4, 2023Anatomy of an Outage: How Microsoft focuses on Transparency during and post incident
Outages happen—no matter the hyperscale provider, no matter the architecture. What separates resilient organizations from the rest is how quickly they detect issues, how effectively they communicate, and how well they learn from the inevitable. Rick Claus had the opportunity to co-present a session on the topic of how Microsoft communicates during outages and what YOU can do to be more proactive on how your Azure based infra is weathering the storm. He and Tajinder Pal Singh Ahluwalia pull back the curtain on how Microsoft handles major incidents—from the first customer impact signal to the deep‑dive retrospectives that follow.Partner Blog | Azure updates for partners: December 2025
At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we explored what it means for organizations to move into the era of Frontier transformation. This shift is focused on embedding AI across every part of the business to improve decision-making, increase speed, and create new value. Organizations leading in AI make it foundational. They rethink processes and integrate new technologies from the start to improve efficiency. For partners, this move toward Frontier represents a significant opportunity to lead customers into this new era. By building AI-powered solutions, connecting data for intelligent insights, and deploying Microsoft Azure’s cloud-ready platforms, partners can deliver value faster and scale confidently through the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft Ignite came with a significant number of announcements, so I’ve gathered the Azure updates that matter most for partners. These are the capabilities that can strengthen your ability to deliver intelligent solutions, drive operational efficiency, and differentiate your product or service in the market. You can also explore how partners are turning momentum into action, access highlights, and grab practical guidance from my Microsoft Ignite session. Continue reading here
Entra Risky Users Custom Role
My customer implemented unified RBAC (Defender Portal) and removed the Entra Security Operator role. They lost the ability to manage Risky Users in Entra. Two options explored by the customer - Protected Identity Administrator role (licensing unclear) or create a custom role with microsoft.directory/identityProtection/riskyUsers/update, which they couldn't find under custom role. Do you know if there are other options to manage Risky Users without using the Security Operator role?
