Planning your move to Microsoft Defender portal for all Microsoft Sentinel customers
In November 2023, Microsoft announced our strategy to unify security operations by bringing the best of XDR and SIEM together. Our first step was bringing Microsoft Sentinel into the Microsoft Defender portal, giving teams a single, comprehensive view of incidents, reducing queue management, enriching threat intel, streamlining response and enabling SOC teams to take advantage of Gen AI in their day-to-day workflow. Since then, considerable progress has been made with thousands of customers using this new unified experience; to enhance the value customers gain when using Sentinel in the Defender portal, multi-tenancy and multi-workspace support was added to help customers with more sophisticated deployments. Our mission is to unify security operations by bringing all your data, workflows, and people together to unlock new capabilities and drive better security outcomes. As a strong example of this, last year we added extended posture management, delivering powerful posture insights to the SOC team. This integration helps build a closed-loop feedback system between your pre- and post-breach efforts. Exposure Management is just one example. By bringing everything together, we can take full advantage of AI and automation to shift from a reactive to predictive SOC that anticipates threats and proactively takes action to defend against them. Beyond Exposure Management, Microsoft has been constantly innovating in the Defender experience, adding not just SIEM but also Security Copilot. The Sentinel experience within the Defender portal is the focus of our innovation energy and where we will continue to add advanced Sentinel capabilities going forward. Onboarding to the new unified experience is easy and doesn’t require a typical migration. Just a few clicks and permissions. Customers can continue to use Sentinel in the Azure portal while it is available even after choosing to transition. Today, we’re announcing that we are moving to the next phase of the transition with a target to retire the Azure portal for Microsoft Sentinel by July 1, 2026. Customers not yet using the Defender portal should plan their transition accordingly. “Really amazing to see that coming, because cross querying with tables in one UI is really cool! Amazing, big step forward to the unified [Defender] portal.” Glueckkanja AG “The biggest benefit of a unified security operations solution (Microsoft Sentinel + Microsoft Defender XDR) has been the ability to combine data in Defender XDR with logs from third party security tools. Another advantage developed has been to eliminate the need to switch between Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel portals, now having a single pane of glass, which the team has been wanting for some years.” Robel Kidane, Group Information Security Manager, Renishaw PLC Delivering the SOC of the future Unifying threat protection, exposure management and security analytics capabilities in one pane of glass not only streamlines the user experience, but also enables Sentinel customers to realize security outcomes more efficiently: Analyst efficiency: A single portal reduces context switching, simplifies workflows, reduces training overhead, and improves team agility. Integrated insights: SOC-focused case management, threat intelligence, incident correlation, advanced hunting, exposure management, and a prioritized incident queue enriched with business and sensitivity context—enabling faster, more informed detection and response across all products. SOC optimization: Security controls that can be adjusted as threats and business priorities change to control costs and provide better coverage and utilization of data, thus maximizing ROI from the SIEM. Accelerated response: AI-driven detection and response which reduces mean time to respond (MTTR) by 30%, increases security response efficiency by 60%, and enables embedded Gen AI and agentic workflows. What’s next: Preparing for the retirement of the Sentinel Experience in the Azure Portal Microsoft is committed to supporting every single customer in making that transition over the next 12 months. Beginning July 1, 2026, Sentinel users will be automatically redirected to the Defender portal. After helping thousands of customers smoothly make the transition, we recommend that security teams begin planning their migration and change management now to ensure continuity and avoid disruption. While the technical process is very straightforward, we have found that early preparation allows time for workflow validation, training, and process alignment to take full advantage of the new capabilities and experience. Tips for a Successful Migration to Microsoft Defender 1. Leverage Microsoft’s help: Leverage Microsoft documentation, instructional videos, guidance, and in-product support to help you be successful. A good starting point is the documentation on Microsoft Learn. 2. Plan early: Engage stakeholders early including SOC and IT Security leads, MSSPs, and compliance teams to align on timing, training and organizational needs. Make sure you have an actionable timeline and agreement in the organization around when you can prioritize this transition to ensure access to the full potential of the new experience. 3. Prepare your environment: Plan and design your environment thoroughly. This includes understanding the prerequisites for onboarding Microsoft Sentinel workspaces, reviewing and deciding on access controls, and planning the architecture of your tenant and workspace. Proper planning will ensure a smooth transition and help avoid any disruptions to your security operations. 4. Leverage Advanced Threat Detection: The Defender portal offers enhanced threat detection capabilities with advanced AI and machine learning for Microsoft Sentinel. Make sure to leverage these features for faster and more accurate threat detection and response. This will help you identify and address critical threats promptly, improving your overall security posture. 5. Utilize Unified Hunting and Incident Management: Take advantage of the enhanced hunting, incident, and investigation capabilities in Microsoft Defender. This provides a comprehensive view for more efficient threat detection and response. By consolidating all security incidents, alerts, and investigations into a single unified interface, you can streamline your operations and improve efficiency. 6. Optimize Cost and Data Management The Defender portal offers cost and data optimization features, such as SOC Optimization and Summary Rules. Make sure to utilize these features to optimize your data management, reduce costs, and increase coverage and SIEM ROI. This will help you manage your security operations more effectively and efficiently. Unleash the full potential of your Security team The unified SecOps experience available in the Defender portal is designed to support the evolving needs of modern SOCs. The Defender portal is not just a new home for Microsoft Sentinel - it’s a foundation for integrated, AI-driven security operations. We’re committed to helping you make this transition smoothly and confidently. If you haven’t already joined the thousands of security organizations that have done so, now is the time to begin. Resources AI-Powered Security Operations Platform | Microsoft Security Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal | Microsoft Learn Shifting your Microsoft Sentinel Environment to the Defender Portal | Microsoft Learn Microsoft Sentinel is now in Defender | YouTubeTrusted Signing Public Preview Update
Nearly a year ago we announced the Public Preview of Trusted Signing with availability for organizations with 3 years or more of verifiable history to onboard to the service to get a fully managed code signing experience to simplify the efforts for Windows app developers. Over the past year, we’ve announced new features including the Preview support for Individual Developers, and we highlighted how the service contributes to the Windows Security story at Microsoft BUILD 2024 in the Unleash Windows App Security & Reputation with Trusted Signing session. During the Public Preview, we have obtained valuable insights on the service features from our customers, and insights into the developer experience as well as experience for Windows users. As we incorporate this feedback and learning into our General Availability (GA) release, we are limiting new customer subscriptions as part of the public preview. This approach will allow us to focus on refining the service based on the feedback and data collected during the preview phase. The limit in new customer subscriptions for Trusted Signing will take effect Wednesday, April 2, 2025, and make the service only available to US and Canada-based organizations with 3 years or more of verifiable history. Onboarding for individual developers and all other organizations will not be directly available for the remainder of the preview, and we look forward to expanding the service availability as we approach GA. Note that this announcement does not impact any existing subscribers of Trusted Signing, and the service will continue to be available for these subscribers as it has been throughout the Public Preview. For additional information about Trusted Signing please refer to Trusted Signing documentation | Microsoft Learn and Trusted Signing FAQ | Microsoft Learn.
Converting Active Directory Groups to Cloud-Only with ADGMS
If you find yourself creating and maintaining on-premises groups just so they will synchronize to your Azure tenant, it’s time to free yourself from this time-consuming and potentially risky outdated practice by converting them to cloud only. Converting your groups to cloud-only will eliminate your dependence on legacy Active Directory Domain Services environments and enable you to delegate their management without resorting to custom Active Directory permissions, outdated management interfaces and even VPN or remote access solutions if your administrators are a part of today’s remote workforce. Remember all those distribution groups that your users were able to manage before their mailboxes were migrated to Exchange Online? By converting those groups to cloud-only, your users can once again manage them themselves! This eliminates the need for custom group management tools or for your helpdesk to manage membership on their behalf. So now that we’ve agreed it makes sense to convert your synced groups to cloud-only, what are your options… There are a variety of methods available to convert your groups to cloud-only, however they vary in cost and complexity, ranging from manual re-creation, which can be time-consuming and prone to error, building your own Graph API or PowerShell scripts, which require a significant understanding of Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, PowerShell as well as rigorous testing to ensure a functional solution, or, worst case, searching the internet and re-using scripts built by others with potentially harmful results. To help simplify and ensure the safety of this process, the IMS team offers a turn-key managed solution called Active Directory Group Modernization Service, or ADGMS. ADGMS is a cloud-based, automated solution that connects to and monitors your Entra tenant, automatically re-creating groups whenever they are moved out of scope of your Entra ID Connect or Entra Cloud Sync solution. ADGMS maintains each group’s membership, including any nesting, as well as it’s email addresses, send and receive restrictions, manager or owner and even extended attributes, and ADGMS uses all this data to instantly re-create the group as cloud-only. Additionally, ADGMS provides reports on all the nested groups in your tenant, helping to identify any cases where you have circular or self-nesting that might otherwise impact mail-flow and management. These reports are then used to create your group modernization strategy by ensuring you re-create your groups in the correct order. The beauty of ADGMS is that it’s 100% automatic and customer-driven. Once ADGMS is enabled, you control the quantity and speed of your group modernizations, and the ADGMS solution handles all the heavy lifting, and because ADGMS maintains all the email routing addresses, your users won’t even realize that the group has been converted to cloud-only. It is important to note, that while ADGMS can help radically change your cloud administration model, it does not support modernization of security groups by default. That said, based on the tens of thousands of groups already modernized with ADGMS, we have found that most legacy mail-enabled security groups primarily exist in Entra for the purposes of email routing and not securing cloud resources. In those cases, the group can be modernized into a cloud-only distribution group, and the on-premises group mail-disabled and left as a security-only group. How to take advantage of ADGMS If you are interested in reducing your administrative burden when it comes to on-premises groups currently synchronizing to Entra and leveraging a proven managed solution for migration of those groups to cloud-only resources, be sure to contact the IMS team for more information about ADGMS. Learn more about IMS and start hassle-free migrations and its capabilities today on our YouTube Channel Want to speak with an expert? Reach out to us at imssales@microsoft.com to connect with a sales representative.Empowering Secure AI Innovation: Data Security and Compliance for AI Agents
As organizations embrace the transformative power of generative AI, agentic AI is quickly becoming a core part of enterprise innovation. Whether organizations are just beginning their AI journey or scaling advanced solutions, one thing is clear: agents are poised to transform every function and workflow across organizations. IDC predicts that over 1 billion new business process agents will be created in the next four years 1 . This surge in AI adoption is empowering employees across roles – from low-code makers to pro-code developers – to build and use AI in new ways. Business leaders are eager to support this momentum, but they also recognize the need to innovate responsibly with AI. Microsoft Purview’s evolution When Microsoft 365 Copilot launched in November 2022, it sparked a wave of excitement and an immediate question: how do we secure and govern the data powering these AI experiences? Microsoft Purview quickly evolved to meet this need, extending its data security and compliance capabilities to the Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem. It delivered discoverability, protection, and governance value that helped customers discover data risks such as data oversharing, protect sensitive data to prevent data loss and insider risks, and govern AI usage to meet regulations and policies. Now, as customers move beyond pre-built agents like Copilot to develop their own AI agents and applications, Microsoft Purview has evolved to extend the same data protections built for Microsoft 365 Copilot to AI agents. Today, those protections span the entire development spectrum—from no-code and low-code tools like Copilot Studio to pro-code environments such as Azure AI Foundry. Microsoft Purview helps address challenges across the development spectrum Makers – typically business users or citizen developers who build solutions using low-code or no-code tools – shouldn’t need to become security experts to build AI responsibly. Yet, without proper safeguards, these agents can inadvertently expose sensitive data or violate compliance policies. That is why with Microsoft Purview, security and IT teams can feel confident about the agents being built in their organizations. When makers build agents through the Agent Builder or directly in Copilot Studio, security admins can set up Microsoft Purview’s data security and compliance controls that work behind the scenes to support makers in building secure and compliant agents. These controls automatically enforce policies, monitor data access, and ensure compliance without requiring the maker to become a security expert without requiring makers to take additional actions. In fact, a recent Microsoft study found that 71% of developer decision-makers acknowledge that these constraints result in security trade-offs and development delays 2 . Pro-code developers are under increasing pressure to deliver fast, flexible, and seamlessly integrated solutions, yet data security often becomes a deployment blocker or an afterthought. Building enterprise-grade data security and compliance capabilities from scratch is not only time-consuming but also requires deep domain expertise. This is where Microsoft Purview steps in. As an industry leader in data security and compliance, Purview does the heavy lifting, so developers don’t have to. Now in preview, Purview SDK can be used by developers to embed robust, enterprise-ready data protections directly into their AI applications, instead of building complex security frameworks on their own. The Purview SDK is a comprehensive set of REST APIs, documentation, and code samples, allowing developers to easily incorporate Microsoft Purview’s capabilities into their workflows—regardless of their integrated development environment (IDE). This empowers them to move fast without compromising on security or compliance and at the same time, Microsoft Purview helps security teams remain in control. : By embedding Purview APIs into the IDE, developers help enable their AI apps to be secured and governed at runtime Startups, ISVs, and partners can leverage the Purview SDK to seamlessly integrate Purview’s industry-leading features into their AI agents and applications. This enables their offerings to become Purview-aware, empowering customers to more easily secure and govern data within their AI environments. For example, Qusitive Chief Technology Offer, Christian Veillete indicates “The synergistic integration of MazikCare, the Quisitive Intelligence Platform, and the data compliance power of Purview SDK, including its DSPM for AI, forms a foundational pillar for trustworthy and safe AI-driven healthcare transformations. This powerful combination ensures continuous oversight and instant enforcement of compliance policies, giving IT leadership full assurance in the output of every AI model and upholding the highest safety standards. By centralizing policy enforcement, security concerns are significantly eased, empowering leadership to confidently steer their organizations through the AI transformation journey.” Microsoft partner, Infotechtion, has also leveraged the new Purview SDK to embed Purview value into their GenAI initiatives. Vivek Bhatt, Infotechtion’s Chief Technology Officer says, “Embedding Purview SDK into Infotechtion's AI governance solution improved trust and security by aligning Gen-AI interactions with Microsoft Purview's enterprise policies.” Microsoft Purview also natively integrates with Azure AI Foundry, enabling seamless, built-in security and compliance for AI workloads without requiring additional development effort. With this integration, signals from Azure AI Foundry are automatically surfaced in Microsoft Purview’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, Insider Risk Management, and compliance solutions. This means security teams can monitor AI usage, detect data risks, and enforce compliance policies across AI agents and applications—whether they’re built in-house or with Azure AI Foundry models. This reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to delivering secure-by-default AI innovation—empowering organizations to scale responsibly with confidence. : Data security admins can now find data security and compliance insights across Microsoft Copilots, agents built with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents in Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI. Explore more partner case studies from Ernst & Young and Infosys to see how they’re leveraging Purview SDK. Learn more about Purview SDK and Microsoft Purview for Azure AI Foundry. Unified visibility and control Whether supporting pro-code developers or low-code makers, Microsoft Purview enables organizations to secure and govern AI across organizations. With Purview, security teams can discover data security risks, protect sensitive data against data leakage and insider risks, and govern AI interactions. Discover data security risks With Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, data security teams can discover detailed data risk insights in AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, agents built in Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents. Data security admins can now find data security and compliance insights across Microsoft Copilots, agents built with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents all in Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI. Protect sensitive data against data leaks and insider risks In DSPM for AI, data security admins can also get recommended insights to improve their organization’s security posture like minimizing risks of data oversharing. For example, an admin might get a recommendation to set up a data loss prevention (DLP) policy that prevents agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot from using certain labeled documents as grounding data to generate summaries or responses. By setting up this policy, organizations can prevent confidential legal documents—with specific language that could lead to improper guidance—from being summarized. It also ensures that “Internal only” documents aren’t used to create content that might be shared outside the organization. Extend data loss prevention (DLP) policies to agents in Microsoft 365 to protect sensitive data. Agents often pull data from sources like SharePoint and Dataverse, and Microsoft Purview helps protect that data every step of the way. It honors sensitivity labels, enforces access permissions, and applies label inheritance so that AI-generated content carries the same protections as its source. With auto-labeling in Dataverse, sensitive data is classified as soon as it’s ingested—reducing manual effort and maintaining consistent protection. When responses draw from multiple sources with different labels, the most restrictive label is applied to uphold compliance and minimize risk. : Sensitivity labels will be automatically applied to data in Dataverse. : AI-generated responses will inherit and honor the source data’s sensitivity labels. In addition to data and permission controls that help address data oversharing or leakage, security teams also need ways to detect users' risky activities in AI apps and agents that could potentially lead to data security incidents. With risky AI usage indicators, policy template, and analytics report in Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, security teams with appropriate permissions can detect risky activities. For example, there could be a departing employee receiving an unusual number of AI responses across Copilots and agents containing sensitive data, deviating from their past activity patterns. Security teams can then effectively detect and respond to these potential incidents to minimize the negative impact. For example, they can configure Adaptive Protection to automatically block a high-risk user from accessing sensitive data. An Insider Risk Management alert from a Risky AI usage policy shows a user with anomalous activities. Govern AI Interactions to detect non-compliant usage Microsoft Purview provides a comprehensive set of tools to govern AI usage and detect non-compliant user activities. AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents, are recorded in Audit logs. eDiscovery enables legal and compliance teams with appropriate permissions to collect and review AI-generated content for internal investigations or litigation. Data Lifecycle Management enables teams to set policies to retain or dispose of AI interactions, while Communication Compliance helps detect risky or inappropriate use of AI, such as harmful content or other violations against code-of-conduct policies. Together, these capabilities give organizations the visibility and control they need to innovate responsibly with AI. AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents are recorded in Audit logs. AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents can be collected and reviewed in eDiscovery. Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can detect non-compliant content in AI prompts across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents. Securing the Future of AI Innovation — Explore Additional Resources As organizations accelerate their adoption of agentic AI, the need for built-in security and compliance has never been more critical. Microsoft Purview empowers both makers and developers to innovate with confidence—ensuring that every AI interaction is secure, compliant, and aligned with enterprise standards. By embedding protection across the entire development lifecycle, Purview helps organizations unlock the full potential of AI while maintaining the trust, transparency, and control that responsible innovation demands. To dive deeper into how Microsoft Purview supports secure AI development, explore our additional resources, documentation, and integration guides: Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Purview SDK Learn more about Purview pricing Get started with Azure AI Foundry Get started with Microsoft Purview 1 IDC, 1 Billion New Logical Applications: More Background, Gary Chen, Jim Mercer, April 2024 https://blogs.idc.com/2025/04/04/the-agentic-evolution-of-enterprise-applications/ 2 Microsoft, AI App Security Quantitative Study, April 2025Enterprise-grade controls for AI apps and agents built with Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio
AI innovation is moving faster than ever, and more AI projects are moving beyond experimentation into deployment, to drive tangible business impact. As organizations accelerate innovation with custom AI applications and agents, new risks emerge across the software development lifecycle and AI stack related to data oversharing and leaks, new vulnerabilities and threats, and non-compliance with stringent regulatory requirements Through 2025, poisoning of software supply chains and infrastructure technology stacks will constitute more than 70% of malicious attacks against AI used in the enterprise 1 , highlighting potential threats that originate early in development. Today, the average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million, but when security issues are caught early in the development process, that number drops dramatically to just $80 per incident 2 . The message is very clear; security can’t be an afterthought anymore. It must be a team sport across the organization, embedded from the start and throughout the development lifecycle. That's why developers and security teams should align on processes and tools that bring security into every stage of the AI development lifecycle and give security practitioners visibility into and the ability to mitigate risks. To address these growing challenges and help customers secure and govern their AI workloads across development and security teams, we are: Enabling Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Copilot Studio to provide best-in-class foundational capabilities to secure and govern AI workloads Deeply integrating and embedding industry-leading capabilities from Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Entra into Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Copilot Studio This week, 3,000 developers are gathering in Seattle for the annual Microsoft Build conference, with many more tuning in online, to learn practical skills for accelerating their AI apps and agents' innovation. To support their AI innovation journey, today we are excited to announce several new capabilities to help developers and organizations secure and govern AI apps and agents. New Azure AI Foundry foundational capabilities to secure and govern AI workloads Azure AI Foundry enhancements for AI security and safety With 70,000 customers, 100 trillion tokens processed this quarter, and 2 billion enterprise search queries each day, Azure AI Foundry has grown beyond just an application layer—it's now a comprehensive platform for building agents that can plan, take action, and continuously learn to drive real business outcomes. To help organizations build and deploy AI with confidence, we’re introducing new security and safety capabilities and insights for developers in Azure AI Foundry Introducing Spotlighting to detect and block prompt injection attacks in real time As AI systems increasingly rely on external data sources, a new class of threats has emerged. Indirect prompt injection attacks embed hidden instructions in documents, emails, and web content, tricking models into taking unauthorized actions without any direct user input. These attacks are difficult to detect and hard to prevent using traditional filters alone. To address this, Azure AI Content Safety is introducing Spotlighting, now available in preview. Spotlighting strengthens the Prompt Shields guardrail by improving its ability to detect and handle potential indirect prompt injections, where hidden adversarial instructions are embedded in external content. This new capability helps prevent the model from inadvertently acting on malicious prompts that are not directly visible to the user. Enable Spotlighting in Azure AI Content Safety to detect potential indirect prompt injection attacks New capabilities for task adherence evaluation and task adherence mitigation to ensure agents remain within scope As developers build more capable agents, organizations face growing pressure to help confirm those agents act within defined instructions and policy boundaries. Even small deviations can lead to tool misuse, broken workflows, or risks like unintended exposure of sensitive data. To solve this, Azure AI Foundry now includes task adherence for agents, now in preview and powered by two components: a real-time evaluation and a new control within Azure AI Content Safety. At the core is a real-time task adherence evaluation API, part of Azure AI Content Safety. This API assesses whether an agent’s behavior is aligned with its assigned task by analyzing the user’s query, system instructions, planned tool calls, and the agent’s response. The evaluation framework is built on Microsoft’s Agent Evaluators, which measure intent resolution, tool selection accuracy, completeness of response, and overall alignment to the original request. Developers can run this scoring logic locally using the Task Adherence Evaluator in the Azure AI Evaluation SDK, with a five-point scale that ranges from fully nonadherent to fully adherent. This gives teams a flexible and transparent way to inspect task-level behavior before it causes downstream issues. Task adherence is enforced through a new control in Azure AI Content Safety. If an agent goes off-task, the control can block tool use, pause execution, or trigger human review. In Azure AI Agent Service, it is available as an opt-in feature and runs automatically. Combined with real-time evaluation, this control helps to ensure that agents stay on task, follow instructions, and operate according to enterprise policies. Learn more about Prompt Shields in Azure AI Content Safety. Azure AI Foundry continuous evaluation and monitoring of agentic systems Maintaining high performance and compliance for AI agents after deployment is a growing challenge. Without ongoing oversight, issues like performance degradation, safety risks, or unintentional misuse of resources can slip through unnoticed. To address this, Azure AI Foundry introduces continuous evaluation and monitoring of agentic systems, now in preview, provides a single pane of glass dashboard to track key metrics such as performance, quality, safety, and resource usage in real time. Continuous evaluation runs quality and safety evaluations at a sampled rate of production usage with results made available in the Azure AI Foundry Monitoring dashboard and published to Application Insights. Developers can set alerts to detect drift or regressions and use Azure Monitor to gain full-stack visibility into their AI systems. For example, an organization using an AI agent to assist with customer-facing tasks can monitor groundedness and detect a decline in quality when the agent begins referencing irrelevant information, helping teams to act before it potentially negatively affects trust of users. Azure AI Foundry evaluation integrations with Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Credo AI, and Saidot for streamlined compliance AI regulations and standards introduce new requirements for transparency, documentation, and risk management for high-risk AI systems. As developers build AI applications and agents, they may need guidance and tools to help them evaluate risks based on these requirements and seamlessly share control and evaluation insights with compliance and risk teams. Today, we are announcing previews for Azure AI Foundry evaluation tool’s integration with a compliance management solution, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, and AI governance solutions, Credo AI and Saidot. These integrations help define risk parameters, run suggested compliance evaluations, and collect evidence for control testing and auditing. For example, for a developer who’s building an AI agent in Europe may be required by their compliance team to complete a Data Protection Impact Assets (DPIA) and Algorithmic Impact Assessment (AIA) to meet internal risk management and technical documentation requirements aligned with emerging AI governance standards and best practices. Based on Purview Compliance Manager’s step-by-step guidance on controls implementation and testing, the compliance teams can evaluate risks such as potential bias, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, or lack of transparency in model behavior. Once the evaluation is conducted in Azure AI Foundry, the developer can obtain a report with documented risk, mitigation, and residual risk for compliance teams to upload to Compliance Manager to support audits and provide evidence to regulators or external stakeholders. Assess controls for Azure AI Foundry against emerging AI governance standards Learn more about Purview Compliance Manager. Learn more about the integration with Credo AI and Saidot in this blogpost. Leading Microsoft Entra, Defender and Purview value extended to Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Copilot Studio Introducing Microsoft Entra Agent ID to help address agent sprawl and manage agent identity Organizations are rapidly building their own AI agents, leading to agent sprawl and a lack of centralized visibility and management. Security teams often struggle to keep up, unable to see which agents exist and whether they introduce security or compliance risks. Without proper oversight, agent sprawl increases the attack surface and makes it harder to manage these non-human identities. To address this challenge, we’re announcing the public preview of Microsoft Entra Agent ID, a new capability in the Microsoft Entra admin center that gives security admins visibility and control over AI agents built with Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry. With Microsoft Entra Agent ID, an agent created through Copilot Studio or Azure AI Foundry is automatically assigned an identity with no additional work required from the developers building them. This is the first step in a broader initiative to manage and protect non-human identities as organizations continue to build AI agents. : Security and identity admins can gain visibility into AI agents built in Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center This new capability lays the foundation for more advanced capabilities coming soon to Microsoft Entra. We also know that no one can do it alone. Security has always been a team sport, and that’s especially true as we enter this new era of protecting AI agents and their identities. We’re energized by the momentum across the industry; two weeks ago, we announced support for the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol and began collaborating with partners to shape the future of AI identity workflows. Today, we’re also excited to announce new partnerships with ServiceNow and Workday. As part of this, we’ll integrate Microsoft Entra Agent ID with the ServiceNow AI Platform and the Workday Agent System of Record. This will allow for automated provisioning of identities for future digital employees. Learn more about Microsoft Entra Agent ID. Microsoft Defender security alerts and recommendations now available in Azure AI Foundry As more AI applications are deployed to production, organizations need to predict and prevent potential AI threats with natively integrated security controls backed by industry-leading Gen AI and threat intelligence for AI deployments. Developers need critical signals from security teams to effectively mitigate security risks related to their AI deployments. When these critical signals live in separate systems outside the developer experience, this can create delays in mitigation, leaving opportunities for AI apps and agents to become liabilities and exposing organizations to various threats and compliance violations. Now in preview, Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates AI security posture management recommendations and runtime threat protection alerts directly into the Azure AI Foundry portal. These capabilities, previously announced as part of the broader Microsoft Defender for Cloud solution, are extended natively into Azure AI Foundry enabling developers to access alerts and recommendations without leaving their workflows. This provides real-time visibility into security risks, misconfigurations, and active threats targeting their AI applications on specific Azure AI projects, without needing to switch tools or wait on security teams to provide details. Security insights from Microsoft Defender for Cloud help developers identify and respond to threats like jailbreak attacks, sensitive data leakage, and misuse of system resources. These insights include: AI security posture recommendations that identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in AI services and provide best practices to reduce risk Threat protection alerts for AI services that notify developers of active threats and provide guidance for mitigation, across more than 15 detection types For example, a developer building an AI-powered agent can receive security recommendations suggesting the use of Azure Private Link for Azure AI Services resources. This reduces the risk of data leakage by handling the connectivity between consumers and services over the Azure backbone network. Each recommendation includes actionable remediation steps, helping teams identify and mitigate risks in both pre- and post-deployment phases. This helps to reduce risks without slowing down innovation. : Developers can view security alerts on the Risks + alerts page in Azure AI Foundry : Developers can view recommendations on the Guardrails + controls page in Azure AI Foundry This integration is currently in preview and will be generally available in June 2025 in Azure AI Foundry. Learn more about protecting AI services with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Microsoft Purview capabilities extended to secure and govern data in custom-built AI apps and agents Data oversharing and leakage are among the top concerns for AI adoption, and central to many regulatory requirements. For organizations to confidently deploy AI applications and agents, both low code and pro code developers need a seamless way to embed security and compliance controls into their AI creations. Without simple, developer-friendly solutions, security gaps can quickly become blockers, delaying deployment and increasing risks as applications move from development to production. Today, Purview is extending its enterprise-grade data security and compliance capabilities, making it easier for both low code and pro code developers to integrate data security and compliance into their AI applications and agents, regardless of which tools or platforms they use. For example, with this update, Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI becomes the one place data security teams can see all the data risk insights across Microsoft Copilots, agents built in Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents built in Azure AI Foundry and other platforms. Admins can easily drill into security and compliance insights for specific AI apps or agents, making it easier to investigate and take action on potential risks. : Data security admins can now find data security and compliance insights across Microsoft Copilots, agents built with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents in Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI In the following sections, we will provide more details about the updates to Purview capabilities in various AI workloads. 1. Microsoft Purview data security and compliance controls can be extended to any custom-built AI application and agent via the new Purview SDK or the native Purview integration with Azure AI Foundry. The new capabilities make it easy and effortless for security teams to bring the same enterprise-grade data security compliance controls available today for Microsoft 365 Copilot to custom AI applications and agents, so organizations can: Discover data security risks, such as sensitive data in user prompts, and data compliance risks, such as harmful content, and get recommended actions to mitigate risks proactively in Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI. Protect sensitive data against data leakage and insider risks with Microsoft Purview data security policies. Govern AI interactions with Audit, Data Lifecycle Management, eDiscovery, and Communication Compliance. Microsoft Purview SDK Microsoft Purview now offers Purview SDK, a set of REST APIs, documentation, and code samples, currently in preview, enabling developers to integrate Purview's data security and compliance capabilities into AI applications or agents within any integrated development environment (IDE). : By embedding Purview APIs into the IDE, developers help enable their AI apps to be secured and governed at runtime For example, a developer building an AI agent using an AWS model can use the Purview SDK to enable their AI app to automatically identify and block sensitive data entered by users before it’s exposed to the model, while also providing security teams with valuable signals that support compliance. With Purview SDK, startups, ISVs, and partners can now embed Purview industry-leading capabilities directly into their AI software solutions, making these solutions Purview aware and easier for their customers to secure and govern data in their AI solutions. For example, Infosys Vice President and Delivery Head of Cyber Security Practice, Ashish Adhvaryu indicates, “Infosys Cyber Next platform integrates Microsoft Purview to provide enhanced AI security capabilities. Our solution, the Cyber Next AI assistant (Cyber Advisor) for the SOC analyst, leverages Purview SDK to drive proactive threat mitigation with real-time monitoring and auditing capabilities. This integration provides holistic AI-assisted protection, enhancing cybersecurity posture." Microsoft partner EY (previously known as Ernst and Young) has also leveraged the new Purview SDK to embed Purview value into their GenAI initiatives. “We’re not just building AI tools, we are creating Agentic solutions where trust, security, and transparency are present from the start, supported by the policy controls provided through the Purview SDK. We’re seeing 25 to 30 percent time savings when we build secure features using the Purview SDK,” noted Sumanta Kar, Partner, Innovation and Emerging Tech at EY. Learn more about the Purview SDK. Microsoft Purview integrates natively with Azure AI Foundry Organizations are developing an average of 14 custom AI applications. The rapid pace of AI innovation may leave security teams unaware of potential data security and compliance risks within their environments. With the update announced today, Azure AI Foundry signals are now directly integrated with Purview Data Security Posture Management for AI, Insider Risk Management, and data compliance controls, minimizing the need for additional development work. For example, for AI applications and agents built with Azure AI Foundry models, data security teams can gain visibility into AI usage and data risks in Purview DSPM for AI, with no additional work from developers. Data security teams can also detect, investigate, and respond to both malicious and inadvertent user activities, such as a departing employee leveraging an AI agent to retrieve an anomalous amount of sensitive data, with Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) policies. Lastly, user prompts and AI responses in Azure AI apps and agents can now be ingested into Purview compliance tools as mentioned above. Learn more about Microsoft Purview for Azure AI Foundry. 2. Purview data protections extended to Copilot Studio agents grounded in Microsoft Dataverse data Coming to preview in June, Purview Information Protection extends auto-labeling and label inheritance coverage to Dataverse to help prevent oversharing and data leaks. Information Protection makes it easier for organizations to automatically classify and protect sensitive data at scale. A common challenge is that sensitive data often lands in Dataverse from various sources without consistent labeling or protection. The rapid adoption of agents built using Copilot Studio and grounding data from Dataverse increases the risk of data oversharing and leakage if data is not properly protected. With auto-labeling, data stored in Dataverse tables can be automatically labeled based on policies set in Microsoft Purview, regardless of its source. This reduces the need for manual labeling effort and protects sensitive information from the moment it enters Dataverse. With label inheritance, AI agent responses grounded in Dataverse data will automatically carry and honor the source data’s sensitivity label. If a response pulls from multiple tables with different labels, the most restrictive label is applied to ensure consistent protection. For example, a financial advisor building an agent in Copilot Studio might connect multiple Dataverse tables, some labeled as “General” and others as “Highly Confidential.” If a response pulls from both, it will inherit the most restrictive label, in this case, "Highly Confidential,” to prevent unauthorized access and ensure appropriate protections are applied across both maker and users of the agent. Together, auto-labeling and label inheritance in Dataverse support a more secure, automated foundation for AI. : Sensitivity labels will be automatically applied to data in Dataverse : AI-generated responses will inherit and honor the source data’s sensitivity labels Learn more about protecting Dataverse data with Microsoft Purview. 3. Purview DSPM for AI can now provide visibility into unauthenticated interactions with Copilot Studio agents As organizations increasingly use Microsoft Copilot Studio to deploy AI agents for frontline customer interactions, gaining visibility into unauthenticated user interactions and proactively mitigating risks becomes increasingly critical. Building on existing Purview and Copilot Studio integrations, we’ve extended DSPM for AI and Audit in Copilot Studio to provide visibility into unauthenticated interactions, now in preview. This gives organizations a more comprehensive view of AI-related data security risks across authenticated and unauthenticated users. For example, a healthcare provider hosting an external, customer-facing agent assistant must be able to detect and respond to attempts by unauthenticated users to access sensitive patient data. With these new capabilities in DSPM for AI, data security teams can now identify these interactions, assess potential exposure of sensitive data, and act accordingly. Additionally, integration with Purview Audit provides teams with seamless access to information needed for audit requirements. : Gain visibility into all AI interactions, including those from unauthenticated users Learn more about Purview for Copilot Studio. 4. Purview Data Loss Prevention extended to more Microsoft 365 agent scenarios To help organizations prevent data oversharing through AI, at Ignite 2024, we announced that data security admins could prevent Microsoft 365 Copilot from using certain labeled documents as grounding data to generate summaries or responses. Now in preview, this control also extends to agents published in Microsoft 365 Copilot that are grounded by Microsoft 365 data, including pre-built Microsoft 365 agents, agents built with the Agent Builder, and agents built with Copilot Studio. This helps ensure that files containing sensitive content are used appropriately by AI agents. For example, confidential legal documents with highly specific language that could lead to improper guidance if summarized by an AI agent, or "Internal only” documents that shouldn’t be used to generate content that can be shared outside of the organization. : Extend data loss prevention (DLP) policies to Microsoft 365 Copilot agents to protect sensitive data Learn more about Data Loss Prevention for Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents. The data protection capabilities we are extending to agents in Agent Builder and Copilot Studio demonstrate our continued investment in strengthening the Security and Governance pillar of the Copilot Control System (CSS). CCS provides integrated controls to help IT and security teams secure, manage, and monitor Copilot and agents across Microsoft 365, spanning governance, management, and reporting. Learn more here. Explore additional resources As developers and security teams continue to secure AI throughout its lifecycle, it’s important to stay ahead of emerging risks and ensure protection. Microsoft Security provides a range of tools and resources to help you proactively secure AI models, apps, and agents from code to runtime. Explore the following resources to deepen your understanding and strengthen your approach to AI security: Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Purview SDK Get started with Azure AI Foundry Get started with Microsoft Entra Get started with Microsoft Purview Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Get started with Copilot Studio Sign up for a free Microsoft 365 E5 Security Trial and Microsoft Purview Trial 1 Predicts 2025: Navigating Imminent AI Turbulence for Cybersecurity, Jeremy D'Hoinne, Akif Khan, Manuel Acosta, Avivah Litan, Deepak Seth, Bart Willemsen, 10 February 2025 2 IBM. "Cost of a Data Breach 2024: Financial Industry." IBM Think, 13 Aug. 2024, https://www.ibm.com/think/insights/cost-of-a-data-breach-2024-financial-industry; Cser, Tamas. "The Cost of Finding Bugs Later in the SDLC." Functionize, 5 Jan. 2023, https://www.functionize.com/blog/the-cost-of-finding-bugs-later-in-the-sdlcUnderstanding and mitigating security risks in MCP implementations
Introducing any new technology can introduce new security challenges or exacerbate existing security risks. In this blog post, we’re going to look at some of the security risks that could be introduced to your environment when using Model Context Protocol (MCP), and what controls you can put in place to mitigate them. MCP is a framework that enables seamless integration between LLM applications and various tools and data sources. MCP defines: A standardized way for AI models to request external actions through a consistent API Structured formats for how data should be passed to and from AI systems Protocols for how AI requests are processed, executed, and returned MCP allows different AI systems to use a common set of tools and patterns, ensuring consistent behavior when AI models interact with external systems. MCP architecture MCP follows a client-server architecture that allows AI models to interact with external tools efficiently. Here’s how it works: MCP Host – The AI model (e.g., Azure OpenAI GPT) requesting data or actions. MCP Client – An intermediary service that forwards the AI model's requests to MCP servers. MCP Server – Lightweight applications that expose specific capabilities (APIs, databases, files, etc.). Data Sources – Various backend systems, including local storage, cloud databases, and external APIs. MCP security controls Any system which has access to important resources has implied security challenges. Security challenges can generally be addressed through correct application of fundamental security controls and concepts. As MCP is only newly defined, the specification is changing very rapidly and as the protocol evolves. Eventually the security controls within it will mature, enabling a better integration with enterprise and established security architectures and best practices. Research published in the Microsoft Digital Defense Report states that 98% of reported breaches would be prevented by robust security hygiene and the best protection against any kind of breach is to get your baseline security hygiene, secure coding best practices and supply chain security right – those tried and tested practices that we already know about still make the most impact in reducing security risk. Let's look at some of the ways that you can start to address security risks when adopting MCP. MCP server authentication (if your MCP implementation was before 26th April 2025) Problem statement: The original MCP specification assumed that developers would write their own authentication server. This requires knowledge of OAuth and related security constraints. MCP servers acted as OAuth 2.0 Authorization Servers, managing the required user authentication directly rather than delegating it to an external service such as Microsoft Entra ID. As of 26 April 2025, an update to the MCP specification allows for MCP servers to delegate user authentication to an external service. Risks: Misconfigured authorization logic in the MCP server can lead to sensitive data exposure and incorrectly applied access controls. OAuth token theft on the local MCP server. If stolen, the token can then be used to impersonate the MCP server and access resources and data from the service that the OAuth token is for. Mitigating controls: Thoroughly review your MCP server authorization logic, here some posts discussing this in more detail - Azure API Management Your Auth Gateway For MCP Servers | Microsoft Community Hub and Using Microsoft Entra ID To Authenticate With MCP Servers Via Sessions · Den Delimarsky Implement best practices for token validation and lifetime Use secure token storage and encrypt tokens Excessive permissions for MCP servers Problem statement: MCP servers may have been granted excessive permissions to the service/resource they are accessing. For example, an MCP server that is part of an AI sales application connecting to an enterprise data store should have access scoped to the sales data and not allowed to access all the files in the store. Referencing back to the principle of least privilege (one of the oldest security principles), no resource should have permissions in excess of what is required for it to execute the tasks it was intended for. AI presents an increased challenge in this space because to enable it to be flexible, it can be challenging to define the exact permissions required. Risks: Granting excessive permissions can allow for exfiltration or amending data that the MCP server was not intended to be able to access. This could also be a privacy issue if the data is personally identifiable information (PII). Mitigating controls: Clearly define the permissions that the MCP server has to access the resource/service it connects to. These permissions should be the minimum required for the MCP server to access the tool or data it is connecting to. Indirect prompt injection attacks Problem statement: Researchers have shown that the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is vulnerable to a subset of Indirect Prompt Injection attacks known as Tool Poisoning Attacks. Tool poisoning is a scenario where an attacker embeds malicious instructions within the descriptions of MCP tools. These instructions are invisible to users but can be interpreted by the AI model and its underlying systems, leading to unintended actions that could ultimately lead to harmful outcomes. Risks: Unintended AI actions present a variety of security risks that include data exfiltration and privacy breaches. Mitigating controls: Implement AI prompt shields: in Azure AI Foundry, you can follow these steps to implement AI prompt shields. Implement robust supply chain security: you can read more about how Microsoft implements supply chain security internally here. Established security best practices that will uplift your MCP implementation’s security posture Any MCP implementation inherits the existing security posture of your organization's environment that it is built upon, so when considering the security of MCP as a component of your overall AI systems it is recommended that you look at uplifting your overall existing security posture. The following established security controls are especially pertinent: Secure coding best practices in your AI application - protect against the OWASP Top 10, the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs, use of secure vaults for secrets and tokens, implementing end-to-end secure communications between all application components, etc. Server hardening – use MFA where possible, keep patching up to date, integrate the server with a third party identity provider for access, etc. Keep devices, infrastructure and applications up to date with patches Security monitoring – implementing logging and monitoring of an AI application (including the MCP client/servers) and sending those logs to a central SIEM for detection of anomalous activities Zero trust architecture – isolating components via network and identity controls in a logical manner to minimize lateral movement if an AI application were compromised. Conclusion MCP is a promising development in the AI space that enables rich data and context access. As developers embrace this new approach to integrating their organization's APIs and connectors into LLMs, they need to be aware of security risks and how to implement controls to reduce those risks. There are mitigating security controls that can be put in place to reduce the risks inherent in the current specification, but as the protocol develops expect that some of the risks will reduce or disappear entirely. We encourage you to contribute to and suggest security related MCP RFCs to make this protocol even better! With thanks to OrinThomas, dasithwijes, dendeli and Peter Marcu for their inputs and collaboration on this post.Enhance AI security and governance across multi-model and multi-cloud environments
Generative AI adoption is accelerating, with AI transformation happening in real-time across various industries. This rapid adoption is reshaping how organizations operate and innovate, but it also introduces new challenges that require careful attention. At Ignite last fall, we announced several new capabilities to help organizations secure their AI transformation. These capabilities were designed to address top customer priorities such as preventing data oversharing, safeguarding custom AI, and preparing for emerging AI regulations. Organizations like Cummins, KPMG, and Mia Labs have leveraged these capabilities to confidently strengthen their AI security and governance efforts. However, despite these advancements, challenges persist. One major concern is the rise of shadow AI—applications used without IT or security oversight. In fact, 78% of AI users report bringing their own AI tools, such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek, into the workplace 1 . Additionally, new threats, like indirect prompt injection attacks, are emerging, with 77% of organizations expressing concerns and 11% of organizations identifying them as a critical risk 2 . To address these challenges, we are excited to announce new features and capabilities that help customers do the following: Prevent risky access and data leakage in shadow AI with granular access controls and inline data security capabilities Manage AI security posture across multi-cloud and multi-model environments Detect and respond to new AI threats, such as indirect prompt injections and wallet abuse Secure and govern data in Microsoft 365 Copilot and beyond In this blog, we’ll explore these announcements and demonstrate how they help organizations navigate AI adoption with confidence, mitigating risks, and unlocking AI’s full potential on their transformation journey. Prevent risky access and data leakage in shadow AI With the rapid rise of generative AI, organizations are increasingly encountering unauthorized employee use of AI applications without IT or security team approval. This unsanctioned and unprotected usage has given rise to “shadow AI,” significantly heightening the risk of sensitive data exposure. Today, we are introducing a set of access and data security controls designed to support a defense-in-depth strategy, helping you mitigate risks and prevent data leakage in third-party AI applications. Real-time access controls to shadow AI The first line of defense against security risks in AI applications is controlling access. While security teams can use endpoint controls to block access for all users across the organization, this approach is often too restrictive and impractical. Instead, they need more granular controls at the user level to manage access to SaaS-based AI applications. Today we are announcing the general availability of the AI web category filter in Microsoft Entra Internet Access to help enforce access controls that govern which users and groups have access to different AI applications. Internet Access deep integration with Microsoft Entra ID extends Conditional Access to any AI application, enabling organizations to apply AI access policies with granularity. By using Conditional Access as the policy control engine, organizations can enforce policies based on user roles, locations, device compliance, user risk levels, and other conditions, ensuring secure and adaptive access to AI applications. For example, with Internet Access, organizations can allow your strategy team to experiment with all or most consumer AI apps while blocking those apps for highly privileged roles, such as accounts payable or IT infrastructure admins. For even greater security, organizations can further restrict access to all AI applications if Microsoft Entra detects elevated identity risk. Inline discovery and protection of sensitive data Once users gain access to sanctioned AI applications, security teams still need to ensure that sensitive data isn’t shared with those applications. Microsoft Purview provides data security capabilities to prevent users from sending sensitive data to AI applications. Today, we are announcing enhanced Purview data security capabilities for the browser available in preview in the coming weeks. The new inline discovery & protection controls within Microsoft Edge for Business detect and block sensitive data from being sent to AI apps in real-time, even if typed directly. This prevents sensitive data leaks as users interact with consumer AI applications, starting with ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and DeepSeek. For example, if an employee attempts to type sensitive details about an upcoming merger or acquisition into Google Gemini to generate a written summary, the new inline protection controls in Microsoft Purview will block the prompt from being submitted, effectively blocking the potential leaks of confidential data to an unsanctioned AI app. This augments existing DLP controls for Edge for Business, including protections that prevent file uploads and the pasting of sensitive content into AI applications. Since inline protection is built natively into Edge for Business, newly deployed policies automatically take effect in the browser even if endpoint DLP is not deployed to the device. : Inline DLP in Edge for Business prevents sensitive data from being submitted to consumer AI applications like Google Gemini by blocking the action. The new inline protection controls are integrated with Adaptive Protection to dynamically enforce different levels of DLP policies based on the risk level of the user interacting with the AI application. For example, admins can block low-risk users from submitting prompts containing the highest-sensitivity classifiers for their organization, such as M&A-related data or intellectual property, while blocking prompts containing any sensitive information type (SIT) for elevated-risk users. Learn more about inline discovery & protection in the Edge for Business browser in this blog. In addition to the new capabilities within Edge for Business, today we are also introducing Purview data security capabilities for the network layer available in preview starting in early May. Enabled through integrations with Netskope and iboss to start, organizations will be able to extend inline discovery of sensitive data to interactions between managed devices and untrusted AI sites. By integrating Purview DLP with their SASE solution (e.g. Netskope and iBoss), data security admins can gain visibility into the use of sensitive data on the network as users interact with AI applications. These interactions can originate from desktop applications such as the ChatGPT desktop app or Microsoft Word with a ChatGPT plugin installed, or non-Microsoft browsers such as Opera and Brave that are accessing AI sites. Using Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, admins will also have visibility into how these interactions contribute to organizational risk and can take action through DSPM for AI policy recommendations. For example, if there is a high volume of prompts containing sensitive data sent to ChatGPT, DSPM for AI will detect and recommend a new DLP policy to help mitigate this risk. Learn more about inline discovery for the network, including Purview integrations with Netskope and iBoss, in this blog. Manage AI security posture across multi-cloud and multi-model environments In today’s rapidly evolving AI landscape, developers frequently leverage multiple cloud providers to optimize cost, performance, and availability. Different AI models excel at various tasks, leading developers to deploy models from various providers for different use cases. Consequently, managing security posture across multi-cloud and multi-model environments has become essential. Today, Microsoft Defender for Cloud supports deployed AI workloads across Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, and Amazon Bedrock. To further enhance our security coverage, we are expanding AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) in Defender for Cloud to improve compatibility with additional cloud service providers and models. This includes: Support for Google Vertex AI models Enhanced support for Azure AI Foundry model catalog and custom models With this expansion, AI-SPM in Defender for Cloud will now offer the discovery of the AI inventory and vulnerabilities, attack path analysis, and recommended actions to address risks in Google VertexAI workloads. Additionally, it will support all models in Azure AI Foundry model catalog, including Meta Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek, as well as custom models. This expansion ensures a consistent and unified approach to managing AI security risks across multi-model and multi-cloud environments. Support for Google Vertex AI models will be available in public preview starting May 1, while support for Azure AI Foundry model catalog and custom models is generally available today. Learn More. 2: Microsoft Defender for Cloud detects an attack path to a DeepSeek R1 workload. In addition, Defender for Cloud will also offer a new data and AI security dashboard. Security teams will have access to an intuitive overview of their datastores and AI services across their multi-cloud environment, top recommendations, and critical attack paths to prioritize and accelerate remediation. The dashboard will be generally available on May 1. The new data & AI security dashboard in Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a comprehensive overview of your data and AI security posture. These new capabilities reflect Microsoft’s commitment to helping organizations address the most critical security challenges in managing AI security posture in their heterogeneous environments. Detect and respond to new AI threats Organizations are integrating generative AI into their workflows and facing new security risks unique to AI. Detecting and responding to these evolving threats is critical to maintaining a secure AI environment. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) provides a trusted framework for identifying and mitigating such vulnerabilities, such as prompt injection and sensitive information disclosure. Today, we are announcing Threat protection for AI services, a new capability that enhances threat protection in Defender for Cloud, enabling organizations to secure custom AI applications by detecting and responding to emerging AI threats more effectively. Building on the OWASP Top 10 risks for LLM applications, this capability addresses those critical vulnerabilities highlighted on the top 10 list, such as prompt injections and sensitive information disclosure. Threat protection for AI services helps organizations identify and mitigate threats to their custom AI applications using anomaly detection and AI-powered insights. With this announcement, Defender for Cloud will now extend its threat protection for AI workloads, providing a rich suite of new and enriched detections for Azure OpenAI Service and models in the Azure AI Foundry model catalog. New detections include direct and indirect prompt injections, novel attack techniques like ASCII smuggling, malicious URL in user prompts and AI responses, wallet abuse, suspicious access to AI resources, and more. Security teams can leverage evidence-based security alerts to enhance investigation and response actions through integration with Microsoft Defender XDR. For example, in Microsoft Defender XDR, a SOC analyst can detect and respond to a wallet abuse attack, where an attacker exploits an AI system to overload resources and increase costs. The analyst gains detailed visibility into the attack, including the affected application, user-entered prompts, IP address, and other suspicious activities performed by the bad actor. With this information, the SOC analyst can take action and block the attacker from accessing the AI application, preventing further risks. This capability will be generally available on May 1. Learn More. : Security teams can investigate new detections of AI threats in Defender XDR. Secure and govern data in Microsoft 365 Copilot and beyond Data oversharing and non-compliant AI use are significant concerns when it comes to securing and governing data in Microsoft Copilots. Today, we are announcing new data security and compliance capabilities. New data oversharing insights for unclassified data available in Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI: Today, we are announcing the public preview of on-demand classification for SharePoint and OneDrive. This new capability gives data security admins visibility into unclassified data stored in SharePoint and OneDrive and enables them to classify that data on demand. This helps ensure that Microsoft 365 Copilot is indexing and referencing files in its responses that have been properly classified. Previously, unclassified and unscanned files did not appear in DSPM for AI oversharing assessments. Now admins can initiate an on-demand data classification scan, directly from the oversharing assessment, ensuring that older or previously unscanned files are identified, classified, and incorporated into the reports. This allows organizations to detect and address potential risks more comprehensively. For example, an admin can initiate a scan of legacy customer contracts stored in a specified SharePoint library to detect and classify sensitive information such as account numbers or contact information. If these newly classified documents match the classifiers included in any existing auto-labeling policies, they will be automatically labeled. This helps ensure that documents containing sensitive information remain protected when they are referenced in Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions. Learn More. Security teams can trigger on-demand classification scan results in the oversharing assessment in Purview DSPM for AI. Secure and govern data in Security Copilot and Copilot in Fabric: We are excited to announce the public preview of Purview for Security Copilot and Copilot in Fabric, starting with Copilot in Power BI, offering DSPM for AI, Insider Risk Management, and data compliance controls, including eDiscovery, Audit, Data Lifecycle Management, and Communication Compliance. These capabilities will help organizations enhance data security posture, manage compliance, and mitigate risks more effectively. For example, admins can now use DSPM for AI to discover sensitive data in user prompts and responses and detect unethical or risky AI usage. Purview’s DSPM for AI provides admins with comprehensive reports on user activities and data interactions in Copilot for Power BI, as part of the Copilot in Fabric experience, and Security Copilot. DSPM Discoverability for Communication Compliance: This new feature in Communication Compliance, which will be available in public preview starting May 1, enables organizations to quickly create policies that detect inappropriate messages that could lead to data compliance risks. The new recommendation card on the DSPM for AI page offers a one-click policy creation in Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance, simplifying the detection and mitigation of potential threats, such as regulatory violations or improperly shared sensitive information. With these enhanced capabilities for securing and governing data in Microsoft 365 Copilot and beyond, organizations can confidently embrace AI innovation while maintaining strict security and compliance standards. Explore additional resources As organizations embrace AI, securing and governing its use is more important than ever. Staying informed and equipped with the right tools is key to navigating its challenges. Explore these resources to see how Microsoft Security can help you confidently adopt AI in your organization. Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Get started with Microsoft Purview Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Sign up for a free Microsoft 365 E5 Security Trial and Microsoft Purview Trial Learn more about the innovations designed to help your organization protect data, defend against cyber threats, and stay compliant. Join Microsoft leaders online at Microsoft Secure on April 9. [1] 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft and LinkedIn, May 2024, N=31,000. [2] Gartner®, Gartner Peer Community Poll – If your org’s using any virtual assistants with AI capabilities, are you concerned about indirect prompt injection attacks? 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