Welcome to the Microsoft Security Community!
Microsoft Security Community Hub | Protect it all with Microsoft Security Eliminate gaps and get the simplified, comprehensive protection, expertise, and AI-powered solutions you need to innovate and grow in a changing world. The Microsoft Security Community is your gateway to connect, learn, and collaborate with peers, experts, and product teams. Gain access to technical discussions, webinars, and help shape Microsoft’s security products. Get there fast To stay up to date on upcoming opportunities and the latest Microsoft Security Community news, make sure to subscribe to our email list. Find the latest skilling content and on-demand videos – subscribe to the Microsoft Security Community YouTube channel. Catch the latest announcements and connect with us on LinkedIn – Microsoft Security Community and Microsoft Entra Community. Upcoming Community Calls March 2026 Mar. 11 | 5:00pm | Microsoft Entra | Building MCP on Entra: Design Choices for Enterprise Agents Explore approaches for integrating MCP with Microsoft Entra Agent ID. We’ll outline key considerations for identity, consent, and authorization, discuss patterns for scalable and auditable agent architectures, and share insights on interoperability. Expect practical guidance, common pitfalls, and an open forum for questions and feedback. Mar. 12 | 12:00pm (BRT) | Microsoft Intune | Novidades do Microsoft Intune - Últimos lançamentos Junte-se a nós para explorar as novidades do Microsoft Intune, incluindo os lançamentos mais recentes anunciados no Microsoft Ignite e a integração do Microsoft Security Copilot no Intune. A sessão contará com demonstrações ao vivo e um espaço interativo de perguntas e respostas, onde você poderá tirar suas dúvidas com especialistas. Mar. 18 | 1:00pm (AEDT) | Microsoft Entra | From Lockouts to Logins: Modern Account Recovery and Passkeys Lost phone, no backup? In a passwordless world, users can face total lockouts and risky helpdesk recovery. This session shows how Entra ID Account Recovery uses strong identity verification and passkey profiles to help users safely regain access. Mar. 19 | 8:00am | Microsoft Purview | Insider Risk Data Risk Graph We’re excited to share a new capability that brings Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) together with Microsoft Sentinel through the data risk graph (public preview) What it is: The data risk graph gives you an interactive, visual map of user activity, data movement, and risk signals—all in one place. Why it matters: Quickly investigate insider risk alerts with clear context, understand the impact of risky activities on sensitive data, accelerate response with intuitive, graph-based insights Getting started: Requires onboarding to the Sentinel data lake & graph. Needs appropriate admin/security roles and at least one IRM policy configured This session will provide practical guidance on onboarding, setup requirements, and best practices for data risk graph. Mar. 24 | 8:00am | Microsoft Purview | eDiscovery recent updates to the modern UX Join us to learn all about the recent updates to the modern UX, from new features and managing generative AI content. Mar. 24 | 9:00am | Microsoft Intune | Accelerate your Mac Management POC in Intune with Intune my Macs Intune my Macs enables you to stand up a complete Microsoft Intune macOS proof‑of‑concept in minutes. Using a single script, it deploys policies, compliance settings, scripts, PKG apps, and optionally Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE). In this session, you’ll learn how to use the solution and see exactly what it delivers. Mar. 26 | 8:00am | Azure Network Security | What's New in Azure Web Application Firewall Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) continues to evolve to help you protect your web applications against ever-changing threats. In this session, we’ll explore the latest enhancements across Azure WAF, including improvements in ruleset accuracy, threat detection, and configuration flexibility. Whether you use Application Gateway WAF or Azure Front Door WAF, this session will help you understand what’s new, what’s improved, and how to get the most from your WAF deployments. Mar. 31 | 8:00am | Microsoft Entra | Developer Tools for Agent ID: SDKs, CLIs & Samples Accelerate agent identity projects with Microsoft Entra’s developer toolchain. Explore SDKs, sample repos, and utilities for token acquisition, consent flows, and downstream API calls. Learn techniques for debugging local environments, validating authentication flows, and automating checks in CI/CD pipelines. Share ready-to-run samples, resources, and guidance for filing new tooling requests—helping you build faster and smarter. April 2026 Apr. 2 | 8:00am | Security Copilot Skilling Series | Current capabilities of Copilot in Intune This session on Copilot in Intune & Agents explores the current embedded Copilot experiences and AI‑powered agents available through Security Copilot in Microsoft Intune. Attendees will learn how these capabilities streamline administrative workflows, reduce manual effort, and accelerate everyday endpoint management tasks, helping organizations modernize how they operate and manage devices at scale. Apr. 7 | 9:00am | Microsoft Intune | Re‑Envisioned: The New Single Device Experience in the Intune Admin Console We’ve updated the single device page in the Intune admin center to make it easier to track device activity, access tools and reports, and manage device information in a more consistent and intuitive layout. The new full-page layout gives a single view for monitoring signals, supporting focus in dedicated views for tools and reports. Join us for an overview of these changes, now available in public preview. Apr. 30 | 8:00am | Microsoft Security Community Presents | Purview Lightning Talks Join the Microsoft Security Community for Purview Lightning Talks; quick technical sessions delivered by the community, for the community. You’ll pick up practical Purview gems: must-know Compliance Manager tips, smart data security tricks, real-world scenarios, and actionable governance recommendations all in one energizing event. Hear directly from Purview customers, partners, and community members and walk away with ideas you can put to work right immediately. Register now; full agenda coming soon! Looking for more? Join the Security Advisors! As a Security Advisor, you’ll gain early visibility into product roadmaps, participate in focus groups, and access private preview features before public release. You’ll have a direct channel to share feedback with engineering teams, influencing the direction of Microsoft Security products. The program also offers opportunities to collaborate and network with fellow end users and Microsoft product teams. Join the Security Advisors program that best fits your interests: www.aka.ms/joincommunity. Additional resources Microsoft Security Hub on Tech Community Virtual Ninja Training Courses Microsoft Security Documentation Azure Network Security GitHub Microsoft Defender for Cloud GitHub Microsoft Sentinel GitHub Microsoft Defender XDR GitHub Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps GitHub Microsoft Defender for Identity GitHub Microsoft Purview GitHubPurview Community: Call for Sessions!
Microsoft Purview Community Lighting Talks is a virtual event series featuring real-world demos, tips, and solutions directly from you, the Purview Community! The goal of these short, fluff-free lighting sessions is to foster authentic knowledge sharing, community connection, and highlight real experiences to empower others who use Microsoft Purview. The virtual events will be held in a simu-live format across multiple time zones and will include subject-matter experts and the speakers in a live-chat Q&A for community participation. For more information and to apply to speak, please visit the Purview Lighting Talks Call for Speakers Submission Form SUBMISSIONS DUE MARCH 16, 2026 So, to our Purview customers, partners, and developers- gather your session title and description, along with a quick 1-2 sentence bio, and submit today! Event details and registration will be shared here and at aka.ms/securitycommunity as soon as they are scheduled. Wish to be notified? Subscribe to our email list.Introducing Security Dashboard for AI (Now in Public Preview)
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. 53% of security professionals say their current AI risk management needs improvement, presenting an opportunity to better identify, assess and manage risk effectively. 1 At the same time, 86% of leaders prefer integrated platforms over fragmented tools, citing better visibility, fewer alerts and improved efficiency. 2 To address these needs, we are excited to announce the Security Dashboard for AI, previously announced at Microsoft Ignite, is available in public preview. This unified dashboard aggregates posture and real-time risk signals from Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview - enabling users to see left-to-right across purpose-built security tools from within a single pane of glass. The dashboard equips CISOs and AI risk leaders with a governance tool to discover agents and AI apps, track AI posture and drift, and correlate risk signals to investigate and act across their entire AI ecosystem. Security teams can continue using the tools they trust while empowering security leaders to govern and collaborate effectively. Gain Unified AI Risk Visibility Consolidating risk signals from across purpose-built tools can simplify AI asset visibility and oversight, increase security teams’ efficiency, and reduce the opportunity for human error. The Security Dashboard for AI provides leaders with unified AI risk visibility by aggregating security, identity, and data risk across Defender, Entra, Purview into a single interactive dashboard experience. The Overview tab of the dashboard provides users with an AI risk scorecard, providing immediate visibility to where there may be risks for security teams to address. It also assesses an organization's implementation of Microsoft security for AI capabilities and provides recommendations for improving AI security posture. The dashboard also features an AI inventory with comprehensive views to support AI assets discovery, risk assessments, and remediation actions for broad coverage of AI agents, models, MCP servers, and applications. The dashboard provides coverage for all Microsoft AI solutions supported by Entra, Defender and Purview—including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio agents, and Microsoft Foundry applications and agents—as well as third-party AI models, applications, and agents, such as Google Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT, and MCP servers. This supports comprehensive visibility and control, regardless of where applications and agents are built. Prioritize Critical Risk with Security Copilots AI-Powered Insights Risk leaders must do more than just recognize existing risks—they also need to determine which ones pose the greatest threat to their business. The dashboard provides a consolidated view of AI-related security risks and leverages Security Copilot’s AI-powered insights to help find the most critical risks within an environment. For example, Security Copilot natural language interaction improves agent discovery and categorization, helping leaders identify unmanaged and shadow AI agents to enhance security posture. Furthermore, Security Copilot allows leaders to investigate AI risks and agent activities through prompt-based exploration, putting them in the driver’s seat for additional risk investigation. Drive Risk Mitigation By streamlining risk mitigation recommendations and automated task delegation, organizations can significantly improve the efficiency of their AI risk management processes. This approach can reduce the potential hidden AI risk and accelerate compliance efforts, helping to ensure that risk mitigation is timely and accurate. To address this, the Security Dashboard for AI evaluates how organizations put Microsoft’s AI security features into practice and offers tailored suggestions to strengthen AI security posture. It leverages Microsoft’s productivity tools for immediate action within the practitioner portal, making it easy for administrators to delegate recommendation tasks to designated users. 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, the Security Dashboard for AI is included with eligible Microsoft security products customers already use. If an organization is already using Microsoft security products to secure AI, they are already a Security Dashboard for AI customer. Getting Started Existing Microsoft Security customers can start using Security Dashboard for AI today. It is included when a customer has the Microsoft Security products—Defender, Entra and Purview—with no additional licensing required. To begin using the Security Dashboard for AI, visit http://ai.security.microsoft.com or access the dashboard from the Defender, Entra or Purview portals. Learn more about the Security Dashboard for AI at Microsoft Security MS Learn. 1AuditBoard & Ascend2 Research. The Connected Risk Report: Uniting Teams and Insights to Drive Organizational Resilience. AuditBoard, October 2024. 2Microsoft. 2026 Data Security Index: Unifying Data Protection and AI Innovation. Microsoft Security, 2026Accelerate Your Security Copilot Readiness with Our Global Technical Workshop Series
The Security Copilot team is delivering virtual hands-on technical workshops designed for technical practitioners who want to deepen their AI for Security expertise with Microsoft Entra, Intune, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Threat Protection. These workshops will help you onboard and configure Security Copilot and deepen your knowledge on agents. These free workshops are delivered year-round and available in multiple time zones. What You’ll Learn Our workshop series combines scenario-based instruction, live demos, hands-on exercises, and expert Q&A to help you operationalize Security Copilot across your security stack. These sessions are all moderated by experts from Microsoft’s engineering teams and are aligned with the latest Security Copilot capabilities. Every session delivers 100% technical content, designed to accelerate real-world Security Copilot adoption. Who Should Attend These workshops are ideal for: Security Architects & Engineers SOC Analysts Identity & Access Management Engineers Endpoint & Device Admins Compliance & Risk Practitioners Partner Technical Consultants Customer technical teams adopting AI powered defense Register now for these upcoming Security Copilot Virtual Workshops Start building Security Copilot skills—choose the product area and time zone that works best for you. Please take note of pre-requisites for each workshop in the registration page Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Defender TBD Asia Pacific optimized delivery schedules Time conversion: 4:00-5:30 PM NZDT; 11:00-12:30 AM GMT +8; 8:30-10:00 AM IST; 7:00-8:30 PM PST TBD Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Entra March 25, 2026 at 8:00 - 9:30 AM (PST) - register here April 22, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here May 20, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here Asia Pacific optimized delivery schedules Time conversion: 4:00-5:30 PM NZDT; 11:00-12:30 AM GMT +8; 8:30-10:00 AM IST; 7:00-8:30 PM PST March 26, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here April 23, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here May 21, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Intune March 11, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here April 8, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here May 6, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here Asia Pacific optimized delivery schedules Time conversion: 4:00-5:30 PM NZDT; 11:00-12:30 AM GMT +8; 8:30-10:00 AM IST; 7:00-8:30 PM PST March 12, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here April 9, 2026 at 2:00 - 3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here May 7, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 AM (AEDT) - register here Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Purview March 19, 2026 8:00 - 9:30 AM (PST) - register here April 15, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here May 13, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here Asia Pacific optimized delivery schedules Time conversion: 4:00-5:30 PM NZDT; 11:00-12:30 AM GMT +8; 8:30-10:00 AM IST; 7:00-8:30 PM PST March 19, 2026 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT)- register here April 16, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here May 14, 2026 at 2:00-3:30 PM (AEDT) - register here Learn and Engage with the Microsoft Security Community Log in and follow this Microsoft Security Community Blog and post/ interact in the Microsoft Security Community discussion spaces. Follow = Click the heart in the upper right when you're logged in 🤍 Join the Microsoft Security Community and be notified of upcoming events, product feedback surveys, and more. Get early access to Microsoft Security products and provide feedback to engineers by joining the Microsoft Security Advisors.. Learn about the Microsoft MVP Program. Join the Microsoft Security Community LinkedIn and the Microsoft Entra Community LinkedInVisit the Microsoft Security Community
Please visit aka.ms/SecurityCommunity for the latest Security Community updates and call/ webinar listings. To visit the new version of this page, visit aka.ms/SecurityCommunity To stay up to date on upcoming opportunities and the latest Microsoft Security Community news, make sure to subscribe to our email list. Find the latest skilling content and on-demand videos – subscribe to the Microsoft Security Community YouTube channel. Catch the latest announcements and connect with us on LinkedIn – Microsoft Security Community and Microsoft Entra Community. Q: Why does this blog post look a bit strange? A: It's a redirect; you've landed on our previous webinars page, which looked a little something like this: Upcoming Webinars DECEMBER 2 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR | Empowering the Modern SOC Microsoft is simplifying the SecOps experience and delivering innovation that will allow your team to scale in new ways. Join us for actionable learnings to help your team modernize your operations and enhance protection of your organization. DECEMBER 3 (8:00 AM -9:00 AM) Microsoft Defender for Identity | Identity Centric Protection in the Cloud Era Microsoft Defender for Identity would like to introduce the new identity centric protection capabilities providing identity centric protection across any identity source. DECEMBER 4 (8:00 AM - 9:30 AM) Security Copilot Skilling Series | Discussion of Ignite Announcements Ignite 2025 is all about driving impact in the era of AI—and security is at the center of it. In this session, we’ll unpack the biggest Security Copilot announcements from Ignite on agents and discuss how Copilot capabilities across Intune, Entra, Purview, and Defender deliver end-to-end protection. DECEMBER 4 (8:00 AM- 9:00 AM) Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Unlocking New Capabilities in Defender for Storage Join us for an in-depth look at the latest enhancements in Microsoft Defender for Storage. In this session, we’ll explore two powerful capabilities now available in public preview: Cloud Storage Aggregated Events and Built-in Automated Malware Remediation for Malicious Blobs. We’ll showcase live demos of these features in action and share best practices for leveraging them effectively. DECEMBER 4 (9:00 AM- 10:00 AM) Microsoft Sentinel | What's New in the Past 6 Months Join us for an insightful session on “What’s New in Microsoft Sentinel.” We’ll spotlight the latest innovations and enhancements, including improvements to the Defender portal that deepen its integration with Microsoft Sentinel. We’ll also explore how data lake capabilities are evolving to support more scalable and flexible security operations. Expect demos, real-world use cases, and a discussion on why these updates matter to our customers. Don’t miss out if you want to stay ahead of what’s new and what’s next! DECEMBER 8 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Security Store | Security, Simplified: A look inside the Security Store This session is to introduce the Microsoft Security Store—a centralized destination where customers can discover, deploy, and manage trusted security solutions built to extend Microsoft’s security platforms like Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Purview, and Intune. DECEMBER 9 (8:00 AM - 9:00 AM) Microsoft Defender XDR | A Deep Dive into Automated Attack Disruption Uncover the value of automated attack disruption and how it delivers protection without the complexity. Join the Automatic Attack Disruption team for an exclusive deep dive into these powerful capabilities. You’ll get a front-row seat to a demo, explore the latest innovations, a look at future investments and have your questions answered directly by the experts. Don’t miss this chance to see effortless protection in action. DECEMBER 9 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Sentinel | Part 1: Stop Waiting, Start Onboarding: Get Sentinel Defender‑Ready Today Part 1: Stop Waiting, Start Onboarding: Get Sentinel Defender‑Ready Today The Microsoft Sentinel portal in Azure is being retired by July 2026, so now is the perfect time to explore the Microsoft Defender unified portal. In this session, we’ll walk through a day in the life of a SOC, showing how integration and simplicity make security operations smoother. You’ll learn how to navigate the portal, manage incidents with a unified queue, and enrich investigations with UEBA, Threat Intelligence, and Watchlists. Plus, see how automation, dashboards, and case management help smaller setups work smarter. DECEMBER 10 (8:00 AM - 9:00 AM) Azure Network Security | Deep Dive into Azure DDoS Protection Join us for an in-depth exploration of Azure DDoS Protection and learn how to safeguard your applications and infrastructure against distributed denial-of-service attacks. This session will walk through the end-to-end architecture and planning considerations, dive into the detection and mitigation flow, and showcase telemetry, analytics, and alerting best practices. We’ll also cover how Azure DDoS Protection integrates with first-party services to deliver seamless protection and visibility across your environment. DECEMBER 10 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Expose Less, Protect More with Microsoft Security Exposure Management Join us for an in-depth look at how Microsoft Security Exposure Management helps organizations reduce risk by identifying and prioritizing exposures before attackers can exploit them. Learn practical strategies to minimize your attack surface, strengthen defenses, and protect what matters most. DECEMBER 11 (8:00 AM - 9:00 AM) Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Modernizing Cloud Security with Next‑Generation Microsoft Defender for Cloud Microsoft Defender for Cloud is evolving to deliver a unified, intuitive, and scalable approach to cloud security. In this session, we’ll discuss how organizations can simplify posture management and threat protection across multicloud environments (Azure, AWS, GCP, and beyond) while improving efficiency and reducing risk. Learn how this direction streamlines operations, enhances clarity for security teams, and supports smarter risk prioritization. DECEMBER 11 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Sentinel data lake | Transforming data collection for AI-ready security operations with Microsoft Sentinel Join us to explore how Microsoft Sentinel is transforming security data collection across multicloud and multiplatform environments. In this webinar, we’ll share our vision for a unified, cloud-native approach, highlight the latest capabilities for ingesting data from on-prem systems, Microsoft workloads, and multi-cloud platforms, and showcase the codeless connector framework that accelerates custom integrations. With over 350 connectors available and the App Assure program ensuring reliability, we’ll also share the roadmap for scaling data collection to power AI-driven security operations. DECEMBER 16 (8:00 AM - 9:00 AM) Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Ask the Experts: Tips and Tricks You’ve watched the latest Microsoft Defender for Office 365 best practices videos and read the blog posts by the esteemed Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), now bring your toughest questions or unique situations straight to the experts. In this interactive panel discussion, Microsoft MVPs will answer your real world scenarios, clarify best practices, and highlight practical tips surfaced in the recent series. We’ll kick off with a who’s who and recent blog/video series recap, then dedicate most of the time to your questions across migration, SOC optimization, fine-tuning configuration, Teams protection, and even Microsoft community engagement. Come ready with your questions (or pre-submit here) for the expert Security MVPs on camera, or the Microsoft Defender for Office 365 product team in the chat! DECEMBER 16 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Sentinel | Part 2: Don’t Get Left Behind: Complete Your Sentinel Move to Defender Part 2: Don’t Get Left Behind: Complete Your Sentinel Move to Defender As the transition deadline approaches in July 2026, this session helps you unlock the full potential of Microsoft Defender. We’ll cover data onboarding, retention strategies, and permission models for governance at scale. Explore Content Hub, analytic rules, and summary rules to optimize detection. Learn how Multi-Tenant Organization (MTO) simplifies management and see Security Copilot in action for AI-driven insights. Ideal for teams migrating from Azure Sentinel Portal or looking to strengthen their SOC posture. JANUARY 13 (9:00 AM - 10:00 AM) Microsoft Sentinel | AI-Powered Entity Analysis in Sentinel's MCP Server Assessing the risk of entities is a core task for SOC teams—whether triaging incidents, investigating threats, or automating response workflows. Traditionally, this has required building complex playbooks or custom logic to gather and analyze fragmented security data from multiple sources. With Entity Analyzer, this complexity is eliminated. The tool leverages Sentinel’s semantic understanding of your security data to deliver comprehensive, reasoned risk assessments for any entity your agents encounter. By providing a unified, out-of-the-box solution for entity analysis, Entity Analyzer enables your AI agents to make smarter decisions and automate more tasks—without the need to manually engineer risk evaluation logic for each entity type. This not only accelerates agent development, but also ensures your agents are always working with the most relevant and up-to-date context from across your security environment. And for those building SOAR workflows, Entity Analyzer is natively integrated with Logic Apps, making it easy to enrich entities and automate verdicts within your playbooks. JANUARY 20 (8:00 AM - 9:00 AM) Microsoft Defender for Cloud | What's New in Microsoft Defender CSPM Cloud security posture management (CSPM) continues to evolve, and Microsoft Defender CSPM is leading the way with powerful enhancements introduced after Microsoft Ignite (November 2025). This session will showcase the latest innovations designed to help security teams strengthen their posture and streamline operations. JANUARY 22 (8:00 AM - 9:00 AM) Azure Network Security | Advancing web application Protection with Azure WAF: Ruleset and Security Enhancements In this session, we’ll explore the latest Azure WAF ruleset and security enhancements designed to strengthen your protection, reduce false positives, and simplify management. You’ll learn how to fine-tune WAF configurations, gain deeper visibility into threat patterns, and ensure consistent security across your web workloads. Whether you’re just getting started with Azure WAF or looking to optimize existing deployments, this webinar will help you confidently build a more resilient and adaptive web application security posture.Learn more about Microsoft Security Communities.
In the last five years, Microsoft has increased the emphasis on community programs – specifically within the security, compliance, and management space. These communities fall into two categories: Public and Private (or NDA only). In this blog, we will share a breakdown of each community and how to join.
Artificial Intelligence & Security
Understanding Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is a computational system that perform human‑intelligence tasks, learning, reasoning, problem‑solving, perception, and language understanding by leveraging algorithmic and statistical methods to analyse data and make informed decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also be abbreviated as is the simulation of human intelligence through machines programmed to learn, reason, and act. It blends statistics, machine learning, and robotics to deliver following outcomes: Prediction: The application of statistical modelling and machine learning techniques to anticipate future outcomes, such as detecting fraudulent transactions. Automation: The utilisation of robotics and artificial intelligence to streamline and execute routine processes, exemplified by automated invoice processing. Augmentation: The enhancement of human decision-making and operational capabilities through AI-driven tools, for instance, AI-assisted sales enablement. Artificial Intelligence: Core Capabilities and Market Outlook Key capabilities of AI include: Data-driven decision-making: Analysing large datasets to generate actionable insights and optimise outcomes. Anomaly detection: Identifying irregular patterns or deviations in data for risk mitigation and quality assurance. Visual interpretation: Processing and understanding visual inputs such as images and videos for applications like computer vision. Natural language understanding: Comprehending and interpreting human language to enable accurate information extraction and contextual responses. Conversational engagement: Facilitating human-like interactions through chatbots, virtual assistants, and dialogue systems. With the exponential growth of data, ML learning models and computing power. AI is advancing much faster and as According to industry analyst reports breakthroughs in deep learning and neural network architectures have enabled highly sophisticated applications across diverse sectors, including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and retail. The global AI market is on a trajectory of significant expansion, projected to increase nearly 5X by 2030, from $391 billion in 2025 to $1.81 trillion. This growth corresponds to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35.9% during the forecast period. These projections are estimates and subject to change as per rapid growth and advancement in the AI Era. AI and Cloud Synergy AI, and cloud computing form a powerful technological mixture. Digital assistants are offering scalable, cloud-powered intelligence. Cloud platforms such as Azure provide pre-trained models and services, enabling businesses to deploy AI solutions efficiently. Core AI Workloads Capabilities Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) underpins most AI systems by enabling models to learn from historical and real-time data to make predictions, classifications, and recommendations. These models adapt over time as they are exposed to new data, improving accuracy and robustness. Example use cases: Credit risk scoring in banking, demand forecasting in retail, and predictive maintenance in manufacturing. Anomaly Detection Anomaly detection techniques identify deviations from expected patterns in data, systems, or processes. This capability is critical for risk management and operational resilience, as it enables early detection of fraud, security breaches, or equipment failures. Example use cases: Fraud detection in financial transactions, network intrusion monitoring in cybersecurity, and quality control in industrial production. Natural Language Processing (NLP) NLP focuses on enabling machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language in both text and speech formats. This capability powers a wide range of applications that require contextual comprehension and semantic accuracy. Example use cases: Sentiment analysis for customer feedback, document summarisation for legal and compliance teams, and multilingual translation for global operations. Principles of Responsible AI To ensure ethical and trustworthy AI, organisations must embrace: Reliability & Safety Privacy & Security Inclusiveness Fairness Transparency Accountability These principles are embedded in frameworks like the Responsible-AI-Standard and reinforced by governance models such as Microsoft AI Governance Framework. Responsible AI Principles and Approach | Microsoft AI AI and Security AI introduces both opportunities and risks. A responsible approach to AI security involves three dimensions: Risk Mitigation: It Is addressing threats from immature or malicious AI applications. Security Applications: These are used to enhance AI security and public safety. Governance Systems: Establishing frameworks to manage AI risks and ensure safe development. Security Risks and Opportunities Due to AI Transformation AI’s transformative nature brings new challenges: Cybersecurity: This brings the opportunities and advancement to track, detect and act against Vulnerabilities in infrastructure and learning models. Data Security: This helps the tool and solutions such as Microsoft Purview to prevent data security by performing assessments, creating Data loss prevention policies applying sensitivity labels. Information Security: The biggest risk is securing the information and due to the AI era of transformation securing IS using various AI security frameworks. These concerns are echoed in The Crucial Role of Data Security Posture Management in the AI Era, which highlights insider threats, generative AI risks, and the need for robust data governance. AI in Security Applications AI’s capabilities in data analysis and decision-making enable innovative security solutions: Network Protection: applications include use of AI algorithms for intrusion detection, malware detection, security situational awareness, and threat early warning, etc. Data Management: applications refer to the use of AI technologies to achieve data protection objectives such as hierarchical classification, leak prevention, and leak traceability. Intelligent Security: applications refer to the use of AI technology to upgrade the security field from passive defence toward the intelligent direction, developing of active judgment and timely early warning. Financial Risk Control: applications use AI technology to improve the efficiency and accuracy of credit assessment, risk management, etc., and assisting governments in the regulation of financial transactions. AI Security Management Effective AI security requires: Regulations & Policies: Establish and safety management laws specifically designed to for governance by regulatory authorities and management policies for key application domains of AI and prominent security risks. Standards & Specifications: Industry-wide benchmarks, along with international and domestic standards can be used to support AI safety. Technological Methods: Early detection with Modern set of tools such as Defender for AI can be used to support to detect and mitigate and remediate AI threats. Security Assessments: Organization should use proper tools and platforms for evaluating AI risks and perform assessments regularly using automated tools approach Conclusion AI is transforming how organizations operate, innovate, and secure their environments. As AI capabilities evolve, integrating security and governance considerations from the outset remains critical. By combining responsible AI principles, effective governance, and appropriate security measures, organizations can work toward deploying AI technologies in a manner that supports both innovation and trust. Industry projections suggest continued growth in AI‑related security investments over the coming years, reflecting increased focus on managing AI risks alongside its benefits. These estimates are subject to change and should be interpreted in the context of evolving technologies and regulatory developments. Disclaimer References to Microsoft products and frameworks are for informational purposes only and do not imply endorsement, guarantee, or contractual commitment. Market projections referenced are based on publicly available industry analyses and are subject to change.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=400Security Guidance Series: CAF 4.0 Threat Hunting From Detection to Anticipation
The CAF 4.0 update reframes C2 (Threat Hunting) as a cornerstone of proactive cyber resilience. According to the NCSC CAF 4.0, this principle is no longer about occasional investigations or manual log reviews; it now demands structured, frequent, and intelligence-led threat hunting that evolves in line with organizational risk. The expectation is that UK public sector organizations will not just respond to alerts but will actively search for hidden or emerging threats that evade standard detection technologies, documenting their findings and using them to strengthen controls and response. In practice, this represents a shift from detection to anticipation. Threat hunting under CAF 4.0 should be hypothesis-driven, focusing on attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) rather than isolated indicators of compromise (IoCs). Organizations must build confidence that their hunting processes are repeatable, measurable, and continuously improving, leveraging automation and threat intelligence to expand coverage and consistency. Microsoft E3 Microsoft E3 equips organizations with the baseline capabilities to begin threat investigation, forming the starting point for Partially Achieved maturity under CAF 4.0 C2. At this level, hunting is ad hoc and event-driven, but it establishes the foundation for structured processes. How E3 contributes to the following objectives in C2: Reactive detection for initial hunts: Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 surfaces alerts on phishing, malware, and suspicious endpoint activity. Analysts can use these alerts to triage incidents and document steps taken, creating the first iteration of a hunting methodology. Identity correlation and manual investigation: Entra ID P1 provides Conditional Access and MFA enforcement, while audit telemetry in the Security & Compliance Centre supports manual reviews of identity anomalies. These capabilities allow organizations to link endpoint and identity signals during investigations. Learning from incidents: By recording findings from reactive hunts and feeding lessons into risk decisions, organizations begin to build repeatable processes, even if hunts are not yet hypothesis-driven or frequent enough to match risk. What’s missing for Achieved: Under E3, hunts remain reactive, lack documented hypotheses, and do not routinely convert findings into automated detections. Achieving full maturity typically requires regular, TTP-focused hunts, automation, and integration with advanced analytics, capabilities found in higher-tier solutions. Microsoft E5 Microsoft E5 elevates threat hunting from reactive investigation to a structured, intelligence-driven discipline, a defining feature of Achieved maturity under CAF 4.0, C2. Distinctive E5 capabilities for C2: Hypothesis-driven hunts at scale: Defender Advanced Hunting (KQL) enables analysts to test hypotheses across correlated telemetry from endpoints, identities, email, and SaaS applications. This supports hunts focused on adversary TTPs, not just atomic IoCs, as CAF requires. Turning hunts into detections: Custom hunting queries can be converted into alert rules, operationalizing findings into automated detection and reducing reliance on manual triage. Threat intelligence integration: Microsoft Threat Intelligence feeds real-time actor tradecraft and sector-specific campaigns into the hunting workflow, ensuring hunts anticipate emerging threats rather than react to incidents. Identity and lateral movement focus: Defender for Identity surfaces Kerberos abuse, credential replay, and lateral movement patterns, enabling hunts that span beyond endpoints and email. Documented and repeatable process: E5 supports recording hunt queries and outcomes via APIs and portals, creating evidence for audits and driving continuous improvement, a CAF expectation. By embedding hypothesis-driven hunts, automation, and intelligence into business-as-usual operations, E5 helps public sector organizations meet CAF C2’s requirement for regular, documented hunts that proactively reduce risk, and evolve with the threat landscape. Sentinel Microsoft Sentinel takes threat hunting beyond the Microsoft ecosystem, unifying telemetry from endpoints, firewalls, OT systems, and third-party SaaS into a single cloud-native SIEM and SOAR platform. This consolidation helps enable hunts that span the entire attack surface, a critical step toward achieving maturity under CAF 4.0 C2. Key capabilities for control C2: Attacker-centric analysis: MITRE ATT&CK-aligned analytics and KQL-based hunting allow teams to identify stealthy behaviours, simulate breach paths, and validate detection coverage. Threat intelligence integration: Sentinel enriches hunts with national and sector-specific intelligence (e.g. NCSC advisories), ensuring hunts target the most relevant TTPs. Automation and repeatability: SOAR playbooks convert post-hunt findings into automated workflows for containment, investigation, and documentation, meeting CAF’s requirement for structured, continuously improving hunts. Evidence-driven improvement: Recorded hunts and automated reporting create a feedback loop that strengthens posture and demonstrates compliance. By combining telemetry, intelligence, and automation, Sentinel helps organizations embed threat hunting as a routine, scalable process, turning insights into detections and ensuring hunts evolve with the threat landscape. The video below shows how E3, E5 and Sentinel power real C2 threat hunts. Bringing it all Together By progressing from E3’s reactive investigation to E5’s intelligence-led correlation and Sentinel’s automated hunting and orchestration, organizations can develop an end-to-end capability that not only detects but anticipates and helps prevent disruption to essential public services across the UK. This is the operational reality of Achieved under CAF 4.0 C2 (Threat Hunting) - a structured, data-driven, and intelligence-informed approach that transforms threat hunting from an isolated task into an ongoing discipline of proactive defence. To demonstrate what effective, CAF-aligned threat hunting looks like, the following one-slider and demo walk through how Microsoft’s security tools support structured, repeatable hunts that match organizational risk. These examples help translate C2’s expectations into practical, operational activity. CAF 4.0 challenges public-sector defenders to move beyond detection and embrace anticipation. How mature is your organization’s ability to uncover the threats that have not yet been seen? In this final post of the series, the message is clear - true cyber resilience moves beyond reactivity towards a predictive approach.
