Registration Open: Community-Led Purview Lightning Talks
Get ready for an electrifying event! The Microsoft Security Community proudly presents Purview Lightning Talks; an action-packed series featuring your fellow Microsoft users, partners and passionate Microsoft Security community members of all sorts. Each 3-12 minute talk cuts straight to the chase, delivering expert insights, real-world use cases, and even a few game-changing tips and tricks. Donât miss this opportunity to learn, connect, and be inspired! Secure your spot now for the big day: April 30th at 8am Redmond Time. đ See agenda details below and follow this blog post (sign in and click the "follow" heart in the upper right) to receive notifications. We have more speaker details and community connection information coming soon! AGENDA The Day Offboarding Exposed Infinite Retention - Nikki Chapple nikkichappleâ A real-world discovery of orphaned OneDrives and retention debt caused by retain-only policies, and how Adaptive Scopes help prevent it. Topic: Data Lifecycle Management Securing Data in the Age of AI - Julio Cesar Goncalves Vasconcelos How Microsoft Purview enables organizations to accelerate AI adoption while maintaining security, compliance, and transparency. Topic: Purview for AI Whatâs In My Compliance Manager Toolbox - Jerrad Dahlager j-dahl7â A practical walkthrough of using Compliance Manager to map controls, track improvements, and simplify multi-framework compliance. Topic: Compliance Manager Why You Should Create Your Own Sensitive Information Types (SITs) - Niels Jakobsen Niels_Jakobsenâ An in-depth analysis of why built-in SITs are not one-size-fits-all, and how to tailor them for real enterprise needs. Topic: Information Protection Beyond eDiscovery â Purview DSI for Security Investigation - Susantha Silva How to turn DLP alerts and Insider Risk signals into structured data investigations without jumping between portals. Topic: Data Security (DSI) Four Labels Max for Daily Use: Which Ones & Why? - Romain Dalle Romain DALLEâ A minimalist sensitivity labeling baseline designed for real-world adoption and usability. Topic: Information Protection Elevating Purview DLP with a Real-World Use Case - Victor Wingsing vicwingsingâ Hardening Purview DLP beyond default configurations to close real-world data loss gaps. Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Stop, Think, Protect: Data Security in Real Life with Purview - Oliver Sahlmann Oliver Sahlmannâ A traffic-light approach showing how simple labels and DLP policies still deliver meaningful protection. Topic: Data Security The Purview Label Engine: Automated Classification & Documentation - Michael Kirst Neshva MichaelKirst1970â A scalable framework for rolling out Microsoft Purview labels across global, multilingual enterprises. Topic: Information Protection Data-Driven Endpoint DLP with Advanced Hunting - Tatu Seppälä tatuseppalaâ Using KQL queries and usage patterns to refine endpoint DLP policies based on real behavior. Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Improving Discovery, Trust, and Reuse of Analytics with Purview Data Products - Craig Wyndowe CraigWyndoweâ How Purview Governance Domains and Data Products create a trusted, reusable analytics ecosystem. Topic: Data Governance From Zero to First Signal: Insider Risk Management Prerequisites That Matter - Sathish Veerapandian Sathish Veerapandianâ A focused look at the configurations required for Insider Risk Management to actually generate alerts. Topic: Insider Risk Management The Purview Hack No One Talks About: Container Sensitivity Labels - Nikki Chapple nikkichappleâ How container sensitivity labels instantly fix oversharing for Teams, Groups, and SharePoint sites. Topic: Information Protection Using Purview to Prevent Oversharing with AI Services - Viktor Hedberg headburghâ How Information Protection and DLP prevent Copilot and AI services from exposing sensitive data. Topic: Information Protection & DLP How I Helped Customers Understand Their AI Usage (and Protect Data) - Bram de Jager Bram de Jagerâ Exposing risky AI usage patterns and protecting sensitive data entered into public AI tools. Topic: Data Security Posture Management for AI Bulk Sensitivity Label Removal with Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MPIP) - Zak Hepler A practical demo on safely removing sensitivity labels at scale from SharePoint libraries. Topic: Information Protection Does M365 Support eDiscovery? (Mythbusting) - Julian Kusenberg Leprechaun91â A myth-busting session separating perception from reality in Microsoft 365 eDiscovery. Topic: eDiscoveryWelcome 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 Microsoftâs 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 â subscribe to the Microsoft Security Community YouTube channel. Catch the latest announcements and connect with us on LinkedIn â Microsoft Security Community and Microsoft Entra Community. Read the latest in the the Microsoft Security Community blog. Upcoming Community Calls April 2026 CANCELLED: Apr. 14 | 8:00am | Microsoft Sentinel | Using distributed content to manage your multi-tenant SecOps Content distribution is a powerful multi-tenant feature that enables scalable management of security content across tenants. With this capability, you can create content distribution profiles in the multi-tenant portal that allow you to seamlessly replicate existing contentâsuch as custom detection rules and endpoint security policiesâfrom a source tenant to designated target tenants. Once distributed, the content runs on the target tenant, enabling centralized control with localized execution. This allows you to onboard new tenants quickly and maintain a consistent security baseline across tenants. In this session we'll walk through how you can use this new capability to scale your security operations. Apr. 23 | 8:00am | Security Copilot Skilling Series | Getting started with Security Copilot New to Security Copilot? This session walks through what you actually need to get started, including E5 inclusion requirements and a practical overview of the core experiences and agents you will use on day one. RESCHEDULED Apr. 28 | 8:00am | Security Copilot Skilling Series | Security Copilot Agents, DSPM AI Observability, and IRM for Agents This session covers an overview of how Microsoft Purview supports AI risk visibility and investigation through Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and Insider Risk Management (IRM), alongside Security Copilotâpowered agents. This session will go over what is AI Observability in DSPM as well as IRM for Agents in Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry. Attendees will learn about the IRM Triage Agent and DSPM Posture Agent and their deployment. Attendees will gain an understanding of how DSPM and IRM capabilities could be leveraged to improve visibility, context, and response for AI-related data risks in Microsoft Purview. 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. Youâll 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! May 2026 May 12 | 9:00am | Microsoft Sentinel | Hyper scale your SOC: Manage delegated access and role-based scoping in Microsoft Defender In this session we'll discuss Unified role based access control (RBAC) and â granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP) expansionsâ including: How to use RBAC to -Allow multiple SOC teams to operate securely within a shared Sentinel environmentâ-Support granular, row-level access without requiring workspace separationâ-Get consistent and reusable scope definitions across tables and experiences âHow to use GDAP to -Manage MSSPs and hyper-scaler organizations with delegated- access to governed tenants within the Defender portalâ-Manage delegated access for Sentinelâ. Looking for more? Join the Security Advisors! As a Security Advisor, youâll gain early visibility into product roadmaps, participate in focus groups, and access private preview features before public release. Youâll 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:âŻwww.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 GitHubAuthorization and Governance for AI Agents: Runtime Authorization Beyond Identity at Scale
Designing AuthorizationâAware AI Agents at Scale Enforcing Runtime RBAC + ABAC with Approval Injection (JIT) Microsoft Entra Agent Identity enables organizations to govern and manage AI agent identities in Copilot Studio, improving visibility and identity-level control. However, as enterprises deploy multiple autonomous AI agents, identity and OAuth permissions alone cannot answer a more critical question: âShould this action be executed now, by this agent, for this user, under the current business and regulatory context?â This post introduces a reusable Authorization Fabricâcombining a Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) and Policy Decision Point (PDP)âimplemented as a Microsoft Entraâprotected endpoint using Azure Functions/App Service authentication. Every AI agent (Copilot Studio or AI Foundry/Semantic Kernel) calls this fabric before tool execution, receiving a deterministic runtime decision: ALLOW / DENY / REQUIRE_APPROVAL / MASK Who this is for Anyone building AI agents (Copilot Studio, AI Foundry/Semantic Kernel) that call tools, workflows, or APIs Organizations scaling to multiple agents and needing consistent runtime controls Teams operating in regulated or securityâsensitive environments, where decisions must be deterministic and auditable Why a V2? Identity is necessaryâruntime authorization is missing Entra Agent Identity (preview) integrates Copilot Studio agents with Microsoft Entra so that newly created agents automatically get an Entra agent identity, manageable in the Entra admin center, and identity activity is logged in Entra. That solves who the agent is and improves identity governance visibility. But multi-agent deployments introduce a new risk class: Autonomous execution sprawl â many agents, operating with delegated privileges, invoking the same backends independently. OAuth and API permissions answer âcan the agent call this API?â They do not answer âshould the agent execute this action under business policy, compliance constraints, data boundaries, and approval thresholds?â This is where a runtime authorization decision plane becomes essential. The pattern: Microsoft EntraâProtected Authorization Fabric (PEP + PDP) Instead of embedding RBAC logic independently inside every agent, use a shared fabric: PEP (Policy Enforcement Point): Gatekeeper invoked before any tool/action PDP (Policy Decision Point): Evaluates RBAC + ABAC + approval policies Decision output: ALLOW / DENY / REQUIRE_APPROVAL / MASK This Authorization Fabric functions as a shared enterprise control plane, decoupling authorization logic from individual agents and enforcing policies consistently across all autonomous execution paths. Architecture (POC reference architecture) Use a single runtime decision plane that sits between agents and tools. Whatâs important here Every agent (Copilot Studio or AI Foundry/SK) calls the Authorization Fabric API first The fabric is a protected endpoint (Microsoft Entraâprotected endpoint required) Tools (Graph/ERP/CRM/custom APIs) are invoked only after an ALLOW decision (or approval) Trust boundaries enforced by this architecture Agents never call business tools directly without a prior authorization decision The Authorization Fabric validates caller identity via Microsoft Entra Authorization decisions are centralized, consistent, and auditable Approval workflows act as a runtime âbreak-glassâ control for high-impact actions This ensures identity, intent, and execution are independently enforced, rather than implicitly trusted. Runtime flow (Decision â Approval â Execution) Here is the runtime sequence as a simple flow (you can keep your Mermaid diagram too). ```mermaid flowchart TD START(["START"]) --> S1["[1] User Request"] S1 --> S2["[2] Agent Extracts Intent\n(action, resource, attributes)"] S2 --> S3["[3] Call /authorize\n(Entra protected)"] S3 --> S4 subgraph S4["[4] PDP Evaluation"] ABAC["ABAC: Tenant ¡ Region ¡ Data Sensitivity"] RBAC["RBAC: Entitlement Check"] Threshold["Approval Threshold"] ABAC --> RBAC --> Threshold end S4 --> Decision{"[5] Decision?"} Decision -->|"ALLOW"| Exec["Execute Tool / API"] Decision -->|"MASK"| Masked["Execute with Masked Data"] Decision -->|"DENY"| Block["Block Request"] Decision -->|"REQUIRE_APPROVAL"| Approve{"[6] Approval Flow"} Approve -->|"Approved"| Exec Approve -->|"Rejected"| Block Exec --> Audit["[7] Audit & Telemetry"] Masked --> Audit Block --> Audit Audit --> ENDNODE(["END"]) style START fill:#4A90D9,stroke:#333,color:#fff style ENDNODE fill:#4A90D9,stroke:#333,color:#fff style S1 fill:#5B5FC7,stroke:#333,color:#fff style S2 fill:#5B5FC7,stroke:#333,color:#fff style S3 fill:#E8A838,stroke:#333,color:#fff style S4 fill:#FFF3E0,stroke:#E8A838,stroke-width:2px style ABAC fill:#FCE4B2,stroke:#999 style RBAC fill:#FCE4B2,stroke:#999 style Threshold fill:#FCE4B2,stroke:#999 style Decision fill:#fff,stroke:#333 style Exec fill:#2ECC71,stroke:#333,color:#fff style Masked fill:#27AE60,stroke:#333,color:#fff style Block fill:#C0392B,stroke:#333,color:#fff style Approve fill:#F39C12,stroke:#333,color:#fff style Audit fill:#3498DB,stroke:#333,color:#fff ``` Design principle: No tool execution occurs until the Authorization Fabric returns ALLOW or REQUIRE_APPROVAL is satisfied via an approval workflow. Where Power Automate fits (important for readers) In most Copilot Studio implementations, Agents calls Power Automate (agent flows), is the practical integration layer that calls enterprise services and APIs. Copilot Studio supports âagent flowsâ as a way to extend agent capabilities with low-code workflows. For this pattern, Power Automate typically: acquires/uses the right identity context for the call (depending on your tenant setup), and calls the /authorize endpoint of the Authorization Fabric, returns the decision payload to the agent for branching. Copilot Studio also supports calling REST endpoints directly using the HTTP Request node, including passing headers such as Authorization: Bearer <token>. Protected endpoint only: Securing the Authorization Fabric with Microsoft Entra For this V2 pattern, the Authorization Fabric must be protected using Microsoft Entraâprotected endpoint on Azure Functions/App Service (builtâin auth). Microsoft Learn provides the configuration guidance for enabling Microsoft Entra as the authentication provider for Azure App Service / Azure Functions. Step 1 â Create the Authorization Fabric API (Azure Function) Expose an authorization endpoint: HTTP Step 2 â Enable Microsoft Entraâprotected endpoint on the Function App In Azure Portal: Function App â Authentication Add identity provider â Microsoft Choose Workforce configuration (enterprise tenant) Set Require authentication for all requests This ensures the Authorization Fabric is not callable without a valid Entra token. Step 3 â Optional hardening (recommended) Depending on enterprise posture, layer: IP restrictions / Private endpoints APIM in front of the Function for rate limiting, request normalization, centralized logging (For a POC, keep it minimalâadd hardening incrementally.) Externalizing policy (so governance scales) To make this pattern reusable across multiple agents, policies should not be hardcoded inside each agent. Instead, store policy definitions in a central policy store such as Cosmos DB (or equivalent configuration store), and have the PDP load/evaluate policies at runtime. Why this matters: Policy changes apply across all agents instantly (no agent republish) Central governance + versioning + rollback becomes possible Audit and reporting become consistent across environments (For the POC, a single JSON document per policy pack in Cosmos DB is sufficient. For production, add versioning and staged rollout.) Store one PolicyPack JSON document per environment (dev/test/prod). Include version, effectiveFrom, priority for safe rollout/rollback. Minimal decision contract (standard request / response) To keep the fabric reusable across agents, standardize the request payload. Request payload (example) Decision response (deterministic) Example scenario (1 minute to understand) Scenario: A user asks a Finance agent to create a Purchase Order for 70,000. Even if the user has API permission and the agent can technically call the ERP API, runtime policy should return: REQUIRE_APPROVAL (threshold exceeded) trigger an approval workflow execute only after approval is granted This is the difference between API access and authorized business execution. Sample Policy Model (RBAC + ABAC + Approval) This POC policy model intentionally stays simple while demonstrating both coarse and fine-grained governance. 1) Coarseâgrained RBAC (roles â actions) FinanceAnalyst CreatePO up to 50,000 ViewVendor FinanceManager CreatePO up to 100,000 and/or approve higher spend 2) Fineâgrained ABAC (conditions at runtime) ABAC evaluates context such as region, classification, tenant boundary, and risk: 3) Approval injection (Agentâlevel JIT execution) For higher-risk/high-impact actions, the fabric returns REQUIRE_APPROVAL rather than hard deny (when appropriate): How policies should be evaluated (deterministic order) To ensure predictable and auditable behavior, evaluate in a deterministic order: Tenant isolation & residency (ABAC hard deny first) Classification rules (deny or mask) RBAC entitlement validation Threshold/risk evaluation Approval injection (JIT step-up) This prevents approval workflows from bypassing foundational security boundaries such as tenant isolation or data sovereignty. Copilot Studio integration (enforcing runtime authorization) Copilot Studio can call external REST APIs using the HTTP Request node, including passing headers such as Authorization: Bearer <token> and binding response schema for branching logic. Copilot Studio also supports using flows with agents (âagent flowsâ) to extend capabilities and orchestrate actions. Option A (Recommended): Copilot Studio â Agent Flow (Power Automate) â Authorization Fabric Why: Flows are a practical place to handle token acquisition patterns, approval orchestration, and standardized logging. Topic flow: Extract user intent + parameters Call an agent flow that: calls /authorize returns decision payload Branch in the topic: If ALLOW â proceed to tool call If REQUIRE_APPROVAL â trigger approval flow; proceed only if approved If DENY â stop and explain policy reason Important: Tool execution must never be reachable through an alternate topic path that bypasses the authorization check. Option B: Direct HTTP Request node to Authorization Fabric Use the Send HTTP request node to call the authorization endpoint and branch using the response schema. This approach is clean, but token acquisition and secure secretless authentication are often simpler when handled via a managed integration layer (flow + connector). AI Foundry / Semantic Kernel integration (tool invocation gate) For Foundry/SK agents, the integration point is before tool execution. Semantic Kernel supports Azure AI agent patterns and tool integration, making it a natural place to enforce a pre-tool authorization check. Pseudo-pattern: Agent extracts intent + context Calls Authorization Fabric Enforces decision Executes tool only when allowed (or after approval) Telemetry & audit (what Security Architects will ask for) Even the best policy engine is incomplete without audit trails. At minimum, log: agentId, userUPN, action, resource decision + reason + policyIds approval outcome (if any) correlationId for downstream tool execution Why it matters: you now have a defensible answer to: âWhy did an autonomous agent execute this action?â Security signal bonus: Denials, unusual approval rates, and repeated policy mismatches can also indicate prompt injection attempts, mis-scoped agents, or governance drift. What this enables (and why it scales) With a shared Authorization Fabric: Avoid duplicating authorization logic across agents Standardize decisions across Copilot Studio + Foundry agents Update governance once (policy change) and apply everywhere Make autonomy safer without blocking productivity Closing: Identity gets you who. Runtime authorization gets you whether/when/how. Copilot Studio can automatically create Entra agent identities (preview), improving identity governance and visibility for agents. But safe autonomy requires a runtime decision plane. Securing that plane as an Entra-protected endpoint is foundational for enterprise deployments. In enterprise environments, autonomous execution without runtime authorization is equivalent to privileged access without PIMâpowerful, fast, and operationally risky.Accelerate 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 Youâll 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 Microsoftâs 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 skillsâchoose the product area and time zone that works best for you. Please take note of pre-requisites for each workshop in the registration page. Please note at the moment we are not able to accept participants from Russia, China and North Korea. Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Defender North America time zone April 29, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here May 27, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here June 24, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 Am (PST) - register here Asia Pacific time zone April 30, 2026 - register here May 27, 2026 - register here June 24, 2026 - register here Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Entra North America time zone April 22, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here May 20, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here June 17, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here Asia Pacific time zone April 23, 2026 - register here May 21, 2026 - register here Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Intune North America time zone 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 time zone April 9, 2026 - register here May 7, 2026 - register here Security Copilot Virtual Workshop: Copilot in Purview North America time zone April 15, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here May 13, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here June 10, 2026 at 8:00-9:30 AM (PST) - register here Asia Pacific time zone April 16, 2026 - register here May 14, 2026 - register here June 11, 2026 - 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 đ¤ 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 LinkedInMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Customer Newsletter
What's new in Defender for Cloud? Kubernetes gated deployment is now generally available for AKS automatic clusters. Use help to deploy the Defender for Containers sensor to use this feature. More information can be found here. Grouped recommendations are converted into individual ones to list each finding separately. While grouped recommendations are still available, new individual recommendations are now marked as preview and are not yet part of the Secure Score. This new format will allow for better prioritization, actionable context and better governance and tracking. For more details, please refer to this documentation. Check out other updates from last month here! Check out monthly news for the rest of the MTP suite here! Blogs of the month In March, our team published the following blog posts we would like to share: Defending Container Runtime from Malware with Defender for Containers Modern Database Protection: From Visibility to Threat Detection with Defender for Cloud New innovations in Microsoft Defender to strengthen multi-cloud, containers, and AI model security Defending the AI Era: New Microsoft Capabilities to Protect AI Defender for Cloud in the field Revisit the malware automated remediation announcement since this feature is now in GA! Automated remediation for malware in storage Visit our YouTube page GitHub Community Check out the new Module 28 in the MDC Lab: Defending Container Runtime from Malware with Microsoft Defender for Containers Defending Container Runtime from Malware Visit our GitHub page Customer journey Discover how other organizations successfully use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to protect their cloud workloads. This month we are featuring ManpowerGroup, a global workforce solutions leader, deployed Microsoft 365 E5, and Microsoft Security to modernize and future-proof their cyber security platform. ManpowerGroup leverages Entra ID, Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, Defender for O365, Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Security Copilot and Purview to transform itself as an AI Frontier Firm. Join our community! We offer several customer connection programs within our private communities. By signing up, you can help us shape our products through activities such as reviewing product roadmaps, participating in co-design, previewing features, and staying up-to-date with announcements. Sign up at aka.ms/JoinCCP. We greatly value your input on the types of content that enhance your understanding of our security products. Your insights are crucial in guiding the development of our future public content. We aim to deliver material that not only educates but also resonates with your daily security challenges. Whether itâs through in-depth live webinars, real-world case studies, comprehensive best practice guides through blogs, or the latest product updates, we want to ensure our content meets your needs. Please submit your feedback on which of these formats do you find most beneficial and are there any specific topics youâre interested in https://aka.ms/PublicContentFeedback. Note: If you want to stay current with Defender for Cloud and receive updates in your inbox, please consider subscribing to our monthly newsletter: https://aka.ms/MDCNewsSubscribeAnnouncing public preview of custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel
Security attacks span identities, devices, resources, and activity, making it critical to understand how these elements connect to expose real risk. In November, we shared how Sentinel graph brings these signals together into a relationship-aware view to help uncover hidden security risks. Weâre excited to announce the public preview of custom graphs in Sentinel, available starting April 1 st . Custom graphs let defenders model relationships that are unique to their organization, then run graph analytics to surface blast radius, attack paths, privilege chains, chokepoints, and anomalies that are difficult to spot in tables alone. In this post, weâll cover what custom graphs are, how they work, and how to get started so the entire team can use them. Custom graphs Security data is inherently connected: a sign-in leads to a token, a token touches a workload, a workload accesses data, and data movement triggers new activity. Graphs represent these relationships as nodes (entities) and edges (relationships), helping you answer questions like: âWho received the phishing email, who clicked, and which clicks were allowed by the proxy?â or âShow me users who exported notebooks, staged files in storage, then uploaded data to personal cloud storage- the full, threeâphase exfiltration chain through one identity.â With custom graphs, security teams can build, query, and visualize tailored security graphs using data from the Sentinel data lake and non-Microsoft sources, powered by Fabric. By uncovering hidden patterns and attack paths, graphs provide the relationship context needed to surface real risk. This context strengthens AIâpowered agent experiences, speeds investigations, clarifies blast radius, and helps teams move from noisy, disconnected alerts to confident decisions. In the words of our preview customers: âWe ingested our Databricks management-plane telemetry into the Sentinel data lake and built a custom security graph. Without writing a single detection rule, the graph surfaced unusual patterns of activity and overprivileged access that we escalated for investigation. We didn't know what we were looking for, the graph surfaced the risk for us by revealing anomalous activity patterns and unusual access combinations driven by relationships, not alerts.â â SVP, Security Solutions | Financial Services organization Use cases Sentinel graph offers embedded, Microsoft managed, security graphs in Defender and Microsoft Purview experiences to help you at every stage of defense, from pre-breach to post-breach and across assets, activities, and threat intelligence. See here for more details. The new custom graph capability gives you full control to create your own graphs combining data from Microsoft sources, non-Microsoft sources, and federated sources in the Sentinel data lake. With custom graphs you can: Understand blast radius â Trace phishing campaigns, malware spread, OAuth abuse, or privilege escalation paths across identities, devices, apps, and data, without stitching together dozens of tables. Reconstruct real attack chains â Model multi-step attacker behavior (MITRE techniques, lateral movement, before/after malware) as connected sequences so investigations are complete and explainable, not a set of partial pivots. Reconstruct these chains from historical data in the Sentinel data lake. Figure 2: Drill into which specific MITRE techniques each IP is executing and in which tactic category Spot hidden risks and anomalies â Detect structural outliers like users with unusually broad access, anomalous email exfiltration, or dangerous permission combinations that are invisible in flat logs. Figure 3: OAuth consent chain â a single compromised user consented four dangerous permissions Creating custom graph Using the Sentinel VS Code extension, you can generate graphs to validate hunting hypotheses, such as understanding attack paths and blast radius of a phishing campaign, reconstructing multiâstep attack chains, and identifying structurally unusual or highârisk behavior, making it accessible to your team and AI agents. Once persisted via a schedule job, you can access these custom graphs from the ready-to-use section in the graphs section in the Defender portal. Figure 4: Use AI-assisted vibe coding in Visual Studio Code to create tailored security graphs powered by Sentinel data lake and Fabric Graphs experience in the Microsoft Defender portal After creating your custom graphs, you can access them in the Graphs section of the Microsoft Defender portal under Sentinel. From there, you can perform interactive, graph-based investigations, for example, using a graph built for phishing analysis to quickly evaluate the impact of a recent incident, profile the attacker, and trace paths across Microsoft telemetry and third-party data. The graph experience lets you run Graph Query Language (GQL) queries, view the graph schema, visualize results, see results in a table, and interactively traverse to the next hop with a single click. Figure 5: Query, visualize, and traverse custom graphs with the new graph experience in Sentinel Billing Custom graph API usage for creating graph and querying graph is billed according to the Sentinel graph meter. Get started To use custom graphs, youâll need Microsoft Sentinel data lake enabled in your tenant, since the lake provides the scalable, open-format foundation that custom graphs build on. Use the Sentinel data lake onboarding flow to provision the data lake if it isnât already enabled. Ensure the required connectors are configured to populate your data lake. See Manage data tiers and retention in Microsoft Sentinel | Microsoft Learn. Create and persist a custom graph. See Get started with custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel (preview) | Microsoft Learn. Run adhoc graph queries and visualize graph results. See Visualize custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel graph (preview) | Microsoft Learn. [Optional] Schedule jobs to write graph query results to the lake tier and analytics tier using notebooks. See Exploring and interacting with lake data using Jupyter Notebooks - Microsoft Security | Microsoft Learn. Learn more Earlier posts (Sentinel graph general availability) RSAC 2026 announcement roundup Custom graphs documentation Custom graph billingAccelerate connectors development using AI agent in Microsoft Sentinel
Today, weâre excited to announce the public preview of a Sentinel connector builder agent, via VS code extension, that helps developers build Microsoft Sentinel codeless connectors faster with low-code and AI-assisted prompts. This new capability brings guided workflows directly into the tooling developers already use, helping accelerate time to value as the Sentinel ecosystem continues to grow. Learn more at Create custom connectors using Sentinel connector AI agent Why this matters As the Microsoft Sentinel ecosystem continues to expand, developers are increasingly tasked with delivering highâquality, productionâready connectors at a faster pace, often while working across different cloud platforms and development environments. Building these integrations involves coordinating schemas, configuration artifacts, Azure deployment concepts, and validation steps that provide flexibility and control, but can span multiple tools and workflows. As connector development scales across more partners and scenarios, there is a clear opportunity to better integrate these capabilities into the developer environments teams already rely on. The new Sentinel connector builder agent, using GitHub Copilot in the Sentinel VS code extension, brings more of the connector development lifecycle -- authoring, validation, testing, and deployment into a single, cohesive workflow. By consolidating these common steps, it helps developers move more easily from design to validation and deployment without disrupting established processes. A guided, AIâassisted workflow inside VS Code The Sentinel connector builder agent for Visual Studio Code is designed to help developers move from API documentation to a working codeless connector more efficiently. The experience begins with an ISVs API documentation. Using GitHub Copilot chat inside VS Code, developers can describe the connector they want to build and point the extension to their API docs, either by URL or inline content. From there, the AIâguided workflow reads and extracts the relevant details needed to begin building the connector. Open the VS Code chat and set the chat to Agent mode. Prompt the agent using sentinelâ. When prompted, select /create-connector and select any supported API. For example in Contoso API, enter the prompt as: @sentinel /create-connector Create a connector for Contoso. Here are the API docs: https://contoso-security-api.azurewebsites.net/v0101/api-doc Next, the agent generates the required artifacts such as polling configurations, data collection rules (DCRs), table schemas, and connector definitions, using guided prompts with builtâin validation. This stepâbyâstep experience helps ensure configurations remain consistent and aligned as theyâre created. Note: During agent evaluation, select Allow responses once to approve changes, or select the option Bypass Approvals in the chat. It might take up to several minutes for the evaluations to finish. As the connector takes shape, developers can validate and test configurations directly within VS Code, including testing API interactions before deployment. Validation of the API data source and polling configuration are surfaced in context, supporting faster iteration without leaving the development environment. When ready, connectors can be deployed directly from VS Code to accessible Microsoft Sentinel workspaces, streamlining the path from development to deployment without requiring manual navigation of the Azure portal. Key capabilities The VS Code connector builder experience includes: AIâguided connector creation to generate codeless connectors from API documentation using natural language prompts. Support for common authentication methods, including Basic authentication, OAuth 2.0, and API keys. Automated validation to check schemas, crossâfile consistency, and configuration correctness as you build. Builtâin testing to validate polling configurations and API interactions before deployment. Oneâclick deployment that allows publishing connectors directly to accessible Microsoft Sentinel workspaces from within VS Code. Together, these capabilities support a more efficient path from API documentation to a working Microsoft Sentinel connector. Testimonials As partners begin using the Sentinel connector builder agent, feedback from the community will help shape future enhancements and refinements. Here is what some of our early adopters have to say about the experience: âThe connector builder agent accelerated our initial exploration of the codeless connector framework and helped guide our connector design decisions.â -- Rodrigo Rodrigues, Technology Alliance Director âThe connector builder agent helped us quickly explore and validate connector options on the codeless connector framework while developing our Sentinel integration.â --Chris Nicosia, Head of Cloud and Tech Partnerships Start building This public preview represents an important step toward simplifying how ISVs build and maintain integrations with Microsoft Sentinel. If youâre ready to get started, the Sentinel connector builder agent is available in public preview for all participants. In the unlikely event that an ISV encounters any issues in building or updating a CCF connector, App Assure is here to help. Reach out to us here.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 buildâfrom silicon to OS, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and cloudsâand 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 â 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 agentâs access to data and resources, and manage the agentâs 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 Microsoftâs security portfolio to provide a âsecure by designâ 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 Purviewâs 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; itâs 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 platformsâeliminating fragmented visibility, disconnected posture insights, and governance gaps as AI adoption scales. Best of all, thereâs nothing new to buy. If youâre already using Microsoft security products to secure AI, youâre 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 Microsoftâs 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 2â3 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, weâre 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 organizationâs 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 agentâs 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. Thatâs 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 Microsoftâs industry-leading threat intelligence and cross-domain security signals to deliver richer, contextualized alerts and security incident views for the SOC analyst. Defenderâs 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 Defenderâs 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 agentâs 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 challengesâspanning 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 freeâŻMicrosoft 365 E5 Security TrialâŻandâŻMicrosoft 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 moreâ 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=400From Manual Vetting to Continuous Trust: Automating Publisher Screening with AI
Publisher screening is a software supply-chain reality: if a publisher account is compromised, a single update can reach thousands of machinesâand recovery is costly. Microsoft Trust & Security Services applies AI to automate screening at onboarding and keep reassessing publishers as new signals appear. Multiple âcheckerâ agents evaluate identity, reputation, and post-approval behavior, then combine evidence into a consistent risk score and an approve/deny/escalate decision, with an evidence-backed explanation that supports auditability and appeals while reducing operational toil.Defending the AI Era: New Microsoft Capabilities to Protect AI
As enterprises rapidly adopt AI to drive productivity, automate decisions, and power intelligent agents, a new attack surface is emergingâone that traditional security controls were never designed to protect. AI models, training pipelines, plugins, and autonomous agents now sit directly in the path of sensitive data, business logic, and critical workflows. Organizations must protect the AI supply chain from model development and deployment to runtime behavior, tool access, and downstream actions. At the same time, AI agents operating with broad privileges require runtime monitoring to ensure every tool invocation and action is safe. By combining proactive model scanning across the AI lifecycle with runtime enforcement that monitors and blocks risky agent behavior, security teams gain the visibility and control needed to prevent data exfiltration, misuse of automation, and silent manipulation of outcomes at machine speed. Microsoft Defender helps organizations protect AI investments end-to-end by proactively identifying risks, detecting AI-specific attacks, and enabling investigation and response efforts. New innovations in Defender continue to build upon this value with new threat protection and visibility capabilities for agents through Agent 365 and AI model scanning. Protect AI agents in Agent 365 from emerging threats As AI agents become embedded in core business workflows, they introduce a new class of operational risk that traditional security controls were never designed to manage. AI agents donât just process dataâthey take actions, invoke tools, and make decisions, often with broad access to sensitive systems and information. Without continuous visibility and protection of agent activity at runtime, organizations risk silent data exfiltration, misuse of automation, and manipulated outcomes that can directly impact business integrity, compliance, and trust. Real-time protection integrates Microsoft Defender directly into Agent 365âs tools gateway (ATG) to evaluate every agent tool invocation before it executes. The new capabilities provide critical runtime scrutiny to catch unsafe or manipulated actions that traditional build-time checks cannot. It focuses on high confidence threats such as attempts to extract system instructions, access or leak sensitive data, misuse internal only tools, or route information to untrusted destinations If an action is determined to be risky, Defender blocks it immediately, before tool invocation, preventing any data access or leak, and harmful action. When there is a block of a risky action, a comprehensive, SOC-ready alert is generated that explains what was stopped, why it was considered risky, and which agent, user, and tool were involved. Identify risks across the AI model lifecycle When we talk about securing AI, we need to start with the model itself. AI models go through a lifecycle from data sourcing and training, through packaging and deployment, all the way to production. At each stage, there are security risks that traditional application security doesn't address. Understanding where those risks live is the first step toward building the right controls. Before any training begins, teams are pulling in pretrained models from registries like Hugging Face, consuming third-party datasets, and importing ML frameworks into their pipelines. A compromised pretrained model can carry embedded malware or backdoors that activate only under specific conditions. If models are consumed from external sources without scanning them, they are trusting unknown actors with access to our environment. AI model scanning in Microsoft Defender now provides scanning for models stored in Azure ML registries and workspaces covering malware, unsafe operators, and backdoors across common model formats. For security teams, recurring scanning results in security recommendations tied to the specific model resource enable quick remediation. Additionally, high-confidence malware detections now generate Defender alerts that flow directly into SOC workflows via Defender XDR. For developers, a new CLI integration enables in-pipeline on-demand scanning of model artifacts during the build process identifies risks down the single line of code. Additionally, gating capabilities in CI/CD pipelines help prevent unsafe models from ever reaching a registry. If a model hasn't been scanned, it shouldn't be pushed. Visibility across the lifecycle ties it all together. The AI model lifecycle requires controls at every stage: supply chain integrity verification, artifact validation during development, automated scanning before deployment, runtime threat detection in production, and discovery and cleanup at end of life. The organizations that treat this as a continuous discipline not a one-time checkpoint are the ones building the foundation to scale AI securely.
