What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025
Protecting your organization against cybersecurity threats is more challenging than ever before. As part of our 2025 Microsoft Secure cybersecurity conference announcements, we’re sharing new product features that spotlight our AI-first, end-to-end security innovations designed to help - including autonomous AI agents in the Security Operations Center (SOC), as well as automatic detection and response capabilities. We also share information on how you can expand your protection by bringing data security and collaboration tools closer to the SOC. Read on to learn more about how these capabilities can help your organization stay ahead of today’s advanced threat actors. Expanding AI-Driven Capabilities for Smarter SOC Operations Introducing Microsoft Security Copilot’s Security Alert Triage Agent (previously named Phishing Triage Agent) Today, we are excited to introduce Security Copilot agents, a major step in bringing AI-driven automation to Microsoft Security solutions. As part of this, we’re unveiling our newest innovation in Microsoft Defender: the Security Alert Triage Agent. Acting as a force multiplier for SOC analysts, it streamlines the triage of user-submitted phishing incidents by autonomously identifying and resolving false positives, typically cleaning out over 95% of submissions. This allows teams to focus on the remaining incidents – those that pose the most critical threats. Phishing submissions are among the highest-volume alerts that security teams handle daily, and our data shows that at least 9 in 10 reported emails turn out to be harmless bulk mail or spam. As a result, security teams must sift through hundreds of these incidents weekly, often spending up to 30 minutes per case determining whether it represents a real threat. This manual triage effort not only adds operational strain but also delays the response to actual phishing attacks, potentially impacting protection levels. The Security Alert Triage Agent transforms this process by leveraging advanced LLM-driven analysis to conduct sophisticated assessments –such as examining the semantic content of emails– to autonomously determine whether an incident is a genuine phishing attempt or a false alarm. By intelligently cutting through the noise, the agent alleviates the burden on SOC teams, allowing them to focus on high-priority threats. Figure 1. A phishing incident triaged by the Security Copilot Security Alert Triage Agent To help analysts gain trust in its decision-making, the agent provides natural language explanations for its classifications, along with a visual representation of its reasoning process. This transparency enables security teams to understand why an incident was classified in a certain way, making it easier to validate verdicts. Analysts can also provide feedback in plain language, allowing the agent to learn from these interactions, refine its accuracy, and adapt to the organization’s unique threat landscape. Over time, this continuous feedback loop fine-tunes the agent’s behavior, aligning it more closely with organizational nuances and reducing the need for manual verification. The Security Copilot Security Alert Triage Agent is designed to transform SOC operations with autonomous, AI-driven capabilities. As phishing threats grow increasingly sophisticated and SOC analysts face mounting demands, this agent alleviates the burden of repetitive tasks, allowing teams to shift their focus to proactive security measures that strengthen the organization’s overall defense. Note: The Phishing Triage Agent has since been expanded and is now called the Security Alert Triage Agent. Learn more at aka.ms/SATA Security Copilot Enriched Incident Summaries and Suggested Prompts Security Copilot Incident Summaries in Microsoft Defender now feature key enrichments, including related threat intelligence and asset risk –enhancements driven by customer feedback. Additionally, we are introducing suggested prompts following incident summaries, giving analysts quick access to common follow-up questions for deeper context on devices, users, threat intelligence, and more. This marks a step towards a more interactive experience, moving beyond predefined inputs to a more dynamic, conversational workflow. Read more about Microsoft Security Copilot agent announcements here. New protection across Microsoft Defender XDR workloads To strengthen core protection across Microsoft Defender XDR workloads, we're introducing new capabilities while building upon existing integrations for enhanced protection. This ensures a more comprehensive and seamless defense against evolving threats. Introducing collaboration security for Microsoft Teams Email remains a prevalent entry point for attackers. But the fast adoption of collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams has opened new attack surfaces for cybercriminals. Our advancements within Defender for Office 365 allow organizations to continue to protect users in Microsoft Teams against phishing and other emerging cyberthreats with inline protection against malicious URLs, safe attachments, brand impersonation protection, and more. And to ensure seamless investigation and response at the incident level, everything is centralized across our SOC workflows in the unified security operations platform. Read the announcement here. Introducing Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations for the SOC Understanding the extent of the data that has been impacted to better prioritize incidents has been a challenge for security teams. As data remains the main target for attackers it’s critical to dismantle silos between security and data security teams to enhance response times. At Microsoft, we’ve made significant investments in bringing SOC and data security teams closer together by integrating Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Purview. We are continuing to build upon the rich set of capabilities and today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations (DSI) can be initiated from the incident graph in Defender XDR. Ensuring robust data security within the SOC has always been important, as it helps protect sensitive information from breaches and unauthorized access. Data Security Investigations significantly accelerates the process of analyzing incident related data such as emails, files, and messages. With AI-powered deep content analysis, DSI reveals the key security and sensitive data risks. This integration allows analysts to further analyze the data involved in the incident, learn which data is at risk of compromise, and take action to respond and mitigate the incident faster, to keep the organization’s data protected. Read the announcement here. Figure 2. An incident that shows the ability to launch a data security investigation. OAuth app insights are now available in Exposure Management In recent years, we’ve witnessed a substantial surge in attackers exploiting OAuth applications to gain access to critical data in business applications like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. To address this threat, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is now integrating OAuth apps and their connections into Microsoft Security Exposure Management, enhancing both attack path and attack surface map experiences. Additionally, we are introducing a unified application inventory to consolidate all app interactions into a single location. This will address the following use cases: Visualize and remediate attack paths that attackers could potentially exploit using high-privilege OAuth apps to access M365 SaaS applications or sensitive Azure resources. Investigate OAuth applications and their connections to the broader ecosystem in Attack Surface Map and Advanced Hunting. Explore OAuth application characteristics and actionable insights to reduce risk from our new unified application inventory. Figure 3. An attack path infused with OAuth app insights Read the latest announcement here AI & TI are critical for effective detection & response To effectively combat emerging threats, AI has become critical in enabling faster detection and response. By combining this with the latest threat analytics, security teams can quickly pinpoint emerging risks and respond in real-time, providing organizations with proactive protection against sophisticated attacks. Disrupt more attacks with automatic attack disruption In this era of multi-stage, multi-domain attacks, the SOC need solutions that enable both speed and scale when responding to threats. That’s where automatic attack disruption comes in—a self-defense capability that dynamically pivots to anticipate and block an attacker’s next move using multi-domain signals, the latest TI, and AI models. We’ve made significant advancements in attack disruption, such as threat intelligence-based disruption announced at Ignite, expansion to OAuth apps, and more. Today, we are thrilled to share our next innovation in attack disruption—the ability to disrupt more attacks through a self-learning architecture that enables much earlier and much broader disruption. At its core, this technology monitors a vast array of signals, ranging from raw telemetry data to alerts and incidents across Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. This extensive range of data sources provides an unparalleled view of your security environment, helping to ensure potential threats do not go unnoticed. What sets this innovation apart is its ability learn from historical events and previously seen attack types to identify and disrupt new attacks. By recognizing similar patterns across data and stitching them together into a contextual sequence, it processes information through machine learning models and enables disruption to stop the attack much earlier in the attack sequence, stopping significantly more attacks in volume and variety. Comprehensive Threat Analytics are now available across all Threat Intelligence reports Organizations can now leverage the full suite of Threat Analytics features (related incidents, impacted assets, endpoints exposure, recommended actions) on all Microsoft Threat Intelligence reports. Previously only available for a limited set of threats, these features are now available for all threats Microsoft has published in Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI), offering comprehensive insights and actionable intelligence to help you ensure your security measures are robust and responsive. Some of these key features include: IOCs with historical hunting: Access IOCs after expiration to investigate past threats and aid in remediation and proactive hunting. MITRE TTPs: Build detections based on threat techniques, going beyond IOCs to block and alert on specific tactics. Targeted Industries: Filter threats by industry, aligning security efforts with sector-specific challenges. We’re proud of our new AI-first innovations that strengthen security protections for our customers and help us further our pledge to customers and our community to prioritize cyber safety above all else. Learn more about the innovations designed to help your organization protect data, defend against cyber threats, and stay compliant. Join Microsoft leaders online at Microsoft Secure on April 9. We hope you’ll also join us in San Francisco from April 27th-May 1 st 2025 at the RSA Conference 2025 to learn more. At the conference, we’ll share live, hands-on demos and theatre sessions all week at the Microsoft booth at Moscone Center. Secure your spot today.Monthly news - December 2025
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - December 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from November 2025. Defender for Cloud has its own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. 😎 Microsoft Ignite 2025 - now on-demand! 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episode: Advancements in Attack Disruption Vulnerability Remediation Agent in Microsoft Intune Microsoft Defender Ignite 2025: What's new in Microsoft Defender? This blog summarizes our big announcements we made at Ignite. (Public Preview) Defender XDR now includes the predictive shielding capability, which uses predictive analytics and real-time insights to dynamically infer risk, anticipate attacker progression, and harden your environment before threats materialize. Learn more about predictive shielding. Security Copilot for SOC: bringing agentic AI to every defender. This blog post gives a great overview of the various agents supporting SOC teams. Account correlation links related accounts and corresponding insights to provide identity-level visibility and insights to the SOC. Coordinated response allows Defenders to take action comprehensively across connected accounts, accelerating response and minimizing the potential for lateral movement. Enhancing visibility into your identity fabric with Microsoft Defender. This blog describes new enhancements to the identity security experience within Defender that will help enrich your security team’s visibility and understanding into your unique identity fabric. (Public Preview) The IdentityAccountInfo table in advanced hunting is now available for preview. This table contains information about account information from various sources, including Microsoft Entra ID. It also includes information and link to the identity that owns the account. Microsoft Sentinel customers using the Defender portal, or the Azure portal with the Microsoft Sentinel Defender XDR data connector, now also benefit from Microsoft Threat Intelligence alerts that highlight activity from nation-state actors, major ransomware campaigns, and fraudulent operations. For more information, see Incidents and alerts in the Microsoft Defender portal. (Public Preview) New Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) experiences in the Defender portal! Microsoft Sentinel introduces new UEBA experiences in the Defender portal, bringing behavioral insights directly into key analyst workflows. These enhancements help analysts prioritize investigations and apply UEBA context more effectively. Learn more on our docs. (Public Preview) A new Restrict pod access response action is now available when investigating container threats in the Defender portal. This response action blocks sensitive interfaces that allow lateral movement and privilege escalation. (Public Preview) Threat analytics now has an Indicators tab that provides a list of all indicators of compromise (IOCs) associated with a threat. Microsoft researchers update these IOCs in real time as they find new evidence related to the threat. This information helps your security operations center (SOC) and threat intelligence analysts with remediation and proactive hunting. Learn more. In addition the overview section of threat analytics now includes additional details about a threat, such as alias, origin, and related intelligence, providing you with more insights on what the threat is and how it might impact your organization. Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) In addition to the GA release of scoping by Active Directory domains a few months ago, you can now scope by Organizational Units (OUs) as part of XDR User Role-Based Access Control. This enhancement provides even more granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. For more information, see Configure scoped access for Microsoft Defender for Identity. (Public Preview). New security posture assessment: Change password for on-prem account with potentially leaked credentials. The new security posture assessment lists users whose valid credentials have been leaked. For more information, see: Change password for on-prem account with potentially leaked credentials. Defender for Identity is slowly rolling out automatic Windows event auditing for sensors v3.x, streamlining deployment by applying required auditing settings to new sensors and fixing misconfigurations on existing ones. As it becomes available, you will be able to enable automatic Windows event-auditing in the Advanced settings section in the Defender portal, or using the Graph API. Identity Inventory enhancements: Accounts tab, manual account linking and unlinking, and expanded remediation actions are now available. Learn more in our docs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (Public Preview) Defender for Cloud Apps automatically discovers AI agents created in Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry, collects audit logs, continuously monitors for suspicious activity, and integrates detections and alerts into the XDR Incidents and Alerts experience with a dedicated Agent entity. For more information, see Protect your AI agents. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Ignite 2025: Microsoft Defender now prevents threats on endpoints during an attack. This year at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Defender is announcing exciting innovations for endpoint protection that help security teams deploy faster, gain more visibility, and proactively block attackers during active attacks. (Public Preview) Defender for Endpoint now includes the GPO hardening and Safeboot hardening response actions. These actions are part of the predictive shielding feature, which anticipates and mitigates potential threats before they materialize. (Public Preview) Custom data collection enables organizations to expand and customize telemetry collection beyond default configurations to support specialized threat hunting and security monitoring needs. (Public Preview) Native root detection support for Microsoft Defender on Android. This enables proactive detection of rooted devices without requiring Intune policies, ensuring stronger security and validating that Defender is running on an uncompromised device, ensuring more reliable telemetry that is not vulnerable to attacker manipulation. (Public Preview) The new Defender deployment tool is a lightweight, self-updating application that streamlines onboarding devices to the Defender endpoint security solution. The tool takes care of prerequisites, automates migrations from older solutions, and removes the need for complex onboarding scripts, separate downloads, and manual installations. It currently supports Windows and Linux devices. Defender deployment tool: for Windows devices for Linux devices (Public Preview) Defender endpoint security solution for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. A Defender for endpoint security solution is now available for legacy Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 devices. The solution provides advanced protection capabilities and improved functionality for these devices compared to other solutions. The new solution is available using the new Defender deployment tool. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (Public Preview) The Vulnerability Management section in the Microsoft Defender portal is now located under Exposure management. This change is part of the vulnerability management integration to Microsoft Security Exposure Management, which significantly expands the scope and capabilities of the platform. Learn more. (General Availability) Microsoft Secure Score now includes new recommendations to help organizations proactively prevent common endpoint attack techniques. Require LDAP client signing and Require LDAP server signing - help ensure integrity of directory requests so attackers can't tamper with or manipulate group memberships or permissions in transit. Encrypt LDAP client traffic - prevents exposure of credentials and sensitive user information by enforcing encrypted communication instead of clear-text LDAP. Enforce LDAP channel binding - prevents man-in-the-middle relay attacks by ensuring the authentication is cryptographically tied to the TLS session. If the TLS channel changes, the bind fails, stopping credential replay. (General Availability) These Microsoft Secure Score recommendations are now generally available: Block web shell creation on servers Block use of copied or impersonated system tools Block rebooting a machine in Safe Mode Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Microsoft Ignite 2025: Transforming Phishing Response with Agentic Innovation. This blog post summarizes the following announcements: General Availability of the Security Copilot Phishing Triage Agent Agentic Email Grading System in Microsoft Defender Cisco and VIPRE Security Group join the Microsoft Defender ICES ecosystem. A separate blog explains these best practices in more detail and outline three other routing techniques commonly used across ICES vendors. Blog series: Best practices from the Microsoft Community Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Fine-Tuning: This blog covers our top recommendations for fine-tuning Microsoft Defender for Office 365 configuration from hundreds of deployments and recovery engagements, by Microsoft MVP Joe Stocker. You may be right after all! Disputing Submission Responses in Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Microsoft MVP Mona Ghadiri spotlights a new place AI has been inserted into a workflow to make it better… a feature that elevates the transparency and responsiveness of threat management: the ability to dispute a submission response directly within Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Blog post: Strengthening calendar security through enhanced remediation.Monthly news - November 2025
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - November 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from October 2025. Defender for Cloud has its own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. ⏰ Microsoft Ignite 2025 November 18-20, register now! 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episode: What’s new for Microsoft Teams protection in Defender for Office 365 Microsoft Defender Custom detections are now the unified experience for creating detections in Microsoft Defender! Read this blog for all the details. How Microsoft Defender helps security teams detect prompt injection attacks in Microsoft 365 Copilot. We’re excited to share that Microsoft Defender now provides visibility into prompt injection attempts within Microsoft 365 Copilot and helps security teams detect and respond to prompt injection attacks more efficiently and at a broader context, with insights that go beyond individual interaction. Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting reports now include an Emerging threats section that details the proactive, hypothesis-based hunts we conducted in your environment. Each report also now includes investigation summaries for nearly every hunt that Defender Experts conduct in your environment, regardless of whether they identified a confirmed threat. Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR reports now include a Trends tab provides you with the monthly volume of investigated and resolved incidents for the last six months, visualized according to the incidents' severity, MITRE tactic, and threat type. This section gives you insight into how Defender Experts are tangibly improving your security operations by showing important operational metrics on a month-over-month basis. Threat Intelligence Export is now available in Microsoft Sentinel. Traditionally, Microsoft Sentinel has supported importing threat intel from external sources (partners, governments, ISACs, or internal tenants) via Structured Threat Information eXpression (STIX) via Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information (TAXII). With this new export feature, you can now share curated threat intel back to trusted destinations. This empowers security teams to contribute threat intel to other organizations in support of collective defense, or to their own central platform to add or enrich threat intelligence. Microsoft Defender for Identity We’re excited to announce that the Defender for Identity Unified Sensor (v3.x) is now generally available (GA). The unified sensor provides enhanced coverage, improved performance across your environment and offering easier deployment and management for domain controllers. Learn more on how to active it in our docs.. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 📘 Email Authentication SecOps Guide (New learn doc) - visit & bookmark our short link: https://aka.ms/authguide The following docs article has been updated with with Compauth Codes: Message Headers Reference New blog series: Best practices from the Microsoft Community Defender for Office 365: Migration & Onboarding Onboarding to Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is often treated as a quick setup task, but it should be seen as a critical opportunity to establish strong security foundations. In my roles supporting incident response and security operations in Microsoft 365, I have observed that onboarding is often underestimated. - Purav Desai, Dual Microsoft Security MVP (Most Valuable Professional) This blog covers four key areas that are frequently missed, but they are essential for a secure and auditable deployment of Defender for Office 365. Before diving into the technical details, it is important to clarify a common misconception about Defender for Office 365 protections. Safeguarding Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 As organizations rely more on Microsoft Teams for daily collaboration, securing this platform has become a top priority. Threat actors are increasingly targeting Teams chats and channels with phishing links and malicious files, making it critical for IT admins and security professionals to extend protection beyond email. Enter Microsoft Defender for Office 365, now armed with dedicated Teams protection capabilities. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 enables users to report suspicious messages, brings time-of-click scanning of URLs and files into Teams conversations, and provides rich alerts and hunting insights for SecOps teams. As a collaborative piece between Pierre Thoor, a Microsoft Security MVP, and the Defender for Office 365 Product Engineering Team, this guides with accompanying videos emphasize a proactive, user-driven approach to threat detection and response, turning everyday Teams interactions into actionable security signals for SecOps. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint End of Windows 10 Support: What Defender Customers Need to Know As of October 14, 2025, Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10. This means that Windows 10 devices will no longer receive security or feature updates, nor technical support from Microsoft. While these devices will continue to operate, the lack of regular security updates increases vulnerability to cyber threats, including malware and viruses. Applications running on Windows 10 may also lose support as the platform stops receiving updates. Endpoint Security Policies can now be distributed via MTO's (Multi Tenant Organization) Content Distribution capability. This capability moved from Public Preview to General Availability (GA). With this capability, you can create content distribution profiles in the multi-tenant portal that allow you to seamlessly replicate existing content - such as custom detection rules and now, endpoint security policies - from a source tenant to designated target tenants. Once distributed, the content runs on the target tenant, enabling centralized control with localized execution. You can read the announcement blog for public preview, as the content shares valuable insights. (Public Preview) Streamlined connectivity support for US government environments (GCC, GCC High, DoD). Learn more in our docs. (General Availability) Isolation exclusions. The Isolation exclusions feature is now generally available. Isolation exclusions allow designated processes or endpoints to bypass the restrictions of network isolation, ensuring essential functions continue while limiting broader network exposure. Learn more in our docs. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (Public Preview) Microsoft Secure Score now includes three new Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) based proactive recommendations that help organizations prevent common endpoint attack techniques including web-shell persistence, misuse of system tools, and Safe Mode based evasion. (Public Preview) You can now use CVE exceptions to exclude specific Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) from analysis in your environment. CVE exceptions allow you to control what type of data is relevant to your organization and to selectively exclude certain data from your remediation efforts. For more information, see Exceptions in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and Create, view, and manage exceptions. For more information, see Exceptions in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and Create, view, and manage exceptions. Microsoft Security Blogs The new Microsoft Security Store unites partners and innovation On September 30, 2025, Microsoft announced a bold new vision for security: a unified, AI-powered platform designed to help organizations defend against today’s most sophisticated cyberthreats. But an equally important story—one that’s just beginning to unfold—is how the Microsoft Security Store is bringing this vision to life through a vibrant ecosystem of partners, developers, and innovators—all contributing together to deliver more value and security to our customers. Security Store is the gateway for customers to easily discover, buy, and deploy trusted security solutions and AI agents from leading partners—all verified by Microsoft Security product teams to work seamlessly with Microsoft Security products. Inside the attack chain: Threat activity targeting Azure Blob Storage Azure Blob Storage is a high-value target for threat actors due to its critical role in storing and managing massive amounts of unstructured data at scale across diverse workloads and is increasingly targeted through sophisticated attack chains that exploit misconfigurations, exposed credentials, and evolving cloud tactics. Investigating targeted “payroll pirate” attacks affecting US universities Microsoft Threat Intelligence has identified a financially motivated threat actor that we track as Storm-2657 compromising employee accounts to gain unauthorized access to employee profiles and divert salary payments to attacker-controlled accounts, attacks that have been dubbed “payroll pirate”. Disrupting threats targeting Microsoft Teams Threat actors seek to abuse Microsoft Teams features and capabilities across the attack chain, underscoring the importance for defenders to proactively monitor, detect, and respond effectively. Harden your identity defense with improved protection, deeper correlation, and richer context Expanded ITDR features—including the new Microsoft Defender for Identity sensor, now generally available—bring improved protection, correlation, and context to help customers modernize their identity defense.Monthly news - October 2025
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - October 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from September 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. ⏰ Microsoft Ignite 2025 November 18-20, register now! 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episodes: Defender for Endpoint: Customize settings for optimum performance The new Defender for Identity sensor explained Expanding Microsoft Sentinel UEBA Transitioning the Sentinel SIEM experience from Azure to the Defender portal Microsoft Defender Move your Microsoft Sentinel experience into Microsoft Defender to streamline security operations into a single, AI-powered interface. This move enhances analyst efficiency, integrates threat insights, and improves response times through automation and advanced posture management. Customers are encouraged to begin planning their migration now to ensure a smooth transition and maximize the benefits of the new experience. Learn more about panning your move to the Defender portal here. Microsoft Defender delivered 242% return on investment over three years. The latest 2025 commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study reveals a 242% ROI over three years for organizations that chose Microsoft Defender. Read more in our blog. Custom detection rules get a boost. If you are a Microsoft Sentinel user and have connected your Sentinel workspace to Microsoft Defender, you are probably more familiar with analytics rules in Microsoft Sentinel and are looking to explore the capabilities and benefits of custom detections. Understanding and leveraging custom detection rules can significantly enhance your organization's security posture. This blog will delve into the benefits of custom detections and showcase scenarios that highlight their capabilities, helping you make the most of this robust feature. (Public Preview) In advanced hunting, you can now hunt using the hunting graph, which renders rendering predefined threat scenarios as interactive graphs. (Public Preview) You can investigate incidents using Blast radius analysis, which is an advanced graph visualization built on the Microsoft Sentinel data lake and graph infrastructure. This feature generates an interactive graph showing possible propagation paths from the selected node to predefined critical targets scoped to the user’s permissions. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (Public Preview) Protect Copilot Studio AI Agents in Real Time with Microsoft Defender. Microsoft Defender offers real-time protection during runtime for AI agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio. This capability automatically blocks the agent’s response during runtime if a suspicious behavior like a prompt injection attack is detected, and notifies security teams with a detailed alert in the Microsoft Defender portal. Learn more about it in this blog. Protect against OAuth Attacks in Salesforce with Microsoft Defender. In this blog, we will delve only into one of the Salesforce OAuth attack campaign and provide guidance on how organizations can use Microsoft Defender to protect against this and similar SaaS attack campaigns. Microsoft Defender for Identity Defender for Identity data centers are now also deployed in the United Arab Emirates, North and Central regions. For the most current list of regional deployments, see Defender for Identity data locations. (Public Preview) We are excited to announce the availability of a new Graph-based API for managing unified agent server actions in Defender for Identity. This capability is currently in preview and available in API Beta version. This API allows customers to: Monitor the status of unified agent servers Enable or disable the automatic activation of eligible servers Activate or deactivate the agent on eligible servers For more information, see Managing unified agent actions through Graph API. Several Defender for Identity detections are being updated to reduce noise and improve accuracy, making alerts more reliable and actionable. As the rollout continues, you might see a decrease in the number of alerts raised. Learn more on our docs page. We've added a new tab on the Identity profile page that contains all active identity-related identity security posture assessments (ISPMs). This feature consolidates all identity-specific security posture assessments into a single contextual view, helping security teams quickly spot weaknesses and take targeted actions. Learn more on our docs page. (Public Preview) Defender for Identity supports the Unified connectors experience, starting with the Okta Single Sign-On connector. This enables Defender for Identity to collect Okta system logs once and share them across supported Microsoft security products, reducing API usage and improving connector efficiency. For more information, see: Connect Okta to Microsoft Defender for Identity Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Near real-time URL protection in Teams messages: - Known, malicious URLs in Teams messages are delivered with a warning. Messages found to contain malicious URLs up to 48 hours after delivery also receive a warning. The warning is added to messages in internal and external chats and channels for all URL verdicts (not just malware or high confidence phishing). Users can report external and intra-org Microsoft Teams messages as non-malicious (not a security risk) from the following locations: Chats Standard, shared, and private channels Meeting conversations User reported settings determine whether reported messages are sent to the specified reporting mailbox, to Microsoft, or both. Also added support for Teams message reporting on Teams mobile client. Microsoft Security Exposure Management Cloud Attack Paths now reflect real, externally driven and exploitable risks that adversaries could use to compromise your organization, helping you cut through the noise and act faster. The paths now focus on external entry points and how attackers could progress through your environment reaching business-critical targets. Read more about it in this blog: Refining Attack Paths: Prioritizing Real-World, Exploitable Threats The legacy Azure AD Connect asset rule has been removed from Critical Assets. Its associated device role, AzureADConnectServer, will be deprecated in December 2025. Ensure all relevant custom rules are transitioned to use the new device role, EntraConnectServer, to maintain compliance and visibility. For more information, see Predefined classification. New predefined classifications: predefined Device classification rules for SharePoint Server and Microsoft Entra ID Cloud Sync were added to the critical assets list. For more information, see Predefined classification. We have added new data connectors for Wiz and Palo Alto Prisma. These connectors enable seamless integration of vulnerability and asset data from leading cloud security platforms into Microsoft Security Exposure Management, providing enhanced visibility and context for your environments. For more information, see: Wiz data connector, Palo Alto Prisma data connector. Microsoft Security Blogs https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/09/24/ai-vs-ai-detecting-an-ai-obfuscated-phishing-campaign/ Microsoft Threat Intelligence recently detected and blocked a credential phishing campaign that likely used AI-generated code to obfuscate its payload and evade traditional defenses, demonstrating a broader trend of attackers leveraging AI to increase the effectiveness of their operations and underscoring the need for defenders to understand and anticipate AI-driven threats. XCSSET evolves again: Analyzing the latest updates to XCSSET’s inventory Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a new variant of the XCSSET malware, which is designed to infect Xcode projects, typically used by software developers building Apple or macOS-related applications.Monthly news - August 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news - August 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from July 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Microsoft Defender Microsoft Sentinel is moving to the Microsoft Defender portal to deliver a unified, AI-powered security operations experience. Many customers have already made the move. Learn how to plan your transition and take advantage of new capabilities in the this blog post. Introducing Microsoft Sentinel data lake. We announced a significant expansion of Microsoft Sentinel’s capabilities through the introduction of Sentinel data lake, now rolling out in public preview. Read this blog post for a look at some of Sentinel data lake’s core features. (Public Preview) The GraphApiAuditEvents table in advanced hunting is now available for preview. This table contains information about Microsoft Entra ID API requests made to Microsoft Graph API for resources in the tenant. (Public Preview) The DisruptionAndResponseEvents table, now available in advanced hunting, contains information about automatic attack disruption events in Microsoft Defender XDR. These events include both block and policy application events related to triggered attack disruption policies, and automatic actions that were taken across related workloads. Increase your visibility and awareness of active, complex attacks disrupted by attack disruption to understand the attacks' scope, context, impact, and actions taken. Introducing Summary Rules Templates: Streamlining Data Aggregation in Microsoft Sentinel. Microsoft Sentinel’s new Summary Rules Templates offer a structured and efficient approach to aggregating verbose data - enabling security teams to extract meaningful insights while optimizing resource usage. Automating Microsoft Sentinel: Playbook Fundamentals. This is the third entry of the blog series on automating Microsoft Sentinel. In this post, we’re going to start talking about Playbooks which can be used for automating just about anything. Customer success story: Kuwait Credit Bank boosts threat detection and response with Microsoft Defender. To modernize its security posture, the bank unified its security operations under Microsoft Defender XDR, integrating Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Purview. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps App Governance is now also available in Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, Arab Emirates and Asia Pacific. For more details, see our documentation.. Updated network requirements for GCC and Gov customers. To support ongoing security enhancements and maintain service availability, Defender for Cloud Apps now requires updated firewall configurations for customers in GCC and Gov environments. To avoid service disruption, take action by August 25, 2025, and update your firewall configuration as described here. Discover and govern ChatGPT and other AI apps accessing Microsoft 365 with Defender for Cloud Apps. In this blog post, we’ll explore how Defender for Cloud Apps helps security teams gain enhanced visibility into the permissions granted to AI applications like ChatGPT as they access Microsoft 365 data. We’ll also share best practices for app governance to help security teams make informed decisions and take proactive steps to enable secure usage of AI apps accessing Microsoft 365 data. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (General Availability) Microsoft Defender Core service is now generally available on Windows Server 2019 or later which helps with the stability and performance of Microsoft Defender Antivirus. Microsoft Defender for Identity Expanded coverage in ITDR deployment health widget. With this update, the widget also includes deployment status for ADFS, ADCS, and Entra Connect servers - making it easier to track and ensure full sensor coverage across all supported identity infrastructure. Time limit added to Recommended test mode. Recommended test mode configuration on the Adjust alert thresholds page, now requires you to set an expiration time (up to 60 days) when enabling it. The end time is shown next to the toggle while test mode is active. For customers who already had Recommended test mode enabled, a 60-day expiration was automatically applied. Identity scoping is now available in Governance environments. Organizations can now define and refine the scope of Defender for Identity monitoring and gain granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. For more information, see Configure scoped access for Microsoft Defender for Identity. New security posture assessments for unmonitored identity servers. Defender for Identity has three new security posture assessments that detect when Microsoft Entra Connect, Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), or Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) servers are present in your environment but aren't monitored. Learn more in our documentation. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Protection against multi-modal attacks with Microsoft Defender. This blog post showcases how Microsoft Defender can detect and correlate certain hybrid, multi-modal attacks that span across email, Teams, identity, and endpoint vectors; and how these insights surface in the Microsoft Defender portal. Users can report external and intra-org Microsoft Teams messages from chats, standard and private channels, meeting conversations to Microsoft, the specified reporting mailbox, or both via user reported settings. Microsoft Security Blogs Frozen in transit: Secret Blizzard’s AiTM campaign against diplomats. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a cyberespionage campaign by the Russian state actor we track as Secret Blizzard that has been ongoing since at least 2024, targeting embassies in Moscow using an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) position to deploy their custom ApolloShadow malware. Sploitlight: Analyzing a Spotlight-based macOS TCC vulnerability. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has discovered a macOS vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-31199, that could allow attackers to steal private data of files normally protected by Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC), including the ability to extract and leak sensitive information cached by Apple Intelligence. Disrupting active exploitation of on-premises SharePoint vulnerabilities. Microsoft has observed two named Chinese nation-state actors, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, exploiting vulnerabilities targeting internet-facing SharePoint servers.Monthly news - June 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news - June 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from May 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel From on-premises to cloud: Graph-powered detection of hybrid attacks with Microsoft exposure graph. In this blog, we explain how the exposure graph, an integral part of our pre-breach security exposure solution, supercharges our post-breach threat protection capabilities to detect and respond to such multi-faceted threats. (Public Preview) Unified detections rules list that includes both analytics rules and custom detections is in public preview. Learn more in our docs. The Best of Microsoft Sentinel — Now in Microsoft Defender. We are proud to share that the most advanced and integrated SIEM experience from Microsoft Sentinel is now fully available within the Microsoft Defender portal as one unified experience. (General Available) Multi workspace for single and multi tenant is now in General Available. (Public Preview) Case management now available for the Defender multitenant portal. For more information, see View and manage cases across multiple tenants in the Microsoft Defender multitenant portal. (Public Preview) You can now highlight your security operations achievements and the impact of Microsoft Defender using the unified security summary. For more information, see Visualize security impact with the unified security summary. (Public Preview) New Microsoft Teams table: The MessageEvents table contains details about messages sent and received within your organization at the time of delivery (Public Preview) New Microsoft Teams table: The MessagePostDeliveryEvents table contains information about security events that occurred after the delivery of a Microsoft Teams message in your organization (Public Preview) New Microsoft Teams table: The MessageUrlInfo table contains information about URLs sent through Microsoft Teams messages in your organization Unified IdentityInfo table in advanced hunting now includes the largest possible set of fields common to both Defender and Azure portals. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Webinar - YouTube Link) Secure Your Servers with Microsoft's Server Protection Solution- This webinar offers an in-depth exploration of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux. Defender for Endpoint successfully passes the AV-Comparatives 2025 Anti-Tampering Test. Discover how automatic attack disruption protects critical assets while ensuring business continuity. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Part 2: Build custom email security reports and dashboards with workbooks in Microsoft Sentinel New deployment guide: Quickly configure Microsoft Teams protection in Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 New SecOps guide: Security Operations Guide for Teams protection in Defender for Office 365 Video - Ninja Show: Advanced Threat Detection with Defender XDR Community Queries Video- Mastering Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Configuration Best Practices Video - Ninja Show: Protecting Microsoft Teams with Defender for Office 365 This blog discussed the new Defender for Office 365 Language AI for Phish Model. SafeLinks Protection for Links Generated by M365 Copilot Chat and Office Apps. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps New Applications inventory page now available in Defender XDR. The new Applications page in Microsoft Defender XDR provides a unified inventory of all SaaS and connected OAuth applications across your environment. For more information, see Application inventory overview. The Cloud app catalog page has been revamped to meet security standards. The new design includes improved navigation, making it easier for you to discover and manage your cloud applications. Note: As part of our ongoing convergence process across Defender workloads, Defender for Cloud Apps SIEM agents will be deprecated starting November 2025. Learn more. Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) Expanded New Sensor Deployment Support for Domain Controllers. Learn more. Active Directory Service Accounts Discovery Dashboard. Learn more. Improved Visibility into Defender for Identity New Sensor Eligibility in the Activation page. The Activation Page now displays all servers from your device inventory, including those not currently eligible for the new Defender for Identity sensor. Note: Local administrators collection (using SAM-R queries) feature will be disabled. Microsoft Security Blogs Analyzing CVE-2025-31191: A macOS security-scoped bookmarks-based sandbox escape Marbled Dust leverages zero-day in Output Messenger for regional espionage Lumma Stealer: Breaking down the delivery techniques and capabilities of a prolific infostealer New Russia-affiliated actor Void Blizzard targets critical sectors for espionage Defending against evolving identity attack techniques Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Activity profile - AITM campaign with brand impersonated OAUTH applications Threat overview: SharePoint Server and Exchange Server threats Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-24813 – Apache Tomcat Path Equivalence Vulnerability Actor profile: Storm-0593 [TA update] Actor profile: Storm-0287 Activity Profile: Marbled Dust leverages zero-day to conduct regional espionage [TA update] Technique profile: ClickFix technique leverages clipboard to run malicious commands Technique profile: LNK file UI feature abuse Technique profile: Azure Blob Storage threats Activity profile: Lumma Stealer: Breaking down the delivery techniques and capabilities of a prolific infostealer Vulnerability profile - CVE-2025-30397 Activity profile: Recent OSINT trends in information stealersMonthly news - May 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news May 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from April 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025 New blog post: Empowering SOC Analysts: Investigating Identity Threats with Microsoft Defender XDR. (GA) Multi Tenant Organizations (MTO) expanded support for up to 100 tenants per view per user is now generally available! We are delighted to announce that Microsoft Defender MTO now supports the ability, for each user, to add up to 100 tenants to their view. We extended the number of tenants you can see in one single pane of glass – from 50 to 100. You can now view incidents, investigate, view device inventory and vulnerabilities on a larger number of tenants at the same time. Expanding Cross Cloud Multitenant Security Operations for Government Customers. This blog post summarizes a new capability that enhances multitenant security operations for government cloud customers, enabling cross-cloud visibility and centralized security management. We invite you to give this new capability a try! (Public Preview) The OAuthAppInfo table is now available for preview in advanced hunting. The table contains information about Microsoft 365-connected OAuth applications registered with Microsoft Entra ID and available in the Defender for Cloud Apps app governance capability. The OnboardingStatus and NetworkAdapterDnsSuffix columns are now available in the DeviceNetworkInfo table in advanced hunting. Automatic attack disruption: Enhanced containment for critical assets and shadow IT. This blog post introduces new, extended capabilities in automatic attack disruption. Announcing Rich Text for Case Management. In the dynamic world of SecOps, managing and communicating information efficiently is vital. Rich Text for Case Management introduces capabilities that allow you to enrich your case documentation with various formatting options, including bold, italics, underlining, code blocks, links, tables, and more. (Public Preview) You can now create data security investigations in the Microsoft Defender portal with the integration of Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations (preview) and Microsoft Defender XDR. This integration allows security operations center (SOC) teams to enhance their investigation and response to potential data security incidents like data breaches or data leaks. Learn more in our docs. (Public Preview) Containing IP addresses associated with devices that are undiscovered or are not onboarded to Defender for Endpoint is now in preview. Containing an IP address prevents attackers from spreading attacks to other non-compromised devices. Learn more in our docs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Updated documentation Schedule antivirus scans using Group Policy Schedule antivirus scans using PowerShell Two new ASR rules are now generally available: Block rebooting machine in Safe Mode: This rule prevents the execution of commands to restart machines in Safe Mode. Block use of copied or impersonated system tools: This rule blocks the use of executable files that are identified as copies of Windows system tools. These files are either duplicates or impostors of the original system tools. (General Available) Defender for Endpoint supports ARM64-based Linux servers across various Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, RHEL, Debian, SUSE Linux, Amazon Linux, and Oracle Linux. All product capabilities that are supported on AMD64 devices are now supported on ARM64-based Linux servers. For more information, see the following articles: Tech Community Blog: Defender for Endpoint extends support to ARM-based Linux servers Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Announcing the Public Preview of Auto-Remediation of Malicious Entity Clusters Identified in Automated Investigation and Response (AIR). Defender for Office 365 automated investigation and response is being enhanced to enable AIR to automatically remediate malicious entity clusters. AIR currently recommends actions for SecOps to approve or decline and this enhancement will allow customers the option to configure auto-remediation for AIR to automatically execute the soft deletion of messages included in malicious URL or malicious file clusters. Options to "tune" controls within Defender for Office 365 for an organization to maximize protection and efficacy. We are pleased to announce that if you are using third-party report message solutions in Microsoft Outlook, such as Knowbe4, Hoxhunt, and Cofense, you can now configure Defender for Office 365 to automatically forward these suspicious messages to Microsoft for analysis. The Outlook.com consumer email service will require compliance with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email authentication standards for domains sending more than 5000 messages to outlook.com, hotmail.com, and yahoo.com recipients as of 5 May, 2025. Learn more in this blog post.. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Enhanced alert source accuracy. This update, applicable to new alerts only, are reflected across various experiences and APIs, including the Defender XDR portal, Advanced hunting, and Graph API. (Public Preview) Investigate OAuth application attack paths in Defender for Cloud Apps Microsoft Defender for Identity (General available) Identities guided tour New attack paths tab on the Identity profile page New and updated events in the Advanced hunting IdentityDirectoryEvents table Identity page enhancements such as user timeline side panel, password last change field on the UI, devices tab filters and others. Deprecation of Defender for Identity alert email notifications (Public Preview) Defender for Identity integration with Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) Privileged Access Management (PAM) vendors integration with Defender for Identity – CyberArk, Delinea and BeyondTrust Microsoft Security Blogs Threat actors leverage tax season to deploy tax-themed phishing campaigns As Tax Day approaches in the United States on April 15, Microsoft has detected several tax-themed phishing campaigns employing various tactics. These campaigns use malicious hyperlinks and attachments to deliver credential phishing and malware including RaccoonO365, AHKBot, Latrodectus, BruteRatel C4 (BRc4), and Remcos. Exploitation of CLFS zero-day leads to ransomware activity Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) have discovered post-compromise exploitation of a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) against a small number of targets. Microsoft released security updates to address the vulnerability, tracked as CVE 2025-29824, on April 8, 2025. Stopping attacks against on-premises Exchange Server and SharePoint Server with AMSI Exchange Server and SharePoint Server are business-critical assets and considered crown-jewels for many organizations, making them attractive targets for attacks. Threat actors misuse Node.js to deliver malware and other malicious payloads Since October 2024, Microsoft Defender Experts has observed and helped multiple customers address campaigns leveraging Node.js to deliver malware and other payloads that ultimately lead to information theft and data exfiltration. Understanding the threat landscape for Kubernetes and containerized assets The dynamic nature of containers can make it challenging for security teams to detect runtime anomalies or pinpoint the source of a security incident, presenting an opportunity for attackers to stay undetected. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors taking advantage of unsecured workload identities to gain access to resources, including containerized environments. Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Activity profile: Tax and IRS-themed phishing campaigns [TA update] Tool profile: Grandoreiro banking trojan Activity profile - Threat actors using fake Chrome updates to deliver Lumma Stealer Actor profile: Storm-2256 Actor Profile - Storm-1877 [TA update] Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-26633 Vulnerability profile - CVE-2025-29824 Activity profile: Cryptomining infection by malicious AutoIT scripts uses masqueraded Ncat for C2 communications Technique profile: ClickFix technique leverages clipboard to run malicious commands [TA update] Actor profile: Storm-1249 Tool profile - XCSSET Tool profile: ReedBed Quarterly cyber threat report: MITRE ATT&CK framework trends in OSINT (January to March 2025) Actor Profile - Storm-1125 Activity profile: Sapphire Sleet using GoLang files to download malware Technique Profile: Device Code PhishingMonthly news - April 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news April 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from March 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. ⏰ April 9th & 10th is Microsoft Secure! Make sure you join this virtual event to hear about our latest product announcements. Three broadcast times are available, offering opportunities to get your questions answered by subject matter experts at a time that suits you best. April 9, 2025 | 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PT (UTC-7) | Americas broadcast April 10, 2025 | 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CET (UTC+1) | Europe, Middle East, Africa broadcast April 10, 2025 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM SGT (UTC+8) | Asia broadcast Microsoft Secure - Home - Microsoft Secure registration home page. New episodes of the Virtual Ninja Show has been published, covering various products and scenarios. Microsoft's Zero Trust approach Resolving high CPU utilization in Microsoft Defender Antivirus Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer overview Mastering onboarding issues with Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer Mastering endpoint security settings issues with Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer Connecting your Apps to Defender for Cloud Apps Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025 (Webinar) Microsoft Sentinel Repositories: Manage Your SIEM Content as code Like a Pro (GA Announcement) The content hub offers the best way to find new content or manage the solutions you already installed, now with granular AI search. (Public Preview) The Microsoft Sentinel agentless data connector for SAP and related security content is now included, as public preview, in the solution for SAP applications. Blog post: Transforming public sector security operations in the AI era Discover how Microsoft's AI-powered, unified SecOps can revolutionize public sector security operations and safeguard multiplatform, multi-cloud environments with industry-leading innovation and seamless integration. Ready to elevate your cyber defense? (Public Preview) The incident description has moved within the incident page. The incident description is now displayed after the incident details. For more information, see Incident details. The Microsoft 365 alert policies can now only be managed in the Microsoft Defender portal. For more information, see Alert policies in Microsoft 365. You can now link Threat analytics reports when setting up custom detections. Learn more Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Update to the Microsoft Defender Antivirus group policies documentation. Learn more Addition of the default settings for Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUA) documentation. Learn more New video (9 mins): How Microsoft is redefining endpoint security New documentation: Troubleshoot Microsoft Defender Antivirus scan issues Microsoft Defender for Office 365 User reported messages by third-party add-ins can be sent to Microsoft for analysis: In user reported settings, admins can select Monitor reported messages in Outlook > Use a non-Microsoft add-in button. In the Reported message destination section, select Microsoft and my reporting mailbox, and then provide the email address of the internal Exchange Online mailbox where user-reported messages by the third-party add-in are routed to. Microsoft analyzea these reported messages and provides result on the User reported tab of Submissions page at https://security.microsoft.com/reportsubmission?viewid=user. Create allow entries directly in the Tenant Allow/Block List: You can now create allow entries for domains & addresses and URLs directly in the Tenant Allow/Block List. This capability is available in Microsoft 365 Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD, and Office 365 operated by 21Vianet. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (GA) Unified Identity inventory now general available. Learn more Defending against OAuth based attacks with automatic attack disruption. Microsoft’s Automatic attack disruption capabilities disrupt sophisticated in-progress attacks and prevent them from spreading, now including OAuth app-based attacks. Attack disruption is an automated response capability that stops in-progress attacks by analyzing the attacker’s intent, identifying compromised assets, and containing them in real time. Level Up Your App Governance With Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Workshop Series. Join one of these workshops to learn: Real-world examples of OAuth attacks New pre-built templates and custom rules to simplify app governance How to quickly identify and mitigate risks from high-risk or suspicious apps Best practices for operationalizing app governance to improve your security posture These workshops are designed to accommodate global participation, with flexible date and time options. Protecting SaaS apps from OAuth threats with attack path, advanced hunting and more. Read this blog post to learn about various new capabilities rolling out over the next few weeks. Microsoft Defender for Identity Blog post: Discover and protect Service Accounts with Microsoft Defender for Identity Microsoft Defender for Identity now includes a Service Account Discovery capability, offering you centralized visibility into service accounts across your Active Directory environment. New health issue for cases where sensors running on VMware have network configuration mismatch. The Identities page under Assets has been updated to provide better visibility and management of identities across your environment. New LDAP query events were added to the IdentityQueryEvents table in Advanced Hunting to provide more visibility into additional LDAP search queries running in the customer environment. Microsoft Security Blogs Silk Typhoon targeting IT supply chain Malvertising campaign leads to info stealers hosted on GitHub New XCSSET malware adds new obfuscation, persistence techniques to infect Xcode projects Phishing campaign impersonates Booking .com, delivers a suite of credential-stealing malware StilachiRAT analysis: From system reconnaissance to cryptocurrency theft Analyzing open-source bootloaders: Finding vulnerabilities faster with AI Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Vulnerability Profile: CVE-2024-40711 – Veeam Backup Activity profile: Moonstone Sleet using Qilin ransomware [TA update] Actor Profile: Secret Blizzard Actor profile: Berry Sandstorm Activity profile: DarkGate malware samples delivered through fake Notion websites followed by ClickFix technique Activity profile: Secret Blizzard and Aqua Blizzard collaborate to target Ukrainian military devices [TA update] Actor profile - Swirl Typhoon Vulnerability profile: CVE-2024-57726 Multiple vulnerabilities found in SimpleHelp Remote Support Software Activity profile: Lumma Stealer spreads via YouTube video descriptions [TA update] Actor profile: Aqua Blizzard Tool profile: Latrodectus Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-26633 Tool profile: WinRing0 Activity profile: Storm-0485 phishing activity Activity profile: Silk Typhoon targeting IT supply chain Activity profile: Storm-1877 evolving tactics to target users with ClickFix attacks Threat overview: Business Email Compromise [Snapshot] Actor profile: Storm-2372 [TA update] Actor profile: ZigZag Hail Actor profile: Storm-0287 Activity profile: Secret Blizzard abusing Visual Studio Code tunneling service Activity Profile: Clickfix and Malvertising campaigns leveraging node.exe application Actor profile: Yulong Flood Vulnerability profile: CVE-2024-43451- NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability Tool profile: FrostyStash [TA update] Tool profile: Mimikatz Tool profile: Mamba 2FA Activity profile: Phishing campaign deploying PureLogStealer targets users in Central America [TA update] Vulnerability profile: CVE 2025-0282: Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateway [TA update] Actor profile: Silk Typhoon Seamless SSO Abuse via AADInternals [TA update] SystemBC Tool Profile Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-22224 – VMwareMonthly news - January 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news January 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from December 2024. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel (Preview) The Link to incident feature in advanced hunting now allows linking of Microsoft Sentinel query results. (Preview) You can now use the adx() operator to query tables stored in Azure Data Explorer. (GA) In advanced hunting, you can now add your frequently used schema tables, functions, queries, and detection rules in the Favorites sections under each tab for quicker access. Learn more on our docs. Hyperscale ML threat intelligence for early detection & disruption. This blog talks about Threat Intelligence Tracking via Dynamic Networks (TITAN) - a groundbreaking approach that uses the power of machine learning to transform threat intelligence and attack disruption by automatically neutralizing malicious activity at scale. You can now view Microsoft Sentinel Workbooks directly from Unified SOC Operations Platform. Learn more about it here. (Preview) Recommendations based on similar organizations - a first-of-its-kind capability for SOC optimizations. Recommendations based on similar organizations use peer-based insights to guide and accelerate your decision-making process. New documentation library for Microsoft's unified security operations platform. Find centralized documentation about Microsoft's unified SecOps platform in the Microsoft Defender portal. Microsoft's unified SecOps platform brings together the full capabilities of Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Security Exposure Management, and generative AI into the Defender portal. Learn about the features and functionality available with Microsoft's unified SecOps platform, then start to plan your deployment. SOC Optimization and Auxiliary Logs collaboration. We’re excited to announce the release of our updated recommendation, which now incorporates Auxiliary Logs! Previously, our recommendation focused on identifying unused tables and suggesting users either increase their utilization or switch the tables’ commitment tier to Basic Logs. With this update, we now recommend eligible tables be moved to Auxiliary Logs. The following new privacy documents for Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR have been added: Data security and retention in Microsoft Defender XDR Geographical availability and data residency in Microsoft Sentinel Ninja Show Episodes: Attack Disruption: Live demo This episode features Threat Hunter and Microsoft MVP Mattias Borg as he explains the anatomy of an attack. Through a live demo of an attack in action, gain exclusive insights into what attackers do behind the scenes, the tools they use and how Microsoft Defender steps up to counter these threats, offering a robust defense to help keep your organization secure. Defender XDR’s Data Security Context with Insider Risk Management Join us as product experts Maayan Magenheim and Sravan Kumar Mera showcase the Public Preview of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) integration into Defender XDR. Learn how Insider Risk and SOC analysts can now distinguish internal and external threats and gain critical insights, including exfiltration context and user activity tracking. Through a valuable demo, we explore the benefits for incident investigation, threat hunting, the correlation of IRM alerts with other DLP and identity protection alerts and more. Follow up LIVE AMA session Unlocking Advanced Cloud Detection & Response capabilities for containers Learn how the Microsoft Cloud Detection & Response solution empowers SOCs with faster, deeper investigations through near real-time detections, new cloud-native responses, and rich log collection. In this episode Product Managers Maayan Magenheim and Daniel Davrayev demo a real container related incident to show how these new capabilities enhance the entire incident response process, bridging knowledge gaps and proactively securing containerized workloads across multi-cloud environments. Threat Analytics - New Tool profile: SectopRAT (You need access to the Defender portal to read this profile.) Microsoft Sentinel (Preview) New AWS WAF connector. Use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) connector to ingest AWS WAF logs, collected in AWS S3 buckets, to Microsoft Sentinel. Learn more on our docs. Agentless deployment for SAP applications. Microsoft Sentinel for SAP’s latest new capability re-uses the SAP Cloud Connector to profit from already existing setups, established integration processes, and well-understood SAP components. Ninja Show Episode Microsoft Sentinel Data tiering best practices In this episode product experts Yael Bergman and Maria de Sousa-Valadas introduce the powerful new Auxiliary Logs tier, now in Public Preview and explain how to use Summary rules to aggregate data from any log tier in Microsoft Sentinel and Log Analytics. Tune in to learn the full potential of these features, as well as practical tips and use cases to help you reduce ingestion costs and gain more insights from your verbose logs. Upcoming webinar Feb 20, 9AM PT: Mastering API Integration with Sentinel & Unified Security Platform Learn how to effectively integrate APIs with Sentinel and Unified Security Platform. This webinar will cover when to use APIs, how to set them up, potential challenges, and feature live demos to guide you through the process. Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR Defender Experts for XDR now offers scoped coverage for customers who wish to define a specific set of devices and/or users, based on geography, subsidiary, or function, for which they'd like Defender Experts to provide support. Experts on demand via Message Center. Select Ask Defender Experts directly inside the Microsoft 365 security portal to get swift and accurate responses to all your threat hunting questions. Experts can provide insight to better understand the complex threats your organization might face. Microsoft Defender for Identity New security posture assessment: Prevent Certificate Enrollment with arbitrary Application Policies (ESC15). Defender for Identity has added the new Prevent Certificate Enrollment with arbitrary Application Policies (ESC15) recommendation in Microsoft Secure Score. Learn more on our docs. Microsoft Security Exposure Management The following predefined classification rules were added to the critical assets list: Classification Description Locked Azure Kubernetes Service cluster This rule applies to Azure Kubernetes Service clusters that are safeguarded by a lock. Premium tier Azure Kubernetes Service cluster This rule applies to premium tier Azure Kubernetes Service clusters. Azure Kubernetes Service cluster with multiple nodes This rule applies to Azure Kubernetes Service clusters with multiple nodes. Azure Arc Kubernetes cluster with multiple nodes This rule applies to Azure Arc clusters with multiple nodes. For more information, see, Predefined classifications Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Considerations for integrating non-Microsoft security services with Microsoft 365: Considerations and recommendations for deploying a defense-in-depth email security strategy using third-party security services. Defender for Office 365 now detects BEC attacks using large language model (LLM)-based filters to analyze an email's language and infer intent. Read this blog to learn more about it. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Defender for Endpoint on iOS now supports iOS/iPadOS 16.x as the minimum version. Defender for Endpoint is ending support for iOS/iPadOS 15 on January 31, 2025. Moving forward, only devices running iOS/iPadOS 16 and later are supported. Learn more on our docs. Android low-touch onboarding is now General Available. Key benefits Faster setup on Android devices – Simplified Android onboarding supports silent sign-on and autogranting of certain permissions on a user's device. As such, users are required to grant only the necessary permissions to onboard to Defender for Endpoint. Intuitive guidance - A clear and intuitive flow to guide users through each step. Broad coverage with support across multiple Android profiles – Android enterprise BYOD, COPE, and fully managed. Configuring low-touch onboarding Although low-touch onboarding is disabled by default, security administrators can enable it through app configuration policies in Intune. See Android low-touch onboarding. . Ninja Show Episode: Defender for Endpoint RDP Telemetry In this episode Cyber Security Researcher Danielle Kuznets Nohi and Senior Product Manager Saar Cohen join us to discuss the importance of Remote Desktop Protocol in Human Operated Attacks considering the current threat landscape. Through a demo, witness critical visibility enhancements made to this important layer of telemetry and learn the powerful capabilities of this tool to identify vulnerable assets and provide deeper threat insights.Monthly news - February 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news February 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from January 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel (Public Preview) Creating a unified, security-focused case management system. We are excited to be introducing a new solution for case management, built specifically for SecOps teams, and integrated into the experience of Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR in the unified SecOps platform. With new case management functionality, available for any customer who has Microsoft Sentinel, customers can benefit from a purpose-built approach to managing and collaborating across security cases. (Public Preview) Device activity events from Microsoft Sentinel's device entity pages are now visible in the Timeline tab on the Device entity page in the Defender portal, in addition to remaining visible on the Sentinel events tab. These device activity events now include blocked, dropped, or denied network traffic originating from a given device. (Public Preview) Users with provisioned access to Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management can now view and manage insider risk management alerts and hunt for insider risk management events and behaviors in the Microsoft Defender portal. For more information, see Investigate insider risk threats in the Microsoft Defender portal with insights from Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management. (General Available) Advanced hunting context panes are now available in custom detection experiences. This allows you to access the advanced hunting feature without leaving your current workflow. For incidents and alerts generated by custom detections, you can select Run query to explore the results of the related custom detection. In the custom detection wizard's Set rule logic step, you can select View query results to verify the results of the query you are about to set. (General Available) The Link to incident feature in Microsoft Defender advanced hunting now allows linking of Microsoft Sentinel query results. In both the Microsoft Defender unified experience and in Defender XDR advanced hunting, you can now specify whether an entity is an impacted asset or related evidence. (General Available) Migrating custom detection queries to Continuous (near real-time or NRT) frequency is now generally available in advanced hunting. Using the Continuous (NRT) frequency increases your organization's ability to identify threats faster. It has minimal to no impact to your resource usage, and should thus be considered for any qualified custom detection rule in your organization. Migrate compatible KQL queries by following the steps in Continuous (NRT) frequency. Microsoft Sentinel Threat intelligence for Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal has changed! We've renamed the page Intel management and moved it with other threat intelligence workflows. There's no change for customers using Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure experience. Learn more on our docs. Unlock advanced hunting with new STIX objects by opting in to new threat intelligence tables. Tables supporting the new STIX object schema are in private preview. In order to view threat intelligence for STIX objects and unlock the hunting model that uses them, request to opt in with this form. Ingest your threat intelligence into the new tables, ThreatIntelIndicator and ThreatIntelObjects alongside with or instead of the current table, ThreatIntelligenceIndicator, with this opt-in process. For more information, see the blog announcement New STIX objects in Microsoft Sentinel. Threat intelligence upload API now supports more STIX objects. The upload API supports the following STIX objects: indicator attack-pattern identity threat-actor relationship For more information, see the following articles: Connect your threat intelligence platform with the upload API (Preview) Import threat intelligence to Microsoft Sentinel with the upload API (Preview) New STIX objects in Microsoft Sentinel Both premium and standard Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence data connectors are now generally available (GA) in content hub. For more information, see the following articles: Explore Defender Threat Intelligence licenses Enable the Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence data connector (Public Preview) Bicep template support for repositories. Use Bicep templates alongside or as a replacement of ARM JSON templates in Microsoft Sentinel repositories. Bicep provides an intuitive way to create templates of Azure resources and Microsoft Sentinel content items. Not only is it easier to develop new content items, Bicep makes reviewing and updating content easier for anyone that's a part of the continuous integration and delivery of your Microsoft Sentinel content. View granular solution content in the Microsoft Sentinel content hub. You can now view the individual content available in a specific solution directly from the Content hub, even before you've installed the solution. This new visibility helps you understand the content available to you, and more easily identify, plan, and install the specific solutions you need. For more information, see Discover content. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Get visibility into your DeepSeek use with Defender for Cloud Apps. Defender for Cloud Apps helps you discover and protect more than 800 generative AI applications, now including DeepSeek. It provides the necessary overview of an app's usage in your organization, combined with the potential risk that the app poses for your organization. In fact, it profiles more than 90 separate risk attributes for each application in the Cloud App Catalog so you can make informed choices in a unified experience. Learn more in this blog post. Microsoft Defender for Identity Introducing the new Defender for Identity sensor management API. This blog discusses the new Defender for Identity sensor management API.This blog discusses Microsoft Security Exposure Management Metrics enhancements The metrics have been enhanced to show the improvement of the exposure levels with a progress bar, progressing from left to right and from 0% (indicating high exposure) to 100% (indicating no exposure). In addition, the metrics weight is now displayed as high, medium, or low, based on the metric's importance to the initiative. The weight can also be defined as risk accepted. For more information, see, Working with metrics Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Use the built-in Report button in Outlook: The built-in Report button in Outlook for iOS and Android version 4.2446 or later now supports the user reported settings experience to report messages as Phishing, Junk, and Not Junk. Build custom email security reports and dashboards with workbooks in Microsoft Sentinel. In this blog, we will showcase how you can use workbooks in Microsoft Sentinel to build a custom dashboard for Defender for Office 365. We will also share an example workbook that is now available and can be customized based on your organization’s needs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Public Preview) Aggregated reporting in Defender for Endpoint: Aggregated reporting extends signal reporting intervals to significantly reduce the size of reported events while preserving essential event properties. This feature is available for Defender for Endpoint Plan 2. For more information, see Aggregated reporting in Defender for Endpoint. (Public Preview) Defender for Endpoint extends support to ARM-based Linux servers. As the demand for ARM64 servers continues to rise, we are thrilled to announce that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now supports ARM64 based Linux servers in Public Preview. This update marks a new milestone in our commitment to providing comprehensive endpoint security across all devices and platforms. More details in this announcement blog. Microsoft Defender for IoT Aggregating multiple alerts violations with the same parameters. To reduce alert fatigue, multiple versions of the same alert violation and with the same parameters are grouped together and listed in the alerts table as one item. The alert details pane lists each of the identical alert violations in the Violations tab and the appropriate remediation actions are listed in the Take action tab. For more information, see our docs.
