Now generally available: Discover local AI agents with Microsoft Defender
As local agents have moved from experimentation into everyday work, traditional security visibility is no longer enough. Unlike static software, local agents such as coding assistants, command-line agents, desktop applications, and agentic development environments can operate on endpoints with access to a user's data, credentials, tools, and services. They can also connect to Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that extend their access to additional tools and data. This change requires security teams to look beyond. They need to understand which local agents are running and where, which users and devices these agents are associated with, and which MCP servers these agents are configured to use. To address this challenge, at Microsoft Build 2026, we introduced new Microsoft Defender capabilities to help security teams discover and protect more than 20 types of local AI agents. Today, discovery of AI agents and their configured MCP servers on Windows and macOS is generally available, with discovery coverage expanded to more than 50 supported agents and MCP servers. On eligible, onboarded devices, Defender discovers supported agents by observing their activity and brings the agent, device, account, and configured MCP context together to give security teams visibility for their local agent environment. Beyond discovery, runtime protection for local agents for Windows continues to be available in preview, helping protect discovered agents as they operate. Teams can deploy runtime protection at scale from either the Microsoft Defender portal or the Microsoft Intune portal, with Intune-based deployment available in preview. Both discovery and runtime protection for local agents will be available for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2 and higher customers. See the local agents and associated MCPs operating in your environment In the Defender portal, security teams can see the discovered agents under Assets. The inventory associates each agent with the device and user account where it runs and includes details such as agent name, version, vendor, related process, and discovery history. Examples of supported local AI agents include: CLI agents: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI Desktop applications: ChatGPT Desktop, Claude Desktop, Codex Desktop, GitHub Copilot app, Microsoft Copilot app, Ollama Desktop, Perplexity Desktop Agentic IDEs: Cursor, Devin Desktop, Kiro IDE, Antigravity IDE VS Code extensions: Claude Code, Cline, Codex, Gemini Code Assist, GitHub Copilot, Roo Code Claw-based agents: OpenClaw, Clawpilot, QClaw We will continue expanding support for agents across both discovery and runtime protection. The supported agent list continues to evolve; see AI agent support matrix for the current list. In addition, security teams can see supported local and remote MCP server configurations associated with discovered agents. Depending on the configuration, details such as the MCP server name, type, endpoint, or the command used to start a local server are visible, helping teams understand not only which agents are present, but also the tools and services those agents can access. Assess exposure and investigate local agents After discovering agents, security teams need to understand what those agents are connected to and what risk they may introduce. The exposure graph in Defender provides a clear visual of the agent’s blast radius including the agent associated devices, identities, and MCP context. These data sources can be used to investigate agent activity in advanced hunting, alongside the data from endpoints, identities, email, and cloud. Risk indicators and security recommendations are also available to help teams prioritize risks. For ready-to-use queries, see Discover local AI agents with Microsoft Defender. Secure local agents while they operate AI agents are good for productivity, but they also undeniably introduce new security risks to organizations. For example, prompt injection can be hidden in a file, web page, repository, or tool response that an agent reads. If the agent follows an attacker’s instructions, the attacker could attempt to misuse the user's access, run unwanted commands, modify code, or expose sensitive information. Defender inspects supported points in the agent loop and stops malicious instruction before an agent acts on them. When Defender detects prompt injection, it raises a suspicious AI prompt injection alert with agent and session context. Administrators can view detections and validate accuracy in audit mode, then move selected device groups to block mode for enforcement. In block mode, Defender can stop the action before it continues and notify the user in the agent experience and through Windows. In preview, Defender currently supports runtime protection via agent-native event inspection and network inspection for discovered agents for Windows; coverage varies by agent and inspection approach. Agent-native event inspection (Hooks) uses vendor-supported event interfaces to inspect user prompts, tool requests before execution, and tool responses after execution. Network inspection extends protection to supported agents that don't expose an agent-native event interface by inspecting supported agent-to-model network flows. Security teams can investigate agent-related threats in Defender with the rich context of existing endpoint protection, alerting, incident correlation, and investigation workflows. Deploy runtime protection at scale As local AI agent adoption grows, security teams need a scalable way to deploy runtime protection consistently across managed devices in the organization. In Defender, security teams can create a Windows policy, select the Microsoft Defender AI agent runtime protection profile and configure AI Agent protection settings with one of three values: Default: Runtime protection is disabled. Audit: Defender detects and reports prompt injection while allowing the supported agent action to continue. Block: Defender detects prompt injection and blocks supported agent actions before they run. We recommend beginning with a limited group in Audit mode, reviewing detections for one to two weeks, and then moving to Block mode when your organization is ready to enforce protection. nshot 4: Deploy AI agent runtime protection with Microsoft Defender] In public preview, Microsoft Intune also provides a native AI agent runtime protection for Microsoft Defender endpoint security policies. Security teams can configure agent-native event inspection on enrolled Windows devices without relying on a custom deployment script. Now, security teams can choose either Microsoft Defender portal or Microsoft Intune portal to deploy runtime protection at scale. For configuration requirements and deployment steps, see Set up AI agent runtime protection with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. To safely validate your configuration on a test device, see AI agent runtime protection demonstration. Learn more: Microsoft Learn: Local AI agent discovery overview Microsoft Learn: Discover local AI agents with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Microsoft Learn: Local AI agent runtime protection Microsoft Learn: Set up local AI agent runtime protection Microsoft Learn: Local AI agent support matrixMonthly News-August 2026
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - August 2026 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 2026. We are now including news related to Defender for Cloud in the Defender portal. For all other Defender for Cloud news, have a look at the dedicated Defender for Cloud Monthly News here. 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episode: Redefining identity security for the modern enterprise One policy engine to govern them all: Securing agentic AI with Microsoft Purview Building a modern detection pipeline with ContentOps Securing local AI agents with Microsoft Defender Microsoft Defender: Extending critical protection for emerging threats in Team Actionable threat insights (find all of them here) Email threat landscape: Q2 2026 trends and insights Enhancing AI security through global AI red teaming Least privilege for AI agents: Identity, access, and tool binding Microsoft Defender (Public Preview) Microsoft Defender now assesses posture risk for AI agents, including enterprise agents and local agents discovered on endpoint devices. Risk levels are based on active risk indicators, such as configuration, access, runtime activity, endpoint and user context, and active alerts. Security teams can use posture risk and recommendations to prioritize risky agents and improve agent security posture. For more information, see AI agent posture risk in Microsoft Defender. (Generally available) The Domain investigation page allows you to investigate an Active Directory domain. It shows Active Directory domain security, including domain properties, deployment health, identity summary, service account breakdown, sensitive entities, active recommendations, group policies, and trust relationships. For more information, see Investigate a domain . (Generally available) With a Microsoft Agent 365 license, Microsoft Defender provides discovery, security posture, threat detection and investigation, and real-time protection for the AI agents in your tenant. Onboarding includes enabling data collection, connecting the Microsoft 365 app connector, and connecting Copilot Studio for real-time protection of Copilot Studio agents. For more information, see Protect AI agents using Microsoft Defender. (Generally available) Improved access to Playbook Generator: Following the GA release of Playbook Generator May 31st, the team focused on streamlining the onboarding experience and reducing friction related to Security Copilot wallet provisioning. Playbook Generator remains included with Microsoft Sentinel and does not consume SCUs for generating, testing, or running playbooks, yet customer feedback highlighted friction around Security Copilot wallet provisioning and initial setup requirements. The team worked on simplifying access and reducing onboarding barriers so organizations can more quickly take advantage of AI-assisted playbook creation, testing, and automation capabilities. For all other Sentinel News, have a look at the "What's new in Microsoft Sentinel blog post - July edition" Identity Security (Generally available) Migration of Defender for Identity sensors from v2.x to v3.x is now generally available. For more information, see Migrate to Defender for Identity sensor v3.x. Migration readiness reasons on the Sensors page: When a server is marked Not ready for migration on the Sensors page, you can now hover over the status to see a tooltip that lists the specific reasons the server doesn't meet the migration prerequisites. For more information, see Troubleshoot "Not ready for migration" status. (Public Preview) Expanded SaaS app support in Password protection. The Password protection page now includes password risks from SaaS apps connected through Defender for Cloud Apps, in addition to Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, and Okta. SaaS apps that support SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM), such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, appear on the Password Hygiene and Password Policies tabs. Each SaaS app requires a Defender for Cloud Apps app connector. For more information, see Investigate identity password protection. Automatic RPC auditing on domain controllers: Defender for Identity now automatically enables RPC auditing on domain controllers when you upgrade to sensor version 3.0.8 or later. You no longer need to apply a tag manually to enable RPC auditing. For more information, see Configure RPC auditing. Microsoft Defender Experts MDR General Availability of Microsoft Defender Experts MDR P2: Microsoft Defender Experts MDR (formerly Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR) is expanding with new third-party and multi-cloud coverage powered by Microsoft Sentinel, with the launch of Defender Experts MDR P2 service. Defender Experts MDR provides a 24/7 managed detection and response service that reduces noise, adds expert context, and drives action. In addition to the Microsoft Defender products, this new service supports key non-Microsoft sources across cloud (AWS), identity (Okta), email (Proofpoint), network (Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Fortinet, ZScaler), and endpoint (CrowdStrike) that are ingested in Microsoft Sentinel, providing E2E visibility and protection for customers operating heterogenous environments. Defender Experts will continue expanding our scope to other non-Microsoft products to deliver on this promise. For more information, see the Microsoft Defender Experts MDR documentation. Microsoft Security Exposure Management / Defender Vulnerability Management (Private Preview) Codename MDASH - Agentic code scanner is now available in private preview in Microsoft Security Exposure Management. Codename MDASH uses a multi-model agentic AI system to detect code vulnerabilities with greater depth and accuracy than traditional static analysis. Security teams can run scans from Defender CLI or through a GitHub connector, review findings in the Defender portal, and use results to help prioritize code security risks. For more information, see Agentic code security overview. (Private Preview) Codename MDASH - MAI-Augmented scan profile private preview. The MAI-Augmented scan profile is now available in preview as part of Codename MDASH. The MAI-Augmented profile can be used when triggering a scan through the Defender CLI. It includes MAI-Cyber-1-Flash, a new cyber-specialized model that extends the current agentic scanner in addition to the existing required models. Security teams can choose this profile when triggering a scan from Defender CLI or continue using a scan profile based on the existing models. For more information, see Scan with a scan profile. OT data connectors in Microsoft Security Exposure Management: Microsoft Security Exposure Management now supports operational technology (OT) data connectors for Armis, Dragos, and Forescout. OT data connectors bring OT asset and vulnerability data from supported third-party OT platforms into the Defender portal. This helps security teams view OT devices alongside other assets, enrich device inventory with OT context, and investigate vulnerabilities across IT and OT environments. For more information, see OT data connectors. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Public Preview) AI agent runtime protection includes these enhancements: - Vendor-supported agent event interfaces now work with standard platform and engine update channels, so no Beta channel configuration is required. Agent-native event inspection now supports Codex CLI and the GitHub Copilot app. - Network inspection is now supported for agents that don't expose vendor-supported event interfaces, including OpenClaw and similar Node.js-based Claw agents. For more information, see AI agent runtime protection with Defender for Endpoint. (Generally available) Available from Defender for Endpoint on Linux version 101.26042.0011 and later. The Defender Deployment Tool for Linux simplifies deployment by combining installation, onboarding, upgrades, and uninstallation into a single workflow. The tool automates prerequisite validation, supports custom installation paths, enables deployment of specific Defender versions from preferred update channels, and works seamlessly in environments that use local repositories. In addition to a simplified deployment experience, customers can now gain complete visibility into deployment progress through Device Timeline integration, providing step-by-step installation, upgrade, and onboarding status, Advanced Hunting queries for fleet-wide deployment monitoring, and detailed error reporting, including deployment stage, status, exit code, and failure reason to simplify troubleshooting. These capabilities help administrators quickly identify deployment issues, track onboarding progress, and understand deployment outcomes across their Linux estate. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Unified RBAC is the default permission model for new Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 organizations. Starting July 2026, new Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 organizations use the Microsoft Defender unified role-based access control (Unified RBAC) model by default. For more information, see Configure Unified RBAC for Defender for Office 365 and MC1246006. Microsoft 365 E3 now includes Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1. For more information about what's included in each plan, see Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 vs. Plan 2 cheat sheet. Prompt injection protection: Defender for Office 365 now detects prompt injection attacks hidden in inbound email. For more information, see Prompt injection protection in Defender for Office 365.Monthly news - July 2026
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - July 2026 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 June 2026. We are now including news related to Defender for Cloud in the Defender portal. For all other Defender for Cloud news, have a look at the dedicated Defender for Cloud Monthly News here. 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episode: Redefining identity security for the modern enterprise One policy engine to govern them all: Securing agentic AI with Microsoft Purview Building a modern detection pipeline with ContentOps Securing local AI agents with Microsoft Defender Microsoft Defender: Extending critical protection for emerging threats in Team Weekly Security News: We publish a short 1ish minute video every week with updates across our Microsoft Security stack. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you don't miss the next episode. Actionable threat insights (find all of them here) Securing AI agents: When AI tools move from reading to acting Chromium extension uses AI‑related branding to redirect browser search Photo ZIP campaign targeting hospitality industry delivers Node.js implant for persistent access Microsoft Defender Two Workbooks capabilities in the unified Microsoft Defender portal moved to GA: Advanced Hunting connector - build custom dashboards directly on top of Advanced Hunting (XDR) dat. Query XDR tables and visualize them in Workbooks for richer investigations and reports. Workspace filter / multi-workspace experience - scope and filter workbooks by workspace, with workspace selection integrated into the workbook itself rather than relying on the global selector. MTO Tenant Groups let MSSPs and large enterprises organize their multitenant view in Microsoft Defender by grouping tenants logically (e.g., by region, business unit, or customer cohort). Learn more here. Custom Detections support in Microsoft Sentinel Repositories. Custom Detections can now be managed as code in Microsoft Sentinel Repositories, the same way customers already manage analytic rules, playbooks, parsers and workbooks. Detection engineers connect a GitHub or Azure DevOps repo to their workspace; Custom Detections placed in the repo are reconciled on every commit. A standalone Bicep path via the Microsoft Security Bicep extension lets teams deploy from any CI/CD pipeline (ADO Pipelines, GitHub Actions, custom runners). (General Availability) The following advanced hunting schema tables are now generally available: The CloudAuditEvents table contains information about cloud audit events for various cloud platforms protected by the organization's Defender for Cloud. The CloudDnsEvents table contains information about DNS activity events from cloud infrastructure environments. The CloudProcessEvents table contains information about process events in multicloud hosted environments. (Public Preview) The AgentsInfo table in advanced hunting is now available in preview. The AIAgentsInfo table is transitioning to this new table, which provides a unified schema that supports agent inventory and governance for all agent types, including Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft 365 Copilot, third-party, and endpoint-discovered agents. Microsoft Agent 365 customers should use the AgentsInfo table today. The AIAgentsInfo table remains accessible until July 1, 2026. Update your queries to use AgentsInfo before this date. For more information, see Advanced hunting schema - Naming changes. For all other Sentinel News, have a look at the "What's new in Microsoft Sentinel blog post - June edition" Identity Security (Public Preview) The Identity Security dashboard now includes a new Human identities card that shows your human identities by source (Entra ID, SaaS, and on-premises), giving you a single view of where your human identities live. For more information, see Identity Security dashboard. (Public Preview) On the Coverage and maturity page, the Review and improve coverage side panel for SaaS Identities now includes an Observed column and a Show Only Observed Applications toggle. By default, the panel shows only SaaS applications detected in your environment. Turn off the toggle to see other supported SaaS applications you can onboard to expand your identity coverage. For more information, see Coverage and maturity. New alerts were added to the Defender for Identity security alerts related to Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory as well as other identity providers. For a full list of those new alerts, check out our documentation. Recent ShinyHunters attacks on Salesforce show how OAuth tokens and connected apps are being weaponized to bypass MFA at scale. The upgraded Salesforce connector for Defender for Cloud Apps helps detect these attacks faster, with richer connected-app context and investigation-ready signals. Customers already using the connector are advised to enable the additional events in the Salesforce console for tighter protection, and eligible customers not yet using it are advised to connect Salesforce. Learn more. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint / Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (Public Preview) Local AI agent discovery: as part of the Defender AI agents experience, Microsoft Defender now automatically discovers supported local AI agents running on onboarded Windows & macOS devices. Discovered agents appear as assets in the AI agent inventory, exposure map, and advanced hunting, giving security teams visibility into local AI agent usage across the organization. For more information, see Discover local AI agents. (Preview) Local AI agent runtime protection on Windows endpoints is now available in public preview. Microsoft Defender inspects the agent loop (user prompts, tool calls, and tool responses) and can block risky activity before it executes, helping stop prompt injection and unsafe agent actions at the device level. Blocked and audited events appear as alerts in Microsoft Defender to support incident correlation and investigation workflows. The new version of the Defender deployment tool for Windows streamlines onboarding and enhances security by: Bundling the onboarding package directly into the tool's executable. Generating a key during deployment package creation that is required for running the tool. Enabling users to configure an expiry date for the package to reduce the risk of unauthorized use. In addition: You have the option of downloading the package as either an .exe or a .zip file, whichever best suits your organization's needs. A new Deployment packages page in the Defender portal facilitates management of downloaded packages by providing centralized visibility into all the packages and their current status. Now generally available: Selective Response Actions enables organizations to tailor high-impact security operations on devices during onboarding. It provides precise control over how response actions are applied on Tier-0 systems and other high-value assets, helping maintain operational stability while delivering strong protection. The new exposure score model in Defender Vulnerability Management is now generally available. This model improves risk prioritization and recommendation impact accuracy by incorporating exploit prediction data (EPSS) and asset context factors such as internet-facing status and criticality. More details here. Microsoft Secure Score now includes the Reduce unnecessary inbound internet exposure on internet-facing devices recommendation, which helps identify devices that are accessible from the public internet and may represent unnecessary attack surface. This recommendation provides centralized visibility into internet-facing devices across the environment. Many predefined SaaS application classification rules were added to the critical assets list. Have a look at our documentation for the full list. These classifications require onboarding to Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.The next frontier in endpoint security: Securing local AI agents with Microsoft Defender
AI agents are now doing real work on the endpoint — reading files, running commands, browsing the web, and acting on behalf of the users they run under. That same power is also what makes them dangerous: agents act on whatever content they take in, and much of it comes from outside the user's control — a web page, a repository, a command's output. A single malicious instruction hidden in that content can turn an agent against the very environment it's trusted to work in. With access to source code, secrets, and the corporate resources, its identity can reach — from cloud infrastructure to SharePoint, email, and internal apps — a compromised agent becomes a path to everything that identity is trusted with. Yet most security teams can't see this activity at all. Local AI agents run as ordinary processes, with little of the visibility or context SOC teams need to understand — let alone investigate — what an agent actually did. That’s why today, we're extending Microsoft Defender to secure AI agents running locally on devices. Security teams now have the visibility, context, and control needed to manage this new frontier of endpoint risk without slowing down the developers driving innovation forward. This includes: Discover 20+ types of local AI agents running on managed Windows and macOS devices Block malicious AI agent activity on the device in real time Assess local agent exposure across identities and reachable resources Investigate local AI agent activity in Advanced Hunting In preview, Defender now discovers these agents across the endpoint — AI coding agents, AI assistants, local AI runtimes, agentic IDE extensions, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers — and adds runtime protection for popular coding agents, with coverage expanding over time. Just as important, it brings them into the same security platform teams already use for endpoints, identities, email, and cloud, so local agents are no longer running unseen alongside the tools security teams already protect, but part of one coordinated defense. Watch this episode of the Ninja Show to see how Microsoft Defender brings visibility, context, and control to local AI agents, helping security teams securely adopt AI and stay ahead of emerging threats. Discover local AI agents on managed devices Security Operation Center (SOC) teams can now identify AI agents running locally as first-class assets, not just operating system (OS) processes. In the Defender portal, security teams can view a dedicated inventory of AI agents across their environment, spanning categories such as: Coding CLIs and terminal agents: GitHub Copilot CLI, Codex CLI, Claude Code CLI, Gemini CLI, Antigravity CLI, OpenCode Agentic IDEs and VS Code extensions: Cursor, Windsurf, Antigravity, Claude Code, Codex, Cline, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Roo Code Desktop AI assistants: ChatGPT Desktop, Claude Desktop, Codex Desktop, Poe Desktop, Antigravity Desktop, GitHub Copilot App Local AI runtimes and autonomous platforms: OpenClaw, Nanobot, ZeroClaw, Ollama Desktop Each agent is surfaced as a security asset, with runtime context including user identity, device and process relationships, trust indicators, and integrity level. Security teams can also see configuration signals, such as “auto-approve” settings and connected services via MCP servers. Defender discovers more than 20 supported local AI agents across Windows and macOS, with coverage continuing to expand. Block malicious AI agent activity in real time Discovery is the starting point. Once SOC teams know which agents are present, they need confidence that malicious behavior will be stopped to reduce impact to their organization’s environment. For popular coding agents, Defender now provides runtime protection that helps block malicious behavior inline and in real time. This capability starts with Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI, with OpenClaw and OpenAI Codex coming soon. When Defender identifies that an agent activity is malicious, it can automatically block it. As with other threats, the user can be notified, and the activity is logged in the protection history. The SOC analyst receives a detailed alert with agent and session context for investigation, including details on the detected threat. At the same time, the user sees a notification on the device that the activity was blocked. The corresponding security alert in the Defender portal, with the process tree and session context for investigation Assess local agent exposure Knowing an agent exists is only half the picture. The next step is mapping the potential blast radius: the resources the agent touches, the identities it can use, and the assets exposed to its next moves. That’s why every agent discovered is automatically mapped to the device it runs on, the identity associated with that device, the MCP servers it’s connected to, and the cloud resources the identity can reach. The exposure graph turns "this agent exists" into “this agent can do these things” by providing an understanding of the agent’s connectivity across your environment. As an example, in the map below, the SOC analyst can see that a ChatGPT Desktop agent is tied to a single AWS account, and from that identity its reach extends to S3 buckets, an AWS KMS key, EC2 instances, and an AWS Bedrock agent. The agent has no cloud permissions of its own, but it inherits the account's — so if it were compromised or misused, that reach becomes a path to encrypted data and key material. This view gives security teams a clear picture of the agent's blast radius, so they can decide how to contain it before it's abused. Investigate local AI agent activity in Advanced Hunting Beyond the inventory and exposure views, security teams often need to hunt across the environment — to ask which agents are behaving unusually, and what else they touch. Every AI agent discovery event, MCP server connection, and configuration signal is queryable in Advanced Hunting, alongside the endpoint, identity, email, and cloud security telemetry your team already uses every day. This capability unlocks two use cases that security teams have been asking for: Correlate agent activity with process, file, network, identity, and cloud telemetry to see the full picture of what the agent did Hunt for risky configurations – for example, agents running in auto-approve mode under an identity with privileged access to production, source code, or CI/CD systems Security teams can turn any of these queries into a custom detection rule — for instance, raising an alert whenever a newly discovered agent appears with a risky configuration on a device tied to a privileged identity. Securing the next frontier of endpoint activity The risk that opened this post — an agent acting on a malicious instruction and reaching everything its identity can touch — is exactly what this protection is built to contain. By bringing local AI agents into the same platform teams already use for endpoints, identities, and cloud, Defender turns that blind spot into something security teams can see, investigate, and stop — without getting in the developer's way. Developers keep the AI tools accelerating their work. Defenders get the visibility and real-time protection to stay ahead of attackers as they turn to this new surface. That balance — speed for builders, control for defenders — is what securing the AI era actually requires. Learn more Discover local AI agents with Microsoft Defender Block malicious AI agent behavior with runtime protection Manage and secure your agents with Microsoft Agent 365Monthly 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.
Host Microsoft Defender data locally in the United Arab Emirates
We are pleased to announce that local data residency support in the UAE is now generally available for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for Identity. This announcement reinforces our ongoing commitment to delivering secure, compliant services aligned with local data sovereignty requirements. Customers can now confidently onboard to Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity in the UAE, knowing that this Defender data will remain at rest within the UAE data boundary. This allows customers to meet their regulatory obligations and maintain control over their data. For more details on the Defender data storage and privacy policies, refer to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint data storage and privacy and Microsoft Defender for Identity data security and privacy. Note: Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity may potentially use other Microsoft services (i.e. Microsoft Intune for security settings management). Each Microsoft service is governed by its own data storage and privacy policies and may have varying regional availability. For more information, refer to our Online Product Terms. In addition to the UAE, Defender data residency capabilities are available in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland and India (see our recent announcement for local data hosting in India). Customers with Existing deployments for Defender for Endpoint and/or Defender for Identity Existing customers can check their deployment geo within the portal by going to Settings -> Microsoft Defender XDR-> Account; and see where the service is storing your data at rest. For example, in the image below, the service location for the Defender XDR tenant is UAE. ation information If you would like to update your service location, please reach out to Customer Service and Support for a tenant reset. Support can be accessed by clicking on the “?” icon in the top right corner of the portal when signed in as an Admin (see image below). If you are a Microsoft Unified support customer, please reach out to your Customer Success Account Manager for assistance with the migration process. More information: Ready to go local? Read our documentation for more information on how to get started. Microsoft Defender XDR data center location Not yet a customer? Take Defender XDR for a spin via a 90-day trial for Office 365 E5 or Defender for Endpoint via a 90-day trial for Defender for Endpoint Check out the Defender for Endpoint website to learn more about our industry leading Endpoint protection platform Check out the Defender for Identity website to learn how to keep your organization safe against rising identity threatsMonthly 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 - September 2025
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - September 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 August 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. New Virtual Ninja Show episodes: Announcing Microsoft Sentinel data lake. Inside the new Phishing Triage Agent in Security Copilot. Microsoft Defender Public Preview items in advanced hunting: The new CloudStorageAggregatedEvents table is now available and brings aggregated storage activity logs, such as operations, authentication details, access sources, and success/failure counts, from Defender for Cloud into a single, queryable schema. You can now investigate Microsoft Defender for Cloud behaviors. For more information, see Investigate behaviors with advanced hunting. The IdentityEvents table contains information about identity events obtained from other cloud identity service providers. You can now enrich your custom detection rules in advanced hunting by creating dynamic alert titles and descriptions, select more impacted entities, and add custom details to display in the alert side panel. Microsoft Sentinel customers that are onboarded to Microsoft Defender also now have the option to customize the alert frequency when the rule is based only on data that is ingested to Sentinel. The number of query results displayed in the Microsoft Defender portal has been increased to 100,000. General Availability item in advanced hunting: you can now view all your user-defined rules - both custom detection rules and analytics rules - in the Detection rules page. This feature also brings the following improvements: You can now filter for every column (in addition to Frequency and Organizational scope). For multiworkspace organizations that have onboarded multiple workspaces to Microsoft Defender, you can now view the Workspace ID column and filter by workspace. You can now view the details pane even for analytics rules. You can now perform the following actions on analytics rules: Turn on/off, Delete, Edit. (General Availability) Defender Experts for XDR and Defender Experts for Hunting customers can now expand their service coverage to include server and cloud workloads protected by Defender for Cloud through the respective add-ons, Microsoft Defender Experts for Servers and Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting - Servers. Learn more (General Availability) Defender Experts for XDR customers can now incorporate third-party network signals for enrichment, which could allow our security analysts to not only gain a more comprehensive view of an attack's path that allows for faster and more thorough detection and response, but also provide customers with a more holistic view of the threat in their environments. (General Availability) The Sensitivity label filter is now available in the Incidents and Alerts queues in the Microsoft Defender portal. This filter lets you filter incidents and alerts based on the sensitivity label assigned to the affected resources. For more information, see Filters in the incident queue and Investigate alerts. (Public Preview) Suggested prompts for incident summaries. Suggested prompts enhance the incident summary experience by automatically surfacing relevant follow-up questions based on the most crucial information in a given incident. With a single click, you can request deeper insight (e.g. device details, identity information, threat intelligence) and obtain plain language summaries from Security Copilot. This intuitive, interactive experience simplifies investigations and speeds up access to critical insights, empowering you to focus on key priorities and accelerate threat response. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Public Preview) Multi-tenant endpoint security policies distribution is now in Public Preview. Defender for Endpoint security policies can now be distributed across multiple tenants from the Defender multi-tenant portal. (Public Preview) Custom installation path support for Defender for Endpoint on Linux is available in public preview. (Public Preview) Offline security intelligence update support for Defender for Endpoint on macOS is in public preview. Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) Entra ID risk level is now available on the Identity Inventory assets page, the identity details page, and in the IdentityInfo table in advanced hunting, and includes the Entra ID risk score. SOC analysts can use this data to correlate risky users with sensitive or highly privileged users, create custom detections based on current or historical user risk, and improve investigation context. (Public Preview) Defender for Identity now includes a new security assessment that helps you identify and remove inactive service accounts in your organization. This assessment lists Active Directory service accounts that have been inactive (stale) for the past 180 days, to help you mitigate security risks associated with unused accounts. For more information, see: Security Assessment: Remove Inactive Service Accounts (Public Preview) A new Graph-based API is now in preview for initiating and managing remediation actions in Defender for Identity. For more information, see Managing response actions through Graph API. (General Availability) Identity scoping is now generally available across all 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. (Public Preview) The new security posture assessment highlights unsecured Active Directory attributes that contain passwords or credential clues and recommends steps to remove them, helping reduce the risk of identity compromise. For more information, see: Security Assessment: Remove discoverable passwords in Active Directory account attributes. Detection update: Suspected Brute Force attack (Kerberos, NTLM). Improved detection logic to include scenarios where accounts were locked during attacks. As a result, the number of triggered alerts might increase. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 SecOps can now dispute Microsoft's verdict on previously submitted email or URLs when they believe the result is incorrect. Disputing an item links back to the original submission and triggers a reevaluation with full context and audit history. Learn more. Microsoft Security Blogs Dissecting PipeMagic: Inside the architecture of a modular backdoor framework A comprehensive technical deep dive on PipeMagic, a highly modular backdoor used by Storm-2460 masquerading as a legitimate open-source ChatGPT Desktop Application. Think before you Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix social engineering technique The ClickFix social engineering technique has been growing in popularity, with campaigns targeting thousands of enterprise and end-user devices daily. Storm-0501’s evolving techniques lead to cloud-based ransomware Financially motivated threat actor Storm-0501 has continuously evolved their campaigns to achieve sharpened focus on cloud-based tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).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 - July 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news - July 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. Microsoft Defender (General Availability) In advanced hunting, Microsoft Defender portal users can now use the adx() operator to query tables stored in Azure Data Explorer. You no longer need to go to log analytics in Microsoft Sentinel to use this operator if you're already in Microsoft Defender. Learn more on our docs. Introducing TITAN powered recommendations in Security Copilot guided response. This blog post explains the power of Guided Response with Security Copilot and and the integration of Threat Intelligence Tracking via Adaptive Networks (TITAN). (General Availability) Case management now supports multiple tenants in Microsoft Defender experience. We’re excited to share that multi-tenant support is now generally available in our case management experience. This new capability empowers security teams to view and manage incidents across all their tenants from a single, unified interface—directly within the Microsoft Defender Multi-Tenant (MTO) portal. You can read this blog for more information. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (General Availability) The Behaviors data type significantly enhances overall threat detection accuracy by reducing alerts on generic anomalies and surfacing alerts only when observed patterns align with real security scenarios. This data type is now generally available. Learn more on how to use Behaviors and new detections in this blog post. New Dynamic Threat Detection model. Defender for Cloud Apps new dynamic threat detection model continuously adapts to the ever-changing SaaS apps threat landscape. This approach ensures your organization remains protected with up-to-date detection logic without the need for manual policy updates or reconfiguration. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (General Availability) Global exclusions on Linux are now generally available. We just published a new blog post, that discussed how you can manage global exclusion policies for Linux across both AV and EDR. (General Availability) Support for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux is now generally available for Linux. (General Availability) Behavior monitoring on macOS is now generally available. Read this blog post to learn more about it and how it improves the early detection and prevention of suspicious and malicious activities targeting macOS users. (Public Preview) Selective Isolation allows you to exclude specific devices, processes, IP addresses, or services from isolation actions. More details in this blog post "Maintain connectivity for essential services with selective network isolation" Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) Domain-based scoping for Active Directory is now available in public preview. This new capability enables SOC analysts to define and refine the scope of Defender for Identity monitoring, providing more granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. Read this announcement blog for more details. (Public Preview) Defender for Identity is extending its identity protection to protect Okta identities, that’s in addition to the already robust protection for on-premises Active Directory and Entra ID identities. For more details, have a look at this announcement blog post. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Introducing the Defender for Office 365 ICES Vendor Ecosystem - a unified framework that enables seamless integration with trusted third-party vendors. Learn more about this exciting announcement in this blog post. (General Availability) Auto-Remediation of malicious messages in Automated Investigation and Response is now generally available. Have a look at this detailed blog post on how it works. Mail bombing is now an available Detection technology value in Threat Explorer, the Email entity page, and the Email summary panel. Mail bombing is also an available DetectionMethods value in Advanced Hunting. For more information, see MC1096885. AI-powered Submissions Response introduces generative AI explanations for admin email submissions to Microsoft. For more information, see Submission result definitions. Microsoft Security Exposure Management (Public Preview) Enhanced External Attack Surface Management integration with Exposure Management. This new integration allows you to incorporate detailed external attack surface data from Defender External Attack Surface Management into Exposure Management. Learn more on our docs. Microsoft Security Blogs Unveiling RIFT: Enhancing Rust malware analysis through pattern matching As threat actors are adopting Rust for malware development, RIFT, an open-source tool, helps reverse engineers analyze Rust malware, solving challenges in the security industry. Jasper Sleet: North Korean remote IT workers’ evolving tactics to infiltrate organizations Since 2024, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed remote IT workers deployed by North Korea leveraging AI to improve the scale and sophistication of their operations, steal data, and generate revenue for the North Korean government. Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Tool Profile: Qilin ransomware. Qilin (also called Agenda) is a ransomware as a service (RaaS) offering that was first observed in 2022. It has been used by multiple cybercriminal groups, including Pistachio Tempest, Octo Tempest, and most recently Moonstone Sleet. While the ransom attacks appear to be opportunistic rather than targeted, they have had notable impacts against healthcare and media companies. Activity Profile: Emerald Sleet using QR codes for credential harvesting. In May 2025, Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed the North Korean threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Emerald Sleet using QR (quick response) codes designed to lure recipients to credential-harvesting sites in phishing emails. Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-34028 – Commvault Command Center Innovation Release. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “the Commvault Command Center Innovation Release allows an unauthenticated actor to upload ZIP files that represent install packages that, when expanded by the target server, are vulnerable to path traversal vulnerability that can result in Remote Code Execution via malicious JSP. This issue affects Command Center Innovation Release: 11.38.0 to 11.38.20. The vulnerability is fixed in 11.38.20 with SP38-CU20-433 and SP38-CU20-436 and also fixed in 11.38.25 with SP38-CU25-434 and SP38-CU25-438.” Activity Profile: Forest Blizzard trojanizes Ukraine software to deliver new variant of Blipslide downloader. Since March, Microsoft Threat intelligence observed the Russian military intelligence threat actor Forest Blizzard infect devices in Ukraine with a new variant of BlipSlide malware, a downloader that the threat actor uses for command and control (C2). Actor Profile: Storm-2416. The threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Storm-2416 is a nation-state activity group based out of China. Storm-2416 is known to primarily target information technology (IT), government, and other business entities in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and South and North America. Activity Profile: Suspicious OAuth applications used to retrieve and send emails. In late February 2025, Microsoft discovered a set of malicious Open Authorization (OAuth) applications, including one that impersonated Outlook, that can retrieve and send emails. Actor Profile: Storm-0126. The threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Storm-0126 is a nation-state activity group based out of China. Storm-0126 is known to primarily target defense industry enterprises, public institutions, research institutes, and military-industrial organizations worldwide. Actor Profile: Storm-2001. Microsoft assesses with high confidence that the threat actor Microsoft tracks as Storm-2001 is a Russian state-sponsored actor. It is known to primarily target defense organizations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance—specifically, member states that form NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) program, recent NATO members, and other related organizations that engage in NATO-related communications and planning. Activity profile: Storm-2561 distributes trojanized SonicWall NetExtender SilentRoute. In late May 2025, Storm-2561 began distributing malware that Microsoft detects as SilentRoute. The malware is a trojanized version of SonicWall’s SSL VPN NetExtender application that transmits the user’s VPN configuration data to a hardcoded IP address.
