Securing data and access in the era of AI with Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Purview
As organizations move from experimenting with AI to deploying it at scale, securing sensitive data, access, and AI usage has become mission critical. In this series, Microsoft experts will show how Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Purview help you: Protect sensitive data across networks, apps, and AI interactions Govern access for users, applications, and AI agents Reduce risk while enabling innovation at scale Whether you're shaping your security strategy or implementing controls, you’ll walk away with the guidance you need to secure data and access to AI as one unified strategy. DATE TIME (PDT) TOPIC July 21 9:00 AM Secure the age of AI: Redefining trust, data and access July 22 9:00 AM Data and identity controls for the browser and network July 23 9:00 AM Unlock AI agents without sacrificing security How do I participate? Select the sessions you are interested in, then select Add to Calendar to save the date and/or the Attend button to save your spot, receive event reminders, and participate in the Q&A. Not able to attend live? This session will be recorded and available on demand shortly after airing. Don't see Attend or Add to Calendar? Sign in to the Tech Community to join the conversation.Unlock AI agents without sacrificing security
AI agents are reaching into mailboxes, files, line-of-business apps, and the open web on behalf of your users—and the business wants more of them, faster. To scale agents safely, your security teams need to be able to verify each agent, govern what it can access, and enforce clear boundaries across every interaction. Learn how Microsoft Entra helps you discover shadow AI agents, govern agent permissions, keep BYOD and endpoint-based agents in scope, and apply Conditional Access to AI prompts and responses. Then see how Microsoft Purview provides visibility into agent activity, strengthens runtime data protection, helps detect agentic risk, and supports auditability across local agents developed on GitHub Copilot CLI, Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and OpenClaw. Walk away with practical ways to unlock AI agents while keeping access and data protection aligned with your enterprise security needs. How do I participate? Select Add to Calendar to save the date, then click the Attend button to save your spot, receive event reminders, and participate in the Q&A. Not able to attend live? This session will be recorded and available on demand shortly after airing. Don't see Attend or Add to Calendar? Sign in to the Tech Community to join the conversation. This session is part of Securing data and access in the era of AI with Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Purview. View the full agenda for more insights to help you move from experimenting with AI to deploying it at scale, securing sensitive data, access, and AI usage.Registration Open: Community-Led Purview Lightning Talks
Get ready for an electrifying event! The Microsoft Security Community proudly presents Purview Lightning Talks; an action-packed series featuring your fellow Microsoft users, partners and passionate Microsoft Security community members of all sorts. Each 3-12 minute talk cuts straight to the chase, delivering expert insights, real-world use cases, and even a few game-changing tips and tricks. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, connect, and be inspired! Secure your spot now for the big day: April 30th at 8am Redmond Time. See agenda details below and follow this blog post (sign in and click the "follow" heart in the upper right) to receive notifications. ❗UPDATE❗This event is expected to last around 2 hours and 15 minutes, due to the incredible number of community sessions that were submitted! 💖 Please see the timing table below broken out into sections of four talks each, and plan to arrive 10 minutes before the section that interests you, OR stay for the whole time! Speakers will be available in the chat to answer your questions; please ask your questions during their session. Spillover Q&A forum links will also be shared. The full session recording will be indexed and posted to Microsoft Security Community YouTube within 24 hours after the event. Bookmark this page or follow this blog post for updates! Agenda Legend ↩️ Data Lifecycle Management 🔐 Information Protection 🚫 Data Loss Prevention (DLP) 🦾 Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI 🤖 Purview for AI 👁️ Insider Risk Management (IRM) 🔍 eDiscovery 📊 Governance 🗒️ Compliance Manager 🛡️ Data Security All times are listed in US Pacific/Redmond Time. Session lengths are rounded to the nearest minute. AGENDA Section 1 - approximately 8:00 am - 8:43 am ↩️ The Day Offboarding Exposed Infinite Retention — Nikki Chapple Length: 10 minutes | Topic: Data Lifecycle Management A routine Purview request led to an unexpected discovery: more than 9,000 orphaned OneDrives and thousands of inactive mailboxes still storing content long after employees had left. This talk explains how a retain-only policy created hidden retention debt and how Adaptive Scopes can help organisations separate active users from leavers to avoid similar pitfalls. 🔐 The Purview Label Engine: Automated Classification, Translation, and co-Documentation for Enterprise Tenants — Michael Kirst-Neshva Length: 12 minutes | Topic: Information Protection Global enterprises face the challenge of implementing uniform data protection standards across borders and languages. In this talk, I’ll present a framework that makes Microsoft Purview labels truly scalable. Discover how to roll out parent and child label logics automatically, manage priorities with a single click, and generate instant compliance documentation for every business unit. 🗒️ What's In My Compliance Manager Toolbox: A Cloud Security Architect's Perspective — Jerrad Dahlager Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Compliance Manager A practical walkthrough of how I use Compliance Manager across real client engagements to map controls, track improvement actions, and simplify multi-framework compliance. No theory, just what works in the field. 🛡️ Stop, Think, Protect: Data Security in Real Life with Purview — Oliver Sahlmann Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Data Security With simple labels and matching DLP policies, Purview offers a practical and accessible way to approach data security. This lightning talk uses a real-life traffic light concept to show how a low barrier to adoption can still drive meaningful protection and awareness. Section 2 - approximately 8:44 am - 9:15 am 🔐 Using Purview to prevent oversharing with AI services — Viktor Hedberg Length: 10 minutes | Topic: Information Protection In this day and age, AI is the big thing. However, Copilot has access to everything you can access, including potentially sensitive data. In this session we will look at how to prevent Copilot to access highly sensitive data, using Information Protection. 🦾 How I Helped My Customers Understand their AI Usage (and protect their sensitive data) — Bram de Jager Length: 5 minutes | Topic: Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI As AI tools explode across the web, many organizations still have no idea what’s actually happening in the browser—where employees type prompts, paste sensitive data, or visit public AI sites outside corporate governance. In this lightning talk, I’ll share how I helped customers shine a light on this issue. We’ll explore how Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) can reveal which AI tools employees use, what types of data they input, and where sensitive information may leak through prompts. I’ll walk through real customer scenario where we detected risky AI usage patterns—such as employees pasting confidential documents into public chatbots. 🔐 Four Labels Max for Daily Use: Which Ones & Why? — Romain Dalle Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Information Protection Sensitivity labels are one of the most critical parts of a Purview Risk and compliance deployment, if not the most critical, because it directly impacts how end-users and business units should allow or restrict themselves to share their business data, internally and externally, on a daily basis. Labels have not other options than being precise, meaningful, and balanced in terms of embedded data security. Setting the right taxonomy is core to success, and is everything but a one-time project. 🚫 Data-driven Endpoint DLP Solution with Advanced Hunting — Tatu Seppälä Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) This lightning talk shows you how to use KQL queries in advanced hunting to easily build initial sensitive service domain groups for authorized and unauthorized domains based on your organization's usage patterns. The same approach can be used for numerous other similar solution refinement and design purposes. Section 3 - approximately 9:16 am - 9:46 am 🔐 The Purview Hack No One Talks About: Container Sensitivity Labels That Fix Oversharing Fast — Nikki Chapple Length: 10 minutes | Topic: Information Protection Most organizations tackle oversharing with manual fixes, but the fastest solution is often overlooked. In this lightning talk, I show how container sensitivity labels automatically apply the right sharing and collaboration controls, ensuring every new Group, Team or SharePoint site starts secure by default. 🔍 Does M365 Support eDiscovery? — Julian Kusenberg Length: 11 minutes | Topic: eDiscovery A myth-busting session that separates perception from reality when it comes to Microsoft 365 eDiscovery capabilities. 📊 Improving Discovery, Trust, and Reuse of Analytics with Purview Data Products — Craig Wyndowe Length: 5 minutes | Topic: Governance This talk shows how bringing Power BI and Fabric assets into Microsoft Purview Governance Domains and Data Products creates a single, trusted view of enterprise analytics. By connecting reports, semantic models, and underlying data with shared metadata, ownership, and business context, organizations can make existing assets easy to discover and safe to reuse. 🔐 Why You Should Create Your Own Sensitive Information Types (SITs) — Niels Jakobsen Length: 5 minutes | Topic: Information Protection An in depth analysis of why Microsoft SITs are not one-size-fits-all, and how to create your own using what Microsoft has already built for you. Section 4 - approximately 9:47 am-10:30 am 👁️ From Zero to First Signal: Insider Risk Management Prerequisites That Actually Matter — Sathish Veerapandian Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Insider Risk Management (IRM) A focused live demo showing the real world prerequisites required for Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management to work effectively. This session highlights the critical Entra ID, Intune, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Purview DLP configurations that must be in place before creating IRM policies. 🤖 Securing data in the age of AI — Júlio César Gonçalves Vasconcelos Length: 11 minutes | Topic: Purview for AI AI will transform business as we know it; but without proper governance, it can introduce serious risks. We’ll show you how Microsoft Purview enables organizations to accelerate AI adoption while maintaining security, compliance, and transparency. 🔍 Beyond eDiscovery - Purview DSI for Security Investigation — Susantha Silva Length: 11 minutes | Topic: eDiscovery Most people hear “Microsoft Purview” and immediately think compliance, eDiscovery, or legal holds. But this session highlights Data Security Investigations, showing how DSI lets you take a DLP alert or insider risk signal and turn it into a structured investigation. 🚫 Elevating Purview DLP with a real world use case — Victor Wingsing Length: 14 minutes | Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Learn how I hardened Microsoft Purview DLP beyond out of the box defaults—closing real world data loss gaps, tuning policies to actual user behavior, and turning noisy alerts into protection that really blocks exfiltration. - Quick Closing/ Resource SharingAzure Availability Zone Mapping and VM Resilience Analysis Guidance using SRE.AZURE.COM Agent
Overview This guidance, supported and tested using SRE.Azure.com, helps Azure platform engineers understand how Availability Zones are mapped within their subscription and how virtual machines (VMs) are distributed across those zones. SRE.Azure.com enables discovery and analysis of zone mappings, VM placement, and infrastructure resilience. Why This Matters Azure uses logical zones (1, 2, 3), but these map differently to physical datacenter zones (az1, az2, az3) in each subscription. This means workloads in the same logical zone across subscriptions may not be physically co-located. Understanding this is critical for high availability, disaster recovery, compliance, and resilience planning. Example sub-prod-eastus-01 -> Zone 1 → az3 sub-prod-eastus-01 -> Zone 2 → az1 sub-prod-eastus-01 -> Zone 3 → az2 sub-prod-weu-01 -> Zone 1 → az1 sub-prod-weu-01 -> Zone 2 → az2 sub-prod-weu-01 -> Zone 3 → az3 Key takeaway: Logical zone numbers do not guarantee physical separation across subscriptions. What SRE.Azure.com agent Enables - Discover logical-to-physical zone mappings - Analyze VM distribution across zones - Identify resilience gaps - Generate presentation-ready reports Suggested Prompt “Act as an Azure platform engineer and generate a clean, presentation-ready analysis for availability zone design. For Azure subscription <subscription-id>, produce two outputs inline in chat. Output 1 — Zone Mapping Summary - Query Azure directly for region availability zone mappings - Show how logical zones map to physical zones - Include a takeaway and tables Output 2 — VM Resilience Distribution - List VMs with zone, physical mapping, and protection level Formatting: - Use markdown tables - No raw JSON - Screenshot-friendly layout - End with 3 observations” Example output: And so on …… Next Steps: Get Started | Azure SRE Agent What is SRE Agent? | Azure SRE Agent
Protect Azure Cosmos DB with vaulted backups using Azure Backup (public preview)
As organizations increasingly rely on Azure Cosmos DB to power mission‑critical, globally distributed applications, protecting this data from accidental deletion, malicious activity, and ransomware has become more important than ever. At MS Build 2026, we’re excited to announce the preview of Azure Backup for Cosmos DB, which introduces vaulted backups—a secure, isolated, and fully managed backup solution designed to strengthen cyber‑resilience and support compliance requirements. Why vaulted backups for Azure Cosmos DB? Azure Cosmos DB already provides built‑in data protection capabilities such as replication and availability features to help ensure application uptime. However, these capabilities alone may not be sufficient to protect against scenarios such as: Accidental or malicious deletion of data or accounts Compromised credentials or insider threats Ransomware attacks targeting production environments Compliance requirements that mandate off‑site, immutable backups Vaulted backups add an independent protection layer by storing backup copies in an Azure Backup vault, isolated from the source Cosmos DB account and managed through Azure Backup. How vaulted backups protect your Cosmos DB data With this preview, Azure Backup enables you to protect Azure Cosmos DB using a policy‑driven, automated backup experience. Once configured, Azure Backup manages backup scheduling, retention, and lifecycle without manual intervention. Key protection capabilities include: Isolation from production data: Vaulted backups are stored in a separate, Microsoft‑managed backup vault, ensuring that backup data remains protected even if the source Cosmos DB account is deleted or compromised. Resilience against ransomware and malicious attacks: Because backups are isolated and protected by Azure Backup security controls, attackers cannot directly access or tamper with recovery points, helping ensure reliable recovery when it matters most. Policy‑based backups with long‑term retention: Define backup schedules and retention periods using Azure Backup policies to support long‑term compliance and audit requirements. Security‑first design: Azure Backup safeguards vaulted backups using encryption, soft delete, immutability, and role‑based access control, helping protect backup data against unauthorized deletion or modification. Designed for compliance and enterprise resilience Vaulted backups for Azure Cosmos DB help organizations align with industry and regulatory expectations that require: Off‑site and isolated backup copies Strong access controls and separation of duties Protection against premature deletion Long‑term retention of critical data By integrating Cosmos DB protection into Azure Backup, customers can manage backups centrally alongside other Azure workloads using a consistent governance and monitoring experience. Getting started with the preview Please refer to the product documentation for details on supported scenarios, limitations, and onboarding steps. For Cosmos DB vaulted backup (preview), you incur charges from, 1 July 2026. Refer to Azure Backup pricing page and pricing calculator for more details.Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse sub-item metadata in Microsoft Purview
Working at the intersection of data security, engineering, and governance, the Microsoft Purview product team continually explores capabilities that reshape how organizations understand and manage their data estate. One such capability—the ability to scan and extract metadata from Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse—has generated genuine excitement and strong customer demand. We are pleased to announce the GA of Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse sub‑item metadata in Microsoft Purview. The Problem It Solves Anyone who has managed a growing data estate knows the pain: data sources and workspaces multiply, Lakehouse accumulate tables and files, and before long nobody has a clear, centralized picture of what data lives where, what it looks like, or how it flows. Data governance becomes a spreadsheet exercise. Audits become stressful. Trust in data erodes. Microsoft Purview directly addresses this by automatically scanning your Fabric tenant and bringing metadata into the Unified Catalog — without requiring your data teams to manually document anything. What Purview Actually Extracts Here is where it gets interesting from a product perspective. The integration distinguishes between two levels of metadata: Item-level metadata covers the top-level workspace artifacts — the Lakehouse, Warehouses etc. Each of these is treated as a single entity in Purview, inventoried automatically after a scan completes. Sub-item level metadata — and this is the exciting part — now extends into the Lakehouse itself. Purview can now scan tables (Delta format) and files within a Lakehouse, surfacing column-level detail, data types, and structural information directly in the Unified Catalog. For a data steward or data consumer, this is the difference between knowing "a Lakehouse called Sales Gold exists" and knowing "that Lakehouse contains a Delta table called fact orders with 14 columns including order date (date) and revenue (decimal)." That distinction matters enormously for data discoverability, data contracts, and onboarding new consumers onto your data products. Setting It Up — Simpler Than You Think Connecting Purview to your Fabric tenant in the same Microsoft Entra tenancy is refreshingly straightforward. At a high level, the steps are: Register your Fabric tenant as a data source in the Purview Data Map. Create a security group in Microsoft Entra ID, add your Purview Managed Identity (MSI) or service principal to it, and grant that group read-only Admin API access in the Fabric tenant admin portal. Enable the "Enhance admin APIs responses with detailed metadata" setting in the Fabric Admin portal. This is easy to miss but critical — without it, sub-item scanning won't function correctly. Configure and schedule your scan, scoping it to all workspaces or a targeted subset. Support for Managed Identity authentication is now available, which simplifies credential management for teams already invested in Azure's identity infrastructure. One practical note: if you are running multiple Fabric or Power BI scans simultaneously, you may encounter rate limiting. The recommended approach is to stagger scans across different time windows rather than running them in parallel. What You Can Do With It Once scanned, the metadata surfaces in Purview's Unified Catalog, where your teams can browse by source type, workspace, or Fabric experience, and search for specific assets by name, description, or other attributes. This makes it genuinely easy for data consumers to find and evaluate data before requesting access! From a governance standpoint, this unlocks several capabilities that matter to modern data teams: Data discoverability — analysts and data scientists can find Lakehouse tables in the catalog without relying on tribal knowledge or chasing down the engineer who built the pipeline six months ago. Are you ready to setup Microsoft Fabric scan in Microsoft Purview? Head over to the Microsoft Purview Portal and select Data Map. Learn more in the Register Microsoft Fabric in Microsoft Purview documentation.Is Power Automate Becoming the New Technical Debt in Dynamics 365 Projects?
Power Automate has transformed how organisations build automation within Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Teams can automate processes quickly, reduce manual effort, and deliver business value without extensive custom development. At the same time, I have noticed an interesting challenge in some organizations as Power Platform adoption matures. Over time, hundreds of flows can be created by different teams, often with varying levels of governance, documentation, and ownership. Business logic may become distributed across multiple automations, making troubleshooting, maintenance, and long-term support more complex. On the other hand, many organisations have successfully scaled Power Automate by implementing strong governance practices and automation standards. I'm interested in hearing different perspectives from the community. Have you seen Power Automate become difficult to manage at scale, or has it reduced technical debt in your organization? What governance, architecture, or operational practices have worked best for balancing innovation with maintainability?[Now Generally Available] Customizable Security Baseline Policies in Machine Configuration!
Background: Azure Machine Configuration remains committed to enabling greater security and simplicity in at-scale server management for all Azure customers. Machine Configuration (previously known as Azure Policy Guest Configuration) enables both built-in and custom configuration as code allowing you to audit and configure OS, app, and workload level settings at scale, both for machines running in Azure and hybrid Azure Arc-enabled servers. We're excited to announce the General Availability of Customizable Security Baselines in Azure Policy and Machine Configuration. What began as a Public Preview is now a mature, production-grade capability that empowers you to tailor industry security benchmarks to your organization's unique compliance standards across both Azure and Arc-connected machines, at scale. This release moves the experience from "useful" to "everyday default." Standards coverage has expanded, the customization and assignment flow is faster, full lifecycle management is now possible directly from the Azure Portal, and a new Overview page gives you a single pane of glass into which parts of your estate are unprotected. What is Baseline Customization? The core experience remains: tailor security standards through the Modify Settings wizard under Policy > Machine Configuration. You can enable, exclude, or adjust rules from existing benchmarks, apply organization-specific parameters, and export your custom configuration as a downloadable JSON file. Each baseline JSON file serves as a reusable, declarative artifact, ideal for policy-as-code workflows, version control, and CI/CD integration. What's New? GA brings four substantive shifts to the customizable baselines experience: broader standards coverage, a faster path from customization to deployment, lifecycle management directly in the portal, and a new Overview page that surfaces compliance gaps at the subscription level. Together, these changes reflect what we heard from early customers during Preview: that custom baselines need to live alongside the rest of their governance workflows, not in a one-time wizard. This cloud-native approach continues to embody Microsoft's Secure by Design and Secure by Default principles, with a sharper focus on the operational reality of running compliance at scale. Built-in Policy Standards Coverage GA expands what you can customize and where it's supported. Standard Status Notes CIS Benchmarks for Linux Generally Available Expanded distribution coverage since Public Preview. See the full list of supported distros in the official documentation. [NEW!] CIS Benchmarks for Windows Public Preview Initial release covers L1 settings for WS2025 Domain Controller and Member Server roles. Azure Compute Security Baseline for Windows Generally Available Now supports customization for Windows Server 2016 and 2019, in addition to 2022 and 2025. Azure Compute Security Baseline for Linux Generally Available Aligned with Azure Compute recommendations across supported Linux distributions. Key Scenarios Faster Time to Deployment The customization-to-assignment path is now a single continuous flow. You can: Skip the JSON download step entirely. Baseline settings are auto-populated into the Azure Policy assignment flow, so you no longer have to download a JSON file, browse for it, and upload it back. The settings ride with you from Modify Settings straight into Assign Policy. Use the improved settings editor. Role-specific values (Domain Controller, Member Server) and formatted inputs render cleanly in the UX, with validation that prevents malformed parameters from reaching the policy assignment. Still export when you need to. The JSON download remains available for teams that want to commit baselines to source control, share with reviewers, or pipe through CI/CD. The net result: what used to take a multi-step download-and-reupload sequence is now a few clicks inside one blade. Lifecycle Management in the Portal Compliance baselines are not write-once artifacts. They evolve as benchmarks update, as your controls tighten, and as your estate changes. GA introduces two capabilities that treat baselines as living configuration: Import and Modify. From the Definitions tab under Machine Configuration, you can now import an existing baseline JSON and iterate on it directly in the portal. This closes the loop between policy-as-code workflows and ad-hoc edits, so you no longer have to choose between version-controlled artifacts and in-portal convenience. Edit Settings on existing Assignments. The Assignments tab now supports updating an active baseline assignment in place. You can refine rules, adjust role-specific values, or exclude controls without tearing down and re-creating the assignment. All you have to do is select the policy assignment and the "Edit Settings" button should be enabled. Together, these turn baselines into something you maintain, not something you set and forget. New Overview Page: See Where You're Unprotected A new Overview page on Policy > Machine Configuration gives you subscription-level visibility into where Machine Configuration is enabled and where it isn't. For each subscription it surfaces status (At Risk, Not Enabled, Enabled), machines missing prerequisites, machines with prerequisites in place, and total eligible machines. From the same view you can enable Machine Configuration on selected subscriptions to onboard eligible VMs and activate baseline auditing in a single action. This shifts the first question from "is this one machine compliant?" to "which corners of my estate aren't even being assessed yet?", which is usually the more consequential gap. Integration and Automation Security baselines continue to integrate into your DevOps pipelines and configuration management workflows. Each baseline produces a declarative settings catalog (JSON) that can be versioned and deployed using Azure CLI, ARM templates, Bicep, and CI/CD automation, ensuring reproducible, traceable compliance configurations across environments. Availability Customizable security baselines are now generally available in all public Azure regions, Azure Government, and Sovereign Clouds. Getting Started Prerequisites Before you begin: Deploy the Azure Machine Configuration prerequisite policy initiative. (This installs the required Guest Configuration extension on supported VMs.) You can also do this in a single action from the new Overview page. Ensure your Azure subscription or management group includes supported Windows or Linux VMs. Have sufficient permissions (Owner or Resource Policy Contributor) to create and assign custom policy definitions. Step-by-Step Guidance Check your coverage on the Overview page to see which subscriptions are unprotected and onboard them with one click. Select a baseline from the Definitions tab in Machine Configuration or use Import and Modify to iterate on an existing baseline JSON. Modify settings to enable, exclude, or parameterize rules to match your internal policies. Assign the policy directly from the wizard. Settings are auto populated into the assignment flow, no JSON upload required. Iterate when needed. Use Edit Settings on the Assignments tab to refine active baselines in place. Review compliance results to track outcomes in Azure Policy, Azure Resource Graph, or the Guest Assignments page. Learn More Azure Machine Configuration security baselines official documentation CIS Benchmark for Windows Server (Preview) documentation CIS Benchmark for Linux documentation Azure Windows Baseline and Azure Linux Baseline documentation Please note that the use of Azure Machine Configuration on Azure Arc-enabled servers will incur a charge.[Public Preview] Introducing Customizable Security Baseline Policies in Machine Configuration
Background: Azure Machine Configuration remains committed to enabling greater security and simplicity in at-scale server management for all Azure customers. Machine Configuration (previously known as Azure Policy Guest Configuration) enables both built-in and custom configuration as code allowing you to audit and configure OS, app, and workload level settings at scale, both for machines running in Azure and hybrid Azure Arc-enabled servers. We’re excited to announce Public Preview support for Customizable Security Baselines in Azure Policy and Machine Configuration. This feature empowers you to tailor industry security benchmarks—such as CIS benchmarks for Linux or Azure Security Baselines for Windows and Linux —to align with your organization’s unique compliance standards across both Azure and Arc-connected machines. This feature builds on top of our existing audit baseline capabilities for Windows and Linux. Now you can create, parameterize, and assign custom baselines at scale, enabling continuous compliance visibility across your entire environment. Learn more about how to get started here: Customize Security Baselines with Azure Policy and Machine Configuration. What's New? Customizable security baselines in Azure Policy and Machine Configuration bring a powerful new way to assess, monitor, and improve your security posture across both Windows and Linux servers. Built on industry benchmarks such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS) and Microsoft’s own Azure Compute Security Baselines, this capability enables you to adapt compliance frameworks to your organization’s specific needs — all while maintaining a consistent governance model across Azure and hybrid environments. By passing custom baseline parameters directly into Azure Policy, you can represent internal controls at scale, ensuring that compliance reflects your enterprise’s unique standards and regulatory requirements. This cloud-native approach embodies Microsoft’s Secure by Design and Secure by Default principles — ensuring your workloads stay compliant, wherever they run. Key Scenarios Baseline Customization Tailor your security standards through the Modify Settings wizard under Policy > Machine Configuration. You can: Enable, exclude, or adjust rules from existing benchmarks Apply organization-specific parameters Export your custom configuration as a downloadable JSON file Each baseline JSON file serves as a reusable, declarative artifact—ideal for policy-as-code workflows, version control, and CI/CD integration. Assign Audit Policies When you assign a baseline via Azure Policy, it automatically: Evaluates configurations against your defined standards Reports compliance in near real time Surfaces findings in Azure Policy, Azure Resource Graph, and the Guest Assignments view This integrated visibility helps IT administrators, security teams, and auditors track compliance status with minimal overhead. Integration and Automation Security baselines integrate seamlessly into your DevOps pipelines and configuration management workflows. Each baseline produces a declarative settings catalog (JSON) that can be versioned and deployed using: Azure CLI ARM templates Bicep CI/CD automation This ensures reproducible, traceable compliance configurations across environments. Supported Standards Standard Description CIS Linux Benchmarks Official CIS Benchmarks for Azure-endorsed Linux distributions, matching the latest CIS versions. Azure Compute Security Baseline for Windows Applies security controls for Windows Server 2022 and 2025, aligned with Azure Compute guidance. Azure Compute Security Baseline for Linux Enforces consistent controls aligned with Azure Compute recommendations. Availability Customizable security baselines are available in all public Azure regions. NOTE: Support for Azure Government and Sovereign Clouds will be added in a future release. These environments are not included in the current Public Preview. Getting Started Prerequisites Before you begin: Deploy the Azure Machine Configuration prerequisite policy initiative. (This installs the required Guest Configuration extension on supported VMs.) Ensure your Azure subscription or management group includes supported Windows or Linux VMs. Have sufficient permissions (Owner or Resource Policy Contributor) to create and assign custom policy definitions. Step-by-Step Guidance Select a baseline from the Machine Configuration tab in Azure Policy. Modify settings to enable, exclude, or parameterize rules to match your internal policies. Download JSON to export your customized baseline configuration file for programmatic and repeatable customization. Assign the policy which can be deployed through the Azure portal, CLI, or your CI/CD pipeline. Review compliance results to track outcomes in Azure Policy, Azure Resource Graph, or the Guest Assignments page. Coming Soon Leverage baseline customization to gradually remediate server security non-compliance using Azure Policy! Join the waitlist here: https://aka.ms/BaselineRemediationWaitlist Learn More Azure Machine Configuration security baselines official documentation CIS Benchmark for Linux documentation Azure Windows Baseline and Azure Linux Baseline documentation Please note that the use of Azure Machine Configuration on Azure Arc-enabled servers will incur a charge.
