Announcing Public Preview: New STIX Objects in Microsoft Sentinel
Security teams often struggle to understand the full context of an attack. In many cases, they rely solely on Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) without the broader insights provided by threat intelligence developed on Threat Actors, Attack Patterns, Identities - and the Relationships between each. This lack of context available to enrich their workflows limits their ability to connect the dots, prioritize threats effectively, and respond comprehensively to evolving attacks. To help customers build out a thorough, real-time understanding of threats, we are excited to announce the public preview of new Threat Intelligence (TI) object support in Microsoft Sentinel and in the Unified SOC Platform. In addition to Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), Microsoft Sentinel now supports Threat Actors, Attack Patterns, Identities, and Relationships. This enhancement empowers organizations to take their threat intelligence management to the next level. In this blog, we’ll highlight key scenarios for which your team would use STIX objects, as well as demos showing how to create objects and new relationships and how to use them to hunt threats across your organization Key Scenarios STIX objects are a critical tool for incident responders attempting to understand an attack and threat intelligence analysts seeking more information on critical threats. It is designed to improve interoperability and sharing of threat intelligence across different systems and organizations. Below, we’ve highlighted four ways Unified SOC Platform customers can begin using STIX objects to protect their organization. Ingesting Objects: You can now ingest these objects from various commercial feeds through several methods including STIX TAXII servers, API, files, or manual input. Curating Threat Intelligence: Curate and manage any of the supported Threat Intelligence objects. Creating Relationships: Establish connections between objects to enhance threat detection and response. For example: Connecting Threat Actor to Attack Pattern: The threat actor "APT29" uses the attack pattern "Phishing via Email" to gain initial access. Linking Indicator to Threat Actor: An indicator (malicious domain) is attributed to the threat actor "APT29". Associating Identity (Victim) with Attack Pattern: The organization "Example Corp" is targeted by the attack pattern "Phishing via Email". Hunt and Investigate Threats More Effectively: Match curated TI data against your logs in the unified SOC platform powered by Microsoft Sentinel. Use these insights to detect, investigate, and hunt threats more efficiently, keeping your organization secure. Get Started Today with the new Hunting Model The ability to ingest and manage these new Threat Intelligence objects is now available in public preview. To enable this data in your workspaces for hunting and detection, submit your request here and we will provide further details. Demo and screen shots Demo 1: Hunt and detect threats using STIX objects Scenario: Linking an IOC to a Threat Actor: An indicator (malicious domain) is attributed to the threat actor " Sangria tempest " via the new TI relationship builder. Please note that the Sangria tempest actor object and the IOC are already present in this demo. These objects can be added automatically or created manually. To create new relationship, sign into your Sentinel instance and go to Add new à TI relationship. In the New TI relationship builder, you can select existing TI objects and define how it's related to one or more other TI objects. After defining a TI object’s relationship, click on “Common” to provide metadata for this relationship, such as Description, Tags, and Confidence score: p time, source, and description. Another type of meta data a customer can add to a relationship is the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP). The TLP is a set of designations used to ensure that sensitive information is shared with the appropriate audience. It uses four colors to indicate different levels of sensitivity and the corresponding sharing permissions: TLP:RED: Information is highly sensitive and should not be shared outside of the specific group or meeting where it was originally disclosed. TLP:AMBER: Information can be shared with members of the organization, but not publicly. It is intended to be used within the organization to protect sensitive information. TLP:GREEN: Information can be shared with peers and partner organizations within the community, but not publicly. It is intended for a wider audience within the community. TLP:WHITE: Information can be shared freely and publicly without any restrictions. Once the relationship is created, your newly created relationship can be viewed from the “Relationships” tab. Now, retrieve information about relationships and indicators associated with the threat actor 'Sangria Tempest'. For Microsoft Sentinel customers leveraging the Azure portal experience, you can access this in Log Analytics. For customers who have migrated to the unified SecOps platform in the Defender portal, you can go find this under “Advanced Hunting”. The following KQL query provides you with all TI objects related to “Sangria Tempest.” You can use this query for any threat actor name. let THREAT_ACTOR_NAME = 'Sangria Tempest'; let ThreatIntelObjectsPlus = (ThreatIntelObjects | union (ThreatIntelIndicators | extend StixType = 'indicator') | extend tlId = tostring(Data.id) | extend StixTypes = StixType | extend Pattern = case(StixType == "indicator", Data.pattern, StixType == "attack-pattern", Data.name, "Unkown") | extend feedSource = base64_decode_tostring(tostring(split(Id, '---')[0])) | summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by Id | where IsDeleted == false); let ThreatActorsWithThatName = (ThreatIntelObjects | where StixType == 'threat-actor' | where Data.name == THREAT_ACTOR_NAME | extend tlId = tostring(Data.id) | extend ActorName = tostring(Data.name) | summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by Id | where IsDeleted == false); let AllRelationships = (ThreatIntelObjects | where StixType == 'relationship' | extend tlSourceRef = tostring(Data.source_ref) | extend tlTargetRef = tostring(Data.target_ref) | extend tlId = tostring(Data.id) | summarize arg_max(TimeGenerated, *) by Id | where IsDeleted == false); let SourceRelationships = (ThreatActorsWithThatName | join AllRelationships on $left.tlId == $right.tlSourceRef | join ThreatIntelObjectsPlus on $left.tlTargetRef == $right.tlId); let TargetRelationships = (ThreatActorsWithThatName | join AllRelationships on $left.tlId == $right.tlTargetRef | join ThreatIntelObjectsPlus on $left.tlSourceRef == $right.tlId); SourceRelationships | union TargetRelationships | project ActorName, StixTypes, ObservableValue, Pattern, Tags, feedSource You now have all the information your organization has available about Sangria Tempest, correlated to maximize your understanding of the threat actor and its associations to threat infrastructure and activity. Demo 2: Curate and attribute objects We have created new UX to streamline TI object creation, which includes the capability to attribute to other objects, so while you are creating a new IoC, you can also attribute that indicator to a Threat Actor, all from one place. To create a new TI object and attribute it to one or multiple threat actors, follow the steps below: Go to Add new a TI Object. In the Context menu, select any object type. Enter all the required information in the fields on the right-hand side for your selected indicator type. While creating a new TI object, you can do TI object curation. This includes defining the relationship. You can also quickly duplicate TI objects, making it easier for those who create multiple TI objects daily. Please note that we also introduced an “Add and duplicate” button to allow customers to create multiple TI objects with the same metadata to streamline a manual bulk process. Demo 3: New supported IoC types The attack pattern builder now supports the creation of four new indicator types. These enable customers to build more specific attack patterns that boost understanding of and organizational knowledge around threats. These new indicators include: X509 certificate X509 certificates are used to authenticate the identity of devices and servers, ensuring secure communication over the internet. They are crucial in preventing man-in-the-middle attacks and verifying the legitimacy of websites and services. For instance, if a certificate is suddenly replaced or a new, unknown certificate appears, it could indicate a compromised server or a malicious actor attempting to intercept communications. JA3 JA3 fingerprints are unique identifiers generated from the TLS/SSL handshake process. They help in identifying specific applications and tools used in network traffic, making it easier to detect malicious activities For example, if a network traffic analysis reveals a JA3 fingerprint matching that of the Cobalt Strike tool, it could indicate an ongoing cyber attack. JA3S JA3S fingerprints extend the capabilities of JA3 by also including server-specific characteristics in the fingerprinting process. This provides a more comprehensive view of the network traffic and helps in identifying both client and server-side threats For instance, if a server starts communicating with an unknown external IP address using a specific JA3S fingerprint, it could be a sign of a compromised server or data exfiltration attempt. User agent User Agents provide information about the client software making requests to a server, such as the browser or operating system. They are useful in identifying and profiling devices and applications accessing a network For example, if a User Agent string associated with a known malicious browser extension appears in network logs, it could indicate a compromised device. Conclusion: The ability to ingest, curate, and establish relationships between various threat intelligence objects such as Threat Actors, Attack Patterns, and Identities provides a powerful framework for incident responders and threat intelligence analysts. The use of STIX objects not only improves interoperability and sharing of threat intelligence but also empowers organizations to hunt and investigate threats more efficiently. As customers adopt these new capabilities, they will find themselves better equipped to understand the full context of an attack and build robust defenses against future threats. With the public preview of Threat Intelligence (TI) object support, organizations are encouraged to explore these new tools and integrate them into their security operations, taking the first step towards a more informed and proactive approach to cybersecurity.
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 threatsMicrosoft Sentinel MCP server - Generally Available With Exciting New Capabilities
Today, we’re excited to announce the General Availability of Microsoft Sentinel MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, a fully managed cloud service built on an open standard that empowers AI agents to seamlessly access your entire security context through natural language, eliminating the need for complex data engineering as you build agents. This unlocks new levels of AI agent performance and effectiveness, enabling them to do more for you. Since the public preview launch on September 30, hundreds of customers have explored MCP tools that provide semantic access to their entire security context. These tools allow security AI agents to operate with unprecedented precision by understanding your unique security context in natural language. Today, we’re introducing multiple innovations and new capabilities designed to help even more customers unlock more with AI-driven security. This post offers a high-level overview of what’s new. Stay tuned for deep-dive blogs that will unpack each feature in detail. Connect to Sentinel MCP server from Multiple AI Platforms By adopting the MCP open standard, we can progress on our mission to empower effective AI agents wherever you choose to run them. Beyond Security Copilot and VSCode Github Copilot, Sentinel MCP server is now natively integrated with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry agent-building experiences. When creating an agent in any of these platforms, you can easily select Sentinel MCP tools, no pre-configuration required. It’s ready to use, so if you are using any of these platforms, dive in and give it a try. Click here for detailed guidance Additionally, you can now connect OpenAI ChatGPT to Sentinel MCP server through a secured OAuth authentication through a simple configuration in Entra. Learn how here assess threat impact on your organization Custom KQL Tools Many organizations rely on a curated library of KQL queries for incident triage, investigation, and threat hunting used in manual Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) or SOAR playbooks—often managed within Defender Advanced Hunting. Now, with Sentinel MCP server, you can instantly transform these saved KQL queries into custom tools with just a click. This new capability allows you to empower your AI agents with precise, actionable data tailored to your unique security workflows. Once a KQL query is saved as a tool, Sentinel MCP server automatically creates and maintains a corresponding MCP tool—ensuring it’s always in sync with the latest version of your saved query in Defender Advanced Hunting. Any connected agent can invoke this tool, confident it reflects your most current logic and requirements. Learn more here Entity Analyzer Assessing the risk of entities is a core task for SOC teams—whether triaging incidents, investigating threats, or automating response workflows. Traditionally, this has required building complex playbooks or custom logic to gather and analyze fragmented security data from multiple sources. With entity analyzer, this complexity is eliminated. The tool leverages your organization’s security data in Sentinel to deliver comprehensive, reasoned risk assessments for any entity your agents encounter – starting with users and urls. By providing a unified, out-of-the-box solution for entity analysis, entity analyzer enables your AI agents to make smarter decisions and automate more tasks—without the need to manually engineer risk evaluation logic for each entity type. This not only accelerates agent development, but also ensures your agents are always working with the most relevant and up-to-date context from across your security environment. Entity Analyzer is now available to any MCP client integrated with Sentinel MCP Server. And for those building SOAR workflows, entity analyzer is natively integrated with Logic Apps, making it easy to enrich entities and automate verdicts within your playbooks. Learn how to build a Logic Apps playbook with Entity Analyzer Graph Tools Microsoft Sentinel graph connects assets, identities, activities, and threat intelligence into a unified security graph, uncovering insights that structured data alone can’t provide such as relationships, blast radius, and attack paths. The graph is now generally available, and these advanced insights can be accessed by AI agents in natural language through a dedicated set of MCP tools. Graph MCP tools are offered in a sign-up preview. Triage Incidents and Alerts Sentinel MCP server extends to enable natural language access to a set of APIs that enable incident and alert triage. AI agents can use these tools to carry out autonomous triage and investigation of Defender XDR and Sentinel alerts and incidents. In the next couple of weeks, it will be available, out of the box, to all customers using Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Stay tuned. Smarter Security, Less Effort With the latest innovations in Sentinel MCP server, security teams can now harness the full power of AI-driven automation with unprecedented simplicity and impact. From seamless integration with leading AI platforms to instant creation of custom KQL tools and out-of-the-box entity analysis, Sentinel MCP server empowers your agents to deliver smarter, faster, and more effective security outcomes. These advancements eliminate manual complexity, accelerate agent development, and ensure your SOC is always equipped with the most relevant context. Currently, features like entity analysis are available at no additional charge; as we continue to evolve the platform, we’ll share updates on future pricing well in advance. Try out the new features today and stay tuned for deep-dive updates as we continue to push the boundaries of AI-powered security automation. Learn how to get startedUncover hidden security risks with Microsoft Sentinel graph
Earlier this fall, we launched Microsoft Sentinel graph – and today, we are pleased to announce that Sentinel graph is generally available starting December 1, 2025. Microsoft Sentinel graph maps the interconnections across activity, asset, and threat intelligence data. This enables comprehensive graph-based security and analysis across pre-and post-breach scenarios in both Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Customers are already seeing the impact of the graph-powered experiences that is providing insights beyond tabular queries. "The predefined scenarios in Sentinel graph are excellent... it definitely shows where I would need to look as an investigator to figure out what's happening in my environment, who has access to it, not only directly, but also indirectly, a couple of hops away. And that's something that you really can't get through a standard KQL query..." - Gary Bushey, Security Architect, Cyclotron, Inc. Building on this foundation, we are taking Sentinel graph to the next level and are excited to announce the public preview of the following new capabilities. Graph MCP Tools Building on the hunting graph and blast radius analysis capabilities in Microsoft Defender portal. We are excited to announce preview of purpose-built Sentinel graph MCP tools (Blast Radius, Path Discovery, and Exposure Perimeter) that make the graph-powered insights accessible to the AI agents. Using these purpose-built Sentinel graph MCP tools, you will be able to use and build AI agents to get insights from the graph in natural language (figure 1): “What is the blast radius from ‘Laura Hanak’?” “Is there a path from user Mark Gafarov to key vault wg-prod?” “Who can all get to wg-prod key vault?” You can sign up here for a free preview of Sentinel graph MCP tools, which will also roll out starting December 1, 2025. Custom Graphs The security operations teams, including Tier-3 analysts, threat intelligence specialists, and security researchers play a critical role in investigating sophisticated attacks and addressing systemic security issues. Their responsibilities range from uncovering design vulnerabilities and tracing historical exploitation, to analyzing types of abuse and recommending effective solutions. These experts strive to identify hidden patterns within organizational data and struggle with the right tools that can help them differentiate between normal vs. abnormal, keep-up with the changing attack patterns, and handle massive and complex datasets at scale. This requires a high level of flexibility and customization to rapidly iterate on the analysis. We’re taking Microsoft Sentinel graph to the next level and are thrilled to announce the public preview of custom graphs with two new powerful approaches designed specifically for security: ephemeral custom graphs and materialized custom graphs. These innovative approaches empower defenders to create and analyze graphs tailored and tuned to their unique security scenarios to find hidden risks and patterns in their security data available in the Sentinel data lake. Using their data in the lake, defenders will be able author notebooks (figure 2) to model, build, visualize, traverse, and run advanced graph analyses like Chokepoint/Centrality, Blast Radius/Reachability, Prioritized Path/Ranked, and K-hop. It’s a transformative leap in graph analytics, fundamentally changing how security teams understand and mitigate organizational risk by connecting the dots in their data. Figure 2: Custom graphs using Notebook in VS Code You can sign up here for a free preview of custom graph capability, which will also roll out starting December 1, 2025. Ephemeral Custom Graphs Ephemeral custom graphs are for one-time investigations requiring quick pattern examination and rapidly changing large scale data that doesn't justify materialization for reuse. For example, in a typical SOC investigation, brute-force attempts or privilege escalations appear as isolated incidents. But in reality, attackers move laterally through interconnected credentials and resources. Let’s assume, a service account (svc-backup) used by a legacy database is compromised. It holds group membership in “DataOps-Admins,” which shares access with “Engineering-All.” A developer reuses their personal access token across staging and production clusters. Individually, these facts seem harmless. Together, they form a multi-hop credential exposure chain that can only be detected through graph traversal. Sentinel graph helps you to build ad-hoc graphs for an investigation and discarded afterward (not kept in a database for reuse). You can pull the data from the Sentinel data lake and build a graph to explore relationships, run analytics, iterate on nodes/edges, and refine queries in an interactive loop. Here are some additional scenarios where ephemeral custom graphs can expose hidden patterns: Sign-in anomaly hunting: An analyst graphs user logins against source IPs and timestamps to identify unusual patterns (like a single IP connecting to many accounts). By iterating on the graph (filtering nodes, adding context like geolocation), they can spot suspicious login clusters or a credential theft scenario. TTP (Tactics, Techniques, Procedures) investigation: For a specific threat (e.g., a known APT’s techniques), the hunter might use a graph template to map related events. Microsoft Sentinel, for instance, can provide hunting notebook templates for scenarios like investigating lateral movement or scanning logs for leaked credentials, so analysts quickly construct a graph of relevant evidence. Audit log pattern discovery: By graphing Office 365 activity logs or admin audit logs, defenders can apply advanced graph algorithms (like betweenness centrality) to find outliers – e.g., an account that intermediates many rare files access relationships might indicate insider abuse. Materialized Custom Graphs Materialized custom graphs are graph datasets that are stored and maintained over time, often updated at intervals (e.g., daily or hourly). Instead of being thrown away each session, these graphs will be materialized in the graph database for running graph analytics and visualization. Materialized custom graphs will enable organizations to create their custom enterprise knowledge graphs for various use cases, such as every organization already has an identity graph — they just haven’t visualized it yet. Imagine a large enterprise where users, devices, service principals, and applications are constantly changing. New credentials are issued, groups evolve, and permissions shift by the hour. Over time, this churn creates a complex web of implicit trust and shared access that no static tool can capture. Organizations can now build their own identity graphs and materialize them. These materialized custom graphs can continuously map relationships across Azure AD Domain Services, Entra ID, AWS IAM, SaaS platforms, and custom applications, updating daily or hourly to reflect the organization’s true security topology. Organizations can query these graphs and run various advanced graph algorithms and understand the chokepoint, blast radius, attack paths, and so on. This helps detect the gradual buildup of privilege overlap — when identities that were once isolated begin to share access paths through evolving group memberships, role assignments, or inherited permissions. Over weeks or months, these subtle shifts expand the blast radius of any single compromise. Behind the scenes We are partnering with our friends in Microsoft Fabric to bring these new capabilities to market. Mapping a large digital estate into a graph requires new scale out approach and that is what graph in Microsoft Fabric enables. “Discovering modern security risks is a massive data challenge. It requires connecting the dots across an entire digital estate, which can only be achieved with a graph at hyperscale. This is why our Fabric team's partnership with the Sentinel graph team is so critical. We’ve collaborated to build a scale-out graph solution capable of processing billion nodes and edges, delivering the performance and scale our largest security customers need to stay ahead of threats.” - Yitzhak Kesselman, CVP, Fabric Real-Time Intelligence Getting started Check out this video to learn more. To get access to the preview capabilities, please sign-up here. Reference links Data lake blog MCP server blogMicrosoft Security Store: Now Generally Available
When we launched the Microsoft Security Store in public preview on September 30, our goal was simple: make it easier for organizations to discover, purchase, and deploy trusted security solutions and AI agents that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Security products. Today, Microsoft Security Store is generally available—with three major enhancements: Embedded where you work: Security Store is now built into Microsoft Defender, featuring SOC-focused agents, and into Microsoft Entra for Verified ID and External ID scenarios like fraud protection. By bringing these capabilities into familiar workflows, organizations can combine Microsoft and partner innovation to strengthen security operations and outcomes. Expanded catalog: Security Store now offers more than 100 third-party solutions, including advanced fraud prevention, forensic analysis, and threat intelligence agents. Security services available: Partners can now list and sell services such as managed detection and response and threat hunting directly through Security Store. Real-World Impact: What We Learned in Public Preview Thousands of customers explored Microsoft Security Store and tried a growing catalog of agents and SaaS solutions. While we are at the beginning of our journey, customer feedback shows these solutions are helping teams apply AI to improve security operations and reduce manual effort. Spairliners, a cloud-first aviation services joint venture between Air France and Lufthansa, strengthened identity and access controls by deploying Glueckkanja’s Privileged Admin Watchdog to enforce just-in-time access. “Using the Security Store felt easy, like adding an app in Entra. For a small team, being able to find and deploy security innovations in minutes is huge.” – Jonathan Mayer, Head of Innovation, Data and Quality GTD, a Chilean technology and telecommunications company, is testing a variety of agents from the Security Store: “As any security team, we’re always looking for ways to automate and simplify our operations. We are exploring and applying the world of agents more and more each day so having the Security Store is convenient—it’s easy to find and deploy agents. We’re excited about the possibilities for further automation and integrations into our workflows, like event-triggered agents, deeper Outlook integration, and more." – Jonathan Lopez Saez, Cybersecurity Architect Partners echoed the momentum they are seeing with the Security Store: “We’re excited by the early momentum with Security Store. We’ve already received multiple new leads since going live, including one in a new market for us, and we have multiple large deals we’re looking to drive through Security Store this quarter.” - Kim Brault, Head of Alliances, Delinea “Partnering with Microsoft through the Security Store has unlocked new ways to reach enterprise customers at scale. The store is pivotal as the industry shifts toward AI, enabling us to monetize agents without building our own billing infrastructure. With the new embedded experience, our solutions appear at the exact moment customers are looking to solve real problems. And by working with Microsoft’s vetting process, we help provide customers confidence to adopt AI agents” – Milan Patel, Co-founder and CEO, BlueVoyant “Agents and the Microsoft Security Store represent a major step forward in bringing AI into security operations. We’ve turned years of service experience into agentic automations, and it’s resonating with customers—we’ve been positively surprised by how quickly they’re adopting these solutions and embedding our automated agentic expertise into their workflows.” – Christian Kanja, Founder and CEO of glueckkanja New at GA: Embedded in Defender, Entra—Security Solutions right where you work Microsoft Security Store is now embedded in the Defender and Entra portals with partner solutions that extend your Microsoft Security products. By placing Security Store in front of security practitioners, it’s now easier than ever to use the best of partner and Microsoft capabilities in combination to drive stronger security outcomes. As Dorothy Li, Corporate Vice President of Security Copilot and Ecosystem put it, “Embedding the Security Store in our core security products is about giving customers access to innovative solutions that tap into the expertise of our partners. These solutions integrate with Microsoft Security products to complete end-to-end workflows, helping customers improve their security” Within the Microsoft Defender portal, SOC teams can now discover Copilot agents from both Microsoft and partners in the embedded Security Store, and run them all from a single, familiar interface. Let’s look at an example of how these agents might help in the day of the life of a SOC analyst. The day starts with Watchtower (BlueVoyant) confirming Sentinel connectors and Defender sensors are healthy, so investigations begin with full visibility. As alerts arrive, the Microsoft Defender Copilot Alert Triage Agent groups related signals, extracts key evidence, and proposes next steps; identity related cases are then validated with Login Investigator (adaQuest), which baselines recent sign-in behavior and device posture to cut false positives. To stay ahead of emerging campaigns, the analyst checks the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent for concise threat rundowns tied to relevant indicators, informing hunts and temporary hardening. When HR flags an offboarding, GuardianIQ (People Tech Group) correlates activity across Entra ID, email, and files to surface possible data exfiltration with evidence and risk scores. After containment, Automated Closing Comment Generator (Ascent Global Inc.) produces clear, consistent closure notes from Defender incident details, keeping documentation tight without hours of writing. Together, these Microsoft and partner agents maintain platform health, accelerate triage, sharpen identity decisions, add timely threat context, reduce insider risk blind spots, and standardize reporting—all inside the Defender portal. You can read more about the new agents available in the Defender portal in this blog. In addition, Security Store is now integrated into Microsoft Entra, focused on identity-centric solutions. Identity admins can discover and activate partner offerings for DDoS protection, intelligent bot defense, and government ID–based verification for account recovery —all within the Entra portal. With these capabilities, Microsoft Entra delivers a seamless, multi-layered defense that combines built-in identity protection with best-in-class partner technologies, making it easier than ever for enterprises to strengthen resilience against modern identity threats. Learn more here. Levent Besik, VP of Microsoft Entra, shared that “This sets a new benchmark for identity security and partner innovation at Microsoft. Attacks on digital identities can come from anywhere. True security comes from defense in depth, layering protection across the entire user journey so every interaction, from the first request to identity recovery, stays secure. This launch marks only the beginning; we will continue to introduce additional layers of protection to safeguard every aspect of the identity journey” New at GA: Services Added to a Growing Catalog of Agents and SaaS For the first time, partners can offer their security services directly through the Security Store. Customers can now find, buy, and activate managed detection and response, threat hunting, and other expert services—making it easier to augment internal teams and scale security operations. Every listing has a MXDR Verification that certifies they are providing next generation advanced threat detection and response services. You can browse all the services available at launch here, and read about some of our exciting partners below: Avanade is proud to be a launch partner for professional services in the Microsoft Security Store. As a leading global Microsoft Security Services provider, we’re excited to make our offerings easier to find and help clients strengthen cyber defenses faster through this streamlined platform - Jason Revill, Avanade Global Security Technology Lead ProServeIT partnering with Microsoft to have our offers in the Microsoft Security Store helps ProServeIT protect our joint customers and allows us to sell better with Microsoft sellers. It shows customers how our technology and services support each other to create a safe and secure platform - Eric Sugar, President Having Reply’s security services showcased in the Microsoft Security Store is a significant milestone for us. It amplifies our ability to reach customers at the exact point where they evaluate and activate Microsoft security solutions, ensuring our offerings are visible alongside Microsoft’s trusted technologies. Notable New Selections Since public preview, the Security Store catalog has grown significantly. Customers can now choose from over 100 third-party solutions, including 60+ SaaS offerings and 50+ Security Copilot agents, with new additions every week. Recent highlights include Cisco Duo and Rubrik: Cisco Duo IAM delivers comprehensive, AI-driven identity protection combining MFA, SSO, passwordless and unified directory management. Duo IAM seamlessly integrates across the Microsoft Security suite—enhancing Entra ID with risk-based authentication and unified access policy management across cloud and on-premises applications seamlessly in just a few clicks. Intune for device compliance and access enforcement. Sentinel for centralized security monitoring and threat detection through critical log ingestion about authentication events, administrator actions, and risk-based alerts, providing real-time visibility across the identity stack. Rubrik's data security platform delivers complete cyber resilience across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS alongside Microsoft. Through the Microsoft Sentinel integration, Rubrik’s data management capabilities are combined with Sentinel’s security analytics to accelerate issue resolution, enabling unified visibility and streamlined responses. Furthermore, Rubrik empowers organizations to reduce identity risk and ensure operational continuity with real-time protection, unified visibility and rapid recovery across Microsoft Active Directory and Entra ID infrastructure. The Road Ahead This is just the beginning. Microsoft Security Store will continue to make it even easier for customers to improve their security outcomes by tapping into the innovation and expertise of our growing partner ecosystem. The momentum we’re seeing is clear—customers are already gaining real efficiencies and stronger outcomes by adopting AI-powered agents. As we work together with partners, we’ll unlock even more automation, deeper integrations, and new capabilities that help security teams move faster and respond smarter. Explore the Security Store today to see what’s possible. For a more detailed walk-through of the capabilities, read our previous public preview Tech Community post If you’re a partner, now is the time to list your solutions and join us in shaping the future of security.
Start Secure and Stay Secure on your AI Agent Journey with Microsoft Defender
Introduction The power of AI agents is their autonomy – their ability to understand context, dynamically adjust workflows, orchestrate tooling, and act with little to no human interaction. But that same autonomous decision-making amplifies security risks. Not only are we seeing a geometric rise in the volume of agents being added to our workforce, but the attack techniques and surface area these agents introduce are fundamentally different than anything before. Analysts expect more than 1.3 billion agents will be in operation by 2028. To put that into perspective, if they were their own country today, they would rank 3rd in population, behind only India and China. The proliferation of pro-code, low-code, and no-code agent-building platforms is further democratizing agent creation and will continue to drive the massive growth we expect in the coming years. These new waves of AI tinkerers, many without extensive developer-level security knowledge, have the potential to introduce additional risks without even realizing it. Today, we are excited to announce new capabilities in Microsoft Defender that help security administrators and security analysts manage agent risks and threats, as part of Microsoft Agent 365. Security teams will now benefit from a unified approach to manage posture and protect against threats across the AI agent lifecycle. Introducing AI Agent security within Microsoft Defender At Ignite 2025, Microsoft Defender is announcing the preview of unified posture management and threat protection for AI agents. These new agent security capabilities will be added to existing product experiences, as well as Microsoft Agent 365. This evolution broadens Defender’s AI security capabilities to cover agentic AI services on pro-code platforms like Microsoft Foundry and low-code/no-code environments such as Copilot Studio. AI security posture management for Microsoft Foundry agents, as well as threat protection for Copilot Studio agents, are now in preview. Threat protection for Microsoft Foundry agents will be available soon. Core Capabilities 1. Comprehensive Visibility for AI Agents Gain a unified, risk-based inventory of AI agents across Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio to eliminate blind spots and reduce shadow agents. Defender consolidates metadata, instructions, identities, and connected tools—helping security administrators manage sprawl and maintain control. Unlike point solutions, Defender’s posture, alerts, and response capabilities cover the entire AI stack within a unified portal and experience. AI agent inventory in Defender 2. Risk Reduction for AI Agents Defender strengthens posture by identifying misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and insecure instructions. AI security posture recommendations and detailed attack path analysis contextualize how weak spots from Microsoft Foundry agents form broader risks for the organization, enabling proactive remediation before breaches occur. Pre-built advanced hunting queries help security teams spot potential vulnerabilities within Copilot Studio agents. 2: Attack path analysis for AI agents 3. Threat Protection for AI Agents The rise of AI agents introduces entirely new threats that traditional security tools aren’t equipped to handle, including prompt injection and privilege compromise. Attackers can exploit an agent’s language understanding with manipulative inputs that evade classic defenses, demanding fresh approaches to security. Defender is expanding its threat protections for generative AI to include new protection for AI agent-specific threats. New jailbreak attempt alerts and real-time blocking of unsafe tool invocation for Copilot Studio agents are automatically correlated with broader threat signals and insights from the industry-leading Microsoft Threat Intelligence, to deliver contextual alerts and incident-level visibility. Similar detections for Microsoft Foundry agents will also be available in preview soon. 3: Threat protection for AI agents Above-mentioned threat signals are further contextualized within Microsoft Defender and Sentinel, seamlessly connecting Microsoft’s security, AI, and DevOps platforms like Microsoft Defender, Foundry, Copilot Studio, and GitHub Advanced Security, helping organizations start secure and shift AI security farther left. Additionally, Defender is expanding the threat hunting experience to include logs for Copilot Studio, Azure Foundry, and agents built on third-party agent builder platforms through the A365 SDK. This enhancement will provide security teams with even more insight into agentic threats and incident context. Customer Scenarios With these capabilities, customers can protect AI agents better with these specific use cases: Gain visibility and insight: Eliminate shadow agents and unify AI asset management across multi-cloud platforms. • Conduct risk reduction: Understand vulnerabilities with posture recommendations and prioritize proactive hardening with attack-path analysis. • Threat protection: Monitor runtime activity for malicious patterns, block prompt injection attacks, and correlate signals for incident context. What Sets Defender Apart AI agents are just one of many potential threat vectors within your organization that attackers may target. Unlike point solutions, Defender offers build-to-runtime protection across the AI stack—models, agents, SaaS apps, and cloud infrastructure. The power of this unified approach is that it extends beyond AI. Correlating security posture, attack paths, and alerts across endpoints, identities, applications, cloud infrastructure, and other signals helps security practitioners better understand threats and coordinate response within a single experience, reducing complexity and enabling continuous security. Looking Ahead Microsoft remains committed to helping customers start secure and stay secure on their AI journey. Join us at Microsoft Ignite either live or in person to learn more about these and other announcements. To learn more about our news, join us live at Microsoft Ignite 2025: BRK264 From Risk to Resilience: Secure your AI Agents with Microsoft Defender BRK267 End-to-end security for your AI platforms, apps, and agents BRK268 Secure Azure AI Foundry agents with Microsoft Security And read about our other Ignite 2025 announcement from Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Defender. Learn more about the AI Security Posture Management capabilities within Defender Cloud Security Posture Management.Security Copilot for SOC: bringing agentic AI to every defender
Cybersecurity has entered an era of relentless complexity. As threat actors increasingly leverage artificial intelligence to automate attacks, evade detection, and scale their tactics, defenders are challenged to keep up. In this new era, security operations centers (SOCs) must transform to not just react, but to anticipate, disrupt, and outpace the next wave of cyberthreats. Microsoft’s goal is to empower every organization to meet this challenge head-on by transforming how security operates. We believe the future of the SOC is more than just agentic: it’s predictive and proactive. This means moving beyond fragmented tools and manual processes, and instead embracing a unified, intelligent approach where AI-driven skills and agents work in concert with human expertise. To bring this vision to life, it’s essential to look at the SOC through the lens of its lifecycle—a dynamic continuum that spans from anticipation and prevention through to recovery and optimization—and to recognize the unique challenges and opportunities within each stage. With Security Copilot’s GenAI and agentic capabilities woven across this lifecycle, Microsoft is delivering an integrated defense platform that enables defenders to move faster, act smarter, and stay ahead of adversaries. Introducing agentic innovation across the SOC lifecycle At Ignite, our agentic innovations are concentrated in three of the five SOC lifecycle pillars, and each one represents a leap forward in how analysts anticipate, detect, triage and investigate threats. Predict and prevent Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent: Introduced in March, this agent has already helped security teams move from reactive to anticipatory defense. At Ignite, we’re announcing that the Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent is now fully embedded in the Microsoft Defender portal, delivering daily, tailored briefings that synthesize Microsoft’s unparalleled global intelligence with organization-specific context in just minutes. Teams no longer need to spend hours gathering TI from disparate sources—the agent automates this process, offering the most current and relevant insights. Analysts can reference the summary to prioritize action, using the agent’s risk assessments, clear recommendations, and links to vulnerable assets to proactively address exposures. Detect and disrupt Dynamic Threat Detection Agent: Detections have long been bottlenecked by the limitations of traditional alerting systems, which rely on predefined logic that can’t scale fast enough to match the speed and variability of modern attacks— resulting in blind spots and missed threats. The Dynamic Threat Detection Agent addresses this challenge head-on. Instead of depending on static rules or isolated input, it continuously analyzes incidents and telemetry, searching for gaps in coverage and correlating signals across the entire security stack. For example, this is how it surfaced a recent AWS attack: a threat actor used an EntraID account to federate into an AWS admin account to exfiltrate sensitive data. The Dynamic Threat Detection Agent generated an alert before the intruder even authenticated into the single sign-on flow, driven by a correlated signal from Sentinel. That alert didn’t exist beforehand; the agent created it on the fly to stop the attack. The result is an adaptive system that extends Microsoft’s industry-leading, research-based detections with context-aware alerts tailored to each organization, closing gaps and revealing threats that legacy systems miss. Triage and investigate Phishing Triage Agent: In March 2025, we introduced the Phishing Triage Agent, built to autonomously handle user-submitted phishing reports at scale. The agent classifies incoming alerts and resolves false positives, escalating only the malicious cases that require human expertise. At Microsoft Ignite, we’re announcing its general availability, backed by strong early results: the agent identifies 6.5 times more malicious alerts, improves verdict accuracy by 77%, and frees analysts to spend 53% more time investigating real threats. St. Luke’s even said it’s saving their team nearly 200 hours each month. Coming soon, we’ll be extending these autonomous triage capabilities beyond phishing to identity and cloud alerts, bringing the same precision and scale to more SOC workflows. Threat Hunting Agent: this agent reimagines the investigation process. Instead of requiring analysts to master complex query languages or sift through mountains of data, Threat Hunting Agent enables natural language investigations with contextual insight. Analysts can vibe with the agent by asking questions in plain English, receive direct answers, and be guided through comprehensive hunting sessions. It levels up the existing Security Copilot NL2KQL capability by enabling teams to explore patterns, pivot intuitively and uncover hidden signals in real time for a fluid, context-aware experience. This not only accelerates investigations but makes advanced threat hunting accessible to every member of the SOC, regardless of experience level. Agents built into your workflows To make the agents easily accessible and help security teams get started more quickly, we are excited to announce that Security Copilot will be available to all Microsoft 365 E5 customers. Rollout starts today for existing Security Copilot customers with Microsoft 365 E5 and will continue in the upcoming months for all Microsoft 365 E5 customers. Customers will receive 30-day advanced notice before activation. Learn more: https://aka.ms/SCP-Ignite25 Discover more: the Security Store The Security Store, now generally available, is the central hub for discovering, deploying, and managing first-party and third-party security agents. Today, it provides instant access to 20+ agents deployable directly in the Microsoft Defender portal, all within a broader ecosystem of 100+ trusted security solutions. Whether you're investigating incidents, hunting threats, or automating response, the Security Store extends Defender with vetted, scenario-aligned tools that can be set up in minutes. Learn more in this blog. Introducing new GenAI embedded capabilities Security Copilot isn’t just growing through agents—it’s also gaining new embedded capabilities: GenAI skills that help SOC teams work faster, operate at greater scale, and get upleveled directly inside Microsoft Defender. Today, we’re excited to introduce new innovations: Analyst Notes represent a meaningful shift in how investigation work is captured and shared. For organizations that choose to opt into this capability, Copilot automatically reconstructs an analyst’s investigation session—from the moment they open an incident to the moment they close it—and turns that activity into clear, structured notes. The system can even track multiple sessions in parallel and attribute actions to the right incident, and analysts can fully review and edit the generated notes before saving them. This not only saves teams valuable time and effort, it preserves the actual investigation path with far greater accuracy and consistency than manual documentation ever could. The result is a living, cumulative record of how the SOC investigates threats: easier handoffs, stronger auditability, faster onboarding, and a deeper shared understanding of how incidents unfold across multiple SecOps members and phases. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for guided response allows organizations to upload their own internal procedures so Security Copilot can align its recommendations with established guidebooks and compliance requirements. Guided response is one of the ways Copilot helps analysts navigate an incident: it offers one-click actions across triage, containment, investigation and remediation that teams can take immediately. With SOPs uploaded, these recommendations draw directly from organizational workflows and policy standards, ensuring they are contextually relevant and trusted. For defenders, this translates into greater confidence and faster, more consistent decision-making. We’re also eager to share that we’re introducing auto-generated content configuration for Security Copilot’s incident summaries. This new feature allows security admins to decide how and when summaries are produced, choosing between always auto-generating, manual trigger only, or auto-generating based on incident severity. The configuration is managed directly in the Microsoft Defender portal, giving organizations flexibility to fine-tune Copilot’s outputs to their operational needs. Join us at Ignite We invite you to learn more and see these innovations in action at Microsoft Ignite. Don’t miss our featured sessions: Microsoft Defender: Building the agentic SOC with guest Allie Mellen on Wednesday, November 19 th with Allie Mellen, Corina Feuerstein, and Rob Lefferts. Learn more. Empowering the SOC: Security Copilot and the rise of Agentic Defense on Friday, November 21 st with Corina Feuerstein and Cristina da Gama. Learn more. Join us to discover how Microsoft is shaping the future of cybersecurity—making intelligent, agentic defense accessible to every organization.Enhancing visibility into your identity fabric with Microsoft Defender
Attackers don’t move in straight lines or follow predictable, sequential steps. Instead, they think in graphs, seeking the path of least resistance, surveying your environment for weak spots and then leverage legitimate connections and permissions to quietly traverse your IT landscape. Just a single compromised account can be a powerful foothold, helping an attacker bypass your other security protocols. To put this simply, while your account may not be what the attacker is looking for, it’s one step on the path to their ultimate goal. Its estimated that less than 1% of your organizational footprint is actually of interest to attackers, but 80% of organizations have at least one open attack path to these critical assets. This is why it is so critical to have a deep understanding of the connected identities, accounts and applications that make up your identity fabric. Layered identity security for the modern enterprise Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) has to combine modern identity and access management (IAM) and security operations (SOC) through an integrated partnership between identity and security teams. Because of this, our vision remains focused on streamlining how these groups collaborate, breaking down siloes to unite these teams, their tools and processes. Today, I am excited to announce 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. These new capabilities include: 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. Account correlation: Mapping the identity fabric, one account at a time. Modern identity fabrics are often complex, reflecting the reality of today’s hybrid and multi-cloud enterprise environments. To understand vulnerabilities and map potential attack paths, security teams must first decipher the relationships between identities, accounts, infrastructure, and a myriad of identity related apps and tools. But the complexity doesn’t end with the fabric itself, each identity typically consists of several related accounts. Take the identity footprint in Figure 1 above: here we see a visual representation of the accounts associated with a single user. At the top you’ll see an on-premises Active Directory (AD) account that is synced with a corresponding Entra ID account. This type of hybrid scenario is found in more than 90% of our customers as a way to allow their users to authenticate seamlessly, to both legacy on-premises environments and cloud services like Microsoft 365. In this example the user also has two other accounts, one an administrator account with elevated privileges and the other a misconfigured cloud account. Now, as I mentioned earlier, attackers will use whatever connections they can to move laterally towards their target and in this case the misconfigured cloud account puts the identity and all its accounts at risk, including the privileged admin. Defender now links accounts, privileges, and activity patterns across the components of your unique identity fabric, augmenting the powerful graph capabilities within Microsoft Sentinel to provide defenders with one trusted view into the identity’s entire footprint. Figure 2: Identity page in Microsoft Defender showing related accounts The detailed understanding of how accounts are connected helps Defender better showcase these risks at the identity level. Posture alerts and recommendations for every related account are now surfaced within a single view. But we don’t stop there: with a relational understanding of your unique identity fabric, Defender maps potential attack paths, showing how an attacker could leverage these vulnerabilities on their way to access critical assets. The easiest way to bring this value to life is using a scenario involving leaked credentials. Earlier this year we unveiled a new leaked credentials alert that extends the powerful detection from Entra to on-premises identities. Figure 4: a sample attack path showing leaked credentials as an entry point To do this Microsoft continuously scans public and private breach resources to identify leaked credentials. If a match is found, Microsoft Security Exposure Management automatically identifies the affected user and surfaces the exposure with clear severity and context. Defender then further validates and correlates that exposure, linking that account to other cross-domain security signals to detect unusual authentications or privilege escalations. These attack paths map are now expanded to show how that compromised account could be leveraged to reach other accounts and ultimately critical assets. One leaked password doesn’t have to become a breach. With Microsoft’s identity security stack, it becomes a closed path and a measurable step toward resilience showing exactly which routes an attacker could take and what controls will break that path. Turning visibility into coordinated response Just as security professionals can now see all the related alerts and posture recommendations across the accounts associated with an identity, they can also take direct action across all accounts with one action. Figure 5: Screenshot of the new "Disable user" experience in Defender Once analysts confirm that an identity is compromised, they can disable compromised identities comprehensively across providers and applications - turning previously complex, multi-portal process into a coordinated, identity-wide response. Get started today Microsoft Defender’s latest identity security enhancements empower organizations to see and understand their entire identity fabric with unprecedented clarity. By surfacing connected accounts and posture recommendations into a single view, and coordinating response actions, Defender enables security teams to better remediate identity before, during and after a breach. This holistic approach not only strengthens identity posture but also transforms response actions from isolated steps into coordinated, organization-wide defenses. With these innovations, organizations are better equipped to outpace attackers, close open paths, and build lasting resilience in an ever-evolving threat landscape. Learn more about these capabilities here and join us in San Francisco, November 17–21, or online, November 18–20, for deep dives and practical labs to help you maximize your Microsoft Defender investments and to get more from the Microsoft capabilities you already use. Featured sessions: Microsoft Defender: Building the agentic SOC with guest Allie Mellen Blueprint for building the SOC of the future Empowering the SOC: Security Copilot and the rise of agentic defense Identity Under Siege: Modern ITDR from Microsoft AI vs AI: Protect email and collaboration tools with Microsoft Defender AI-powered defense for cloud workloadsIgnite your future with new security skills during Microsoft Ignite 2025
Ignite your future with new security skills during Microsoft Ignite 2025 AI and cloud technologies are reshaping every industry. Organizations need professionals who can secure AI solutions, modernize infrastructure, and drive innovation responsibly. Ignite brings together experts, learning, and credentials to help you get skilled for the future. Take on the Secure and Govern AI with Confidence Challenge Start your journey with the Azure Skilling Microsoft Challenge. These curated challenges help you practice real-world scenarios and earn recognition for your skills. One of the challenges featured is the Secure and Govern AI with Confidence challenge. This challenge helps you: Implement AI governance frameworks. Configure responsible AI guardrails in Azure AI Foundry. Apply security best practices for AI workloads. Special Offer: Be among the first 5,000 participants to complete this challenge and receive a discounted certification exam voucher—a perfect way to validate your skills and accelerate your career. Completing this challenge earns you a badge and prepares you for advanced credentials—ideal for anyone looking to lead in AI security. Join the challenge today! Validate Your Expertise with this new Microsoft Applied Skill. Applied Skills assessments are scenario-based, so you demonstrate practical expertise—not just theory. Earn the Secure AI Solutions in the Cloud credential—a job-ready validation of your ability to: Configure security for AI services using Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Implement governance and guardrails in Azure AI Foundry. Protect sensitive data and ensure compliance across AI workloads. This applied skill is designed for professionals who want to lead in AI security, accelerate career growth, and stand out in a competitive market. To learn how to prepare and take the applied skill, visit here. Your Next Steps: Security Plans Ignite isn’t just about live sessions—it’s about giving you on-demand digital content and curated learning paths so you can keep building skills long after the event ends. With 15 curated security plans that discuss topics such as controlling access with Microsoft Entra and securing your organization’s data, find what is relevant to you on Microsoft Ignite: Keep the momentum going page.
