Securing AI Agents at Runtime: Real-Time Protection and Threat Detection for Microsoft Agent 365
Organizations are rapidly adopting AI agents to automate workflows, access enterprise data, invoke tools, and take actions on behalf of users. This autonomy creates a fundamentally new security challenge. Unlike traditional AI applications, agents operate across dynamic execution flows, interacting with external content, calling tools, and accessing sensitive resources. These interactions create new attack paths that traditional security controls were not designed to address. Today, we're announcing two major milestones for Security for AI in Microsoft Defender for Microsoft Agent 365: Threat detection for Microsoft Agent 365 agents — now in public preview. Real-time protection for Microsoft Agent 365 tooling servers — now generally available. Together, these capabilities help security teams detect, investigate, and block attacks targeting AI agents, extending Microsoft Defender's threat protection capabilities into the agent runtime. Threat detection for Microsoft Agent 365 Agents (Public Preview) Threat detection provides SOC teams with detailed visibility into attacks and suspicious activity targeting AI agents. By analyzing runtime signals across agent interactions, tool usage, and execution patterns, Microsoft Defender identifies suspicious and malicious behavior throughout the agent execution lifecycle and surfaces actionable security alerts for SOC teams. Threat detection supports cloud agent types that emit observability logs to Microsoft Agent 365, including: Microsoft Copilot Studio Microsoft Foundry Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Builder Agents integrated through the Microsoft Agent 365 SDK This provides consistent threat visibility across supported Microsoft Agent 365 agent experiences, regardless of how the agent was built. Fig. 1. Microsoft Security for AI alerts in Microsoft Defender XDR (Preview) Microsoft Defender identifies a broad range of AI-specific threats, including: Indirect prompt injection (XPIA) — malicious instructions embedded in external content designed to manipulate agent behavior. Evasion techniques — attempts to bypass agent instructions or security controls. Malicious content propagation — attempts to use agents to generate or distribute malicious content. Secret leakage — exposure of credentials, API keys, or other sensitive information through agent interactions. LLM reconnaissance — attempts to probe agent capabilities, instructions, or security boundaries. Suspicious IP access — agent access originating from anonymized or suspicious IP addresses. Alerts are surfaced directly in Microsoft Defender, enabling SOC analysts to investigate and respond using familiar workflows, Advanced Hunting queries, and the Defender XDR investigation experience. Real-time protection for WorkIQ and Custom MCP servers (General Availability) Real-time protection moves beyond detection by blocking threats inline when AI agents interact with WorkIQ and custom MCP servers (see Microsoft Agent 365 tooling servers). When an agent invokes a registered tool or receives a tool response, Defender evaluates the interaction against configured security policies and determines whether to allow or block it directly within the agent's execution flow. This helps prevent malicious actions and data leakage in real time, without requiring agent developers to implement custom security logic. Fig. 2. Microsoft Security for AI Real-Time Protection policy in Defender Real-time protection currently guards against high-impact threats, including: Evasion techniques — attempts to bypass agent guardrails or security controls. Malicious content propagation — preventing agents from spreading malicious content through tool actions. Secret leakage — blocking agents from inadvertently exposing credentials or sensitive data through tool calls. Communication with untrusted domains — preventing agents from sending email or data to high-risk or untrusted email domains. Better Together: Detection and Protection Threat detection and real-time protection address complementary parts of the agent security lifecycle. Real-time protection provides inline enforcement to block malicious interactions during execution, while threat detection gives SOC teams the visibility and investigation context needed to identify attack patterns, assess impact, and respond to suspicious activity. Together, they provide a defense-in-depth approach that combines runtime enforcement with SOC-driven detection and investigation, purpose-built for AI agents. Getting Started Both capabilities are available through Microsoft Defender, using a dedicated Security for AI workload experience that brings together AI threat detections, investigations, and runtime protection policies. To learn more: Enable security for AI agents using Microsoft Defender Detect and investigate threats to AI agents using Microsoft Defender (Preview) Protect AI agents in real time using Microsoft Defender As AI agents become more autonomous and gain access to enterprise data and tools, securing their runtime behavior becomes critical. With Threat Detection and Real-Time Protection, Microsoft Defender helps organizations adopt AI agents with security controls designed for how agents actually operate—detecting attacks, enabling SOC investigation, and blocking malicious interactions at runtime.Microsoft Defender now integrates with Dragos, Forescout, & Armis for OT Security
Co-author(s): Amit Cohen and Hadar Shindler Operational technology (OT) environments are unlike anything else in cybersecurity. The systems that run our factories, power grids, water treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation networks weren’t built with modern threats in mind — and they can’t simply be patched, rebooted, or scanned the way IT systems can. A misstep doesn’t just create an alert backlog; it can stop a production line, disrupt critical services, or put physical safety at risk. To support customers in bringing their OT security solutions into their Security Operation (SOC) platform, we’re excited to announce an expansion of the Microsoft ecosystem with new OT security integrations from Dragos, Forescout, and Armis from ServiceNow. This gives customers greater flexibility to use the OT security solutions that best fit their environments. Expanding OT coverage in Defender with new partner integrations We’ve built new connectors for Dragos, Forescout and Armis that are now ready for customers to start using. Dragos "Strong OT defense starts with knowing what is running in your operational environment, the vulnerabilities those assets carry, the threats targeting your systems, and the data to determine root cause. That kind of intelligence comes from years of operating inside OT environments and tracking the groups behind those threats. As OT threats continue to grow and AI accelerates how quickly adversaries can approach the OT boundary, integrating Dragos into Microsoft Defender strengthens how organizations see, understand, and defend their OT environments." -Robert M. Lee, CEO and Co-Founder, Dragos, Inc. Forescout "Our integration with Microsoft Defender represents a significant step forward in helping organizations defend their most critical operations against today's rapidly evolving cyber threats. By combining Forescout's industry-leading visibility and protection for IoT, OT, and network-connected assets with Microsoft's leadership in endpoint, identity, cloud, and security operations, we're delivering a more unified approach to cyber defense. Together, we're enabling healthcare providers, government agencies, critical infrastructure operators, and enterprises comprehensive visibility across IT and OT environments while empowering security teams to detect, investigate, and respond to threats faster and with greater confidence." -Robert McNutt, Chief Strategy Officer, Forescout Armis “Fragmented security is no longer an option as threats to critical infrastructure evolve at machine speed. By deepening our integration with Microsoft, we are unifying visibility and context in complex OT and IoT environments. Integrating Armis Centrix™ with Microsoft Defender equips security teams with real-time, actionable insights to identify and mitigate risks across their entire operational footprint.” -Nadir Izrael, Group Vice President, Armis from ServiceNow Bringing OT and IT Security Together With these new integrations, signals, asset inventory and vulnerabilities from Dragos, Forescout, and Armis from ServiceNow flow directly into Microsoft Defender — giving security operations teams a single, unified view across IT, OT, and IoT. What this means for customers: Unified visibility across IT and OT. OT assets and vulnerabilities surface alongside IT signals in Defender, so the SOC can see and reason about them in one place. Cross-domain correlation. Identity, endpoint, cloud, and OT signals are correlated automatically. Streamlined investigation and response. Analysts can pivot from an OT detection to related IT activity (and back) without switching tools or losing context. Specialized depth, unified breadth. Customers keep the deep OT expertise of their chosen partner platform and gain the enterprise-wide coverage of Defender. Let’s take a look at some of new the user experience updates that showcase these integrations. Figure 1. Discovered devices by OT partner in device inventory The Device Inventory now will show OT devices discovered through a new partner integration (see Figure 1). Industrial assets like substation relays and switches from vendors are automatically surfaced with rich context, criticality, vendor, model, firmware, and discovery source alongside built-in recommendations to classify critical assets and protect unmanaged OT devices. The result: unified visibility across IT and OT from a single view, so security teams can find, prioritize, and protect previously unseen devices faster. Figure 2. Vulnerabilities and exposure across OT devices The Vulnerabilities view now includes a dedicated OT Partner CVEs tab, surfacing thousands of vulnerabilities on operational technology devices discovered through partner integrations. Every CVE is enriched with severity, CVSS score, age, active threats, and exposed device count, and the list is sorted by exposure so the most widespread, highest-impact risks rise to the top. Most importantly, security teams can now see OT vulnerabilities alongside IT in a single, prioritized view, making it faster to focus remediation where it matters most. Figure 3. Discovered devices exposed by OT integration Selecting a CVE opens a detail panel with a dedicated Exposed devices discovered by OT partner tab, listing every affected device along with its OS platform and last seen date. For CVE-2024-7264, that means a clear view of all 75 exposed devices in one place, from OT controllers to sales workstations. The benefit is that security teams can move from a single vulnerability straight to the exact devices at risk, making it easy to scope impact and drive targeted remediation without leaving the view. Figure 4. Discovered vulnerabilities by OT integration Drilling into a specific device, like the Substation-North-HMI2 shown here, reveals a dedicated Discovered vulnerabilities by OT partner tab alongside the standard device views such as incidents, timeline, and security recommendations. It lists every vulnerability found on that device by the OT partner, complete with severity, CVSS score, publication and detection dates, and active threats. The benefit is a complete, device-level picture of OT risk right where analysts investigate, so they can see exactly what a single asset is exposed to and prioritize remediation without switching tools or context. Built for customer choice and flexibility We’re excited to expand our integration ecosystem, giving customers the flexibility to work with the OT solutions they already trust. These integrations help bring specialized OT context into broader security workflows, enabling SOC teams, risk managers, and security leaders to collaborate more effectively while using the tools that best fit their environment. Get started The Dragos, Forescout, and Armis integrations are available in public preview starting today. Customers can enable them through the Defender portal and begin ingesting OT signals from their partner platform of choice. Integrate the Dragos OT data connector in Microsoft Security Exposure Management - Microsoft Security Exposure Management | Microsoft Learn Integrate the Forescout OT data connector in Microsoft Security Exposure Management - Microsoft Security Exposure Management | Microsoft Learn Integrate the Armis OT data connector in Microsoft Security Exposure Management - Microsoft Security Exposure Management | Microsoft LearnMonthly news - July 2026
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - July 2026 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from June 2026. We are now including news related to Defender for Cloud in the Defender portal. For all other Defender for Cloud news, have a look at the dedicated Defender for Cloud Monthly News here. 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episode: Redefining identity security for the modern enterprise One policy engine to govern them all: Securing agentic AI with Microsoft Purview Building a modern detection pipeline with ContentOps Securing local AI agents with Microsoft Defender Microsoft Defender: Extending critical protection for emerging threats in Team Weekly Security News: We publish a short 1ish minute video every week with updates across our Microsoft Security stack. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you don't miss the next episode. Actionable threat insights (find all of them here) Securing AI agents: When AI tools move from reading to acting Chromium extension uses AI‑related branding to redirect browser search Photo ZIP campaign targeting hospitality industry delivers Node.js implant for persistent access Microsoft Defender Two Workbooks capabilities in the unified Microsoft Defender portal moved to GA: Advanced Hunting connector - build custom dashboards directly on top of Advanced Hunting (XDR) dat. Query XDR tables and visualize them in Workbooks for richer investigations and reports. Workspace filter / multi-workspace experience - scope and filter workbooks by workspace, with workspace selection integrated into the workbook itself rather than relying on the global selector. MTO Tenant Groups let MSSPs and large enterprises organize their multitenant view in Microsoft Defender by grouping tenants logically (e.g., by region, business unit, or customer cohort). Learn more here. Custom Detections support in Microsoft Sentinel Repositories. Custom Detections can now be managed as code in Microsoft Sentinel Repositories, the same way customers already manage analytic rules, playbooks, parsers and workbooks. Detection engineers connect a GitHub or Azure DevOps repo to their workspace; Custom Detections placed in the repo are reconciled on every commit. A standalone Bicep path via the Microsoft Security Bicep extension lets teams deploy from any CI/CD pipeline (ADO Pipelines, GitHub Actions, custom runners). (General Availability) The following advanced hunting schema tables are now generally available: The CloudAuditEvents table contains information about cloud audit events for various cloud platforms protected by the organization's Defender for Cloud. The CloudDnsEvents table contains information about DNS activity events from cloud infrastructure environments. The CloudProcessEvents table contains information about process events in multicloud hosted environments. (Public Preview) The AgentsInfo table in advanced hunting is now available in preview. The AIAgentsInfo table is transitioning to this new table, which provides a unified schema that supports agent inventory and governance for all agent types, including Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft 365 Copilot, third-party, and endpoint-discovered agents. Microsoft Agent 365 customers should use the AgentsInfo table today. The AIAgentsInfo table remains accessible until July 1, 2026. Update your queries to use AgentsInfo before this date. For more information, see Advanced hunting schema - Naming changes. For all other Sentinel News, have a look at the "What's new in Microsoft Sentinel blog post - June edition" Identity Security (Public Preview) The Identity Security dashboard now includes a new Human identities card that shows your human identities by source (Entra ID, SaaS, and on-premises), giving you a single view of where your human identities live. For more information, see Identity Security dashboard. (Public Preview) On the Coverage and maturity page, the Review and improve coverage side panel for SaaS Identities now includes an Observed column and a Show Only Observed Applications toggle. By default, the panel shows only SaaS applications detected in your environment. Turn off the toggle to see other supported SaaS applications you can onboard to expand your identity coverage. For more information, see Coverage and maturity. New alerts were added to the Defender for Identity security alerts related to Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory as well as other identity providers. For a full list of those new alerts, check out our documentation. Recent ShinyHunters attacks on Salesforce show how OAuth tokens and connected apps are being weaponized to bypass MFA at scale. The upgraded Salesforce connector for Defender for Cloud Apps helps detect these attacks faster, with richer connected-app context and investigation-ready signals. Customers already using the connector are advised to enable the additional events in the Salesforce console for tighter protection, and eligible customers not yet using it are advised to connect Salesforce. Learn more. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint / Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (Public Preview) Local AI agent discovery: as part of the Defender AI agents experience, Microsoft Defender now automatically discovers supported local AI agents running on onboarded Windows & macOS devices. Discovered agents appear as assets in the AI agent inventory, exposure map, and advanced hunting, giving security teams visibility into local AI agent usage across the organization. For more information, see Discover local AI agents. (Preview) Local AI agent runtime protection on Windows endpoints is now available in public preview. Microsoft Defender inspects the agent loop (user prompts, tool calls, and tool responses) and can block risky activity before it executes, helping stop prompt injection and unsafe agent actions at the device level. Blocked and audited events appear as alerts in Microsoft Defender to support incident correlation and investigation workflows. The new version of the Defender deployment tool for Windows streamlines onboarding and enhances security by: Bundling the onboarding package directly into the tool's executable. Generating a key during deployment package creation that is required for running the tool. Enabling users to configure an expiry date for the package to reduce the risk of unauthorized use. In addition: You have the option of downloading the package as either an .exe or a .zip file, whichever best suits your organization's needs. A new Deployment packages page in the Defender portal facilitates management of downloaded packages by providing centralized visibility into all the packages and their current status. Now generally available: Selective Response Actions enables organizations to tailor high-impact security operations on devices during onboarding. It provides precise control over how response actions are applied on Tier-0 systems and other high-value assets, helping maintain operational stability while delivering strong protection. The new exposure score model in Defender Vulnerability Management is now generally available. This model improves risk prioritization and recommendation impact accuracy by incorporating exploit prediction data (EPSS) and asset context factors such as internet-facing status and criticality. More details here. Microsoft Secure Score now includes the Reduce unnecessary inbound internet exposure on internet-facing devices recommendation, which helps identify devices that are accessible from the public internet and may represent unnecessary attack surface. This recommendation provides centralized visibility into internet-facing devices across the environment. Many predefined SaaS application classification rules were added to the critical assets list. Have a look at our documentation for the full list. These classifications require onboarding to Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.The next frontier in endpoint security: Securing local AI agents with Microsoft Defender
AI agents are now doing real work on the endpoint — reading files, running commands, browsing the web, and acting on behalf of the users they run under. That same power is also what makes them dangerous: agents act on whatever content they take in, and much of it comes from outside the user's control — a web page, a repository, a command's output. A single malicious instruction hidden in that content can turn an agent against the very environment it's trusted to work in. With access to source code, secrets, and the corporate resources, its identity can reach — from cloud infrastructure to SharePoint, email, and internal apps — a compromised agent becomes a path to everything that identity is trusted with. Yet most security teams can't see this activity at all. Local AI agents run as ordinary processes, with little of the visibility or context SOC teams need to understand — let alone investigate — what an agent actually did. That’s why today, we're extending Microsoft Defender to secure AI agents running locally on devices. Security teams now have the visibility, context, and control needed to manage this new frontier of endpoint risk without slowing down the developers driving innovation forward. This includes: Discover 20+ types of local AI agents running on managed Windows and macOS devices Block malicious AI agent activity on the device in real time Assess local agent exposure across identities and reachable resources Investigate local AI agent activity in Advanced Hunting In preview, Defender now discovers these agents across the endpoint — AI coding agents, AI assistants, local AI runtimes, agentic IDE extensions, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers — and adds runtime protection for popular coding agents, with coverage expanding over time. Just as important, it brings them into the same security platform teams already use for endpoints, identities, email, and cloud, so local agents are no longer running unseen alongside the tools security teams already protect, but part of one coordinated defense. Watch this episode of the Ninja Show to see how Microsoft Defender brings visibility, context, and control to local AI agents, helping security teams securely adopt AI and stay ahead of emerging threats. Discover local AI agents on managed devices Security Operation Center (SOC) teams can now identify AI agents running locally as first-class assets, not just operating system (OS) processes. In the Defender portal, security teams can view a dedicated inventory of AI agents across their environment, spanning categories such as: Coding CLIs and terminal agents: GitHub Copilot CLI, Codex CLI, Claude Code CLI, Gemini CLI, Antigravity CLI, OpenCode Agentic IDEs and VS Code extensions: Cursor, Windsurf, Antigravity, Claude Code, Codex, Cline, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Roo Code Desktop AI assistants: ChatGPT Desktop, Claude Desktop, Codex Desktop, Poe Desktop, Antigravity Desktop, GitHub Copilot App Local AI runtimes and autonomous platforms: OpenClaw, Nanobot, ZeroClaw, Ollama Desktop Each agent is surfaced as a security asset, with runtime context including user identity, device and process relationships, trust indicators, and integrity level. Security teams can also see configuration signals, such as “auto-approve” settings and connected services via MCP servers. Defender discovers more than 20 supported local AI agents across Windows and macOS, with coverage continuing to expand. Block malicious AI agent activity in real time Discovery is the starting point. Once SOC teams know which agents are present, they need confidence that malicious behavior will be stopped to reduce impact to their organization’s environment. For popular coding agents, Defender now provides runtime protection that helps block malicious behavior inline and in real time. This capability starts with Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI, with OpenClaw and OpenAI Codex coming soon. When Defender identifies that an agent activity is malicious, it can automatically block it. As with other threats, the user can be notified, and the activity is logged in the protection history. The SOC analyst receives a detailed alert with agent and session context for investigation, including details on the detected threat. At the same time, the user sees a notification on the device that the activity was blocked. The corresponding security alert in the Defender portal, with the process tree and session context for investigation Assess local agent exposure Knowing an agent exists is only half the picture. The next step is mapping the potential blast radius: the resources the agent touches, the identities it can use, and the assets exposed to its next moves. That’s why every agent discovered is automatically mapped to the device it runs on, the identity associated with that device, the MCP servers it’s connected to, and the cloud resources the identity can reach. The exposure graph turns "this agent exists" into “this agent can do these things” by providing an understanding of the agent’s connectivity across your environment. As an example, in the map below, the SOC analyst can see that a ChatGPT Desktop agent is tied to a single AWS account, and from that identity its reach extends to S3 buckets, an AWS KMS key, EC2 instances, and an AWS Bedrock agent. The agent has no cloud permissions of its own, but it inherits the account's — so if it were compromised or misused, that reach becomes a path to encrypted data and key material. This view gives security teams a clear picture of the agent's blast radius, so they can decide how to contain it before it's abused. Investigate local AI agent activity in Advanced Hunting Beyond the inventory and exposure views, security teams often need to hunt across the environment — to ask which agents are behaving unusually, and what else they touch. Every AI agent discovery event, MCP server connection, and configuration signal is queryable in Advanced Hunting, alongside the endpoint, identity, email, and cloud security telemetry your team already uses every day. This capability unlocks two use cases that security teams have been asking for: Correlate agent activity with process, file, network, identity, and cloud telemetry to see the full picture of what the agent did Hunt for risky configurations – for example, agents running in auto-approve mode under an identity with privileged access to production, source code, or CI/CD systems Security teams can turn any of these queries into a custom detection rule — for instance, raising an alert whenever a newly discovered agent appears with a risky configuration on a device tied to a privileged identity. Securing the next frontier of endpoint activity The risk that opened this post — an agent acting on a malicious instruction and reaching everything its identity can touch — is exactly what this protection is built to contain. By bringing local AI agents into the same platform teams already use for endpoints, identities, and cloud, Defender turns that blind spot into something security teams can see, investigate, and stop — without getting in the developer's way. Developers keep the AI tools accelerating their work. Defenders get the visibility and real-time protection to stay ahead of attackers as they turn to this new surface. That balance — speed for builders, control for defenders — is what securing the AI era actually requires. Learn more Discover local AI agents with Microsoft Defender Block malicious AI agent behavior with runtime protection Manage and secure your agents with Microsoft Agent 365Organize your multitenant view with Tenant Groups in Microsoft Defender
Managing security across many tenants shouldn’t mean drowning in a single, flat list. We’re excited to share a new capability, now in public preview in the Microsoft Defender multitenant (MTO) portal: Tenant Groups—a flexible way to organize the tenants you manage and switch your view between them with a single click. If you’re a managed security service provider (MSSP), a cloud service provider (CSP), or a security team operating across multiple Entra ID tenants, this one’s for you. What’s new Tenant Groups let you create logical groupings of tenants (by customer segment, geography, criticality, onboarding stage—whatever fits how you work) and seamlessly switch the Defender MTO view to show data from only the tenants in that group. NOTICE: The feature previously called Tenant groups—used for content distribution—has been renamed to Deployment profiles. The name “Tenant Groups” now refers to this new grouping experience. Why it matters Focus, faster – Investigate incidents, hunt threats, and review posture against just the tenants you care about right now—without noise from the rest. Operational clarity – Group tenants the way your team actually works (e.g., Tier 1 customers, EMEA, Pilot rollout). Permissions-aware – Even if a Tenant Group contains more tenants, you’ll only see the ones where you have B2B/GDAP (granular delegated admin privileges) access. Your existing access controls stay in charge. Permissions you’ll need To work with Tenant Groups, your account needs one of the following: Entra ID roles Security Administrator Security Operator Global Administrator Product-specific (MDE, MDI, etc.) role-based access control (RBAC) Global Administrator Security Administrator Plus, any custom RBAC roles required to see data across products Unified RBAC (URBAC) Security/read—to view Tenant Groups Security/manage—to create Tenant Groups Remember: A Tenant Group can include tenants you don’t have access to. You’ll only ever see the ones your permissions allow. Getting started 1. Open Tenant Groups Sign in to the Microsoft Defender portal with administrative credentials, then navigate to Multitenant Management > Tenant Groups. You’ll find a built-in group called My private group that contains all the tenants from your previous setup. You can add or remove tenants from it, but it can’t be deleted. 2. Create a Tenant Group Select + Create tenant group. Give it a descriptive name (e.g., Healthcare customers, EMEA Tier 1). Optionally, add a description so teammates know the group’s intent. Select the tenants you want to include. That’s it—your group is ready. 3. Switch between Tenant Groups In the top-left corner of the portal, select Open multitenant management. Choose the group you just created. Navigate around the Defender MTO portal—incidents, alerts, devices, hunting—and you’ll see only data from the tenants in that group. Switch groups anytime to refocus. Live change detection: If a teammate edits a Tenant Group (adds or removes tenants) while you’re viewing it, the portal surfaces a notification so you know the underlying scope has changed. No stale views, no surprises. 4. Edit a Tenant Group Go back to Multitenant Management > Tenant Groups. Select the group and choose Edit. Add or remove tenants as your environment evolves, then re-test your views. Tips for getting the most out of Tenant Groups Start with how your team triages – Name groups after the workflows you actually run (On-call queue, Customer A—production). Keep groups small and purposeful – Overlapping, focused groups beat one giant catch-all. Pair with Deployment profiles – Use Tenant Groups for viewing, and Deployment profiles for distributing content—two clean, complementary concepts. Audit access regularly – Because group membership is independent of B2B/GDAP access, periodic reviews keep expectations aligned. We want your feedback Tenant Groups are designed around real multitenant operations work—and we’d love to hear how you’re using them. Try it out in your environment, share what’s working (and what isn’t), and let us know what you’d like to see next.Why UK Enterprise Cybersecurity Is Failing in 2026 (And What Leaders Must Change)
Enterprise cybersecurity in large organisations has always been an asymmetric game. But with the rise of AI‑enabled cyber attacks, that imbalance has widened dramatically - particularly for UK and EMEA enterprises operating complex cloud, SaaS, and identity‑driven environments. Microsoft Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Defender Security Research have publicly reported a clear shift in how attackers operate: AI is now embedded across the entire attack lifecycle. Threat actors use AI to accelerate reconnaissance, generate highly targeted phishing at scale, automate infrastructure, and adapt tactics in real time - dramatically reducing the time required to move from initial access to business impact. In recent months, Microsoft has documented AI‑enabled phishing campaigns abusing legitimate authentication mechanisms, including OAuth and device‑code flows, to compromise enterprise accounts at scale. These attacks rely on automation, dynamic code generation, and highly personalised lures - not on exploiting traditional vulnerabilities or stealing passwords. The Reality Gap: Adaptive Attackers vs. Static Enterprise Defences Meanwhile, many UK enterprises still rely on legacy cybersecurity controls designed for a very different threat model - one rooted in a far more predictable world. This creates a dangerous "Resilience Gap." Here is why your current stack is failing- and the C-Suite strategy required to fix it. 1. The Failure of Traditional Antivirus in the AI Era Traditional antivirus (AV) relies on static signatures and hashes. It assumes malicious code remains identical across different targets. AI has rendered this assumption obsolete. Modern malware now uses automated mutation to generate unique code variants at execution time, and adapts behaviour based on its environment. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors using AI‑assisted tooling to rapidly rewrite payload components, ensuring that every deployment looks subtly different. In this model, there is no reliable signature to detect. By the time a pattern exists, the attacker has already moved on. Signature‑based detection is not just slow - it is structurally misaligned with AI‑driven attacks. The Risk: If your security relies on "recognising" a threat, you are already breached. By the time a signature exists, the attacker has evolved. The C-Suite Pivot: Shift investment from artifact detection to EDR/XDR (Extended Detection and Response). We must prioritise behavioural analytics and machine learning models that identify intent rather than file names. 2. Why Perimeter Firewalls Fail in a Cloud-First World Many UK enterprise still rely on firewalls enforcing static allow/deny rules based on IP addresses and ports. This model worked when applications were predictable and networks clearly segmented. Today, enterprise traffic is encrypted, cloud‑hosted, API‑driven, and deeply integrated with SaaS and identity services. AI‑assisted phishing campaigns abusing OAuth and device‑code flows demonstrate this clearly. From a network perspective, everything looks legitimate: HTTPS traffic to trusted identity providers. No suspicious port. No malicious domain. Yet the attacker successfully compromises identity. The Risk: Traditional firewalls are "blind" to identity-based breaches in cloud environments. The C-Suite Pivot: Move to Identity-First Security. Treat Identity as the new Control Plane, integrating signals like user risk, device health, and geolocation into every access decision. 3. The Critical Weakness of Single-Factor Authentication Despite clear NCSC guidance, single-factor passwords remain a common vulnerability in legacy applications and VPNs. AI-driven credential abuse has changed the economics of these attacks. Threat actors now deploy adaptive phishing campaigns that evolve in real-time. Microsoft has observed attackers using AI to hyper-target high-value UK identities- specifically CEOs, Finance Directors, and Procurement leads. The Risk: Static passwords are now the primary weak link in UK supply chain security. The C-Suite Pivot: Mandate Phishing‑resistant MFA (Passkeys or hardware security keys). Implement Conditional Access policies that evaluate risk dynamically at the moment of access, not just at login. Legacy Security vs. AI‑Era Reality 4. The Inherent Risk of VPN-Centric Security VPNs were built on a flawed assumption: that anyone "inside" the network is trustworthy. In 2026, this logic is a liability. AI-assisted attackers now use automation to map internal networks and identify escalation paths the moment they gain VPN access. Furthermore, Microsoft has tracked nation-state actors using AI to create synthetic employee identities- complete with fake resumes and deepfake communication. In these scenarios, VPN access isn't "hacked"; it is legally granted to a fraudster. The Risk: A compromised VPN gives an attacker the "keys to the kingdom." The C-Suite Pivot: Transition to Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). Access must be explicit, scoped to the specific application, and continuously re‑evaluated using behavioural signals. 5. Data: The High-Velocity Target Sensitive data sitting unencrypted in legacy databases or backups is a ticking time bomb. In the AI era, data discovery is no longer a slow, manual process for a hacker. Attackers now use AI to instantly analyse your directory structures, classify your files, and prioritise high-value data for theft. Unencrypted data significantly increases your "blast radius," turning a containable incident into a catastrophic board-level crisis. The Risk: Beyond the technical breach, unencrypted data leads to massive UK GDPR fines and irreparable brand damage. The C-Suite Pivot: Adopt Data-Centric Security. Implement encryption by default, classify data while adding sensitivity labels and start board-level discussions regarding post‑quantum cryptography (PQC) to future-proof your most sensitive assets. 6. The Failure of Static IDS Traditional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) rely on known indicators of compromise - assuming attackers reuse the same tools and techniques. AI‑driven attacks deliberately avoid that assumption. Threat actors are now using Large Language Models (LLMs) to weaponize newly disclosed vulnerabilities within hours. While your team waits for a "known pattern" to be updated in your system, the attacker is already using a custom, AI-generated exploit. The Risk: Your team is defending against yesterday's news while the attacker is moving at machine speed. The C-Suite Pivot: Invest in Adaptive Threat Detection. Move toward Graph‑based XDR platforms that correlate signals across email, endpoint, and cloud to automate investigation and response before the damage spreads. From Static Security to Continuous Security Closing Thought: Security Is a Journey, Not a Destination For UK enterprises, the shift toward adaptive cybersecurity is no longer optional - it is increasingly driven by regulatory expectation, board oversight, and accountability for operational resilience. Recent UK cyber resilience reforms and evolving regulatory frameworks signal a clear direction of travel: cybersecurity is now a board‑level responsibility, not a back‑office technical concern. Directors and executive leaders are expected to demonstrate effective governance, risk ownership, and preparedness for cyber disruption - particularly as AI reshapes the threat landscape. AI is not a future cybersecurity problem. It is a current force multiplier for attackers, exposing the limits of legacy enterprise security architectures faster than many organisations are willing to admit. The uncomfortable truth for boards in 2026 is that no enterprise is 100% secure. Intrusions are inevitable. Credentials will be compromised. Controls will be tested. The difference between a resilient enterprise and a vulnerable one is not the absence of incidents, but how risk is managed when they occur. In mature organisations, this means assuming breach and designing for containment: Access controls that limit blast radius Least privilege and conditional access restricting attackers to the smallest possible scope if an identity is compromised Data‑centric security using automated classification and encryption, ensuring that even when access is misused, sensitive data cannot be freely exfiltrated As a Senior Enterprise Cybersecurity Architect, I see this moment as a unique opportunity. AI adoption does not have to repeat the mistakes of earlier technology waves, where innovation moved fast and security followed years later. We now have a rare chance to embed security from day one - designing identity controls, data boundaries, automated monitoring, and governance before AI systems become business‑critical. When security is built in upfront, enterprises don’t just reduce risk - they gain the confidence to move faster and unlock AI’s value safely. Security is no longer a “department”. In the age of AI, it is a continuous business function - essential to preserving trust and maintaining operational continuity as attackers move at machine speed. References: Inside an AI‑enabled device code phishing campaign | Microsoft Security Blog AI as tradecraft: How threat actors operationalize AI | Microsoft Security Blog Detecting and analyzing prompt abuse in AI tools | Microsoft Security Blog Post-Quantum Cryptography | CSRC Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025 | Microsoft https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/government-adopt-passkey-technology-digital-servicesAnnouncing public preview of custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel
Security attacks span identities, devices, resources, and activity, making it critical to understand how these elements connect to expose real risk. In November, we shared how Sentinel graph brings these signals together into a relationship-aware view to help uncover hidden security risks. We’re excited to announce the public preview of custom graphs in Sentinel, available starting April 1 st . Custom graphs let defenders model relationships that are unique to their organization, then run graph analytics to surface blast radius, attack paths, privilege chains, chokepoints, and anomalies that are difficult to spot in tables alone. In this post, we’ll cover what custom graphs are, how they work, and how to get started so the entire team can use them. Custom graphs Security data is inherently connected: a sign-in leads to a token, a token touches a workload, a workload accesses data, and data movement triggers new activity. Graphs represent these relationships as nodes (entities) and edges (relationships), helping you answer questions like: “Who received the phishing email, who clicked, and which clicks were allowed by the proxy?” or “Show me users who exported notebooks, staged files in storage, then uploaded data to personal cloud storage- the full, three‑phase exfiltration chain through one identity.” With custom graphs, security teams can build, query, and visualize tailored security graphs using data from the Sentinel data lake and non-Microsoft sources, powered by Fabric. By uncovering hidden patterns and attack paths, graphs provide the relationship context needed to surface real risk. This context strengthens AI‑powered agent experiences, speeds investigations, clarifies blast radius, and helps teams move from noisy, disconnected alerts to confident decisions. In the words of our preview customers: “We ingested our Databricks management-plane telemetry into the Sentinel data lake and built a custom security graph. Without writing a single detection rule, the graph surfaced unusual patterns of activity and overprivileged access that we escalated for investigation. We didn't know what we were looking for, the graph surfaced the risk for us by revealing anomalous activity patterns and unusual access combinations driven by relationships, not alerts.” – SVP, Security Solutions | Financial Services organization Use cases Sentinel graph offers embedded, Microsoft managed, security graphs in Defender and Microsoft Purview experiences to help you at every stage of defense, from pre-breach to post-breach and across assets, activities, and threat intelligence. See here for more details. The new custom graph capability gives you full control to create your own graphs combining data from Microsoft sources, non-Microsoft sources, and federated sources in the Sentinel data lake. With custom graphs you can: Understand blast radius – Trace phishing campaigns, malware spread, OAuth abuse, or privilege escalation paths across identities, devices, apps, and data, without stitching together dozens of tables. Reconstruct real attack chains – Model multi-step attacker behavior (MITRE techniques, lateral movement, before/after malware) as connected sequences so investigations are complete and explainable, not a set of partial pivots. Reconstruct these chains from historical data in the Sentinel data lake. Figure 2: Drill into which specific MITRE techniques each IP is executing and in which tactic category Spot hidden risks and anomalies – Detect structural outliers like users with unusually broad access, anomalous email exfiltration, or dangerous permission combinations that are invisible in flat logs. Figure 3: OAuth consent chain – a single compromised user consented four dangerous permissions Creating custom graph Using the Sentinel VS Code extension, you can generate graphs to validate hunting hypotheses, such as understanding attack paths and blast radius of a phishing campaign, reconstructing multi‑step attack chains, and identifying structurally unusual or high‑risk behavior, making it accessible to your team and AI agents. Once persisted via a schedule job, you can access these custom graphs from the ready-to-use section in the graphs section in the Defender portal. Figure 4: Use AI-assisted vibe coding in Visual Studio Code to create tailored security graphs powered by Sentinel data lake and Fabric Graphs experience in the Microsoft Defender portal After creating your custom graphs, you can access them in the Graphs section of the Microsoft Defender portal under Sentinel. From there, you can perform interactive, graph-based investigations, for example, using a graph built for phishing analysis to quickly evaluate the impact of a recent incident, profile the attacker, and trace paths across Microsoft telemetry and third-party data. The graph experience lets you run Graph Query Language (GQL) queries, view the graph schema, visualize results, see results in a table, and interactively traverse to the next hop with a single click. Figure 5: Query, visualize, and traverse custom graphs with the new graph experience in Sentinel Billing Custom graph API usage for creating graph and querying graph is billed according to the Sentinel graph meter. Get started To use custom graphs, you’ll need Microsoft Sentinel data lake enabled in your tenant, since the lake provides the scalable, open-format foundation that custom graphs build on. Use the Sentinel data lake onboarding flow to provision the data lake if it isn’t already enabled. Ensure the required connectors are configured to populate your data lake. See Manage data tiers and retention in Microsoft Sentinel | Microsoft Learn. Create and persist a custom graph. See Get started with custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel (preview) | Microsoft Learn. Run adhoc graph queries and visualize graph results. See Visualize custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel graph (preview) | Microsoft Learn. [Optional] Schedule jobs to write graph query results to the lake tier and analytics tier using notebooks. See Exploring and interacting with lake data using Jupyter Notebooks - Microsoft Security | Microsoft Learn. Learn more Earlier posts (Sentinel graph general availability) RSAC 2026 announcement roundup Custom graphs documentation Custom graph billingCrawl, Walk, Run: A Practitioner's Guide to AI Maturity in the SOC
Every security operations center is being told to adopt AI. Vendors promise autonomous threat detection, instant incident response, and the end of alert fatigue. The reality is messier. Most SOC teams are still figuring out where AI fits into their existing workflows, and jumping straight to autonomous agents without building foundational trust is a recipe for expensive failure. The Crawl, Walk, Run framework offers a more honest path. It's not a new concept. Cloud migration teams, DevOps organizations, and Zero Trust programs have used it for years. But it maps remarkably well to how security teams should adopt AI. Each phase builds organizational trust, governance maturity, and technical capability that the next phase depends on. Skip a phase and the risk compounds. This guide is written for SOC leaders and practitioners who want a practical, phased approach to AI adoption, not a vendor pitch.Strengthening your Security Posture with Microsoft Security Store Innovations at RSAC 2026
Security teams are facing more threats, more complexity, and more pressure to act quickly - without increasing risk or operational overhead. What matters is being able to find the right capability, deploy it safely, and use it where security work already happens. Microsoft Security Store was built with that goal in mind. It provides a single, trusted place to discover, purchase, and deploy Microsoft and partner-built security agents and solutions that extend Microsoft Security - helping you improve protection across SOC, identity, and data protection workflows. Today, the Security Store includes 75+ security agents and 115+ solutions from Microsoft and trusted partners - each designed to integrate directly into Microsoft Security experiences and meet enterprise security requirements. At RSAC 2026, we’re announcing capabilities that make it easier to turn security intent into action- by improving how you discover agents, how quickly you can put them to use, and how effectively you can apply them across workflows to achieve your security outcomes. Meet the Next Generation of Security Agents Security agents are becoming part of day-to-day operations for many teams - helping automate investigations, enrich signals, and reduce manual effort across common security tasks. Since Security Store became generally available, Microsoft and our partners have continued to expand the set of agents that integrate directly with Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Entra, Purview, Intune and Security Copilot. Some of the notable partner-built agents available through Security Store include: XBOW Continuous Penetration Testing Agent XBOW’s penetration testing agents perform pen-tests, analyzes findings, and correlates those findings with a customer’s Microsoft Defender detections. XBOW integrates offensive security directly into Microsoft Security workflows by streaming validated, exploitable AppSec findings into Microsoft Sentinel and enabling investigation through XBOW's Copilot agents in Microsoft Defender. With XBOW’s pen-testing agents, offensive security can run continuously to identify which vulnerabilities are actually exploitable, and how to improve posture and detections. Tanium Incident Scoping Agent The Tanium Incident Scoping Agent (In Preview) is bringing real-time endpoint intelligence directly into Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Security Copilot workflows. The agent automatically scopes incidents, identifies impacted devices, and surfaces actionable context in minutes-helping teams move faster from detection to containment. By combining Tanium’s real-time intelligence with Microsoft Security investigations, you can reduce manual effort, accelerate response, and maintain enterprise-grade governance and control. Zscaler In Microsoft Sentinel, the Zscaler ZIA–ZPA Correlation Agent correlates ZIA and ZPA activity for a given user to speed malsite/malware investigations. It highlights suspicious patterns and recommends ZIA/ZPA policy changes to reduce repeat exposure. These agents build on a growing ecosystem of Microsoft and partner capabilities designed to work together, allowing you to extend Microsoft Security with specialized expertise where it has the most impact. Discover and Deploy Agents and Solutions in the Flow of Security Work Security teams work best when they don’t have to switch tools to make decisions. That’s why Security Store is embedded directly into Microsoft Security experiences - so you can discover and evaluate trusted agents and solutions in context, while working in the tools you already use. When Security Store became generally available, we embedded it into Microsoft Defender, allowing SOC teams to discover and deploy trusted Microsoft and partner‑built agents and solutions in the middle of active investigations. Analysts can now automate response, enrich investigations, and resolve threats all within the Defender portal. At RSAC, we’re expanding this approach across identity and data security. Strengthening Identity Security with Security Store in Microsoft Entra Identity has become a primary attack surface - from fraud and automated abuse to privileged access misuse and posture gaps. Security Store is now embedded in Microsoft Entra, allowing identity and security teams to discover and deploy partner solutions and agents directly within identity workflows. For external and verified identity scenarios, Security Store includes partner solutions that integrate with Entra External ID and Entra Verified ID to help protect against fraud, DDoS attacks, and intelligent bot abuse. These solutions, built by partners such as IDEMIA, AU10TIX, TrueCredential, HUMAN Security, Akamai and Arkose Labs help strengthen trust while preserving seamless user experiences. For enterprise identity security, more than 15 agents available through the Entra Security Store provide visibility into privileged activity and identity risk, posture health and trends, and actionable recommendations to improve identity security and overall security score. These agents are built by partners such as glueckkanja, adaQuest, Ontinue, BlueVoyant, Invoke, and Performanta. This allows you to extend Entra with specialized identity security capabilities, without leaving the identity control plane. Extending Data Protection with Security Store in Microsoft Purview Protecting sensitive data requires consistent controls across where data lives and how it moves. Security Store is now embedded in Microsoft Purview, enabling teams responsible for data protection and compliance to discover partner solutions directly within Purview DLP workflows. Through this experience, you can extend Microsoft Purview DLP with partner data security solutions that help protect sensitive data across cloud applications, enterprise browsers, and networks. These include solutions from Microsoft Entra Global Secure Access and partners such as Netskope, Island, iBoss, and Palo Alto Networks. This experience will be available to customers later this month, as reflected on the M365 roadmap. By discovering solutions in context, teams can strengthen data protection without disrupting established compliance workflows. Across Defender, Entra, and Purview, purchases continue to be completed through the Security Store website, ensuring a consistent, secure, and governed transaction experience - while discovery and evaluation happen exactly where teams already work. Outcome-Driven Discovery, with Security Store Advisor As the number of agents and solutions in the Store grow, finding the right fit for your security scenario quickly becomes more important. That’s why we’re introducing the AI‑guided Security Store Advisor, now generally available. You can describe your goal in natural language - such as “investigate suspicious network activity” and receive recommendations aligned to that outcome. Advisor also includes side-by-side comparison views for agents and solutions, helping you review capabilities, integrated services, and deployment requirements more quickly and reduce evaluation time. Security Store Advisor is designed with Responsible AI principles in mind, including transparency and explainability. You can learn more about how Responsible AI is applied in this experience in the Security Store Advisor Responsible AI FAQ. Overall, this outcome‑driven approach reduces time to value, improves solution fit, and helps your team move faster from intent to action. Learning from the Security Community with Ratings and Reviews Security decisions are strongest when informed by real world use cases. This is why we are introducing Security Store ratings and reviews from security professionals who have deployed and used agents and solutions in production environments. These reviews focus on practical considerations such as integration quality, operational impact, and ease of use, helping you learn from peers facing similar security challenges. By sharing feedback, the security community helps raise the bar for quality and enables faster, more informed decisions, so teams can adopt agents and solutions with greater confidence and reduce time to value. Making agents easier to use post deployment Once you’ve deployed your agents, we’re introducing several new capabilities that make it easier to work with your agents in your daily workflows. These updates help you operationalize agents faster and apply automation where it delivers real value. Interactive chat with agents in Microsoft Defender lets SOC analysts ask questions to agents with specialized expertise, such as understanding impacted devices or understanding what vulnerabilities to prioritize directly in the Defender portal. By bringing a conversational experience with agents into the place where analysts do most of their investigation work, analysts can seamlessly work in collaboration with agents to improve security. Logic App triggers for agents enables security teams to include security agents in their automated, repeatable workflows. With this update, organizations can apply agentic automation to a wider variety of security tasks while integrating with their existing tools and workflows to perform tasks like incident triage and access reviews. Product combinations in Security Store make it easier to deploy complete security solutions from a single streamlined flow - whether that includes connectors, SaaS tools, or multiple agents that need to work together. Increasingly, partners are building agents that are adept at using your SaaS security tools and security data to provide intelligent recommendations - this feature helps you deploy them faster with ease. A Growing Ecosystem Focused on Security Outcomes As the Security Store ecosystem continues to expand, you gain access to a broader set of specialized agents and solutions that work together to help defend your environment - extending Microsoft Security with partner innovation in a governed and integrated way. At the same time, Security Store provides partners a clear path to deliver differentiated capabilities directly into Microsoft Security workflows, aligned to how customers evaluate, adopt, and use security solutions. Get Started Visit https://securitystore.microsoft.com/ to discover security agents and solutions that meet your needs and extend your Microsoft Security investments. If you’re a partner, visit https://securitystore.microsoft.com/partners to learn how to list your solution or agent and reach customers where security decisions are made. Where to find us at RSAC 2026? Security Reborn in the Era of AI workshop Get hands‑on guidance on building and deploying Security Copilot agents and publishing them to the Security Store. March 23 | 8:00 AM | The Palace Hotel Register: Security Reborn in the Era of AI | Microsoft Corporate Microsoft Security Store: An Inside Look Join us for a live theater session exploring what’s coming next for Security Store March 26 | 1:00 PM | Microsoft Security Booth #5744 | North Expo Hall Visit us at the Booth Experience Security Store firsthand - test the experience and connect with experts. Microsoft Booth #1843RSA 2026: What’s new in Microsoft Defender?
Modern attacks increasingly exploit the sprawl of today’s digital environments. In the identity space alone, over half of today’s organizations say each person now has more than 21 distinct accounts. Each one of these accounts is a potential entry point that an attacker can exploit. As organizations adopt cloud, SaaS, AI, and autonomous agents, the rapid growth of non‑human identities accelerates sprawl, expanding the attack surface and increasing gaps in protection. At the same time, agents help accelerate the SOC by automating high‑volume tasks, reducing noise, and enabling analysts to act faster and more consistently. This shift demands a new approach: comprehensive identity security paired with agentic AI to help the SOC better reason across signals, predict risk, and act earlier, while augmenting human analysts to keep pace with increasingly fast and complex attacks. At RSA, we’re excited to announce innovations in Microsoft Defender and Security Copilot to help customers defend against the latest threats. These include: Identity Security: expanded capabilities and enhanced experiences to help the SOC better prepare for, detect and autonomously respond to identity-related threats. Collaboration Security: protect against voice‑based attacks in Teams with real‑time user warnings, SOC‑ready investigation, and new threat & posture insights reporting. Accelerate the SOC with Security Copilot: expansion of the Security Triage Agent to identity and cloud alerts, a new Security Analyst agent to uncover risk and a new chat experience directly in Microsoft Defender. Cloud Security: expansion of multi-cloud visibility to new AWS and GCP services, near real-time container runtime protection to eliminate binary drift, and introducing AI model scanning. Learn more here. Reshaping Identity Security Today’s identity landscape is no longer defined by a single directory and a single set of users. It’s a fast-changing fabric of human, non-human, and emerging agentic identities spread across cloud services, SaaS apps, and on-premises infrastructure—that attackers actively target. To meet this new reality, we’re reshaping identity security in Microsoft Defender to move beyond point defenses and reactive investigation to an autonomous, end-to-end approach that continuously strengthens identity posture, stops active threats while they’re happening, and helps the SOC act faster with less manual effort. To start, we’re broadening our coverage across modern identity fabrics, making posture and activity easier to understand quickly, and tightening the operational loop between identity and the SOC. To do this were delivering new detections, a unified risk score that assesses risk across all accounts and identity types, and updated experiences like the new identity security dashboard that brings your most important posture gaps, active exposures, and identity risk into one place - so security teams can move from fragmented signals to shared context and coordinated action. On top of this improved foundation we are also unveiling autonomous ITDR in two complementary ways. First, we’re extending Security Copilot’s agentic triage capabilities to identity. With the new Security Alert Triage Agent, Defender can autonomously evaluate high‑volume identity alerts, distinguish true threats from noise, and surface clear, explainable verdicts so analysts can focus immediately on what requires action. Second, we’re bringing the AI-powered just-in-time hardening of predictive shielding to identity allowing Defender to not only disrupt threats but also anticipate an attacker’s next move and automatically enforces targeted controls to block credential- and token-driven pivots before they succeed. Together, these innovations empower security teams to understand their identity footprint, prioritize what matters most, and stop identity-driven attacks earlier: Expanded coverage across modern identity fabrics with new identity-specific detections Identity-level insights that turn sprawl into clarity via an updated dashboard that provides a unified inventory and improved correlation across SaaS apps and identity types—elevating the SOC view from accounts to the identity. Streamlined protections and aligned workflows across Defender and Entra, including a new identity-level risk score to help identity and SOC teams prioritize and act from shared signals. Predictive shielding applies precise, just-in-time hardening actions used during identity attacks including RemoteOps hardening and Remote Registry hardening —helping prevent lateral movement. Autonomous triage for identity alerts with Security Copilot, expanding the Security Triage Agent so identity alerts can be investigated consistently and at scale, with clear verdicts and explainable reasoning to speed up response. Learn more about these innovations here. Protect collaboration threats and prove security outcomes As collaboration platforms become a new front door for attackers, Microsoft Defender extends protection beyond email to detect and respond to voice‑based social engineering in Microsoft Teams. New Teams calling protection surfaces suspicious and malicious calls, enables SOC teams to investigate and correlate call activity using Advanced Hunting, and delivers real‑time in‑call warnings when a call appears to impersonate a trusted contact, closing the gap between what users experience and what analysts can investigate. To help organizations clearly measure and communicate the impact of these protections, Microsoft Defender is introducing the Protection & Posture Insights report. It gives customers a tenant‑specific view of the threats targeting their environment, highlighting spam, phishing, and malware campaigns observed against users. The report delivers personalized insights and policy recommendations to reduce exposure, while enabling teams to validate results, and share credible, executive‑ready security outcomes—without manual data assembly. Read more here. Accelerate your security operations at scale with Security Copilot Adversaries are using AI to accelerate attacks and increase sophistication. At RSA Conference 2026, we’re expanding our innovation around autonomous and assistive AI in Microsoft Defender with Security Copilot—helping defenders operate with the speed, scale, and intelligence required to stay ahead of modern threats across the entire SOC lifecycle. In addition to expanding agentic triage to identity alerts, we’re extending that same capability to cloud—bringing phish, identity and cloud triage together within a single agent. The Security Alert Triage Agent helps analysts autonomously determine whether these alerts represent real threats or false alarms, delivering natural language verdicts and transparent, step-by-step decision reasoning. We’re also announcing the Security Analyst Agent, designed to help security teams uncover hidden risk. This agent performs deep, multi-step investigations across Microsoft Defender and Sentinel telemetry to surface high-impact threats, cut through the noise, and deliver prioritized insights in minutes. Every finding is accompanied by transparent reasoning and supporting evidence. Lastly, we’re bringing a chat experience for Security Copilot directly within Microsoft Defender. Analysts can ask questions, explore hypotheses, and follow investigative threads across incidents, alerts, identities, devices, IPs, and other evidence without switching tools or manually piecing together context. You can learn more about Microsoft Security Copilot news at RSA Conference 2026 here. Looking ahead The Microsoft Defender announcements at RSA 2026 reflect a clear shift toward agentic and autonomous security, while augmenting the SOC with Security Copilot–driven workflows. Together, these capabilities give defenders clearer context, tighter control, and the ability to stop attacks earlier, before adversaries can escalate privileges or move laterally. Microsoft’s continued investment signals a longer-term evolution toward agentic security operations that anticipate attacker behavior, adapt in real time, and steadily reduce risk as environments and threats continue to evolve. Learn more at RSA Conference 2026! To learn more about Microsoft Defender and Security Copilot, visit us at booth # at RSA Conference 2026. Our team will be demonstrating how autonomous agents and assistive AI experiences are helping SOC teams move faster through alert triage, investigation, and response. You can join our booth sessions: Empowering the SOC with assistive and autonomous AI with Yuval Derman | March 23rd at 5.15PM Predictive Shielding: Protecting identities before attackers pivot | March 24th at 4.30PM Identity Security with Microsoft | March 25 at 3:30PM For a full list of all the ways to connect with us at RSA, check out our dedicated RSAC 2026 page.
