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Index Community Calls: January 2026 | February 2026 Upcoming Community Calls January 2026 Jan. 14 | 8:00am | 425 Show | Microsoft MCP Server for Enterprise: Transforming User, Security & Identity Tasks with AI See Microsoft’s MCP Server in action! Discover how AI-powered workflows simplify tasks and strengthen security. Packed with demos, this session shows how to operationalize AI across your organization. Jan. 15 | 8:00am | Microsoft Purview | Purview Data Security and Entra Global Secure Access Deep Dive Learn how Microsoft Global Secure Access (GSA) and Purview extend data loss prevention to the network, inspecting traffic to and from sanctioned and unsanctioned apps, including AI, and block sensitive data exfiltration in real time. The guidance in this session will provide actionable steps to security teams getting started with extending data security to the network layer to support compliance and zero trust strategies. 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Reachability of a domain across multiple tenants
I have a general question about an Entra scenario that we currently need to implement. Our company consists of 3 companies (companyA.com, companyB.com, companyC.com), each with their own MS Tenant. Here, A is the parent company and B and C are subsidiaries. Is it somehow possible, perhaps with Cross Tenant Synchronization from B, C -> A, that users from the subsidiaries can log in with the parent company's domain name in Entra, Teams & Co., and that Teams invitations can also be sent via an email address of the parent company? So I have mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons and I would like this user to also be known as mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons in the Microsoft ecosystem. From a marketing perspective, it is important that all employees log in and are reachable with the same domain. A migration into one tenant is probably not easily possible for legal reasons. Thank you in advance for your assistance. ChristianAccelerate Your Security Copilot Readiness with Our Global Technical Workshop Series
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In recent months, cybersecurity experts have sounded the alarm on a surge of fake “employees” – job candidates who are not who they claim to be. These fraudsters use everything from fabricated CVs and stolen identities to AI-generated deepfake videos in interviews to land jobs under false pretenses. It’s a global phenomenon making headlines on LinkedIn and in the press. With the topic surfacing everywhere, I wanted to take a closer look at what’s really going on — and explore the solutions that could help organizations respond to this growing challenge. And as it happens, one solution is finally reaching maturity at exactly the right moment: decentralized identity. Let me walk you through it. But first, let’s look at a few troubling facts: Even tech giants aren’t immune. Amazon’s Chief Security Officer revealed that since April 2024 the company has blocked over 1,800 suspected North Korean scammers from getting hired, and that the volume of such fake applicants jumped 27% each quarter this year (1.1). In fact, a coordinated scheme involving North Korean IT operatives posing as remote workers has infiltrated over 300 U.S. companies since 2020, generating at least $6.8 million in revenue for the regime (2.1). CrowdStrike also reported more than 320 confirmed incidents in the past year alone, marking a 220% surge in activity (2.2). And it’s not just North Korea: organised crime groups globally are adopting similar tactics. This trend is not a small blip; it’s likely a sign of things to come. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four job applicant profiles could be fake in some way (3). Think about that – in a few years, 25% of the people applying to your jobs might be bots or impostors trying to trick their way in. We’re not just talking about exaggerated resumes; we’re talking about full-scale deception: people hiring stand-ins for interviews, AI bots filling out assessments, and deepfake avatars smiling through video calls. It’s a hiring manager’s nightmare — no one wants to waste time interviewing bots or deepfakes — and a CISO’s worst-case scenario rolled into one. The Rise of the Deepfake Employee What does a “fake employee” actually do? In many cases, these impostors are part of organized schemes (even state-sponsored) to steal money or data. They might forge impressive résumés and create a minimal but believable online presence. During remote interviews, some have been caught using deepfake video filters – basically digital masks – to appear as someone else. In one case, Amazon investigators noticed an interviewee’s typing did not sync with the on-screen video (the keystrokes had a 110ms lag); it turned out to be a North Korean hacker remotely controlling a fake persona on the video call (1.2). Others refuse video entirely, claiming technical issues, so you only hear a voice. Some even hire proxy interviewees – a real person who interviews in their place. The level of creativity is frightening. Once inside, a fake employee can do serious damage. They gain legitimate access to internal systems, data, and tools. Some have stolen sensitive source code and threatened to leak it unless the company paid a ransom (1). Others quietly set up backdoor access for future cyberattacks. And as noted, if they’re part of a nation-state operation, the salary you pay them is funding adversaries. The U.S. Department of Justice recently warned that many North Korean IT workers send the majority of their pay back to the regime’s illicit weapons programs (1)(2.3). Beyond the financial angle, think of the security breach: a malicious actor is now an “insider” with an access badge. No sector is safe. While tech companies with lots of remote jobs were the first targets, the scam has expanded. According to the World Economic Forum, about half of the companies targeted by these attacks aren’t in the tech industry at all (4). Financial services, healthcare, media, energy – any business that hires remote freelancers or IT staff could be at risk. Many Fortune 500 firms have quietly admitted to Charles Carmakal (Chief Technology Officer at Google Cloud’s Mandiant) that they’ve encountered fake candidates (2.3). Brandon Wales — former Executive Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and now VP of Cybersecurity Strategy at SentinelOne — warned that the “scale and speed” of these operations is unlike anything seen before (2.3). Rivka Little, Chief Growth Officer at Socure, put it bluntly: “Every Fortune 100 and potentially Fortune 500 has a pretty high number of risky employees on their books” right now (1). If you’re in charge of security or IT, this should send a chill down your spine. How do you defend against an attack that walks in through your front door (virtually) with HR’s approval? It calls for rethinking some fundamental practices, which leads us to the biggest gap these scams have exposed: identity verification in the hiring process. The Identity Verification Gap in Hiring Let’s face it: traditional hiring and onboarding operate on a lot of trust. You collect a résumé, maybe call some references, do a background check that might catch a criminal record but won’t catch a well-crafted fake identity. You might ask for a copy of a driver’s license or passport to satisfy HR paperwork, but how thoroughly is it checked? And once the person is hired and given an employee account, how often do we re-confirm that person’s identity in the months or years that follow? Almost never. Now let’s look at the situation from the reverse perspective: During your last recruitment, or when you became a new vendor for a client, were you asked to send over a full copy of your ID via email? Most likely, yes. You send a scan of your passport or ID card to an HR representative or a partner’s portal, and you have no idea where that image gets stored, who can see it, or how long it will sit around. It feels uncomfortable, but we do it because we need to prove who we are. In reality, we’re making a leap of faith that the process is secure. This is the identity verification gap. Companies are trusting documents and self-assertions that can be forged, and they rarely have a way to verify those beyond a cursory glance. Fraudsters exploit this gap mercilessly. They provide fake documents that look real, or steal someone else’s identity details to pass background checks. Once they’ve cleared that initial hurdle, the organization treats them as legit. IT sets up accounts, security gives them access, and from then on the “user identity” is assumed to be genuine. Forever. Moreover, once an employee is on board, internal processes often default to trust. Need a password reset? The helpdesk might ask for your birthdate or employee ID – pieces of info a savvy attacker can learn or steal. We don’t usually ask an employee who calls IT to re-prove that they are the same person HR hired months or years ago. All of this stands in contrast to the principle of Zero Trust security that many companies are now adopting. Thanks to John Kindervag (Forrester, 2009), Zero Trust says “never trust, always verify” each access request. But how can you verify if the underlying identity was fake to start with? As part of Microsoft, we often say that “identity is the new perimeter” – meaning the primary defense line is verifying identities, not just securing network walls. If that identity perimeter is built on shaky ground (unverified people), the whole security model is weak. So, what can be done? Security leaders and even the World Economic Forum are advocating for stronger identity proofing in hiring. The WEF specifically recommends “verifiable government ID checks at multiple stages of recruitment and into employment” (4). In other words, don’t just verify once and forget it – verify early, verify often. That might mean an ID and background check when offering the job, another verification during onboarding, and perhaps periodic re-checks or at least on certain events (like when the employee requests elevated privileges). Amazon’s CSO, S. Schmidt, echoed this after battling North Korean fakes; he advised companies to “Implement identity verification at multiple hiring stages and monitor for anomalous technical behavior” as a key defense (1). Of course, doing this manually is tough. You can’t very well ask each candidate to fly in their first day just to show their passport in person, especially with global and remote workforces. That’s where technology is stepping up. Enter the world of Verified ID and decentralized identity. Enter Microsoft Entra Verified ID: proving Identity, not just Checking a Box Imagine if, instead of emailing copies of your passport to every new employer or partner, you could carry a digital identity credential that is already verified and can be trusted by others instantly. That’s the idea behind Microsoft Entra Verified ID. It’s essentially a system for issuing and verifying cryptographically-secure digital identity credentials. Let’s break down what that means in plain terms. At its core, a Verified ID credential is like a digital ID card that lives in an app on your phone. But unlike a photocopy of your driver’s license (which anyone could copy, steal or tamper with), this digital credential is signed with cryptographic keys that make it tamper-proof and verifiable. It’s based on open standards. Microsoft has been heavily involved in the development of Decentralized Identifiers (DID) and W3C Verifiable Credentials standards over the past few years (7). The benefit of standards is that this isn’t a proprietary Microsoft-only thing – it’s part of a broader move toward decentralized identity, where the user is in control of their own credentials. Here’s a real-life analogy: When you go to a bar and need to prove you’re over 18, you show your driver’s license, National ID or Passport. The bouncer checks your birth date and maybe the hologram, but they don’t photocopy your entire ID and keep it; they just verify it and hand it back. You remain in possession of your ID. Now translate that to digital interactions: with Verified ID, you could have a credential on your phone that says “Government ID verified: [Your Name], age 25”. When a verifier (like an employer or service) needs proof, you share that credential through a secure app. The verifier’s system checks the credential’s digital signature to confirm it was issued by a trusted authority (for example, a background check company or a government agency) and that it hasn’t been altered. You don’t have to send over a scan of your actual passport or reveal extra info like your full birthdate or address – the credential can be designed to reveal only the necessary facts (e.g. “is over 18” = yes). This concept is called selective disclosure, and it’s a big win for privacy. Crucially, you decide which credentials to share and with whom. You might have one that proves your legal name and age (from a government issuer), another that proves your employment status (from your employer), another that proves a certification or degree (from a university). And you only share them when needed. They can also have expiration dates or be revoked. For instance, an employment credential could automatically expire when you leave the company. This means if someone tries to use an old credential, it would fail verification – another useful security feature. Now, how do these credentials get issued in the first place? This is where the integration of our Microsoft Partner IDEMIA comes in, which was a highlight of Microsoft Ignite 2025. IDEMIA is a company you might not have heard of, but they’re a huge player in the identity world – they’re the folks behind many government ID and biometric systems (think passport chips, national ID programs, biometric border control, etc.). Microsoft announced that Entra Verified ID now integrate IDEMIA’s identity verification services. In practice, this means when you need a high-assurance credential (like proving your real identity for a job), the system can invoke IDEMIA to do a thorough check. For example, as part of a remote onboarding process, an employer using Verified ID could ask the new hire to verify their identity through IDEMIA. The new hire gets a link or prompt, and is guided to scan their official government ID and take a live selfie video. IDEMIA’s system checks that the ID is authentic (not a forgery) and matches the person’s face, doing so in a privacy-protecting way (for instance, biometric data might be used momentarily to match and then not stored long-term, depending on the service policies). This process confirms “Yes, this is Alice, and we’ve confirmed her identity with a passport and live face check.” At that point, Microsoft Entra Verified ID can issue a credential to Alice, such as “Alice – identity verified by Contoso Corp on [Date]”. Alice stores this credential in her digital wallet (for instance, the Microsoft Authenticator app). Now Alice can present that credential to apps or IT systems to prove it’s really Alice. The employer might require it to activate her accounts, or later if Alice calls IT support, they might ask her to present the credential to prove her identity for a password reset. The verification of the credential is cryptographically secure and instantaneous – the IT system just checks the digital signature. There’s no need to manually pull up Alice’s passport scan from HR files or interrogate her with personal questions. Plus, Alice isn’t repeatedly sending sensitive personal documents; she shared them once with a trusted verifier (IDEMIA via the Verified ID app flow), not with every individual who asks for ID. This reduces the exposure of her personal data. From the company’s perspective, this approach dramatically improves security and streamlines processes. During onboarding, it’s actually faster to have someone go through an automated ID verification flow than to coordinate an in-person verification or trust slow manual checks. Organizations also avoid collecting and storing piles of personal documents, which is a compliance headache and a breach risk. Instead, they get a cryptographic assurance. Think of it like the difference between keeping copies of everyone’s credit card versus using a payment token – the latter is safer and just as effective for the transaction. Microsoft has been laying the groundwork for this for years. Back in 2020 (and even 2017....), Microsoft discussed decentralized identity concepts where users own their identity data and apps verify facts about you through digital attestations (7). Now it’s reality: Entra Verified ID uses those open standards (DID and Verifiable Credentials) under the hood. Plus, the integration with IDEMIA and others means it’s not just theoretical — it’s operational and scalable. As Ankur Patel, one of our product leaders for Microsoft Entra, said about these integrations: it enables “high assurance verification without custom business contracts or technical implementations” (6). In other words, companies can now easily plug this capability in, rather than building their own verification processes from scratch. Before moving on, let’s not forget to include the promised quote from IDEMIA’s exec that really underscores the value: “With more than 40 years of experience in identity issuance, verification and advanced biometrics, our collaboration with Microsoft enables secure authentication with verified identities organizations can rely on to ensure individuals are who they claim to be and critical services can be accessed seamlessly and securely.” – Amit Sharma, Head of Digital Strategy, IDEMIA (6) That quote basically says it all: verified identities that organizations can rely on, enabling seamless and secure access. Now, let’s see how that translates into real-world usage. Use Cases and Benefits: From Onboarding to Recovery How can Verified ID (plus IDEMIA’s) be applied in day-to-day business? There are several high-impact use cases: Remote Employee Onboarding (aka Hire with Confidence): This is the most straightforward scenario. When bringing in a new hire you haven’t met in person, you can integrate an identity verification step. As described earlier, the new employee verifies their government ID and face once, gets a credential, and uses that to start their work. The hiring team can trust that “this person is real and is who they say they are.” This directly prevents many fake-employee scams. In fact, some companies have already tried informal versions of this: The Register reported a story of an identity verification company (ironically) who, after seeing suspicious candidates, told one applicant “next interview we’ll do a document verification, it’s easy, we’ll send you a barcode to scan your ID” – and that candidate never showed up for the next round because they knew they’d be caught (1). With Verified ID, this becomes a standard, automated part of the process, not an ad-hoc test. As a bonus, the employee’s Verified ID credential can also speed up IT onboarding (auto-provisioning accounts when the verified credential is presented) and even simplify things like proving work authorization to other services (think how you often have to send copies of IDs to benefits providers or background screeners – a credential could replace that). The new hire starts faster, and with less anxiety because they know there’s a strong proof attached to their identity, and the company has less risk from day one. Oh, and HR isn’t stuck babysitting sensitive documents – governance and privacy risk go down. Stronger Helpdesk and Support Authentication: Helpdesk fraud is a common way attackers exploit weak verification. Instead of asking employees for their first pet’s name or a short code (which an attacker might phish), support can use Verified ID to confirm the person’s identity. For example, if someone calls IT saying “I’m locked out of my account,” the support portal can send a push notification asking the user to present their Verified Employee credential or do a quick re-verify via the app. If the person on the phone is an impostor, they’ll fail this check. If it’s the real employee, it’s an easy tap on their phone to prove it’s them. This approach secures processes like password resets, unlocking accounts, or granting temporary access. Think of it as caller-ID on steroids. Instead of taking someone’s word that “I am Alice from Finance,” the system actually asks for proof. And because the proof is cryptographically verified, it’s much harder to trick than a human support agent with a sob story. This reduces the burden on support too – less time playing detective with personal questions, more confidence in automating certain requests. Account Recovery and On-Demand Re-Verification: We’ve all dealt with the hassle of account recovery when we lose a password or device. Often it’s a weak link: backup codes, personal Q&A, the support team asking some manager who can’t even tell if it’s really you, or asking for a copy of your ID… With Verified ID, organizations can offer a secure self-service recovery that doesn’t rely on shared secrets. For instance, if you lose access to your multi-factor auth and need to regain entry, you could be prompted to verify your identity with a government ID check through the Verified ID system. Once you pass, you might be allowed to reset your authentication methods. Microsoft is already moving in this direction – there’s talk of replacing security questions with Verified ID checks for Entra ID account recovery (6). The benefit here is you get high assurance that the person recovering the account is the legitimate owner. This is especially important for administrators or other highly privileged users. And it’s still faster for the user than, say, waiting days for IT to manual vet and approve a request. Additionally, companies could have policies where every X months, employees might get a prompt to reaffirm their identity if they’re engaging in sensitive work. It keeps everyone honest and catches any anomalies (like, imagine an attacker somehow compromised an account – when faced with an unexpected ID check, they wouldn’t be able to comply, raising a red flag). Step-Up Authentication for Sensitive Actions: Not every action an employee takes needs this level of verification, but some absolutely do. For example, a finance officer making a $10 million wire transfer, or an engineer pushing code to a production environment, or an HR admin downloading an entire employee database – these could all trigger a step-up authentication that includes verifying the user’s identity credential. In practice, the user might get a pop-up saying “Please present your Verified ID to continue.” It might even ask for a quick fresh selfie depending on the sensitivity, which can be matched against the one on file (using Face Match in a privacy-conscious way). This is like saying: “We know you logged in with your password and MFA earlier, but this action is so critical that we want to double-check you are still the one executing it – not someone who stole your session or is using your computer.” It’s analogous to how some banks send a one-time code for high-value transactions, but instead of just a code (which could be stolen), it’s verifying you. This dramatically reduces the risk of insider threats and account takeovers causing catastrophic damage. And for the user, it’s usually a simple extra step that they’ll understand the importance of, especially in high-stakes fields. It builds trust – both that the company trusts them enough to give access, but also verifies them to ensure no one is impersonating them. In all these cases, Verified ID is adding security without a huge usability cost. In fact, many users might prefer it to the status quo: I’d rather verify my identity once properly than have to answer a bunch of security questions or have an IT person eyeballing my ID over a grainy video call. It also introduces transparency and control. As an employee, if I’m using a Verified ID, I know exactly what credential I’m sharing and why, and I have a log of it. It’s not an opaque process where I send documents into a void. From a governance perspective, using Verified ID means less widespread personal data to protect, and a clearer audit trail of “this action was taken by Alice, whose identity was verified by method X at time Y.” It can even help with regulatory compliance – for instance, proving that you really know who has access to sensitive financial data (important for things like SOX compliance or other audits). And circling back to the theme of fake employees, if such a system is in place, it’s a massive deterrent. The barrier to entry for fraudsters becomes much higher. It’s not impossible (nothing is, and you still need to Assume breach), but now they’d have to fool a top-tier document verification and biometric check – not just an overworked recruiter. That likely requires physical presence and high-quality fake documents, which are riskier and more costly for attackers. The more companies adopt such measures, the less “return on investment” these hiring scams will have for cybercriminals. The Bigger Picture: Verified Identity as the New Security Frontier The convergence of trends here is interesting. On one hand, we have digital transformation and remote work which opened the door to these novel attacks. On the other hand, we have new security philosophies like Zero Trust that emphasize continuous verification of identity and context. Verified ID is essentially Zero Trust for the hiring and identity side of things: “never trust an identity claim, always verify it.” What’s exciting is that this can now be done without turning the enterprise into a surveillance state or creating unbearable friction for legitimate users. It leverages cryptography and user-centric design to raise security and preserve privacy. Microsoft’s involvement in decentralized identity and the integration of partners like IDEMIA signals that this approach is maturing. It’s moving from pilot projects to being built into mainstream products (Entra ID, Microsoft 365, LinkedIn even offers verification badges via Entra Verified ID now (5)). It’s worth noting LinkedIn’s angle here: job seekers can verify where they work or their government ID on their LinkedIn profile, which could also help employers spot fakes (though it’s voluntary and early-stage). For CISOs and identity architects, Verified ID offers a concrete tool to address what was previously a very squishy problem. Instead of just crossing your fingers that employees are who they say they are, you can enforce it. It’s analogous to the evolution of payments security: we moved from signatures (which were rarely checked) to PIN codes and chips, and now to contactless cryptographic payments. Hiring and access management can undergo a similar upgrade from assumption-based to verification-based. Of course, adopting Verified ID or any new identity tech requires planning. Organizations will need to update their onboarding processes, train HR and IT staff on the new procedure, and ensure employees are comfortable with it. Privacy considerations must be addressed (e.g., clarify that biometric data used for verification isn’t stored indefinitely, etc.). But compared to the alternative – doing nothing and hoping to avoid being the next company in a scathing news headline about North Korean fake workers – the effort is worthwhile. In summary, human identity has become the new primary perimeter for cybersecurity. We can build all the firewalls and endpoint protections we want, but if a malicious actor can legitimately log in through the front door as an employee, those defenses may not matter. Verified identity solutions like Microsoft Entra Verified ID (with partners like IDEMIA) provide a way to fortify that perimeter with strong, real-time checks. They bring trust back into remote interactions by shifting from “trust by default” to “trust because verified.” This is not just a theoretical future; it’s happening now. As of late 2025, these tools are generally available and being rolled out in enterprises. Early adopters will likely be those in highly targeted sectors or with regulatory pressures – think defense contractors, financial institutions, and tech companies burned by experience. But I suspect it will trickle into standard best practices over the next few years, much like multi-factor authentication did. The fight against fake employees and deepfake hiring scams will continue, and attackers will evolve new tricks (perhaps trying to fake the verifications themselves). But having this layer in place tilts the balance back in favor of the defenders. It forces attackers to take more risks and expend more resources, which in turn dissuades many from even trying. To end on a practical note: If you’re a security decision-maker, now is a good time to evaluate your organization’s hiring and identity verification practices. Conduct a risk assessment – do you have any way to truly verify a new remote hire’s identity? How confident are you that all your current employees are real? If those questions make you uncomfortable, it’s worth looking into solutions like Verified ID. We’re entering an era where digital identity proofing will be as standard as background checks in HR processes. The technology has caught up to the threat, and embracing it could save your company from a very costly “lesson learned.” Remember: trust is good, but verified trust is better. By making identity verification a seamless part of the employee lifecycle, we can help ensure that the only people on the payroll are the ones we intended to hire. In a world of sophisticated fakes, that confidence is priceless. Sources: (1.1) The Register – Amazon blocked 1,800 suspected North Korean scammers seeking jobs (Dec 18, 2025) – S. Schmidt comments on DPRK fake workers and advises multi-stage identity verification. https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/18/amazon_blocked_fake_dprk_workers ("We believe, at this point, every Fortune 100 and potentially Fortune 500 has a pretty high number of risky employees on their books" Socure Chief Growth Officer Rivka Little) & https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stephenschmidt1_over-the-past-few-years-north-korean-dprk-activity-7407485036142276610-dot7 (“Implement identity verification at multiple hiring stages and monitor for anomalous technical behavior”, Amazon’s CSO, S. Schmidt) | (1.2) Heal Security – Amazon Catches North Korean IT Worker by Tracking Tiny 110ms Keystroke Delays (Dec 19, 2025). https://healsecurity.com/amazon-catches-north-korean-it-worker-by-tracking-tiny-110ms-keystroke-delays/ (2.1) U.S. Department of Justice – “Charges and Seizures Brought in Fraud Scheme Aimed at Denying Revenue for Workers Associated with North Korea” (May 16, 2024). https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/charges-and-seizures-brought-fraud-scheme-aimed-denying-revenue-workers-associated-north | (2.2) PCMag – “Remote Scammers Infiltrate 300+ Companies” (Aug 4, 2025). https://www.pcmag.com/news/is-your-coworker-a-north-korean-remote-scammers-infiltrate-300-plus-companies | (2.3) POLITICO – Tech companies have a big remote worker problem: North Korean operatives (May 12 2025). https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/12/north-korea-remote-workers-us-tech-companies-00340208 ("I’ve talked to a lot of CISOs at Fortune 500 companies, and nearly every one that I’ve spoken to about the North Korean IT worker problem has admitted they’ve hired at least one North Korean IT worker, if not a dozen or a few dozen,” Charles Carmakal, Chief Technology Officer at Google Cloud’s Mandiant) & North Koreans posing as remote IT workers infiltrated 136 U.S. companies (Nov 14, 2025). https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/14/north-korean-remote-work-it-scam-00652866 HR Dive – By 2028, 1 in 4 candidate profiles will be fake, Gartner predicts (Aug 8, 2025) – Gartner research highlighting rising candidate fraud and 25% fake profile forecast. https://www.hrdive.com/news/fake-job-candidates-ai/757126/ World Economic Forum – Unmasking the AI-powered, remote IT worker scams threatening businesses (Dec 15, 2025) – Overview of deepfake hiring threats; recommends government ID checks at multiple hiring stages. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/unmasking-ai-powered-remote-it-worker-scams-threatening-businesses-worldwide/ The Verge – LinkedIn gets a free verified badge that lets you prove where you work (Apr 2023) – Describes LinkedIn’s integration with Microsoft Entra for profile verification. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/12/23679998/linkedin-verification-badge-system-clear-microsoft-entra Microsoft Tech Community – Building defense in depth: Simplifying identity security with new partner integrations (Nov 24, 2025 by P. Nrisimha) – Microsoft Entra blog announcing Verified ID GA, includes IDEMIA integration and quotes (Amit Sharma, Ankur Patel). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-entra-blog/building-defense-in-depth-simplifying-identity-security-with-new/ba-p/4468733 & https://www.linkedin.com/posts/idemia-public-security_synced-passkeys-and-high-assurance-account-activity-7407061181879709696-SMi7 & https://www.linkedin.com/posts/4ankurpatel_synced-passkeys-and-high-assurance-account-activity-7406757097578799105-uFZz ("high assurance verification without custom business contracts or technical implementations", Ankur Patel) Microsoft Entra Blog – Building trust into digital experiences with decentralized identities (June 10, 2020 by A. Simons & A. Patel) – Background on Microsoft’s approach to decentralized identity (DID, Verifiable Credentials). https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-entra-blog/building-trust-into-digital-experiences-with-decentralized/ba-p/1257362 & Decentralized digital identities and blockchain: The future as we see it. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2018/02/12/decentralized-digital-identities-and-blockchain-the-future-as-we-see-it/ & Partnering for a path to digital identity (Janv 22, 2018) https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/01/22/partnering-for-a-path-to-digital-identity/ About the Author I'm Samuel Gaston-Raoul, Partner Solution Architect at Microsoft, working across the EMEA region with the diverse ecosystem of Microsoft partners—including System Integrators (SIs) and strategic advisory firms, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) / Software Development Companies (SDCs), and Startups. I engage with our partners to build, scale, and innovate securely on Microsoft Cloud and Microsoft Security platforms. With a strong focus on cloud and cybersecurity, I help shape strategic offerings and guide the development of security practices—ensuring alignment with market needs, emerging challenges, and Microsoft’s product roadmap. I also engage closely with our product and engineering teams to foster early technical dialogue and drive innovation through collaborative design. Whether through architecture workshops, technical enablement, or public speaking engagements, I aim to evangelize Microsoft’s security vision while co-creating solutions that meet the evolving demands of the AI and cybersecurity era.
Entra Risky Users Custom Role
My customer implemented unified RBAC (Defender Portal) and removed the Entra Security Operator role. They lost the ability to manage Risky Users in Entra. Two options explored by the customer - Protected Identity Administrator role (licensing unclear) or create a custom role with microsoft.directory/identityProtection/riskyUsers/update, which they couldn't find under custom role. Do you know if there are other options to manage Risky Users without using the Security Operator role?From “No” to “Now”: A 7-Layer Strategy for Enterprise AI Safety
The “block” posture on Generative AI has failed. In a global enterprise, banning these tools doesn't stop usage; it simply pushes intellectual property into unmanaged channels and creates a massive visibility gap in corporate telemetry. The priority has now shifted from stopping AI to hardening the environment so that innovation can run at velocity without compromising data sovereignty. Traditional security perimeters are ineffective against the “slow bleed” of AI leakage - where data moves through prompts, clipboards, and autonomous agents rather than bulk file transfers. To secure this environment, a 7-layer defense-in-depth model is required to treat the conversation itself as the new perimeter. 1. Identity: The Only Verifiable Perimeter Identity is the primary control plane. Access to AI services must be treated with the same rigor as administrative access to core infrastructure. The strategy centers on enforcing device-bound Conditional Access, where access is strictly contingent on device health. To solve the "Account Leak" problem, the deployment of Tenant Restrictions v2 (TRv2) is essential to prevent users from signing into personal tenants using corporate-managed devices. For enhanced coverage, Universal Tenant Restrictions (UTR) via Global Secure Access (GSA) allows for consistent enforcement at the cloud edge. While TRv2 authentication-plane is GA, data-plane protection is GA for the Microsoft 365 admin center and remains in preview for other workloads such as SharePoint and Teams. 2. Eliminating the Visibility Gap (Shadow AI) You can’t secure what you can't see. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (MDCA) serves to discover and govern the enterprise AI footprint, while Purview DSPM for AI (formerly AI Hub) monitors Copilot and third-party interactions. By categorizing tools using MDCA risk scores and compliance attributes, organizations can apply automated sanctioning decisions and enforce session controls for high-risk endpoints. 3. Data Hygiene: Hardening the “Work IQ” AI acts as a mirror of internal permissions. In a "flat" environment, AI acts like a search engine for your over-shared data. Hardening the foundation requires automated sensitivity labeling in Purview Information Protection. Identifying PII and proprietary code before assigning AI licenses ensures that labels travel with the data, preventing labeled content from being exfiltrated via prompts or unauthorized sharing. 4. Session Governance: Solving the “Clipboard Leak” The most common leak in 2025 is not a file upload; it’s a simple copy-paste action or a USB transfer. Deploying Conditional Access App Control (CAAC) via MDCA session policies allows sanctioned apps to function while specifically blocking cut/copy/paste. This is complemented by Endpoint DLP, which extends governance to the physical device level, preventing sensitive data from being moved to unmanaged USB storage or printers during an AI-assisted workflow. Purview Information Protection with IRM rounds this out by enforcing encryption and usage rights on the files themselves. When a user tries to print a "Do Not Print" document, Purview triggers an alert that flows into Microsoft Sentinel. This gives the SOC visibility into actual policy violations instead of them having to hunt through generic activity logs. 5. The “Agentic” Era: Agent 365 & Sharing Controls Now that we're moving from "Chat" to "Agents", Agent 365 and Entra Agent ID provide the necessary identity and control plane for autonomous entities. A quick tip: in large-scale tenants, default settings often present a governance risk. A critical first step is navigating to the Microsoft 365 admin center (Copilot > Agents) to disable the default “Anyone in organization” sharing option. Restricting agent creation and sharing to a validated security group is essential to prevent unvetted agent sprawl and ensure that only compliant agents are discoverable. 6. The Human Layer: “Safe Harbors” over Bans Security fails when it creates more friction than the risk it seeks to mitigate. Instead of an outright ban, investment in AI skilling-teaching users context minimization (redacting specifics before interacting with a model) - is the better path. Providing a sanctioned, enterprise-grade "Safe Harbor" like M365 Copilot offers a superior tool that naturally cuts down the use of Shadow AI. 7. Continuous Ops: Monitoring & Regulatory Audit Security is not a “set and forget” project, particularly with the EU AI Act on the horizon. Correlating AI interactions and DLP alerts in Microsoft Sentinel using Purview Audit (specifically the CopilotInteraction logs) data allows for real-time responses. Automated SOAR playbooks can then trigger protective actions - such as revoking an Agent ID - if an entity attempts to access sensitive HR or financial data. Final Thoughts Securing AI at scale is an architectural shift. By layering Identity, Session Governance, and Agentic Identity, AI moves from being a fragmented risk to a governed tool that actually works for the modern workplace.
NPS Extension for azure MFA and multiple tenants?
Hi, is it possible to setup one NPS server with the Extension for Azure MFA to authenticate against multiple tenants? The onprem AD has azure ad connector for each domain and the users are in sync with there tenants. Its a RDS setup with one RD Gateway and one NPS server and multiple RD servers. I need email address removed for privacy reasons and email address removed for privacy reasons etc. to authenticate with MFA, but i can only get the users on the tenant thats linked in the NPS Extension for Azure MFA to work. I dont think its possible to setup more than one tenant in one NPS server (Extension for azure MFA). I get this error in the NPS log NPS Extension for Azure MFA: CID:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx : Access Rejected for user email address removed for privacy reasons with Azure MFA response: AccessDenied and message: Caller tenant:'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' does not have access permissions to do authentication for the user in tenant:'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',,,xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The ID in the Caller tenant and the user tenant in the error is correct, so something have to work? I cat find a way to allow the Caller tenant to access users in the user tenant.Looking for a way to set up mail moderation using Entra dynamic group
Our organization is working on shifting from a hybrid AD-Entra environment to Entra only. We currently use mail-moderated dynamic distribution lists using Extension Attributes to set the rules for mass internal company emails. In conjunction with us migrating to Entra only, we are also planning to use an API integration to manage our Entra account creation and updates. This integration does not have the ability to populate the Extension Attribute fields. Because of these changes we will no longer be able to use the existing dynamic distribution lists we have, and we have not had luck finding a solution for it yet. Has anyone else gone through this or have any experience solving for this same problem?Security as the core primitive - Securing AI agents and apps
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we shared our vision for Microsoft security -- In the agentic era, security must be ambient and autonomous, like the AI it protects. It must be woven into and around everything we build—from silicon to OS, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and clouds—and throughout everything we do. In this blog, we are going to dive deeper into many of the new innovations we are introducing this week to secure AI agents and apps. As I spend time with our customers and partners, there are four consistent themes that have emerged as core security challenges to secure AI workloads. These are: preventing agent sprawl and access to resources, protecting against data oversharing and data leaks, defending against new AI threats and vulnerabilities, and adhering to evolving regulations. Addressing these challenges holistically requires a coordinated effort across IT, developers, and security leaders, not just within security teams and to enable this, we are introducing several new innovations: Microsoft Agent 365 for IT, Foundry Control Plane in Microsoft Foundry for developers, and the Security Dashboard for AI for security leaders. In addition, we are releasing several new purpose-built capabilities to protect and govern AI apps and agents across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. Observability at every layer of the stack To facilitate the organization-wide effort that it takes to secure and govern AI agents and apps – IT, developers, and security leaders need observability (security, management, and monitoring) at every level. IT teams need to enable the development and deployment of any agent in their environment. To ensure the responsible and secure deployment of agents into an organization, IT needs a unified agent registry, the ability to assign an identity to every agent, manage the agent’s access to data and resources, and manage the agent’s entire lifecycle. In addition, IT needs to be able to assign access to common productivity and collaboration tools, such as email and file storage, and be able to observe their entire agent estate for risks such as over-permissioned agents. Development teams need to build and test agents, apply security and compliance controls by default, and ensure AI models are evaluated for safety guardrails and security vulnerabilities. Post deployment, development teams must observe agents to ensure they are staying on task, accessing applications and data sources appropriately, and operating within their cost and performance expectations. Security & compliance teams must ensure overall security of their AI estate, including their AI infrastructure, platforms, data, apps, and agents. They need comprehensive visibility into all their security risks- including agent sprawl and resource access, data oversharing and leaks, AI threats and vulnerabilities, and complying with global regulations. They want to address these risks by extending their existing security investments that they are already invested in and familiar with, rather than using siloed or bolt-on tools. These teams can be most effective in delivering trustworthy AI to their organizations if security is natively integrated into the tools and platforms that they use every day, and if those tools and platforms share consistent security primitives such as agent identities from Entra; data security and compliance controls from Purview; and security posture, detections, and protections from Defender. With the new capabilities being released today, we are delivering observability at every layer of the AI stack, meeting IT, developers, and security teams where they are in the tools they already use to innovate with confidence. For IT Teams - Introducing Microsoft Agent 365, the control plane for agents, now in preview The best infrastructure for managing your agents is the one you already use to manage your users. With Agent 365, organizations can extend familiar tools and policies to confidently deploy and secure agents, without reinventing the wheel. By using the same trusted Microsoft 365 infrastructure, productivity apps, and protections, organizations can now apply consistent and familiar governance and security controls that are purpose-built to protect against agent-specific threats and risks. gement and governance of agents across organizations Microsoft Agent 365 delivers a unified agent Registry, Access Control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security capabilities for your organization. These capabilities work together to help organizations manage agents and drive business value. The Registry powered by the Entra provides a complete and unified inventory of all the agents deployed and used in your organization including both Microsoft and third-party agents. Access Control allows you to limit the access privileges of your agents to only the resources that they need and protect their access to resources in real time. Visualization gives organizations the ability to see what matters most and gain insights through a unified dashboard, advanced analytics, and role-based reporting. Interop allows agents to access organizational data through Work IQ for added context, and to integrate with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Word, and Excel so they can create and collaborate alongside users. Security enables the proactive detection of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, protects against common attacks such as prompt injections, prevents agents from processing or leaking sensitive data, and gives organizations the ability to audit agent interactions, assess compliance readiness and policy violations, and recommend controls for evolving regulatory requirements. Microsoft Agent 365 also includes the Agent 365 SDK, part of Microsoft Agent Framework, which empowers developers and ISVs to build agents on their own AI stack. The SDK enables agents to automatically inherit Microsoft's security and governance protections, such as identity controls, data security policies, and compliance capabilities, without the need for custom integration. For more details on Agent 365, read the blog here. For Developers - Introducing Microsoft Foundry Control Plane to observe, secure and manage agents, now in preview Developers are moving fast to bring agents into production, but operating them at scale introduces new challenges and responsibilities. Agents can access tools, take actions, and make decisions in real time, which means development teams must ensure that every agent behaves safely, securely, and consistently. Today, developers need to work across multiple disparate tools to get a holistic picture of the cybersecurity and safety risks that their agents may have. Once they understand the risk, they then need a unified and simplified way to monitor and manage their entire agent fleet and apply controls and guardrails as needed. Microsoft Foundry provides a unified platform for developers to build, evaluate and deploy AI apps and agents in a responsible way. Today we are excited to announce that Foundry Control Plane is available in preview. This enables developers to observe, secure, and manage their agent fleets with built-in security, and centralized governance controls. With this unified approach, developers can now identify risks and correlate disparate signals across their models, agents, and tools; enforce consistent policies and quality gates; and continuously monitor task adherence and runtime risks. Foundry Control Plane is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s security portfolio to provide a ‘secure by design’ foundation for developers. With Microsoft Entra, developers can ensure an agent identity (Agent ID) and access controls are built into every agent, mitigating the risk of unmanaged agents and over permissioned resources. With Microsoft Defender built in, developers gain contextualized alerts and posture recommendations for agents directly within the Foundry Control Plane. This integration proactively prevents configuration and access risks, while also defending agents from runtime threats in real time. Microsoft Purview’s native integration into Foundry Control Plane makes it easy to enable data security and compliance for every Foundry-built application or agent. This allows Purview to discover data security and compliance risks and apply policies to prevent user prompts and AI responses from safety and policy violations. In addition, agent interactions can be logged and searched for compliance and legal audits. This integration of the shared security capabilities, including identity and access, data security and compliance, and threat protection and posture ensures that security is not an afterthought; it’s embedded at every stage of the agent lifecycle, enabling you to start secure and stay secure. For more details, read the blog. For Security Teams - Introducing Security Dashboard for AI - unified risk visibility for CISOs and AI risk leaders, coming soon AI proliferation in the enterprise, combined with the emergence of AI governance committees and evolving AI regulations, leaves CISOs and AI risk leaders needing a clear view of their AI risks, such as data leaks, model vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and unethical agent actions across their entire AI estate, spanning AI platforms, apps, and agents. 90% of security professionals, including CISOs, report that their responsibilities have expanded to include data governance and AI oversight within the past year. 1 At the same time, 86% of risk managers say disconnected data and systems lead to duplicated efforts and gaps in risk coverage. 2 To address these needs, we are excited to introduce the Security Dashboard for AI. This serves as a unified dashboard that aggregates posture and real-time risk signals from Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. This unified dashboard allows CISOs and AI risk leaders to discover agents and AI apps, track AI posture and drift, and correlate risk signals to investigate and act across their entire AI ecosystem. For example, you can see your full AI inventory and get visibility into a quarantined agent, flagged for high data risk due to oversharing sensitive information in Purview. The dashboard then correlates that signal with identity insights from Entra and threat protection alerts from Defender to provide a complete picture of exposure. From there, you can delegate tasks to the appropriate teams to enforce policies and remediate issues quickly. With the Security Dashboard for AI, CISOs and risk leaders gain a clear, consolidated view of AI risks across agents, apps, and platforms—eliminating fragmented visibility, disconnected posture insights, and governance gaps as AI adoption scales. Best of all, there’s nothing new to buy. If you’re already using Microsoft security products to secure AI, you’re already a Security Dashboard for AI customer. Figure 5: Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a unified view of their AI risk by bringing together their AI inventory, AI risk, and security recommendations to strengthen overall posture Together, these innovations deliver observability and security across IT, development, and security teams, powered by Microsoft’s shared security capabilities. With Microsoft Agent 365, IT teams can manage and secure agents alongside users. Foundry Control Plane gives developers unified governance and lifecycle controls for agent fleets. Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a consolidated view of AI risks across platforms, apps, and agents. Added innovation to secure and govern your AI workloads In addition to the IT, developer, and security leader-focused innovations outlined above, we continue to accelerate our pace of innovation in Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender to address the most pressing needs for securing and governing your AI workloads. These needs are: Manage agent sprawl and resource access e.g. managing agent identity, access to resources, and permissions lifecycle at scale Prevent data oversharing and leaks e.g. protecting sensitive information shared in prompts, responses, and agent interactions Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities e.g. managing unsanctioned applications, preventing prompt injection attacks, and detecting AI supply chain vulnerabilities Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance e.g. ensuring AI development, operations, and usage comply with evolving global regulations and frameworks Manage agent sprawl and resource access 76% of business leaders expect employees to manage agents within the next 2–3 years. 3 Widespread adoption of agents is driving the need for visibility and control, which includes the need for a unified registry, agent identities, lifecycle governance, and secure access to resources. Today, Microsoft Entra provides robust identity protection and secure access for applications and users. However, organizations lack a unified way to manage, govern, and protect agents in the same way they manage their users. Organizations need a purpose-built identity and access framework for agents. Introducing Microsoft Entra Agent ID, now in preview Microsoft Entra Agent ID offers enterprise-grade capabilities that enable organizations to prevent agent sprawl and protect agent identities and their access to resources. These new purpose-built capabilities enable organizations to: Register and manage agents: Get a complete inventory of the agent fleet and ensure all new agents are created with an identity built-in and are automatically protected by organization policies to accelerate adoption. Govern agent identities and lifecycle: Keep the agent fleet under control with lifecycle management and IT-defined guardrails for both agents and people who create and manage them. Protect agent access to resources: Reduce risk of breaches, block risky agents, and prevent agent access to malicious resources with conditional access and traffic inspection. Agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, and Security Copilot get an Entra Agent ID built-in at creation. Developers can also adopt Entra Agent ID for agents they build through Microsoft Agent Framework, Microsoft Agent 365 SDK, or Microsoft Entra Agent ID SDK. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. Prevent data oversharing and leaks Data security is more complex than ever. Information Security Media Group (ISMG) reports that 80% of leaders cite leakage of sensitive data as their top concern. 4 In addition to data security and compliance risks of generative AI (GenAI) apps, agents introduces new data risks such as unsupervised data access, highlighting the need to protect all types of corporate data, whether it is accessed by employees or agents. To mitigate these risks, we are introducing new Microsoft Purview data security and compliance capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot and for agents and AI apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, providing unified protection, visibility, and control for users, AI Apps, and Agents. New Microsoft Purview controls safeguard Microsoft 365 Copilot with real-time protection and bulk remediation of oversharing risks Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365 Copilot deliver a fully integrated solution for protecting sensitive data in AI workflows. Based on ongoing customer feedback, we’re introducing new capabilities to deliver real-time protection for sensitive data in M365 Copilot and accelerated remediation of oversharing risks: Data risk assessments: Previously, admins could monitor oversharing risks such as SharePoint sites with unprotected sensitive data. Now, they can perform item-level investigations and bulk remediation for overshared files in SharePoint and OneDrive to quickly reduce oversharing exposure. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for M365 Copilot: DLP previously excluded files with sensitivity labels from Copilot processing. Now in preview, DLP also prevents prompts that include sensitive data from being processed in M365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and Copilot agents, and prevents Copilot from using sensitive data in prompts for web grounding. Priority cleanup for M365 Copilot assets: Many organizations have org-wide policies to retain or delete data. Priority cleanup, now generally available, lets admins delete assets that are frequently processed by Copilot, such as meeting transcripts and recordings, on an independent schedule from the org-wide policies while maintaining regulatory compliance. On-demand classification for meeting transcripts: Purview can now detect sensitive information in meeting transcripts on-demand. This enables data security admins to apply DLP policies and enforce Priority cleanup based on the sensitive information detected. & bulk remediation Read the full Data Security blog to learn more. Introducing new Microsoft Purview data security capabilities for agents and apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends the same data security and compliance for users and Copilots to agents and apps. These new capabilities are: Enhanced Data Security Posture Management: A centralized DSPM dashboard that provides observability, risk assessment, and guided remediation across users, AI apps, and agents. Insider Risk Management (IRM) for Agents: Uniquely designed for agents, using dedicated behavioral analytics, Purview dynamically assigns risk levels to agents based on their risky handing of sensitive data and enables admins to apply conditional policies based on that risk level. Sensitive data protection with Azure AI Search: Azure AI Search enables fast, AI-driven retrieval across large document collections, essential for building AI Apps. When apps or agents use Azure AI Search to index or retrieve data, Purview sensitivity labels are preserved in the search index, ensuring that any sensitive information remains protected under the organization’s data security & compliance policies. For more information on preventing data oversharing and data leaks - Learn how Purview protects and governs agents in the Data Security and Compliance for Agents blog. Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities AI workloads are subject to new AI-specific threats like prompt injections attacks, model poisoning, and data exfiltration of AI generated content. Although security admins and SOC analysts have similar tasks when securing agents, the attack methods and surfaces differ significantly. To help customers defend against these novel attacks, we are introducing new capabilities in Microsoft Defender that deliver end-to-end protection, from security posture management to runtime defense. Introducing Security Posture Management for agents, now in preview As organizations adopt AI agents to automate critical workflows, they become high-value targets and potential points of compromise, creating a critical need to ensure agents are hardened, compliant, and resilient by preventing misconfigurations and safeguarding against adversarial manipulation. Security Posture Management for agents in Microsoft Defender now provides an agent inventory for security teams across Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio agents. Here, analysts can assess the overall security posture of an agent, easily implement security recommendations, and identify vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations and excessive permissions, all aligned to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Additionally, the new agent attack path analysis visualizes how an agent’s weak security posture can create broader organizational risk, so you can quickly limit exposure and prevent lateral movement. Introducing Threat Protection for agents, now in preview Attack techniques and attack surfaces for agents are fundamentally different from other assets in your environment. That’s why Defender is delivering purpose-built protections and detections to help defend against them. Defender is introducing runtime protection for Copilot Studio agents that automatically block prompt injection attacks in real time. In addition, we are announcing agent-specific threat detections for Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry agents coming soon. Defender automatically correlates these alerts with Microsoft’s industry-leading threat intelligence and cross-domain security signals to deliver richer, contextualized alerts and security incident views for the SOC analyst. Defender’s risk and threat signals are natively integrated into the new Microsoft Foundry Control Plane, giving development teams full observability and the ability to act directly from within their familiar environment. Finally, security analysts will be able to hunt across all agent telemetry in the Advanced Hunting experience in Defender, and the new Agent 365 SDK extends Defender’s visibility and hunting capabilities to third-party agents, starting with Genspark and Kasisto, giving security teams even more coverage across their AI landscape. To learn more about how you can harden the security posture of your agents and defend against threats, read the Microsoft Defender blog. Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance Global AI regulations like the EU AI Act and NIST AI RMF are evolving rapidly; yet, according to ISMG, 55% of leaders report lacking clarity on current and future AI regulatory requirements. 5 As enterprises adopt AI, they must ensure that their AI innovation aligns with global regulations and standards to avoid costly compliance gaps. Introducing new Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager capabilities to stay ahead of evolving AI regulations, now in preview Today, Purview Compliance Manager provides over 300 pre-built assessments for common industry, regional, and global standards and regulations. However, the pace of change for new AI regulations requires controls to be continuously re-evaluated and updated so that organizations can adapt to ongoing changes in regulations and stay compliant. To address this need, Compliance Manager now includes AI-powered regulatory templates. AI-powered regulatory templates enable real-time ingestion and analysis of global regulatory documents, allowing compliance teams to quickly adapt to changes as they happen. As regulations evolve, the updated regulatory documents can be uploaded to Compliance Manager, and the new requirements are automatically mapped to applicable recommended actions to implement controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Foundry. Automated actions by Compliance Manager further streamline governance, reduce manual workload, and strengthen regulatory accountability. Introducing expanded Microsoft Purview compliance capabilities for agents and AI apps now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends its compliance capabilities across agent-generated interactions, ensuring responsible use and regulatory alignment as AI becomes deeply embedded across business processes. New capabilities include expanded coverage for: Audit: Surface agent interactions, lifecycle events, and data usage with Purview Audit. Unified audit logs across user and agent activities, paired with traceability for every agent using an Entra Agent ID, support investigation, anomaly detection, and regulatory reporting. Communication Compliance: Detect prompts sent to agents and agent-generated responses containing inappropriate, unethical, or risky language, including attempts to manipulate agents into bypassing policies, generating risky content, or producing noncompliant outputs. When issues arise, data security admins get full context, including the prompt, the agent’s output, and relevant metadata, so they can investigate and take corrective action Data Lifecycle Management: Apply retention and deletion policies to agent-generated content and communication flows to automate lifecycle controls and reduce regulatory risk. Read about Microsoft Purview data security for agents to learn more. Finally, we are extending our data security, threat protection, and identity access capabilities to third-party apps and agents via the network. Advancing Microsoft Entra Internet Access Secure Web + AI Gateway - extend runtime protections to the network, now in preview Microsoft Entra Internet Access, part of the Microsoft Entra Suite, has new capabilities to secure access to and usage of GenAI at the network level, marking a transition from Secure Web Gateway to Secure Web and AI Gateway. Enterprises can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, empowering employees to experiment with new AI tools safely. The new capabilities include: Prompt injection protection which blocks malicious prompts in real time by extending Azure AI Prompt Shields to the network layer. Network file filtering which extends Microsoft Purview to inspect files in transit and prevents regulated or confidential data from being uploaded to unsanctioned AI services. Shadow AI Detection that provides visibility into unsanctioned AI applications through Cloud Application Analytics and Defender for Cloud Apps risk scoring, empowering security teams to monitor usage trends, apply Conditional Access, or block high-risk apps instantly. Unsanctioned MCP server blocking prevents access to MCP servers from unauthorized agents. With these controls, you can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, so employees can experiment with new AI tools safely. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. As AI transforms the enterprise, security must evolve to meet new challenges—spanning agent sprawl, data protection, emerging threats, and regulatory compliance. Our approach is to empower IT, developers, and security leaders with purpose-built innovations like Agent 365, Foundry Control Plane, and the Security Dashboard for AI. These solutions bring observability, governance, and protection to every layer of the AI stack, leveraging familiar tools and integrated controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. The future of security is ambient, autonomous, and deeply woven into the fabric of how we build, deploy, and govern AI systems. Explore additional resources Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Agent 365 Learn more about Microsoft Entra Agent ID Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Get started with Microsoft Copilot Studio Get started with Microsoft Foundry Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Get started with Microsoft Entra Get started with Microsoft Purview Get started with Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager Sign up for a free Microsoft 365 E5 Security Trial and Microsoft Purview Trial 1 Bedrock Security, 2025 Data Security Confidence Index, published Mar 17, 2025. 2 AuditBoard & Ascend2, Connected Risk Report 2024; as cited by MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2025. 3 KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey | Q3 2025. September 2025. n= 130 U.S.-based C-suite and business leaders representing organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more 4 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, , Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400 5 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400
