Blog Series: Limitless Advanced Hunting with Azure Data Explorer (ADX)
Leverage the power of Azure Data Explorer (ADX) to extend your Microsoft 365 Defender (XDR) / Microsoft Defender For Endpoint advanced hunting data for as long as you want (10 years!). If you enjoy rewriting queries just to look through old data and spending time and money rehydrating it, this post isn't for you!Monthly news - January 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news January 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from December 2024. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel (Preview) The Link to incident feature in advanced hunting now allows linking of Microsoft Sentinel query results. (Preview) You can now use the adx() operator to query tables stored in Azure Data Explorer. (GA) In advanced hunting, you can now add your frequently used schema tables, functions, queries, and detection rules in the Favorites sections under each tab for quicker access. Learn more on our docs. Hyperscale ML threat intelligence for early detection & disruption. This blog talks about Threat Intelligence Tracking via Dynamic Networks (TITAN) - a groundbreaking approach that uses the power of machine learning to transform threat intelligence and attack disruption by automatically neutralizing malicious activity at scale. You can now view Microsoft Sentinel Workbooks directly from Unified SOC Operations Platform. Learn more about it here. (Preview) Recommendations based on similar organizations - a first-of-its-kind capability for SOC optimizations. Recommendations based on similar organizations use peer-based insights to guide and accelerate your decision-making process. New documentation library for Microsoft's unified security operations platform. Find centralized documentation about Microsoft's unified SecOps platform in the Microsoft Defender portal. Microsoft's unified SecOps platform brings together the full capabilities of Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Security Exposure Management, and generative AI into the Defender portal. Learn about the features and functionality available with Microsoft's unified SecOps platform, then start to plan your deployment. SOC Optimization and Auxiliary Logs collaboration. We’re excited to announce the release of our updated recommendation, which now incorporates Auxiliary Logs! Previously, our recommendation focused on identifying unused tables and suggesting users either increase their utilization or switch the tables’ commitment tier to Basic Logs. With this update, we now recommend eligible tables be moved to Auxiliary Logs. The following new privacy documents for Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR have been added: Data security and retention in Microsoft Defender XDR Geographical availability and data residency in Microsoft Sentinel Ninja Show Episodes: Attack Disruption: Live demo This episode features Threat Hunter and Microsoft MVP Mattias Borg as he explains the anatomy of an attack. Through a live demo of an attack in action, gain exclusive insights into what attackers do behind the scenes, the tools they use and how Microsoft Defender steps up to counter these threats, offering a robust defense to help keep your organization secure. Defender XDR’s Data Security Context with Insider Risk Management Join us as product experts Maayan Magenheim and Sravan Kumar Mera showcase the Public Preview of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management (IRM) integration into Defender XDR. Learn how Insider Risk and SOC analysts can now distinguish internal and external threats and gain critical insights, including exfiltration context and user activity tracking. Through a valuable demo, we explore the benefits for incident investigation, threat hunting, the correlation of IRM alerts with other DLP and identity protection alerts and more. Follow up LIVE AMA session Unlocking Advanced Cloud Detection & Response capabilities for containers Learn how the Microsoft Cloud Detection & Response solution empowers SOCs with faster, deeper investigations through near real-time detections, new cloud-native responses, and rich log collection. In this episode Product Managers Maayan Magenheim and Daniel Davrayev demo a real container related incident to show how these new capabilities enhance the entire incident response process, bridging knowledge gaps and proactively securing containerized workloads across multi-cloud environments. Threat Analytics - New Tool profile: SectopRAT (You need access to the Defender portal to read this profile.) Microsoft Sentinel (Preview) New AWS WAF connector. Use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) connector to ingest AWS WAF logs, collected in AWS S3 buckets, to Microsoft Sentinel. Learn more on our docs. Agentless deployment for SAP applications. Microsoft Sentinel for SAP’s latest new capability re-uses the SAP Cloud Connector to profit from already existing setups, established integration processes, and well-understood SAP components. Ninja Show Episode Microsoft Sentinel Data tiering best practices In this episode product experts Yael Bergman and Maria de Sousa-Valadas introduce the powerful new Auxiliary Logs tier, now in Public Preview and explain how to use Summary rules to aggregate data from any log tier in Microsoft Sentinel and Log Analytics. Tune in to learn the full potential of these features, as well as practical tips and use cases to help you reduce ingestion costs and gain more insights from your verbose logs. Upcoming webinar Feb 20, 9AM PT: Mastering API Integration with Sentinel & Unified Security Platform Learn how to effectively integrate APIs with Sentinel and Unified Security Platform. This webinar will cover when to use APIs, how to set them up, potential challenges, and feature live demos to guide you through the process. Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR Defender Experts for XDR now offers scoped coverage for customers who wish to define a specific set of devices and/or users, based on geography, subsidiary, or function, for which they'd like Defender Experts to provide support. Experts on demand via Message Center. Select Ask Defender Experts directly inside the Microsoft 365 security portal to get swift and accurate responses to all your threat hunting questions. Experts can provide insight to better understand the complex threats your organization might face. Microsoft Defender for Identity New security posture assessment: Prevent Certificate Enrollment with arbitrary Application Policies (ESC15). Defender for Identity has added the new Prevent Certificate Enrollment with arbitrary Application Policies (ESC15) recommendation in Microsoft Secure Score. Learn more on our docs. Microsoft Security Exposure Management The following predefined classification rules were added to the critical assets list: Classification Description Locked Azure Kubernetes Service cluster This rule applies to Azure Kubernetes Service clusters that are safeguarded by a lock. Premium tier Azure Kubernetes Service cluster This rule applies to premium tier Azure Kubernetes Service clusters. Azure Kubernetes Service cluster with multiple nodes This rule applies to Azure Kubernetes Service clusters with multiple nodes. Azure Arc Kubernetes cluster with multiple nodes This rule applies to Azure Arc clusters with multiple nodes. For more information, see, Predefined classifications Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Considerations for integrating non-Microsoft security services with Microsoft 365: Considerations and recommendations for deploying a defense-in-depth email security strategy using third-party security services. Defender for Office 365 now detects BEC attacks using large language model (LLM)-based filters to analyze an email's language and infer intent. Read this blog to learn more about it. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Defender for Endpoint on iOS now supports iOS/iPadOS 16.x as the minimum version. Defender for Endpoint is ending support for iOS/iPadOS 15 on January 31, 2025. Moving forward, only devices running iOS/iPadOS 16 and later are supported. Learn more on our docs. Android low-touch onboarding is now General Available. Key benefits Faster setup on Android devices – Simplified Android onboarding supports silent sign-on and autogranting of certain permissions on a user's device. As such, users are required to grant only the necessary permissions to onboard to Defender for Endpoint. Intuitive guidance - A clear and intuitive flow to guide users through each step. Broad coverage with support across multiple Android profiles – Android enterprise BYOD, COPE, and fully managed. Configuring low-touch onboarding Although low-touch onboarding is disabled by default, security administrators can enable it through app configuration policies in Intune. See Android low-touch onboarding. . Ninja Show Episode: Defender for Endpoint RDP Telemetry In this episode Cyber Security Researcher Danielle Kuznets Nohi and Senior Product Manager Saar Cohen join us to discuss the importance of Remote Desktop Protocol in Human Operated Attacks considering the current threat landscape. Through a demo, witness critical visibility enhancements made to this important layer of telemetry and learn the powerful capabilities of this tool to identify vulnerable assets and provide deeper threat insights.The Best of Microsoft Sentinel — Now in Microsoft Defender
Just over a year ago, we introduced the unified security operations (SecOps) experience within Microsoft Defender, bringing together the full stack of threat protection capabilities across” Security Incident Event Management (SIEM), Extended Detection and Response (XDR), Extended Security Posture Management (XSPM), Cloud Security, Threat Intelligence (TI), and Security Copilot. Thousands of organizations have already embraced this unified SecOps experience to streamline analyst workflows, enhance operational efficiency, and accelerate incident response across their security environments. Today, we are proud to share that the most advanced and integrated SIEM experience from Microsoft Sentinel is now fully available within the Microsoft Defender portal as one unified experience. This experience encompasses all SIEM features and is accessible to every customer, including large-scale enterprises and partners with complex security environments. With the general availability of multi-tenant and multi-workspace capabilities, security teams can now seamlessly collaborate, investigate threats, and manage incidents across multiple Microsoft Sentinel tenants—all from a single, unified queue. This advancement empowers analysts to operate more efficiently and effectively in today’s dynamic threat landscape. Why Customers Are Making the Move Thousands of organizations have already made the move—and they’re seeing real results. Work smarter: Manage incidents, alerts, and investigations across tenants and workspaces in one unified view. Detect faster: AI-driven insights reduce false positives by 85%* and boost alert correlation speed by 50%*. Respond instantly: Security Copilot delivers guided investigations and automated summaries. Hunt deeper: Investigate threats across Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR—no switching, no silos. “The Defender portal is a game-changer. Our team is faster, more focused, and finally working in one place.” — Security Operations Lead, Global Financial Services What’s New—and Why it Matters Advanced Hunting Enhancements Unified queries across Microsoft Sentinel and Defender data, with Security Copilot-assisted KQL generation allows for threat hunting across all data sources from a single portal without context switching and delays. For more information, see Advanced hunting in the Microsoft Defender portal and Security Copilot in advanced hunting. Case Management Use native case workflows in Defender to manage complex investigations efficiently. Features include custom statuses, task assignments, due dates, and multi-incident linking, all while maintaining security context. For more information, see Manage cases natively in Microsoft Defender experience. SOC Optimization Tools Get actionable, tailored recommendations to reduce costs, close data gaps, improve coverage, strengthen your security posture, and maximize ROI. To learn more about the different types of recommendations, see SOC optimization reference. Expanded Threat Intelligence Import indicators in bulk, visualize data better, and map to MITRE ATT&CK. Enrich investigations with deeper context and better visibility into attacker behavior. For more information, see Threat detection features across the Microsoft unified security platform. Embedded Security Copilot The GenAI power of Security Copilot built to the experience. Utilize AI-powered tools to summarize incidents, analyze scripts/files, and generate incident reports directly within the portal. Accelerate response times and reduce analyst fatigue with intelligent automation. For more information, see Security Copilot in Defender. Seamless, Zero-Disruption Onboarding Connecting your Microsoft Sentinel workspace to Defender is fast, simple, and non-disruptive. Your data stays intact, and you can continue using the classic Azure experience while unlocking the full power of Defender. And going forward, all new features and innovations will be delivered exclusively through the Microsoft Defender portal—ensuring you always have access to the most advanced tools in the Microsoft Security ecosystem. Take Action Now Transform your SecOps with Microsoft Defender and take advantage of the latest innovations. Get started today: https://security.microsoft.com Begin the process of onboarding your Microsoft Sentinel workspaces to the Defender portal Transition Guide Pre-recorded webinar Register for upcoming webinars here. *Source: Microsoft internal researchMonthly news - September 2025
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - September 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from August 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. New Virtual Ninja Show episodes: Announcing Microsoft Sentinel data lake. Inside the new Phishing Triage Agent in Security Copilot. Microsoft Defender Public Preview items in advanced hunting: The new CloudStorageAggregatedEvents table is now available and brings aggregated storage activity logs, such as operations, authentication details, access sources, and success/failure counts, from Defender for Cloud into a single, queryable schema. You can now investigate Microsoft Defender for Cloud behaviors. For more information, see Investigate behaviors with advanced hunting. The IdentityEvents table contains information about identity events obtained from other cloud identity service providers. You can now enrich your custom detection rules in advanced hunting by creating dynamic alert titles and descriptions, select more impacted entities, and add custom details to display in the alert side panel. Microsoft Sentinel customers that are onboarded to Microsoft Defender also now have the option to customize the alert frequency when the rule is based only on data that is ingested to Sentinel. The number of query results displayed in the Microsoft Defender portal has been increased to 100,000. General Availability item in advanced hunting: you can now view all your user-defined rules - both custom detection rules and analytics rules - in the Detection rules page. This feature also brings the following improvements: You can now filter for every column (in addition to Frequency and Organizational scope). For multiworkspace organizations that have onboarded multiple workspaces to Microsoft Defender, you can now view the Workspace ID column and filter by workspace. You can now view the details pane even for analytics rules. You can now perform the following actions on analytics rules: Turn on/off, Delete, Edit. (General Availability) Defender Experts for XDR and Defender Experts for Hunting customers can now expand their service coverage to include server and cloud workloads protected by Defender for Cloud through the respective add-ons, Microsoft Defender Experts for Servers and Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting - Servers. Learn more (General Availability) Defender Experts for XDR customers can now incorporate third-party network signals for enrichment, which could allow our security analysts to not only gain a more comprehensive view of an attack's path that allows for faster and more thorough detection and response, but also provide customers with a more holistic view of the threat in their environments. (General Availability) The Sensitivity label filter is now available in the Incidents and Alerts queues in the Microsoft Defender portal. This filter lets you filter incidents and alerts based on the sensitivity label assigned to the affected resources. For more information, see Filters in the incident queue and Investigate alerts. (Public Preview) Suggested prompts for incident summaries. Suggested prompts enhance the incident summary experience by automatically surfacing relevant follow-up questions based on the most crucial information in a given incident. With a single click, you can request deeper insight (e.g. device details, identity information, threat intelligence) and obtain plain language summaries from Security Copilot. This intuitive, interactive experience simplifies investigations and speeds up access to critical insights, empowering you to focus on key priorities and accelerate threat response. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Public Preview) Multi-tenant endpoint security policies distribution is now in Public Preview. Defender for Endpoint security policies can now be distributed across multiple tenants from the Defender multi-tenant portal. (Public Preview) Custom installation path support for Defender for Endpoint on Linux is available in public preview. (Public Preview) Offline security intelligence update support for Defender for Endpoint on macOS is in public preview. Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) Entra ID risk level is now available on the Identity Inventory assets page, the identity details page, and in the IdentityInfo table in advanced hunting, and includes the Entra ID risk score. SOC analysts can use this data to correlate risky users with sensitive or highly privileged users, create custom detections based on current or historical user risk, and improve investigation context. (Public Preview) Defender for Identity now includes a new security assessment that helps you identify and remove inactive service accounts in your organization. This assessment lists Active Directory service accounts that have been inactive (stale) for the past 180 days, to help you mitigate security risks associated with unused accounts. For more information, see: Security Assessment: Remove Inactive Service Accounts (Public Preview) A new Graph-based API is now in preview for initiating and managing remediation actions in Defender for Identity. For more information, see Managing response actions through Graph API. (General Availability) Identity scoping is now generally available across all environments. Organizations can now define and refine the scope of Defender for Identity monitoring and gain granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. For more information, see Configure scoped access for Microsoft Defender for Identity. (Public Preview) The new security posture assessment highlights unsecured Active Directory attributes that contain passwords or credential clues and recommends steps to remove them, helping reduce the risk of identity compromise. For more information, see: Security Assessment: Remove discoverable passwords in Active Directory account attributes. Detection update: Suspected Brute Force attack (Kerberos, NTLM). Improved detection logic to include scenarios where accounts were locked during attacks. As a result, the number of triggered alerts might increase. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 SecOps can now dispute Microsoft's verdict on previously submitted email or URLs when they believe the result is incorrect. Disputing an item links back to the original submission and triggers a reevaluation with full context and audit history. Learn more. Microsoft Security Blogs Dissecting PipeMagic: Inside the architecture of a modular backdoor framework A comprehensive technical deep dive on PipeMagic, a highly modular backdoor used by Storm-2460 masquerading as a legitimate open-source ChatGPT Desktop Application. Think before you Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix social engineering technique The ClickFix social engineering technique has been growing in popularity, with campaigns targeting thousands of enterprise and end-user devices daily. Storm-0501’s evolving techniques lead to cloud-based ransomware Financially motivated threat actor Storm-0501 has continuously evolved their campaigns to achieve sharpened focus on cloud-based tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).Security Copilot: A game changer for modern SOC
In today's rapidly evolving threat landscape, Security Operations Centers (SOCs) face relentless pressure to swiftly and accurately detect, investigate, and respond to security incidents. As frontline defenders of an organization’s cybersecurity, security analysts need real-time intelligent insights to boost investigation and response. Microsoft Security Copilot empowers security teams with gen AI-powered capabilities that streamline workflows, automate tasks and upskill teams, enhancing overall SOC efficiency. A recent study showed customers could achieve 30% reduction in MTTR for security incidents. We are committed to continuously improving our products based on valuable customer feedback. By listening to our users and understanding their needs, we have enhanced numerous features and introduced new skills that significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of SOC teams. AI-powered insights to accelerate investigation and response When SOC analysts investigate and respond to incidents, Security Copilot offers a comprehensive description of the attack, affected systems, and event timelines, paired with clear, actionable steps for swift remediation and mitigation. Some of our recent innovations include: Enhancement! The Microsoft Sentinel Incident Summary, available in the Copilot standalone experience has been enhanced and now aligns with the Defender incident summaries, offering detailed, step-by-step descriptions of the attack. The summary includes key information such as the attack's start time, timelines, involved assets, indicators of compromise (IOCs), kill chain steps, and a direct link to the incident page. These improvements enable you to request a summary of a Microsoft Sentinel incident from either the standalone or the unified security operations platform embedded experience. Microsoft Sentinel incident summary in standalone experience Enhancement! Users can request Copilot to list incidents in Defender and/or Microsoft Sentinel through a prompt in the standalone portal, filtering by assignment, classification, creation time, determination, last update time, severity, and status. List of incidents In addition, users can also retrieve a list of entities for a specified incident. Figure 3: List of entities for an incident These enhancements allow analysts to efficiently retrieve incidents and entities on demand and apply additional filters for more targeted actions. Enhancement! A recent enhancement to Guided Response enables security analysts to easily communicate with end users, a common activity in the SOC that is particularly helpful for incident triage. Copilot now dynamically generates text for analysts to use, describing the observed user activity under investigation. Analysts can contact the user directly via Teams using the readily available Guided Response recommendation button or copy the generated text to their preferred communication tool. Dynamicallygenerated text for analysts to use This allows for quick and efficient communication with end users, accelerating the incident investigation process and saving the analyst from the tedious task of crafting the message with all the necessary information about the incident. New! During incident investigations, analysts commonly review details about participating assets and entities. In addition to the already available insightful Device Summary, the new Identity Summary provides a comprehensive overview of user identities, highlighting behavioral anomalies and potential misconfigurations. This feature is crucial for SOC analysts as it offers clear, contextual insights into identity-related activities, enabling quicker identification and resolution of security issues. By summarizing key information such as login locations, role changes, and authentication methods, the Identity Summary helps analysts understand the full scope of identity behaviors and risks Figure 5: Identity Summary Enhancement! The script and file analysis features in Security Copilot simplify complex investigations by translating what a script does into natural language and streamlining the analysis of multiple executable files. With the new addition of relevant MITRE ATT&CK techniques to the analysis, SOC analysts can quickly understand the attack tactics and techniques used by adversaries and provide faster and better response. Figure 6: MITRE techniques used Enhancement! The Security Copilot incident report compiles all response activities into a detailed report of the security incident. It includes what happened, the actions taken, by whom and when, and the reason for classification. Initially, the incident report gathered its data from Defender and Microsoft Sentinel, including incident management actions like status changes and assignments, comments from the activity log, actions and playbooks performed on entities within the incident, and more. To further streamline report sharing and provide a more holistic view, the incident report now also integrates with the third-party case management system ServiceNow to include in the report incident investigation and remediation steps logged in ServiceNow tickets. This integration requires the bidirectional connector between Microsoft Sentinel and ServiceNow to be installed. Strengthen your security with improved Threat Intelligence content Copilot integrated with Threat Intelligence empowers security teams with comprehensive information about threat actors, threat tools, indicators of compromise (IOCs) related to vulnerabilities and incidents, providing contextual threat intelligence directly from Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (Defender TI) to detect, analyze, and respond to threats more effectively. At Ignite, customers will see exciting enhancements to this experience, including: New! The ten new MDTI indicator skills can leverage the full corpus of raw and finished threat intelligence in MDTI to link any IoC (indicator of compromise) to all related data and content, providing critical context to attacks and enabling advanced research and preemptive hunting capabilities, including threat infrastructure chaining and analysis, offering defenders a head start on adversaries. Gain critical context with MDTI Enhancement! Copilot can now leverage vulnerability and asset intelligence from Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (MDEASM), Defender Vulnerability Management (MDVM), and Threat Analytics for a more complete view of vulnerabilities and a better understanding of how known threats covered in Microsoft threat intelligence impact the organization. This capability helps customers prioritize vulnerabilities and have an in-depth understanding of the impact of this vulnerability on the organization. Overview of vulnerability Improved Copilot sidecar with better user control The recent updates to the Copilot side panel in the embedded experience provide more flexibility, allowing you to open or close Copilot based on your preference. This helps optimize screen space while investigating incidents or entities, using Advanced Hunting, or navigating the Threat Intelligence pages. Once you close the Copilot side panel in any of these scenarios, it will remember your preference and stay closed. gure 9: Close Copilot based on preference You can reopen the Copilot panel anytime for AI-powered insights to aid your SOC workflows. Microsoft recommends keeping the Copilot panel open to ensure you are receiving real time insights to stay ahead of threats. Reopen Copilot panel Looking forward Security Copilot is revolutionizing the way security teams operate by providing advanced AI-driven capabilities that not only enhance their efficiency and effectiveness but also empowers them to stay ahead of threats and protect their organizations at the speed and scale of AI. Microsoft is committed to delivering industry-leading innovation with precise insights for faster and more effective threat detection and response. We are working closely with our customers to collect feedback and will continue to add more functionality. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts. Resources Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Defender - Microsoft Defender XDR | Microsoft Learn Microsoft Copilot for Security | Microsoft Security Microsoft Copilot for Security - Pricing | Microsoft Azure What’s new in Defender: How Copilot for Security can transform your SOC | Microsoft Community Hub Operationalizing Microsoft Security Copilot to Reinvent SOC Productivity What’s New at Ignite: Unified Threat Intelligence Experience in CopilotMonthly news - February 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news February 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from January 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel (Public Preview) Creating a unified, security-focused case management system. We are excited to be introducing a new solution for case management, built specifically for SecOps teams, and integrated into the experience of Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR in the unified SecOps platform. With new case management functionality, available for any customer who has Microsoft Sentinel, customers can benefit from a purpose-built approach to managing and collaborating across security cases. (Public Preview) Device activity events from Microsoft Sentinel's device entity pages are now visible in the Timeline tab on the Device entity page in the Defender portal, in addition to remaining visible on the Sentinel events tab. These device activity events now include blocked, dropped, or denied network traffic originating from a given device. (Public Preview) Users with provisioned access to Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management can now view and manage insider risk management alerts and hunt for insider risk management events and behaviors in the Microsoft Defender portal. For more information, see Investigate insider risk threats in the Microsoft Defender portal with insights from Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management. (General Available) Advanced hunting context panes are now available in custom detection experiences. This allows you to access the advanced hunting feature without leaving your current workflow. For incidents and alerts generated by custom detections, you can select Run query to explore the results of the related custom detection. In the custom detection wizard's Set rule logic step, you can select View query results to verify the results of the query you are about to set. (General Available) The Link to incident feature in Microsoft Defender advanced hunting now allows linking of Microsoft Sentinel query results. In both the Microsoft Defender unified experience and in Defender XDR advanced hunting, you can now specify whether an entity is an impacted asset or related evidence. (General Available) Migrating custom detection queries to Continuous (near real-time or NRT) frequency is now generally available in advanced hunting. Using the Continuous (NRT) frequency increases your organization's ability to identify threats faster. It has minimal to no impact to your resource usage, and should thus be considered for any qualified custom detection rule in your organization. Migrate compatible KQL queries by following the steps in Continuous (NRT) frequency. Microsoft Sentinel Threat intelligence for Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal has changed! We've renamed the page Intel management and moved it with other threat intelligence workflows. There's no change for customers using Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure experience. Learn more on our docs. Unlock advanced hunting with new STIX objects by opting in to new threat intelligence tables. Tables supporting the new STIX object schema are in private preview. In order to view threat intelligence for STIX objects and unlock the hunting model that uses them, request to opt in with this form. Ingest your threat intelligence into the new tables, ThreatIntelIndicator and ThreatIntelObjects alongside with or instead of the current table, ThreatIntelligenceIndicator, with this opt-in process. For more information, see the blog announcement New STIX objects in Microsoft Sentinel. Threat intelligence upload API now supports more STIX objects. The upload API supports the following STIX objects: indicator attack-pattern identity threat-actor relationship For more information, see the following articles: Connect your threat intelligence platform with the upload API (Preview) Import threat intelligence to Microsoft Sentinel with the upload API (Preview) New STIX objects in Microsoft Sentinel Both premium and standard Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence data connectors are now generally available (GA) in content hub. For more information, see the following articles: Explore Defender Threat Intelligence licenses Enable the Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence data connector (Public Preview) Bicep template support for repositories. Use Bicep templates alongside or as a replacement of ARM JSON templates in Microsoft Sentinel repositories. Bicep provides an intuitive way to create templates of Azure resources and Microsoft Sentinel content items. Not only is it easier to develop new content items, Bicep makes reviewing and updating content easier for anyone that's a part of the continuous integration and delivery of your Microsoft Sentinel content. View granular solution content in the Microsoft Sentinel content hub. You can now view the individual content available in a specific solution directly from the Content hub, even before you've installed the solution. This new visibility helps you understand the content available to you, and more easily identify, plan, and install the specific solutions you need. For more information, see Discover content. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Get visibility into your DeepSeek use with Defender for Cloud Apps. Defender for Cloud Apps helps you discover and protect more than 800 generative AI applications, now including DeepSeek. It provides the necessary overview of an app's usage in your organization, combined with the potential risk that the app poses for your organization. In fact, it profiles more than 90 separate risk attributes for each application in the Cloud App Catalog so you can make informed choices in a unified experience. Learn more in this blog post. Microsoft Defender for Identity Introducing the new Defender for Identity sensor management API. This blog discusses the new Defender for Identity sensor management API.This blog discusses Microsoft Security Exposure Management Metrics enhancements The metrics have been enhanced to show the improvement of the exposure levels with a progress bar, progressing from left to right and from 0% (indicating high exposure) to 100% (indicating no exposure). In addition, the metrics weight is now displayed as high, medium, or low, based on the metric's importance to the initiative. The weight can also be defined as risk accepted. For more information, see, Working with metrics Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Use the built-in Report button in Outlook: The built-in Report button in Outlook for iOS and Android version 4.2446 or later now supports the user reported settings experience to report messages as Phishing, Junk, and Not Junk. Build custom email security reports and dashboards with workbooks in Microsoft Sentinel. In this blog, we will showcase how you can use workbooks in Microsoft Sentinel to build a custom dashboard for Defender for Office 365. We will also share an example workbook that is now available and can be customized based on your organization’s needs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Public Preview) Aggregated reporting in Defender for Endpoint: Aggregated reporting extends signal reporting intervals to significantly reduce the size of reported events while preserving essential event properties. This feature is available for Defender for Endpoint Plan 2. For more information, see Aggregated reporting in Defender for Endpoint. (Public Preview) Defender for Endpoint extends support to ARM-based Linux servers. As the demand for ARM64 servers continues to rise, we are thrilled to announce that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint now supports ARM64 based Linux servers in Public Preview. This update marks a new milestone in our commitment to providing comprehensive endpoint security across all devices and platforms. More details in this announcement blog. Microsoft Defender for IoT Aggregating multiple alerts violations with the same parameters. To reduce alert fatigue, multiple versions of the same alert violation and with the same parameters are grouped together and listed in the alerts table as one item. The alert details pane lists each of the identical alert violations in the Violations tab and the appropriate remediation actions are listed in the Take action tab. For more information, see our docs.Monthly news - July 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news - July 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from May 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Microsoft Defender (General Availability) In advanced hunting, Microsoft Defender portal users can now use the adx() operator to query tables stored in Azure Data Explorer. You no longer need to go to log analytics in Microsoft Sentinel to use this operator if you're already in Microsoft Defender. Learn more on our docs. Introducing TITAN powered recommendations in Security Copilot guided response. This blog post explains the power of Guided Response with Security Copilot and and the integration of Threat Intelligence Tracking via Adaptive Networks (TITAN). (General Availability) Case management now supports multiple tenants in Microsoft Defender experience. We’re excited to share that multi-tenant support is now generally available in our case management experience. This new capability empowers security teams to view and manage incidents across all their tenants from a single, unified interface—directly within the Microsoft Defender Multi-Tenant (MTO) portal. You can read this blog for more information. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (General Availability) The Behaviors data type significantly enhances overall threat detection accuracy by reducing alerts on generic anomalies and surfacing alerts only when observed patterns align with real security scenarios. This data type is now generally available. Learn more on how to use Behaviors and new detections in this blog post. New Dynamic Threat Detection model. Defender for Cloud Apps new dynamic threat detection model continuously adapts to the ever-changing SaaS apps threat landscape. This approach ensures your organization remains protected with up-to-date detection logic without the need for manual policy updates or reconfiguration. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (General Availability) Global exclusions on Linux are now generally available. We just published a new blog post, that discussed how you can manage global exclusion policies for Linux across both AV and EDR. (General Availability) Support for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux is now generally available for Linux. (General Availability) Behavior monitoring on macOS is now generally available. Read this blog post to learn more about it and how it improves the early detection and prevention of suspicious and malicious activities targeting macOS users. (Public Preview) Selective Isolation allows you to exclude specific devices, processes, IP addresses, or services from isolation actions. More details in this blog post "Maintain connectivity for essential services with selective network isolation" Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) Domain-based scoping for Active Directory is now available in public preview. This new capability enables SOC analysts to define and refine the scope of Defender for Identity monitoring, providing more granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. Read this announcement blog for more details. (Public Preview) Defender for Identity is extending its identity protection to protect Okta identities, that’s in addition to the already robust protection for on-premises Active Directory and Entra ID identities. For more details, have a look at this announcement blog post. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Introducing the Defender for Office 365 ICES Vendor Ecosystem - a unified framework that enables seamless integration with trusted third-party vendors. Learn more about this exciting announcement in this blog post. (General Availability) Auto-Remediation of malicious messages in Automated Investigation and Response is now generally available. Have a look at this detailed blog post on how it works. Mail bombing is now an available Detection technology value in Threat Explorer, the Email entity page, and the Email summary panel. Mail bombing is also an available DetectionMethods value in Advanced Hunting. For more information, see MC1096885. AI-powered Submissions Response introduces generative AI explanations for admin email submissions to Microsoft. For more information, see Submission result definitions. Microsoft Security Exposure Management (Public Preview) Enhanced External Attack Surface Management integration with Exposure Management. This new integration allows you to incorporate detailed external attack surface data from Defender External Attack Surface Management into Exposure Management. Learn more on our docs. Microsoft Security Blogs Unveiling RIFT: Enhancing Rust malware analysis through pattern matching As threat actors are adopting Rust for malware development, RIFT, an open-source tool, helps reverse engineers analyze Rust malware, solving challenges in the security industry. Jasper Sleet: North Korean remote IT workers’ evolving tactics to infiltrate organizations Since 2024, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed remote IT workers deployed by North Korea leveraging AI to improve the scale and sophistication of their operations, steal data, and generate revenue for the North Korean government. Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Tool Profile: Qilin ransomware. Qilin (also called Agenda) is a ransomware as a service (RaaS) offering that was first observed in 2022. It has been used by multiple cybercriminal groups, including Pistachio Tempest, Octo Tempest, and most recently Moonstone Sleet. While the ransom attacks appear to be opportunistic rather than targeted, they have had notable impacts against healthcare and media companies. Activity Profile: Emerald Sleet using QR codes for credential harvesting. In May 2025, Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed the North Korean threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Emerald Sleet using QR (quick response) codes designed to lure recipients to credential-harvesting sites in phishing emails. Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-34028 – Commvault Command Center Innovation Release. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “the Commvault Command Center Innovation Release allows an unauthenticated actor to upload ZIP files that represent install packages that, when expanded by the target server, are vulnerable to path traversal vulnerability that can result in Remote Code Execution via malicious JSP. This issue affects Command Center Innovation Release: 11.38.0 to 11.38.20. The vulnerability is fixed in 11.38.20 with SP38-CU20-433 and SP38-CU20-436 and also fixed in 11.38.25 with SP38-CU25-434 and SP38-CU25-438.” Activity Profile: Forest Blizzard trojanizes Ukraine software to deliver new variant of Blipslide downloader. Since March, Microsoft Threat intelligence observed the Russian military intelligence threat actor Forest Blizzard infect devices in Ukraine with a new variant of BlipSlide malware, a downloader that the threat actor uses for command and control (C2). Actor Profile: Storm-2416. The threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Storm-2416 is a nation-state activity group based out of China. Storm-2416 is known to primarily target information technology (IT), government, and other business entities in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and South and North America. Activity Profile: Suspicious OAuth applications used to retrieve and send emails. In late February 2025, Microsoft discovered a set of malicious Open Authorization (OAuth) applications, including one that impersonated Outlook, that can retrieve and send emails. Actor Profile: Storm-0126. The threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Storm-0126 is a nation-state activity group based out of China. Storm-0126 is known to primarily target defense industry enterprises, public institutions, research institutes, and military-industrial organizations worldwide. Actor Profile: Storm-2001. Microsoft assesses with high confidence that the threat actor Microsoft tracks as Storm-2001 is a Russian state-sponsored actor. It is known to primarily target defense organizations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance—specifically, member states that form NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) program, recent NATO members, and other related organizations that engage in NATO-related communications and planning. Activity profile: Storm-2561 distributes trojanized SonicWall NetExtender SilentRoute. In late May 2025, Storm-2561 began distributing malware that Microsoft detects as SilentRoute. The malware is a trojanized version of SonicWall’s SSL VPN NetExtender application that transmits the user’s VPN configuration data to a hardcoded IP address.Monthly news - November 2024
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news November 2024 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from October 2024.Hyperscale ML threat intelligence for early detection & disruption
In today's rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, the ability to swiftly identify and mitigate threats is more critical than ever. Attackers are increasingly well-resourced, enabling them to keep adding new components to their toolkits that keep their infrastructure fresh and hard to detect. Traditional labeling methods used to identify and block malicious infrastructure are struggling to keep up. At Microsoft, we recognize the pressing need for innovative solutions that not only keep pace with these threats but stay ahead of them. This past Ignite, we announced Threat Intelligence Tracking via Dynamic Networks (TITAN)—a groundbreaking approach that uses the power of machine learning to transform threat intelligence and attack disruption by automatically neutralizing malicious activity at scale. By leveraging real-time ML-driven analytics, TITAN uncovers previously hidden threat actor infrastructure, enabling the disruption capabilities built into our unified security operations platform to detect and stop attacks significantly earlier in the attack chain (Figure 1). The power of machine-scale threat intelligence TITAN represents a new wave of innovation built on Microsoft threat intelligence capabilities, introducing a real-time, adaptive threat intelligence (TI) graph that integrates first and third-party telemetry from the unified security operations platform, Microsoft Defender for Threat Intelligence, Microsoft Defender for Experts, and customer feedback. This graph employs guilt-by-association techniques to propagate known TI labels to unknown neighboring entities (e.g., IP, file, email) at machine scale. By analyzing relationships between entities, TITAN can identify attacker infrastructure before they are leveraged in attacks, providing an invaluable window of opportunity to prevent harm. Figure 1. Architectural overview of TITAN, comprising four key steps: (1) constructing a graph using telemetry from 1 st and 3 rd party detectors in the Unified Security Operations Platform, (2) integrating known threat intelligence from across Microsoft, (3) applying reputation propagation algorithms to classify previously unknown entities as either benign or malicious, and (4) updating the reputation score for each entity in the graph. By leveraging guilt-by-association methods, TITAN can swiftly identify hidden threat actor infrastructure through cross-organizational associations with known malicious entities within the TI graph. Specifically, we employ a semi-supervised label propagation technique that iteratively assigns reputation scores to nodes based on their neighbors’ scores, refining the graph’s score distribution until convergence. These high-confidence entity reputation scores empower the unified security operations platform to implement proactive containment and remediation actions via attack disruption. A key advantage of our constantly evolving threat intelligence is that we can provide clear and explainable reputation scores for each entity by examining the neighboring entities that contribute to the overall score. Preventing attacks before they happen Consider a scenario where TITAN detects unusual activity from a seemingly benign IP address that has connections to known malicious domains. Traditional systems might not flag this IP until after malicious activity is confirmed. However, TITAN's guilt-by-association techniques elevate the reputation score of the IP address, immediately triggering detection and disruption rules that block the threat before any damage occurs. With an impressive average macro-F1 score of 0.89 and a precision-recall AUC of 0.94, TITAN identifies millions of high-risk entities each week, enabling a 6x increase in non-file threat intelligence. Since its deployment, TITAN has reduced the time to disrupt by a factor of 1.9x while maintaining 99% precision, as confirmed by customer feedback and thorough manual evaluation by security experts—ultimately saving customers from costly security breaches. Dynamic threat intelligence graph construction At the heart of TITAN is a dynamic, time-evolving threat intelligence graph that captures complex relationships between millions of interlinked entities, alerts, and incidents. By combining telemetry across both 1 st and 3 rd party sources in the unified security operations platform, TITAN is uniquely positioned for comprehensive view of the threat landscape, essential for early detection and disruption. Key features include: Real-time updates – In cybersecurity, speed is critical. TITAN operates in real-time, with graph creation and reputation propagation algorithms running every hour. This frequency ensures that security teams receive fresh and active threat intelligence, enabling swift and effective responses to emerging threats. The ability to act quickly can mean the difference between thwarting an attack and being breached. Infusing security domain knowledge via edge weights – Edges in the TI graph carry weights that signify the strength or relevance of the relationships between entities. We introduce edge weight decay functions that automatically reduce edge weights based on the time elapsed since the edge was formed. This ensures that newer and more relevant relationships have a greater impact on reputation assessments, aligning the dynamic graph with the real-time nature of security incidents. Pruning outdated nodes and edges – To maintain the relevance and efficiency of the TI graph, we implement pruning mechanisms that remove nodes and edges when their weights fall below certain thresholds. This approach keeps the graph focused on the most current and meaningful connections, ensuring optimal performance. Evolving cybersecurity defense with TI TITAN represents a monumental step forward in the mission to protect organizations from cyber threats. By infusing the power of AI with advanced threat intelligence, we are equipping security teams with the tools they need to stay ahead of the attackers. This is only possible with a unified platform that consolidates threat intelligence across 1 st and 3 rd party workloads and products, organizations benefit not only from streamlining their security operations but also gain deeper insights into potential threats and vulnerabilities. TITAN is just one of the many examples of how powerful bringing together the full capabilities of an industry-leading cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM), comprehensive extended detection and response (XDR), and generative AI built specifically for cybersecurity. Integrating all of this data, advanced analysis, threat intel and automation enables an entirely new era of defense for security teams and we’re so energized by the potential. TITAN is just the start – look forward to new capabilities announced in the coming months. Learn More Check out our resources to learn more about our new approach to AI-driven threat intelligence, and our recent security announcements: See TITAN in action in the session delivered at Ignite Read the full paper on the TITAN architecture Read the Copilot for Security Guided Response paper & blog Read the unified security operations platform GA announcementMonthly news - April 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news April 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from March 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. ⏰ April 9th & 10th is Microsoft Secure! Make sure you join this virtual event to hear about our latest product announcements. Three broadcast times are available, offering opportunities to get your questions answered by subject matter experts at a time that suits you best. April 9, 2025 | 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PT (UTC-7) | Americas broadcast April 10, 2025 | 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CET (UTC+1) | Europe, Middle East, Africa broadcast April 10, 2025 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM SGT (UTC+8) | Asia broadcast Microsoft Secure - Home - Microsoft Secure registration home page. New episodes of the Virtual Ninja Show has been published, covering various products and scenarios. Microsoft's Zero Trust approach Resolving high CPU utilization in Microsoft Defender Antivirus Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer overview Mastering onboarding issues with Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer Mastering endpoint security settings issues with Defender for Endpoint Client Analyzer Connecting your Apps to Defender for Cloud Apps Unified Security Operations Platform: Microsoft Defender XDR & Microsoft Sentinel What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025 (Webinar) Microsoft Sentinel Repositories: Manage Your SIEM Content as code Like a Pro (GA Announcement) The content hub offers the best way to find new content or manage the solutions you already installed, now with granular AI search. (Public Preview) The Microsoft Sentinel agentless data connector for SAP and related security content is now included, as public preview, in the solution for SAP applications. Blog post: Transforming public sector security operations in the AI era Discover how Microsoft's AI-powered, unified SecOps can revolutionize public sector security operations and safeguard multiplatform, multi-cloud environments with industry-leading innovation and seamless integration. Ready to elevate your cyber defense? (Public Preview) The incident description has moved within the incident page. The incident description is now displayed after the incident details. For more information, see Incident details. The Microsoft 365 alert policies can now only be managed in the Microsoft Defender portal. For more information, see Alert policies in Microsoft 365. You can now link Threat analytics reports when setting up custom detections. Learn more Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Update to the Microsoft Defender Antivirus group policies documentation. Learn more Addition of the default settings for Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUA) documentation. Learn more New video (9 mins): How Microsoft is redefining endpoint security New documentation: Troubleshoot Microsoft Defender Antivirus scan issues Microsoft Defender for Office 365 User reported messages by third-party add-ins can be sent to Microsoft for analysis: In user reported settings, admins can select Monitor reported messages in Outlook > Use a non-Microsoft add-in button. In the Reported message destination section, select Microsoft and my reporting mailbox, and then provide the email address of the internal Exchange Online mailbox where user-reported messages by the third-party add-in are routed to. Microsoft analyzea these reported messages and provides result on the User reported tab of Submissions page at https://security.microsoft.com/reportsubmission?viewid=user. Create allow entries directly in the Tenant Allow/Block List: You can now create allow entries for domains & addresses and URLs directly in the Tenant Allow/Block List. This capability is available in Microsoft 365 Worldwide, GCC, GCC High, DoD, and Office 365 operated by 21Vianet. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (GA) Unified Identity inventory now general available. Learn more Defending against OAuth based attacks with automatic attack disruption. Microsoft’s Automatic attack disruption capabilities disrupt sophisticated in-progress attacks and prevent them from spreading, now including OAuth app-based attacks. Attack disruption is an automated response capability that stops in-progress attacks by analyzing the attacker’s intent, identifying compromised assets, and containing them in real time. Level Up Your App Governance With Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Workshop Series. Join one of these workshops to learn: Real-world examples of OAuth attacks New pre-built templates and custom rules to simplify app governance How to quickly identify and mitigate risks from high-risk or suspicious apps Best practices for operationalizing app governance to improve your security posture These workshops are designed to accommodate global participation, with flexible date and time options. Protecting SaaS apps from OAuth threats with attack path, advanced hunting and more. Read this blog post to learn about various new capabilities rolling out over the next few weeks. Microsoft Defender for Identity Blog post: Discover and protect Service Accounts with Microsoft Defender for Identity Microsoft Defender for Identity now includes a Service Account Discovery capability, offering you centralized visibility into service accounts across your Active Directory environment. New health issue for cases where sensors running on VMware have network configuration mismatch. The Identities page under Assets has been updated to provide better visibility and management of identities across your environment. New LDAP query events were added to the IdentityQueryEvents table in Advanced Hunting to provide more visibility into additional LDAP search queries running in the customer environment. Microsoft Security Blogs Silk Typhoon targeting IT supply chain Malvertising campaign leads to info stealers hosted on GitHub New XCSSET malware adds new obfuscation, persistence techniques to infect Xcode projects Phishing campaign impersonates Booking .com, delivers a suite of credential-stealing malware StilachiRAT analysis: From system reconnaissance to cryptocurrency theft Analyzing open-source bootloaders: Finding vulnerabilities faster with AI Threat Analytics (Access to the Defender Portal needed) Vulnerability Profile: CVE-2024-40711 – Veeam Backup Activity profile: Moonstone Sleet using Qilin ransomware [TA update] Actor Profile: Secret Blizzard Actor profile: Berry Sandstorm Activity profile: DarkGate malware samples delivered through fake Notion websites followed by ClickFix technique Activity profile: Secret Blizzard and Aqua Blizzard collaborate to target Ukrainian military devices [TA update] Actor profile - Swirl Typhoon Vulnerability profile: CVE-2024-57726 Multiple vulnerabilities found in SimpleHelp Remote Support Software Activity profile: Lumma Stealer spreads via YouTube video descriptions [TA update] Actor profile: Aqua Blizzard Tool profile: Latrodectus Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-26633 Tool profile: WinRing0 Activity profile: Storm-0485 phishing activity Activity profile: Silk Typhoon targeting IT supply chain Activity profile: Storm-1877 evolving tactics to target users with ClickFix attacks Threat overview: Business Email Compromise [Snapshot] Actor profile: Storm-2372 [TA update] Actor profile: ZigZag Hail Actor profile: Storm-0287 Activity profile: Secret Blizzard abusing Visual Studio Code tunneling service Activity Profile: Clickfix and Malvertising campaigns leveraging node.exe application Actor profile: Yulong Flood Vulnerability profile: CVE-2024-43451- NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability Tool profile: FrostyStash [TA update] Tool profile: Mimikatz Tool profile: Mamba 2FA Activity profile: Phishing campaign deploying PureLogStealer targets users in Central America [TA update] Vulnerability profile: CVE 2025-0282: Ivanti Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateway [TA update] Actor profile: Silk Typhoon Seamless SSO Abuse via AADInternals [TA update] SystemBC Tool Profile Vulnerability profile: CVE-2025-22224 – VMware
