External people can't open files with Sensitivity Label encryption.
Question: What are the best practices for ensuring external users can open files encrypted with Sensitivity Labels? Hi all. I've been investigating proper setup of sensitivity labels in Purview, and the impact on user experience. The prerequisites are simple enough, creating and configuring the labels reasonably straightforward, and publishing them is a breeze. But using them appears to be a different matter! Everything is fine for labels that don't apply encryption (control access) or when used internally. However, the problems come when labels do apply encryption and information is sent externally. The result is that we apply a label to a document, attach that document to an email, and send it externally - and the recipient says they can't open it and they get an error that their email address is not in our directory. This is because due to the encryption, the external user needs to authenticate back to our tenant, and if they're not in our tenant they obviously can't do this so the files won't open. So, back to the question above. What's the easiest / most secure / best way to add any user we might share encrypted content with to our tenant. As I see it we have the following options: Users have to request Admins add the user as a Guest in our tenant before they send the content. Let's face it, they'll not do this and/or get frustrated. Users share encrypted content directly from SharePoint / OneDrive, rather than attaching it to emails (as that would automatically add the external person as a Guest in the tenant). This will be fine in some circumstances, but won't always be appropriate (when you want to send them a point-in-time version of a doc). With good SharePoint setup, site Owners would also have to approve the share before it gets sent which could delay things. Admins add all possible domains that encrypted content might be shared with to Entra B2B Direct Connect (so the external recipient doesn't have to be our tenant). This may not be practical as you often don't know who you'll need to share with and we work with hundreds of organisations. The bigger gotcha is that the external organisation would also have to configure Entra B2B Direct Connect. Admins default Entra B2B Direct Connect to 'Allow All'. This opens up a significant attack surface and also still requires any external organisation to configure Entra B2B Direct Connect as well. I really want to make this work, but it need to be as simple as possible for the end users sharing sensitive or confidential content. And all of the above options seem to have significant down-sides. I'm really hoping someone who uses Sensitivity Labels on a day-to-day basis can provide some help or advice to share their experiences. Thanks, Oz.From Chaos to Clarity: How Microsoft 365 Copilot Helps SMBs Make Smarter Decisions
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face a constant challenge: do more with less and do it faster. The pressure to innovate, respond to market shifts, and keep teams aligned is real. That’s why Microsoft 365 Copilot is more than just another productivity tool—it’s a strategic partner for SMBs looking to turn operational chaos into clarity.Microsoft Sentinel data lake is now generally available
Security is being reengineered for the AI era, shifting from static controls to fast, platform-driven defense. Traditional tools, scattered data, and outdated systems struggle against modern threats. An AI-ready, data-first foundation is needed to unify telemetry, standardize agent access, and enable autonomous responses while ensuring humans are in command of strategy and high-impact investigations. Security teams already anchor their operations around SIEMs for comprehensive visibility. We're building on that foundation by evolving Microsoft Sentinel into both the SIEM and the platform for agentic defense—connecting analytics and context across ecosystems. Today, we’re introducing new platform capabilities that build on Sentinel data lake: Sentinel graph for deeper insight and context; an MCP server and tools to make data agent ready; new developer capabilities; and a Security Store for effortless discovery and deployment—so protection accelerates to machine speed while analysts do their best work. We’ve reached a major milestone in our journey to modernize security operations — Microsoft Sentinel data lake is now generally available. This fully managed, cloud-native data lake is redefining how security teams manage, analyze, and act on their data cost-effectively. Since its introduction, organizations across sectors are embracing Sentinel data lake for its transformative impact on security operations. Customers consistently highlight its ability to unify security data from diverse sources, enabling enhanced threat detection and investigation. Many cite cost efficiency as a key benefit, with tiered storage and flexible retention, helping reduce costs. With petabytes of data already ingested, users are gaining real-time and historical insights at scale. "With Microsoft Sentinel data lake integration, we now have a scalable and cost-efficient solution for retaining Microsoft Sentinel data for long-term retention. This empowers our security and compliance teams with seamless access to historical telemetry data right within the data lake explorer and Jupyter notebooks - enabling advanced threat hunting, forensic analysis, and AI-powered insights at scale" Farhan Nadeem, Senior Security Engineer Government of Nunavut Industry partners also commend its role in modernizing SOC workflows and accelerating AI-driven analytics. “Microsoft Sentinel data lake amplifies BlueVoyant’s ability to transform security operations into a mature, intelligence-driven discipline. It preserves institutional memory across years of telemetry, which empowers advanced threat hunting strategies that evolve with time. Security teams can validate which data sources yield actionable insights, uncover persistent attack patterns, and retain high-value indicators that support long-term strategic advantage.” Milan Patel, CRO BlueVoyant Microsoft Sentinel data lake use-cases There are many powerful ways customers are unlocking value with Sentinel data lake—here are just a few impactful examples.: Threat investigations over extended timelines: Security analysts query data older than 90 days to uncover slow-moving attacks—like brute-force and password spray campaigns—that span accounts and geographies. Behavioral baselining for deeper insights: SOC engineers build time-series models using months of sign-in logs to establish a standard of normal behavior and identify unusual patterns, such as credential abuse or lateral movement. Alert enrichment: SOC teams correlate alerts with Firewall and Netflow data, often stored only in the data lake, reducing false positives and increasing alert accuracy. Retrospective threat hunting with new indicators of compromise (IOCs): Threat intelligence teams react to emerging IOCs by running historical queries across the data lake, enabling rapid and informed response. ML-Powered insights: SOC engineers use Spark Notebooks to build and operationalize custom machine learning models for anomaly detection, alert enrichment, and predictive analytics. The Sentinel data lake is more than a storage solution—it’s the foundation for modern, AI-powered security operations. Whether you're scaling your SOC, building deeper analytics, or preparing for future threats, the Sentinel data lake is ready to support your journey. What’s new Regional expansion In light of strong customer demand in public preview, at GA we are expanding Sentinel data lake availability to additional regions. These new regions will roll out progressively over the coming weeks. For more information, see documentation. Flexible data ingestion and management With over 350 native connectors, SOC teams can seamlessly ingest both structured and semi-structured data at scale. Data is automatically mirrored from the analytics tier to the data lake tier, at no additional cost, ensuring a single, unified copy is available for diverse use cases across security operations. Since the public preview of Microsoft Sentinel data lake, we've launched 45 new connectors built on the scalable and performant Codeless Connector Framework (CCF), including connectors for: GCP: SQL, DNS, VPC Flow, Resource Manager, IAM, Apigee AWS: Security Hub findings, Route53 DNS Others: Alibaba Cloud, Oracle, Salesforce, Snowflake, Cisco Sentinel’s connector ecosystem is designed to help security teams seamlessly unify signals across hybrid environments, without the need for heavy engineering effort. Explore the full list of connectors in our documentation here. App Assure Microsoft Sentinel data lake promise As part of our commitment to customer success, we are expanding the App Assure Microsoft Sentinel promise to Sentinel data lake. This means customers can confidently onboard their data, knowing that App Assure stands ready to help resolve connector issues such as replacing deprecated APIs with updated ones, and accelerating new integrations. Whether you're working with existing Independent Software Vendor (ISV) solutions or building new ones, App Assure will collaborate directly with ISVs to ensure seamless data ingestion into the lake. This promise reinforces our dedication to delivering reliable, scalable, and secure security operations, backed by engineering support and a thriving partner ecosystem. Cost management and billing We are introducing new cost management features in public preview to help customers with cost predictability, billing transparency, and operational efficiency. Customers can set usage-based alerts on specific meters to monitor and control costs. For example, you can receive alerts when query or notebook usage passes set limits, helping avoid unexpected expenses and manage budgets. In-product reports provide customers with insights into usage trends over time, enabling them to identify cost drivers and optimize data retention and processing strategies. To support the ingestion and standardization of diverse data sources, we are introducing a new Data Processing feature that applies a $0.10 per GB charge for all data as it is ingested into the data lake. This feature enables a broad array of transformations like redaction, splitting, filtering and normalizing data. This feature was not billed during public preview but will be chargeable at GA starting October 1,2025. Data lake ingestion charges of $0.05 per GB will apply to Entra asset data; starting October 1, 2025. This was previously not billed during public preview. Retaining security data to perform deep analytics and investigations is crucial for defending against threats. To help enable customers to retain all their security data for extended periods cost effectively, data lake storage, including asset data storage, is now billed with a simple and uniform data compression rate of 6:1 across all data sources. Please refer to Plan costs and understand Microsoft Sentinel pricing and billing article for more information. For detailed prerequisites and instructions on configuring and managing asset connectors, refer to the official documentation: Asset data in Microsoft Sentinel data lake. KQL and Notebook enhancements We are introducing several enhancements to our data lake analytics capabilities with an upgraded KQL and notebook experience. Security teams can now run multi-workspace KQL queries for broader threat correlation and schedule KQL jobs more frequently. Frequent KQL jobs enable SOC teams to automate historical threat intelligence matching, summarize alert trends, and aggregate signals across workspaces. For example, schedule recurring jobs to scan for matches against newly ingested IOCs, helping uncover threats that were previously undetected and strengthening threat hunting and investigation workflows. The enhanced Jobs page offers operational clarity for SOC teams with a comprehensive view into job health and activity. At the top, a summary dashboard provides instant visibility into key metrics, total jobs, completions, and failures, helping teams quickly assess job health. A filterable list view displays essential details such as job names, status, frequency, and last run information, enabling quick prioritization and triage. For more detailed diagnostics, users can view individual jobs to access job runs telemetry such as job run duration, row count, and additional historical execution trends, providing additional visibility. Notebooks are receiving a significant upgrade, offering streamlined user experience for querying the data lake. Users now benefit from IntelliSense support for syntax and table names, making query authoring faster and more intuitive. They can also configure custom compute session timeouts and warning windows to better manage resources. Scheduling notebooks as jobs is now simpler, and users can leverage GitHub Copilot for intelligent assistance throughout the process. Together, these KQL and notebook improvements deliver deeper, more customizable analytics, helping customers unlock richer insights, accelerate threat response, and scale securely across diverse environments. Powering agentic defense Data centralization powers AI agents and automation to access comprehensive, historical, and real-time data for advanced analytics, anomaly detection, and autonomous threat response. Support for tools like KQL queries, Spark notebooks, and machine learning models in the data lake, allows agentic systems to continuously learn, adapt, and act on emerging threats. Integration with Security Copilot and MCP Server further enhances agentic defense, enabling smarter, faster, and context-rich security operations—all built on the foundation of Sentinel’s unified data lake. Microsoft Sentinel 50 GB commitment tier promotional pricing To make Microsoft Sentinel more accessible to small and mid-sized customers, we are introducing a new 50 GB commitment tier in public preview, with promotional pricing offered from October 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026. Customers who choose the 50 GB commitment tier during this period will maintain their promotional rate until March 31, 2027. This offer is available in all regions where Microsoft Sentinel is sold, with regional variations in promotional pricing. It is accessible through EA, CSP, and Direct channels. The new 50 GB commitment tier details will be available starting October 1, 2025, on the Microsoft Sentinel pricing page. Thank you to our customers and partners We’re incredibly grateful for the continued partnership and collaboration from our customers and partners throughout this journey. Your feedback and trust have been instrumental in shaping Microsoft Sentinel data lake into what it is today. Thank you for being a part of this critical milestone—we’re excited to keep building together. Get started today By centralizing data, optimizing costs, expanding coverage, and enabling deep analytics, Microsoft Sentinel empowers security teams to operate smarter, faster, and more effectively. Get started with Microsoft Sentinel data lake today in the Microsoft Defender experience. To learn more, see: Microsoft Sentinel—AI-Powered Cloud SIEM & Platform Pricing: Pricing page, Plan costs and understand Microsoft Sentinel pricing and billing Documentation: Connect Sentinel to Defender, Jupyter notebooks in Microsoft Sentinel data lake, KQL and the Microsoft Sentinel data lake, Permissions for Microsoft Sentinel data lake, Manage data tiers and retention in Microsoft Defender experience Blogs: Sentinel data lake FAQ blog, Empowering defenders in the era of AI, Microsoft Sentinel graph announcement, App Assure Microsoft Sentinel data lake promiseIntroducing new security and compliance add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are under pressure like never before. Cyber threats are evolving rapidly, and regulatory requirements are becoming increasingly complex. Microsoft 365 Business Premium is our productivity and security solution designed for SMBs (1–300 users). It includes Office apps, Teams, advanced security such as Microsoft Defender for Business, and device management — all in one cost-effective package. Today, we’re taking that a step further. We’re excited to announce three new Microsoft 365 Business Premium add-ons designed to supercharge security and compliance. Tailored for medium-sized organizations, these add-ons bring enterprise-grade security, compliance, and identity protection to the Business Premium experience without the enterprise price tag. Microsoft Defender Suite for Business Premium: $10/user/month Cyberattacks are becoming more complex. Attackers are getting smarter. Microsoft Defender Suite provides end-to-end security to safeguard your businesses from identity attacks, device threats, email phishing, and risky cloud apps. It enables SMBs to reduce risks, respond faster, and maintain a strong security posture without adding complexity. It includes: Protect your business from identity threats: Microsoft Entra ID P2 offers advanced security and governance features including Microsoft Entra ID Protection and Microsoft Entra ID Governance. Microsoft Entra ID protection offers risk-based conditional access that helps block identity attacks in real time using behavioral analytics and signals from both user risk and sign-in risk. It also enables SMBs to detect, investigate, and remediate potential identity-based risks using sophisticated machine learning and anomaly detection capabilities. With detailed reports and alerts, your business is notified of suspicious user activities and sign-in attempts, including scenarios like a password-spray where attackers try to gain unauthorized access to company employee accounts by trying a small number of commonly used passwords across many different accounts. ID Governance capabilities are also included to help automate workflows and processes that give users access to resources. For example, IT admins historically manage the onboarding process manually and generate repetitive user access requests for Managers to review which is time consuming and inefficient. With ID Governance capabilities, pre-configured workflows facilitate the automation of employee onboarding, user access, and lifecycle management throughout their employment, streamlining the process and reducing onboarding time. Microsoft Defender for Identity includes dedicated sensors and connectors for common identity elements that offer visibility into your unique identity landscape and provide detailed posture recommendations, robust detections and response actions. These powerful detections are then automatically enriched and correlated with data from other domains across Defender XDR for true incident-level visibility. Keep your devices safe: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 offers industry-leading antimalware, cyberattack surface reduction, device-based conditional access, comprehensive endpoint detection and response (EDR), advanced hunting with support for custom detections, and attack surface reduction capabilities powered by Secure Score. Secure email and collaboration: With Microsoft Defender for Office 365 P2, you gain access to cyber-attack simulation training, which provides SMBs with a safe and controlled environment to simulate real-world cyber-attacks, helping to train employees in recognizing phishing attempts. Additionally automated response capabilities and post-breach investigations help reduce the time and resources required to identify and remediate potential security breaches. Detailed reports are also available that capture information on employees’ URL clicks, internal and external email distribution, and more. Protect your cloud apps: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a comprehensive, AI-powered software-as-a-service (SaaS) security solution that enables IT teams to identify and manage shadow IT and ensure that only approved applications are used. It protects against sophisticated SaaS-based attacks, OAuth attacks, and risky interactions with generative AI apps by combining SaaS app discovery, security posture management, app-to-app protection, and integrated threat protection. IT teams can gain full visibility into their SaaS app landscape, understand the risks and set up controls to manage the apps. SaaS security posture management quickly identifies app misconfigurations and provides remediation actions to reduce the attack surface. Microsoft Purview Suite for Business Premium: $10/user/month Protect against insider threats Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management uses behavioral analytics to detect risky activities, like an employee downloading large volumes of files before leaving the company. Privacy is built in, so you can act early without breaking employee trust. Protect sensitive data wherever it goes Microsoft Purview Information Protection classifies and labels sensitive data, so the right protections follow the data wherever it goes. Think of it as a ‘security tag’ that stays attached to a document whether it’s stored in OneDrive, shared in Teams, or emailed outside the company. Policies can be set based on the ‘tag’ to prevent data oversharing, ensuring sensitive files are only accessible to the right people. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) works in the background to stop sensitive information, like credit card numbers or health data, from being accidentally shared with unauthorized people Microsoft Purview Message Encryption adds another layer by making sure email content stays private, even when sent outside the organization. Microsoft Purview Customer Key gives organizations control of their own encryption keys, helping meet strict regulatory requirements. Ensure data privacy and compliant communications Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance monitors and flags inappropriate or risky communications to protect against policy and compliance violations. Protect AI interactions Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI provides visibility into how AI interacts with sensitive data, helping detect oversharing, risky prompts, and unethical behavior. Monitors Copilot and third-party AI usage with real-time alerts, policy enforcement, and risk scoring. Manage information through its lifecycle Microsoft Purview Records and Data Lifecycle Management helps businesses meet compliance obligations by applying policies that enable automatic retention or deletion of data. Stay investigation-ready Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) makes it easier to respond to internal investigations, legal holds, or compliance reviews. Instead of juggling multiple systems, you can search, place holds, and export information in one place — ensuring legal and compliance teams work efficiently. Microsoft Purview Audit (Premium) provides deeper audit logs and analytics to trace activity like file access, email reads, or user actions. This level of detail is critical for incident response and forensic investigations, helping SMBs maintain regulatory readiness and customer trust. Simplify Compliance Management Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager helps track regulatory requirements, assess risk, and manage improvement actions, all in one dashboard tailored for SMBs. Together, these capabilities help SMBs operate with the same level of compliance and data protection as large enterprises but simplified for smaller teams and tighter budgets. Microsoft Defender and Purview Suites for Business Premium: $15/user/month The new Microsoft Defender and Purview Suites unite the full capabilities of Microsoft Defender and Purview into a single, cost-effective package. This all-in-one solution delivers comprehensive security, compliance, and data protection, while helping SMB customers unlock up to 68% savings compared to buying the products separately, making it easier than ever to safeguard your organization without compromising on features or budget. FAQ Q: When will these new add-ons be available for purchase? A: They will be available for purchase as add-ons to Business Premium in September 2025. Q: How can I purchase? A: You can purchase these as add-ons to your Business Premium subscription through Microsoft Security for SMBs website or through your Partner. Q: Are there any seat limits for the add-on offers? A: Yes. Customers can purchase a mix of add-on offers, but the total number of seats across all add-ons is limited to 300 per customer. Q: Does Microsoft 365 Business Premium plus Microsoft Defender Suite allow mixed licensing for endpoint security solutions? A: Microsoft Defender for Business does not support mixed licensing so a tenant with Defender for Business (included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium) along with Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 (included in Microsoft 365 Security) will default to Defender for Business. For example, if you have 80 users licensed for Microsoft 365 Business Premium and you’ve added Microsoft Defender Suite for 30 of those users, the experience for all users will default to Defender for Business. If you would like to change that to the Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 experience, you should license all users for Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 (either through standalone or Microsoft Defender Suite) and then contact Microsoft Support to request the switch for your tenant. You can learn more here. Q: Can customers who purchased the E5 Security Suite as an add-on to Microsoft 365 Business Premium transition to the new Defender Suite starting from the October billing cycle? A: Yes. Customers currently using the Microsoft 365 E5 Security add-on with Microsoft 365 Business Premium are eligible to transition to the new Defender Suite beginning with the October billing cycle. For detailed guidance, please refer to the guidelines here. Q: As a Partner, how do I build Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services with MDB? A: For partners or customers looking to build their own security operations center (SOC) with MDR, Defender for Business supports the streaming of device events (device file, registry, network, logon events and more) to Azure Event Hub, Azure Storage, and Microsoft Sentinel to support advanced hunting and attack detection. If you are using the streaming API for the first time, you can find step-by-step instructions in the Microsoft 365 Streaming API Guide on configuring the Microsoft 365 Streaming API to stream events to your Azure Event Hubs or to your Azure Storage Account. To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions for SMBs you can visit our website.New Microsoft Purview Deployment Blueprint | Lightweight guide to mitigate data leakage
We’re excited to share our latest Data Security deployment blueprint: “Lightweight guide to mitigate data leakage”—a practical resource designed to help organizations quickly enable core data security features across their Microsoft 365 estate with minimal setup. The blueprint follows a good / better / best model that maps protections to your licensing. “Good” highlights foundational features included in Business Premium SKUs, while “Better” and “Best” layer in advanced E5 Compliance capabilities, such as auto-labeling, Endpoint DLP, insider risk signals and much more. With the new E5 Compliance Add-On for Business Premium, this guide shows how organizations can capture quick wins today while building toward stronger, long-term security practices. This blueprint is designed for IT administrators, security teams, and compliance stakeholders tasked with protecting sensitive data – and it’s equally valuable for Microsoft partners and consultants supporting customers on their data security journey. Whether you’re enabling basic safeguards or advancing towards automated protection, this guide provides clear, actionable steps to strengthen your data security posture. Ready to get started? Visit our Purview deployment blueprint page or jump straight to the direct PPT link for a step-by-step walkthrough. Securing your data doesn’t have to be complex – this lightweight blueprint makes it achievable for organizations of any size.
Dibbling Microsoft AutoUpdate - macOS
I have a customer with a Mac mini M4 with multiple user accounts. Each user has an access to Office 365 apps, Outlook, Excel and Word. The issue I am having is with Microsoft AutoUpdate. I have turned off "Automatically keep Microsoft apps up to date" on all of the users. This has not stopped update application from opening and showing on each of the users there are updates available. If one of the users tries to run the update while an application is open by another user, it cause all kinds of problems. My questions is, "Is there another way to prevent AutoUpdate from indicating there are updates available? Thanks Len Levin BSC
