What’s new in Microsoft Sentinel: RSAC 2026
Security is entering a new era, one defined by explosive data growth, increasingly sophisticated threats, and the rise of AI-enabled operations. To keep pace, security teams need an AI-powered approach to collect, reason over, and act on security data at scale. At RSA Conference 2026 (RSAC), we’re unveiling the next wave of Sentinel innovations designed to help organizations move faster, see deeper, and defend smarter with AI-ready tools. These updates include AI-driven playbooks that accelerate SOC automation, Granular Delegated Admin Privileges (GDAP) and granular role-based access controls (RBAC) that let you scale your SOC, accelerated data onboarding through new connectors, and data federation that enables analysis in place without duplication. Together, they give teams greater clarity, control, and speed. Come see us at RSAC to view these innovations in action. Hear from Sentinel leaders during our exclusive Microsoft Pre-Day, then visit Microsoft booth #5744 for demos, theater sessions, and conversations with Sentinel experts. Read on to explore what’s new. See you at RSAC! Sentinel feature innovations: Sentinel SIEM Sentinel data lake Sentinel graph Sentinel MCP Threat Intelligence Microsoft Security Store Sentinel promotions Sentinel SIEM Playbook generator [Now in public preview] The Sentinel playbook generator delivers a new era of automation capabilities. You can vibe code complex automations, integrate with different tools to ensure timely and compliant workflows throughout your SOC and feel confident in the results with built in testing and documentation. Customers and partners are already seeing benefit from this innovation. “The playbook generator gives security engineers the flexibility and speed of AI-assisted coding while delivering the deterministic outcomes that enterprise security operations require. It's the best of both worlds, and it lives natively in Defender where the engineers already work.” – Jaime Guimera Coll | Security and AI Architect | BlueVoyant Learn more about playbook generator. SIEM migration experience [General availability now] The Sentinel SIEM migration experience helps you plan and execute SIEM migrations through a guided, in-product workflow. You can upload Splunk or QRadar exports to generate recommendations for best‑fit Sentinel analytics rules and required data connectors, then assess migration scope, validate detection coverage, and migrate from Splunk or QRadar to Sentinel in phases while tracking progress. “The tool helps turn a Splunk to Sentinel migration into a practical decision process. It gives clear visibility into which detections are relevant, how they align to real security use cases, and where it makes sense to enable or prioritize coverage—especially with cost and data sources in mind.” – Deniz Mutlu | Director | Swiss Post Cybersecurity Ltd Learn more about SIEM migration experience. GDAP, unified RBAC, and row-level RBAC for Sentinel [Public preview, April 1] As Sentinel environments grow for enterprises, MSSPs, hyperscalers, and partners operating across shared or multiple environments, the challenge becomes managing access control efficiently and consistently at scale. Sentinel’s expanded permissions and access capabilities are designed to meet these needs. Granular Delegated Admin Privileges (GDAP) lets you streamline management across multiple governed tenants using your primary account, based on existing GDAP relationships. Unified RBAC allows you to opt in to managing permissions for Sentinel workspaces through a single pane of glass, configuring and enforcing access across Sentinel experiences in the analytics tier and data lake in the Defender portal. This simplifies administration and improves operational efficiency by reducing the number of permission models you need to manage. Row-level RBAC scoping within tables enables precise, scoped access to data in the Sentinel data lake. Multiple SOC teams can operate independently within a shared Sentinel environment, querying only the data they are authorized to see, without separating workspaces or introducing complex data flow changes. Consistent, reusable scope definitions ensure permissions are applied uniformly across tables and experiences, while maintaining strong security boundaries. To learn more, read our technical deep dives on RBAC and GDAP. Sentinel data lake Sentinel data federation [Public preview, April 1] Sentinel data federation lets you analyze security data in place without copying or duplicating your data. Powered by Microsoft Fabric, you can now federate data from Fabric, Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS), and Azure Databricks into Sentinel data lake. Federated data appears alongside native Sentinel data, so you can use familiar tools like KQL hunting, notebooks, and custom graphs to correlate signals and investigate across your entire digital estate, all while preserving governance and compliance. You can start analyzing data in place and progressively ingest data into Sentinel for deeper security insights, advanced automation, and AI-powered defense at scale. You are billed only when you run analytics on federated data using existing Sentinel data lake query and advanced insights meters. les for unified investigation and hunting Sentinel cost estimation tool [Public Preview, April 9] The new Sentinel cost estimation tool offers all Microsoft customers and partners a guided, meter-level cost estimation experience that makes pricing transparent and predictable. A built-in three-year cost projection lets you model data growth and ramp-up over time, anticipate spend, and avoid surprises. Get transparent estimates into spend as you scale your security operations. All other customers can continue to use the Azure calculator for Sentinel pricing estimates. See the Sentinel pricing page for more information. Sentinel data connectors A365 Observability connector [Public preview, April 15] Bring AI agent telemetry into the Sentinel data lake to investigate agent behavior, tool usage, prompts, reasoning and execution using hunting, graph, and MCP workflows. GitHub audit log connector using API polling [General availability, March 6] Ingest GitHub enterprise audit logs into Sentinel to monitor user and administrator activity, detect risky changes, and investigate security events across your development environment. Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) connector [General availability, March 6] Collect Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) audit and workload logs in Sentinel to monitor cluster activity, analyze workload behavior, and detect security threats across Kubernetes environments. Microsoft Entra and Azure Resource Graph (ARG) connector enhancements [Public preview, April 15] Enable new Entra assets (EntraDevices, EntraOrgContacts) and ARG assets (ARGRoleDefinitions) in existing asset connectors, expanding inventory coverage and powering richer, built‑in graph experiences for greater visibility. With over 350 Sentinel data connectors, customers achieve broad visibility into complex digital environments and can expand their security operations effectively. “Microsoft Sentinel data lake forms the core of our agentic SOC. By unifying large volumes of Microsoft and third-party data, enabling graph-based analysis, and supporting MCP-driven workflows, it allows us to investigate faster, at lower cost, and with greater confidence.” – Øyvind Bergerud | Head of Security Operations | Storebrand Learn more about Sentinel data connectors. Sentinel connector builder agent using Sentinel Visual Studio Code extension [Public preview, March 31] Build Sentinel data connectors in minutes instead of weeks using the AI‑assisted Connector Builder agent in Visual Studio Code. This low‑code experience guides developers and ISVs end-to-end, automatically generating schemas, deployment assets, connector UI, secure secret handling, and polling logic. Built‑in validation surfaces issues early, so you can validate event logs before deployment and ingestion. Example prompt in GitHub Copilot Chat: @sentinel-connector-builder Create a new connector for OpenAI audit logs using https://api.openai.com/v1/organization/audit_logs Get started with custom connectors and learn more in our blog. Data filtering and splitting [Public preview, March 30] As security teams ingest more data, the challenge shifts from scale to relevance. With filtering and splitting now built into the Defender portal, teams can shape data before it lands in Sentinel, without switching tools or managing custom JSON files. Define simple KQL‑based transformations directly in the UI to filter low‑value events and intelligently route data, making ingestion optimization faster, more intuitive, and easier to manage at scale. Filtering at ingest time allows you to remove low-value or benign events to reduce noise, cut unnecessary processing, and ensure that high-signal data drives detections and investigations. Splitting enables intelligent routing of data between the analytics tier and the data lake tier based on relevance and usage. Together, these two capabilities help you balance cost and performance while scaling data ingestion sustainably as your digital estate grows. Create workbook reports directly from the data lake [Public preview, April 1] Sentinel workbooks can now directly run on the data lake using KQL, enabling you to visualize and monitor security data straight from the data lake. By selecting the data lake as the workbook data source, you can now create trend analysis and executive reporting. Sentinel graph Custom graphs [Public preview, April 1] Custom graphs let you build tailored security graphs tuned to your unique security scenarios using data from Sentinel data lake as well as non-Microsoft sources. With custom graph, powered by Fabric, you can build, query, and visualize connected data, uncover hidden patterns and attack paths, and help surface risks that are hard to detect when data is analyzed in isolation. These graphs provide the knowledge context that enables AI-powered agent experiences to work more effectively, speeding investigations, revealing blast radius, and helping you move from noisy, disconnected alerts to confident decisions at scale. In the words of our preview customers: “We ingested our Databricks management-plane telemetry into the Sentinel data lake and built a custom security graph. Without writing a single detection rule, the graph surfaced unusual patterns of activity and overprivileged access that we escalated for investigation. We didn't know what we were looking for, the graph surfaced the risk for us by revealing anomalous activity patterns and unusual access combinations driven by relationships, not alerts.” – SVP, Security Solutions | Financial Services organization Custom graph API usage for creating graph and querying graph will be billed starting April 1, 2026, according to the Sentinel graph meter. Creating custom graph Using the Sentinel VS Code extension, you can generate graphs to validate hunting hypotheses, such as understanding attack paths and blast radius of a phishing campaign, reconstructing multi‑step attack chains, and identifying structurally unusual or high‑risk behavior, making it accessible to your team and AI agents. Once persisted via a schedule job, you can access these custom graphs from the ready-to-use section in the graph experience in the Defender portal. Graphs experience in the Microsoft Defender portal After creating your custom graphs, you can access them in the graphs section of the Defender portal under Sentinel. From there, you’ll be able to perform interactive graph-based investigations, such as using a graph built for phishing analysis to help you quickly evaluate the impact of a recent incident, profile the attacker, and trace its paths across Microsoft telemetry and third-party data. The new graph experience lets you run Graph Query Language (GQL) queries, view the graph schema, visualize the graph, view graph results in tabular format, and interactively travers the graph to the next hop with a simple click. Sentinel MCP Sentinel MCP entity analyzer [General availability, April 1] Entity analyzer provides reasoned, out-of-the-box risk assessments that help you quickly understand whether a URL or user identity represents potential malicious activity. The capability analyzes data across modalities including threat intelligence, prevalence, and organizational context to generate clear, explainable verdicts you can trust. Entity analyzer integrates easily with your agents through Sentinel MCP server connections to first-party and third-party AI runtime platforms, or with your SOAR workflows through Logic Apps. The entity analyzer is also a trusted foundation for the Defender Triage Agent and delivers more accurate alert classifications and deeper investigative reasoning. This removes the need to manually engineer evaluation logic and creates trust for analysts and AI agents to act with higher accuracy and confidence. Learn more about entity analyzer and in our blog here. Entity analyzer will be billed starting April 1, 2026, based on Security Compute Units (SCU) consumption. Learn more about MCP billing. Sentinel MCP graph tool collection [Public preview, April 20] Graph tool collection helps you visualize and explore relationships between identities and device assets, threats and activities signals ingested by data connectors and alerted by analytic rules. The tool provides a clear graph view that highlights dependencies and configuration gaps, which makes it easier to understand how content interacts across your environment. This helps security teams assess coverage, optimize content deployment, and identify areas that may need tuning or additional data sources, all from a single, interactive workspace. Executing graph queries via the MCP tools will trigger the graph meter. Claude MCP connector [Public preview, April 1] Anthropic Claude can connect to Sentinel through a custom MCP connector, giving you AI-assisted analysis across your Sentinel environment. Microsoft provides step-by-step guidance for configuring a custom connector in Claude that securely connects to a Sentinel MCP server. With this connection you can summarize incidents, investigate alerts, and reason over security signals while keeping data inside Microsoft's security boundary. Access to large language models (LLMs) is managed through Microsoft authentication and role-based controls, supporting faster triage and investigation workflows while maintaining compliance and visibility. Threat Intelligence CVEs of interest in the Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent [Public preview in April] The Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent delivers curated intelligence based on your organization’s configuration, preferences, and unique industry and geographic needs. CVEs of interest which highlights vulnerabilities actively discussed across the security landscape and assesses their potential impact on your environment, delivering more timely threat intelligence insights. The agent automatically incorporates internet exposure data powered by the Sentinel platform to surface threats targeting technologies exposed in your organization. Together, these enhancements help you focus faster on the threats that matter most, without manual investigation. Microsoft Security Store Security Store embedded in Entra [General availability, March 23] As identity environments grow more complex, teams need to move faster and extend Entra with trusted third‑party capabilities that address operational, compliance, and risk challenges. The Security Store embedded directly into Entra lets you discover and adopt Entra‑ready agents and solutions in your workflow. You can extend Entra with identity‑focused agents that surface privileged access risk, identity posture gaps, network access insights, and overall identity health, turning identity data into clear recommendations and reports teams can use immediately. You can also enhance Entra with Verified ID and External ID integrations that strengthen identity verification, streamline account recovery, and reduce fraud across workforce, consumer, and external identities. Security Store embedded in Microsoft Purview [General availability, March 31] Extending data security across the digital estate requires visibility and enforcement into new data sources and risk surfaces, often requiring a partnered approach. The Security Store embedded directly into Purview lets you discover and evaluate integrated solutions inside your data security workflows. Relevant partner capabilities surface alongside context, making it easier to strengthen data protection, address regulatory requirements, and respond to risk without disrupting existing processes. You can quickly assess which solutions align to data security scenarios, especially with respect to securing AI use, and how they can leverage established classifiers, policies, and investigation workflows in Purview. Keeping integration discovery in‑flow and purchases centralized through the Security Store means you move faster from evaluation to deployment, reducing friction and maintaining a secure, consistent transaction experience. Security Store Advisor [General availability, March 23] Security teams today face growing complexity and choice. Teams often know the security outcome they need, whether that's strengthening identity protection, improving ransomware resilience, or reducing insider risk, but lack a clear, efficient way to determine which solutions will help them get there. Security Store Advisor provides a guided, natural-language discovery experience that shifts security evaluation from product‑centric browsing to outcome‑driven decision‑making. You can describe your goal in plain language, and the Advisor surfaces the most relevant Microsoft and partner agents, solutions, and services available in the Security Store, without requiring deep product knowledge. This approach simplifies discovery, reduces time spent navigating catalogs and documentation, and helps you understand how individual capabilities fit together to deliver meaningful security outcomes. Sentinel promotions Extending signups for promotional 50 GB commitment tier [Through June 2026] The Sentinel promotional 50 GB commitment tier offers small and mid-sized organizations a cost-effective entry point into Sentinel. Sign up for the 50 GB commitment tier until June 30, 2026, and maintain the promotional rate until March 31, 2027. This promotion is available globally with regional variations in pricing and accessible through EA, CSP, and Direct channels. Visit the Sentinel pricing page for details and to get started. Sentinel RSAC 2026 sessions All week – Sentinel product demos, Microsoft Booth #5744 Mon Mar 23, 3:55 PM – RSAC 2026 main stage Keynote with CVP Vasu Jakkal [KEY-M10W] Ambient and autonomous security: Building trust in the agentic AI era Tue Mar 24, 10:30 AM – Live Q&A session, Microsoft booth #5744 and online Ask me anything with Microsoft Security SMEs and real practitioners Tue Mar 24, 11 AM – Sentinel data lake theater session, Microsoft booth #5744 From signals to insights: How Microsoft Sentinel data lake powers modern security operations Tue Mar 24, 2 PM – Sentinel SIEM theater session, Microsoft booth #5744 Vibe-coding SecOps automations with the Sentinel playbook generator Wed Mar 25, 12 PM – Executive event at Palace Hotel with Threat Protection GM Scott Woodgate The AI risk equation: Visibility, control, and threat acceleration Wed Mar 25, 1:30 PM – Sentinel graph theater session, Microsoft booth #5744 Bringing knowledge-driven context to security with Microsoft Sentinel graph Wed Mar 25, 5 PM – MISA theater session, Microsoft booth #5744 Cut SIEM costs without reducing protection: A Sentinel data lake case study Thu Mar 26, 1 PM – Security Store theater session, Microsoft booth #5744 What's next for Security Store: Expanding in portal and smarter discovery All week – 1:1 meetings with Microsoft security experts Meet with Microsoft Defender and Sentinel SIEM and Defender Security Operations Additional resources Sentinel data lake video playlist Explore the full capabilities of Sentinel data lake as a unified, AI-ready security platform that is deeply integrated into the Defender portal Sentinel data lake FAQ blog Get answers to many of the questions we’ve heard from our customers and partners on Sentinel data lake and billing AI‑powered SIEM migration experience ninja training Walk through the SIEM migration experience, see how it maps detections, surfaces connector requirements, and supports phased migration decisions SIEM migration experience documentation Learn how the SIEM migration experience analyzes your exports, maps detections and connectors, and recommends prioritized coverage Accenture collaborates with Microsoft to bring agentic security and business resilience to the front lines of cyber defense Stay connected Check back each month for the latest innovations, updates, and events to ensure you’re getting the most out of Sentinel. We’ll see you in the next edition!What’s New in Microsoft Teams | March 2026
Welcome once again to everyone in our Microsoft Tech Community! We’re glad you’ve joined us to check out a fresh lineup of Teams features designed to keep you productive, secure, and connected. Before we dive in, mark your calendars: the Microsoft 365 Community Conference is coming up in April! Join us to learn the new ways Teams and Copilot help you stay in the flow of work. And now to the main event: new Teams capabilities! This month's updates have something for everyone. The new AI-powered Workflows app lets you automate everyday tasks using Copilot—no coding required. Teams now enables you to View and manage activity in other accounts and organizations, so you can collaborate with colleagues and respond to messages without switching accounts. And for privacy-conscious users, Teams now automatically removes EXIF metadata from shared images, protecting sensitive location and device details by default. Read on for the full list of what's new! Feature categories: (All features listed are generally available unless otherwise noted) Chat and collaboration Teams Meetings Teams Phone Workplace Fundamentals and Security Teams Platform Certified for Teams Devices Chat and Collaboration View and manage activity in other accounts and organizations Stay engaged across all your accounts with simplified external collaboration in Teams. The new multi-tenant, multi-account experience consolidates notifications from across all your organizations into one feed, so you don't miss a chat or mention, and can respond without switching accounts. You can even pin key accounts to your sidebar for quick access, enabling more seamless cross-tenant collaboration. Learn more. Enhanced organization chart in profile card Understand how colleagues fit into the organization, right from their profile card in Teams. The enhanced organization chart in profile cards provides a streamlined way to navigate reporting relationships, revisit previously viewed profiles, see team size at a glance, and gain instant organizational context without leaving the profile card. Easily find unsent drafts Lost track of a message you started? The new Drafts quick view makes it simple to find, edit, and send draft messages across chats and channels. No more searching through conversations to find that half-finished thought. Your drafts are now accessible in one convenient location, helping you complete and send when you're ready. Live meeting indicator for threaded channels in Teams Threaded channels now display a live meeting indicator, making it easier to discover and join active meetings in the channel. Jump into conversations as they happen and increase real-time participation from channel members. Simplified controls for managing external collaboration in Teams A new overview page in the Teams admin center under External collaboration allows admins to review and modify these settings for their organization. To make changes, admins can use a guided flow and select either the Open or Controlled preset modes or choose to customize the settings. Teams image viewer improvements The improved image viewer lets you scroll through images shared in the current conversation view - regardless of when or how they were posted - so you can stay focused on visuals without distractions. The enhanced Lightbox experience highlights the image you’re viewing, and a new header option lets you quickly jump back to the original message where the image was shared. As you scroll to load more of the conversation, additional previously shared images become available in Lightbox. Control the Enter key in Teams chat Now you can control how the Enter key works when composing messages in Teams chat. You can choose whether pressing Enter sends your message or starts a new line, making it easier to write longer messages without accidental sends. Keyboard shortcut to mark all as read in Teams chats and channels The new keyboard shortcut (SHIFT + ESC) lets users mark all Teams chat and channel messages as read at once, quickly clearing unread notifications, reducing Activity feed clutter, and helping users get back to focused work faster. Teams Action in Spotlight on Mac Teams actions can now be accessed directly from Spotlight on macOS. You can quickly set your presence status, open your Teams calendar, start a new message, or open Teams to create a new meeting – all without leaving Spotlight. Share files and Loop components in external chats Collaborate seamlessly across organizations by sharing files and Loop components in chats with external participants. Teams automatically manages permissions so everyone can view, edit, and upload content, further simplifying cross-organization teamwork (admin configuration required). Learn more. Meetings Annotations on single shared window during meetings Bring more focus and privacy to your meetings with annotations on single window sharing. When you share a specific application window in a Teams meeting, you and your participants can now annotate directly on that shared content—no need to expose your entire desktop. This makes training sessions, client presentations, and design reviews cleaner and more secure, while keeping everyone engaged with markup tools right where you need them. Annotations work seamlessly across Windows, macOS, and mobile, so the whole team can contribute no matter which device they're using. Audio Recap — Expanded Language Support Audio recap is now available in seven additional languages, making it easier for global teams to catch up on meetings in the language that works best for them. With this update, you can generate and listen to AI-powered audio summaries in Chinese, English (multiple variations), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Whether you're commuting, multitasking, or just prefer listening over reading, audio recap delivers the key discussion points, decisions, and action items from one or multiple meetings—now in more languages. Teams Phone Copilot in Teams Phone live calls, powered by Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat The Copilot experience in Teams Phone on desktop and mobile is fully powered by Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat for a more unified experience across Teams and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. During a call, users can open Copilot Chat as a side panel to generate call summaries, surface key insights, and get a head start on actioning tasks. For example, you can prompt Copilot during the call to, “Summarize relevant documents or prior emails related to the conversation.” By applying the user’s Work IQ data—including emails, meetings, files—and relevant web data, Copilot Chat goes beyond the call transcript to provide more personalized, context‑aware guidance in real time. This helps users stay informed during the conversation and move faster from discussion to action. Workplace Voice and face profile enrollment dashboard for admins Admins now have visibility and insight for voice and facial profile enrollments through a dashboard in the Teams Admin Center (TAC). Voice and face profiles are critical for supporting AI-enhanced meeting experiences for users across the organization. The dashboard provides metrics on enrollments over time. Learn more. Teams shared display mode and peripheral detection available for GCC-H Shared display mode in Teams is now available in government GCC-H environments, enabling more seamless and private meeting hosting from your PC. Additionally, peripheral detection for bring-your-own-device spaces is available for inventory management and reporting through the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal in GCC-H environments. Learn more. Fundamentals and Security Teams on the web – Browser Update Required by May 15, 2026 To continue using Teams on the web after May 15, 2026, it will be required for all users to ensure they are using supported browser versions. Beginning on this date, Teams on the web will only load on browser versions that are ECMAScript 2022 (ES2022) compliant. To prepare, Tenant Administrators should ensure end users are using both supported browsers and supported versions of browsers to connect to Microsoft 365 web applications and services. Prior to May 15, 2026, users on older browsers will see periodic reminder banners. Beginning May 15, users who are not using a supported browser or browser version will see a blocking page directing them to update their browser before continuing. Stay Available When You’re Active: Accurate Presence in Teams on the Web We’re introducing a new setting in Teams on the web that helps maintain your presence when you are active. When turned on, Teams will know you’re active on your device even if you’re not in the Teams tab, so your status stays set to available when you really are. Note: When a user or admin grants permission to Teams for the presence feature, Teams is only enabled to check whether the user is active or idle on their device, it does not track what they’re doing or capture content. EXIF data will be removed from images shared on Teams Your privacy, protected by default. Teams now automatically strips EXIF metadata—like GPS location and device details—from images shared in chats and channels. Share photos with confidence, knowing your sensitive information stays private. Teams Platform New Workflows app experience in Teams The newly redesigned Workflows experience in Teams makes automation easier and more accessible than ever. With a simple interface, it helps you automate day-to-day tasks, like getting updates from your teammates, automatically routing documents for approvals as they get modified, or adding tasks to Planner from messages without ever having to leave Teams. Additionally, you can now use new AI-powered workflow templates to automate tasks with Copilot or your channel’s agent — no coding required. The same Workflows experience will be available soon in SharePoint. To access the AI workflows, users need a M365 Copilot license. Certified for Teams Devices Yealink MP55 E2 Teams Powered by the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP) and Android 15, the Yealink MP55 E2 offers faster response times and enterprise-level security. With a variety of feature keys and line keys, the MP55 E2 enables efficient management of high call volumes, making it suitable for front desks, call centers, and common areas. Armed with Yealink’s Optima HD Voice and AI Noise cancellation Technology, MP55 E2 presents a standalone voice solution and excellent audio clarity. Moreover, MP55 E2 makes collaboration easier than ever thanks to its support for Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, and USB headsets. Learn more. Owl Labs HP Poly & Owl Labs Small Microsoft Teams Rooms Bundle with Owl 3 or Owl 4+ The Poly Studio Base Kit G9 Plus for Microsoft Teams Rooms is a Purpose-built PC for collaboration solutions. The HP Mini IP Conferencing PC features a13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor, 16GB of paired with Poly TC10 IP touch controller. This bundle includes Meeting OWL 3, an AI-powered 360° camera, speaker and microphone. Meeting Owl 3’s award-winning speaker-switching software uses visual and audio cues to automatically focus on and capture a high-quality view of in-room speakers. Or, choose the Meeting Owl 4+, with all the features of the Owl 3, but with 4K video so remote participants can engage and participate in hybrid discussions effectively and productively. Owl Labs HP Poly & Owl Labs Small Microsoft Teams Rooms Bundle with Owl 3 Owl Labs HP Poly & Owl Labs Small Microsoft Teams Rooms Bundle with Owl 4+ Huddly C1 Huddly C1 is an AI-driven videobar designed to deliver intelligent video and audio in small and medium meeting rooms. Built on Huddly’s proven AI video expertise, the on-device AI director shapes the meeting experience with dynamic meeting modes for better focus and engagement, with optional Group or Manual Framing for added control. An AI-enhanced microphone array amplifies voices while reducing echo, noise, and reverb. Hi-fi stereo speakers deliver rich, immersive sound. Powered by the next generation of Huddly Intelligence with 20× more AI processing power, C1 delivers impactful meetings today and evolves with future AI capabilities. Learn more. Neat Center camera Neat Center is a 360° companion device that lets remote meeting attendees follow the conversation more closely by clearly hearing and seeing everyone in the room, even when those in the room are far away from the main device or facing inward, discussing something among themselves. It’s simple to set up, gives you flexible placement options, and further improves the capabilities of your Neat devices for enhanced context and engagement.Introducing a refreshed design, task chat, and more in Microsoft Planner
We’re excited to announce that a modernized user interface and new features are now rolling out to basic plans in both Planner in Teams and Planner for the web. The updated design offers enhanced navigation, responsive layouts, a new goals view for setting objectives and priorities, and task chat—one of your most requested features—to enable real-time collaboration and @ mentioning team members. This release aims to make planning easier for everyday users while preparing for future AI-powered capabilities. Our goal is to streamline planning by making it more intelligent and connected, so teams can concentrate on achieving results rather than managing tasks. What's new in Planner A refreshed design: With this rollout, users will be able to manage their plans in a cleaner, more modern interface that brings a more consistent planning experience across work. Planner’s new look was designed to feel simpler, allowing users to find what they need. It reduces visual clutter, improves layout and spacing, and creates a more focused workspace. Task chat with @ mentions: A new task chat is coming to basic plans, bringing real-time, threaded conversations directly into tasks, including @ mentions, rich formatting, emojis, and notifications to help keep decisions tied to the specific task at hand. Plan members who are @ mentioned in a task will receive a notification in their Teams Activity feed and via email and can select the notification which takes them directly to the task card for additional context. Note that previously, users received notifications for every task comment, but as a result of customer feedback, we now only send notifications to mentioned users. The ability to @ mention team members directly in a task has been a top request, and we’re excited to roll this out in a familiar, chat-based experience. Please note, premium plans will continue to utilize the existing task conversation experience. This will converge into the new experience at a later point in time. Goals view: Basic plans will now include a dedicated Goals view, allowing teams to set clear, well-defined objectives to help prioritize work. By connecting tasks to shared goals, teams achieve greater alignment, gain clarity on priorities, and track progress and outcomes—driving the plan forward together. Access to Goals view in basic plans requires either a Planner premium license or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Notes on availability Please note that not all users will see the new Planner interface at the same time. This refreshed interface, along with Task chat and Goals view, begins rolling out to basic plans today and will continue to roll out over the coming weeks. This is only the beginning This redesign lays the groundwork for many more improvements coming to Planner in the next few weeks and months, including: Project Manager agent in basic plans – to help with task execution and the creation of status reports. Custom templates. Planner in Outlook. Stay tuned for announcements regarding these updates and more aligned to our long-term vision for integrated work management. Feature availability, naming, and timelines are subject to change. Please refer to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for the latest status. Addressing your feedback We heard your feedback about inconsistencies between basic and premium plans. This refresh starts closing those gaps, so features appear consistently across plans based on your license. For example, users with a Planner premium license will now see Goals in basic plans, and users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will soon have access to Project Manager Agent in basic plans as well. Tell us what you think about the new Planner interface, Task chat, and Goals view by selecting More (circled question mark icon) in the top right corner of the app, then selecting Feedback from the dropdown menu. We also encourage you to share any feature requests by adding your ideas to the Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you. Learn more Visit planner.cloud.microsoft to access Planner directly from your browser. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Learn more about Planner in our Frequently asked questions. Check out the Planner adoption page and Planner help & learning page to learn more about Planner. Visit the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. Walk through the interactive demos for Project Manager Agent in Planner and Project Manager Agent skills in Teams meetings.What’s New in Microsoft Teams | October 2024
This month, we have even more updates to share that are bringing intelligence, convenience, and productivity together in Teams. A few that I’m most excited for you to try are: the highly anticipated ‘Queues App’ that makes handling and monitoring customer calls easier for call center agents and leads, ‘Voting, Filtering, Sorting and Archiving in Teams Q&A’ for Town Halls and Webinars, that allows attendees to upvote questions they find most compelling, and ‘Expanded cross-platform meetings via SIP join’ that give you the ability to use Microsoft Teams to join meetings from other services like Google Meet, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Amazon Chime, RingCentral, and others.Your Sentinel AMA Logs & Queries Are Public by Default — AMPLS Architectures to Fix That
When you deploy Microsoft Sentinel, security log ingestion travels over public Azure Data Collection Endpoints by default. The connection is encrypted, and the data arrives correctly — but the endpoint is publicly reachable, and so is the workspace itself, queryable from any browser on any network. For many organisations, that trade-off is fine. For others — regulated industries, healthcare, financial services, critical infrastructure — it is the exact problem they need to solve. Azure Monitor Private Link Scope (AMPLS) is how you solve it. What AMPLS Actually Does AMPLS is a single Azure resource that wraps your monitoring pipeline and controls two settings: Where logs are allowed to go (ingestion mode: Open or PrivateOnly) Where analysts are allowed to query from (query mode: Open or PrivateOnly) Change those two settings and you fundamentally change the security posture — not as a policy recommendation, but as a hard platform enforcement. Set ingestion to PrivateOnly and the public endpoint stops working. It does not fall back gracefully. It returns an error. That is the point. It is not a firewall rule someone can bypass or a policy someone can override. Control is baked in at the infrastructure level. Three Patterns — One Spectrum There is no universally correct answer. The right architecture depends on your organisation's risk appetite, existing network infrastructure, and how much operational complexity your team can realistically manage. These three patterns cover the full range: Architecture 1 — Open / Public (Basic) No AMPLS. Logs travel to public Data Collection Endpoints over the internet. The workspace is open to queries from anywhere. This is the default — operational in minutes with zero network setup. Cloud service connectors (Microsoft 365, Defender, third-party) work immediately because they are server-side/API/Graph pulls and are unaffected by AMPLS. Azure Monitor Agents and Azure Arc agents handle ingestion from cloud or on-prem machines via public network. Simplicity: 9/10 | Security: 6/10 Good for: Dev environments, teams getting started, low-sensitivity workloads Architecture 2 — Hybrid: Private Ingestion, Open Queries (Recommended for most) AMPLS is in place. Ingestion is locked to PrivateOnly — logs from virtual machines travel through a Private Endpoint inside your own network, never touching a public route. On-premises or hybrid machines connect through Azure Arc over VPN or a dedicated circuit and feed into the same private pipeline. Query access stays open, so analysts can work from anywhere without needing a VPN/Jumpbox to reach the Sentinel portal — the investigation workflow stays flexible, but the log ingestion path is fully ring-fenced. You can also split ingestion mode per DCE if you need some sources public and some private. This is the architecture most organisations land on as their steady state. Simplicity: 6/10 | Security: 8/10 Good for: Organisations with mixed cloud and on-premises estates that need private ingestion without restricting analyst access Architecture 3 — Fully Private (Maximum Control) Infrastructure is essentially identical to Architecture 2 — AMPLS, Private Endpoints, Private DNS zones, VPN or dedicated circuit, Azure Arc for on-premises machines. The single difference: query mode is also set to PrivateOnly. Analysts can only reach Sentinel from inside the private network. VPN or Jumpbox required to access the portal. Both the pipe that carries logs in and the channel analysts use to read them are fully contained within the defined boundary. This is the right choice when your organisation needs to demonstrate — not just claim — that security data never moves outside a defined network perimeter. Simplicity: 2/10 | Security: 10/10 Good for: Organisations with strict data boundary requirements (regulated industries, audit, compliance mandates) Quick Reference — Which Pattern Fits? Scenario Architecture Getting started / low-sensitivity workloads Arch 1 — No network setup, public endpoints accepted Private log ingestion, analysts work anywhere Arch 2 — AMPLS PrivateOnly ingestion, query mode open Both ingestion and queries must be fully private Arch 3 — Same as Arch 2 + query mode set to PrivateOnly One thing all three share: Microsoft 365, Entra ID, and Defender connectors work in every pattern — they are server-side pulls by Sentinel and are not affected by your network posture. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding the information provided.From alert overload to decisive action: How Security Copilot agents are transforming security and IT
Security and IT teams operate in a constant stream of alerts, incidents, and investigations. As environments expand across identities, endpoints, cloud, and data, the challenge becomes clear: identifying real risk quickly enough to act. Security Copilot agents bring AI directly into the flow of work, helping teams understand risk with greater context, investigate threats more efficiently, and take action sooner. Security Copilot is now included with Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 licenses at no additional cost, so teams can start using agents right away. Over the past year, organizations have used Security Copilot to triage alerts, surface real threats earlier, and move faster from investigation to action. At this RSA 2026 conference, we are announcing new capabilities that reflect a continuous wave of innovation, evolving from built-in AI assistance and automated summaries to new agents that can analyze signals, investigate incidents, and execute security workflows. Real-world impact: measurable results Security Copilot agents help security and IT teams identify and respond to risk more effectively. Customers are seeing that impact in their day-to-day operations. At St. Luke’s University Health Network, the Phishing Triage Agent in Microsoft Defender saves security analysts more than 200 hours every month, automatically triaging phishing alerts and surfacing those that actually matter. Independent randomized controlled studies reinforce the results. Security professionals using the Phishing Triage Agent triaged alerts up to 78% faster, delivered 77% more accurate verdicts, and identified 6.5 times more malicious emails. That same impact extends beyond the SOC into other critical areas of security and IT. A data security team at a large telecommunications organization used the Data Security Triage Agent in Microsoft Purview to triage more than 40,000 Data Loss Prevention (DLP) alerts in 90 days, surfacing the 10% most critical alerts that required investigation. Identity teams are also seeing huge improvements with the Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra, which continuously analyzes access policies against Zero Trust baselines and recommends actions. In controlled productivity studies, identity admins completed policy-related tasks 43% faster and 48% more accurately when identifying configuration weaknesses. IT teams are also seeing impact using the Vulnerability Remediation Agent in Microsoft Intune, which continuously detects new vulnerabilities as threats emerge. As one CTO at a renewable energy and technology company shared, the agent is “dramatically changing the way we approach working with vulnerabilities in our environment. A two‑week process is now a two‑minute process, really huge number for us.” Across these scenarios, teams begin investigations with clearer context and a better understanding of what actually matters. Instead of piecing together signals across dozens of tools, they can focus on the highest-risk issues and move from investigation to action with confidence. As environments continue expanding across identities, endpoints, applications, and data, quickly connecting signals and understanding risk becomes essential. New Security Copilot agents and capabilities announced at RSA Conference Our innovation continues. Microsoft is introducing new Security Copilot agents and expanded capabilities designed to help organizations analyze complex security data, triage alerts more effectively, and strengthen security posture across identity, endpoint, cloud, and data environments. New and updated Security Copilot agents built by Microsoft Security Analyst Agent in Microsoft Defender Security teams are often sitting on enormous volumes of security data, but turning that data into answers takes time. The Security Analyst Agent helps teams move from raw telemetry to real understanding much faster. By performing deep, multi-step investigations across Microsoft Defender and Sentinel telemetry, the agent can analyze up to ~100MB of security data to uncover anomalies, hidden risks, and high-impact threats that might otherwise stay buried. Analysts can chat directly with the agent to ask questions, explore hypotheses, and dig deeper into findings. The results include transparent reasoning and supporting evidence, helping teams quickly understand what matters and move forward with confidence. Security Alert Triage Agent in Microsoft Defender One of the biggest challenges for SOC teams is deciding which alerts actually deserve attention. The Security Alert Triage Agent helps cut through that noise so analysts can focus on the threats that truly matter. Building on its existing phishing triage capabilities, the agent now extends autonomous triage to identity and cloud alerts. Each verdict includes clear, transparent reasoning so analysts can quickly understand the outcome and prioritize the alerts that matter most. New capabilities for Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra Identity environments are constantly evolving as organizations add new apps, users, and authentication methods. New capabilities in the Conditional Access Optimization Agent help identity teams identify and close critical policy gaps faster, with recommendations tailored to their organization’s needs. The agent now delivers business-context-aware recommendations, supports phased rollout of new policies, enables automated least-privilege enforcement for supported third-party agent identities, and helps drive passkey adoption. Together, these capabilities help organizations continuously strengthen identity security while maintaining productivity. New capabilities for Data Security Posture Agent in Microsoft Purview Sensitive data often moves through documents, emails, chats, and collaboration tools, which makes it easy for credentials or secrets to end up where they shouldn’t be. A new credential scanning capability in the Data Security Posture Agent helps data security teams proactively identify exposed credentials within their data environment. By analyzing data signals and access patterns, the agent surfaces potential credential exposure risks and helps teams quickly investigate and remediate them. This gives organizations better visibility into hidden data risks and strengthens overall protection of critical systems. New capabilities for Data Security Triage Agent in Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management Investigating insider risk alerts often requires piecing together signals from many different sources to understand what is really happening. The Data Security Triage Agent now introduces an advanced AI reasoning layer that helps security teams evaluate those signals more holistically. By performing deeper, multi-step analysis across behavioral signals from users, devices, and data activity, the agent can surface the incidents that truly require investigation while filtering out noise. The result is faster, more accurate investigations and better confidence when responding to potential insider risks. New capabilities for Data Security Triage Agent in Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention Custom Sensitive Information Types (SITs) are often difficult for analysts to interpret quickly because the underlying definitions and patterns lack clear context at triage time. This latest enhancement makes custom Sensitive Information Types (SITs) easier for both the agent and analysts to understand in Data Loss Prevention alerts. Purview interprets custom SIT definitions, generates semantic descriptions of the data, and surfaces that context directly within the agent. This allows the agent to classify and prioritize alerts involving custom data more accurately, helping analysts quickly recognize real risk and respond appropriately. New Security Copilot agents built by partners To meet customers where they are across their existing security stack, the Security Copilot ecosystem continues to grow with more than 70 partner-built agents available today in the Security Store, bringing additional signals and investigation capabilities into the platform. Some of these agents include the following: Security Investigation Agent by Commvault – Correlates backup anomalies with identity and security signals across platforms such as Entra, CrowdStrike, Netskope, and Darktrace. MITRE Attack Coverage Insight Agent by Inspira – Evaluates analytic rule coverage, calculates ATT&CK coverage, identifies detection gaps, generates detection recommendations, and provides SOC detection maturity scoring. Endpoint Risk Insights Agent by Avanade – Provides endpoint risk insights by correlating signals across security telemetry. Identity Role Mining Agent by Invoke – Allows user to discover and analyze administrator roles in Microsoft Entra ID with ease and precision. Identity Threat Triage Agent by Silverfort - Correlates Silverfort's identity risk signals with Entra ID and Defender for Endpoint data in the Sentinel data lake to surface risky sign‑ins, MFA abuse, suspicious processes, and anomalies. Together, these partner agents extend Security Copilot’s ability to connect signals across Microsoft and third-party security platforms, giving organizations broader visibility and stronger investigation capabilities across their security environment. To explore all new Security Copilot agents, visit the Microsoft Security Store. New Security Copilot innovations that turn insight into action Security Copilot continues to integrate more deeply into the tools security and IT teams already use every day. These capabilities bring AI directly into the environments where investigations happen, helping teams explore threats, understand context, and take action without switching between tools. Security Copilot interactive chat experience in Microsoft Defender Analysts can ask questions, explore investigative hypotheses, and follow threat activity across incidents, alerts, identities, devices, and IPs without leaving their investigation. Copilot understands the context of the page analysts are working on and grounds responses in the relevant signals already available in Defender. As analysts ask questions, Copilot can run investigative steps, gather additional evidence, and surface new insights. This allows teams to iterate quickly, validate assumptions, and dig deeper into threats while staying in the same workflow. Secret finder skill in Security Copilot is now generally available Available in the Security Copilot standalone portal, the Secret Finder skill can be invoked to analyze unstructured content such as emails, chats, documents, and investigation notes to identify exposed credentials hidden in real-world workflows. Using agentic capabilities such as multi-step reasoning rather than simple pattern matching, it detects real, usable secrets and the systems they unlock, helping security teams quickly understand potential exposure and respond with confidence. Additional integrations and use cases are planned to expand how this capability can be used across security workflows. Security Copilot trigger in Logic Apps Building on how many organizations already use Logic Apps to automate security workflows, a new connector action for Security Copilot in Logic Apps flows allows teams to easily invoke partner-built agents and custom agents they create as part of repeatable workflows. This brings deeper AI-driven investigation, context, and decision support into tasks such as incident triage, threat intelligence analysis, and policy validation. See Security Copilot in action at RSA Conference Join us at RSA Conference to see the latest Security Copilot agents and capabilities in action. Stop by the Microsoft booth to connect with the team, explore new innovations, and experience how agents are helping security and IT teams investigate threats, understand risk, and strengthen security posture. Hear from Microsoft Security product leaders in these booth sessions March 23 | 5:15 PM Empowering the SOC with assistive and autonomous AI, Yuval Derman March 24 | 3:00 PM Security Copilot agents: Insight. Action. Impact., Lizzie Heinze and Donna Lee March 25 | 10:30 AM Turning Data Risk into Action with Security Copilot Agents, Paige Johnson and Tanay Baldua March 26 | 12:00 PM Defend identity autonomously with agentic AI in Microsoft Entra, Mitch Muro, Rahul Prakash, Nikhil Reddy Join our deep dive session March 24 | 8:30 AM | The Palace Hotel Security Copilot in action: An agentic approach to modern security Register here: Microsoft Security RSAC Events | Microsoft Corporate Stop by the Microsoft booth for a hands-on experience Test out the latest Security Copilot agents at the demo station and connect with our experts. Agentic AI Arena: Try a fun, gamified experience that shows how Security Copilot agents investigate threats, surface risk, and help security teams respond faster. Start using Security Copilot in your daily workflows If you have received access to Security Copilot as part of your Microsoft 365 E5 plan, we recommend following steps to get started quickly: Sign up for the Security Copilot skilling series Review new agentic scenarios and developer capabilities in the Security Copilot Adoption Hub Learn what’s included with your Microsoft 365 E5 plan in documentation Request assistance from a Microsoft 365 FastTrack specialist to unlock the full value of Security CopilotMicrosoft Sentinel data lake FAQ
Microsoft Sentinel data lake (generally available) is a purpose‑built, cloud‑native security data lake. It centralizes all security data in an open format, serving as the foundation for agentic defense, enhanced security insights, and graph-based enrichment. It offers cost‑effective ingestion, long‑term retention, and advanced analytics. In this blog we offer answers to many of the questions we’ve heard from our customers and partners. General questions What is the Microsoft Sentinel data lake? Microsoft has expanded its industry-leading SIEM solution, Microsoft Sentinel, to include a unified, security data lake, designed to help optimize costs, simplify data management, and accelerate the adoption of AI in security operations. This modern data lake serves as the foundation for the Microsoft Sentinel platform. It has a cloud-native architecture and is purpose-built for security—bringing together all security data for greater visibility, deeper security analysis, contextual awareness and agentic defense. It provides affordable, long-term retention, allowing organizations to maintain robust security while effectively managing budgetary requirements. What are the benefits of Sentinel data lake? Microsoft Sentinel data lake is purpose built for security offering flexible analytics, cost management, and deeper security insights. Sentinel data lake: Centralizes security data delta parquet and open format for easy access. This unified data foundation accelerates threat detection, investigation, and response across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Enables data federation by allowing customers to access data in external sources like Microsoft Fabric, ADLS and Databricks from the data lake. Federated data appears alongside native Sentinel data, enabling correlated hunting, investigation, and custom graph analysis across a broader digital estate. Offers a disaggregated storage and compute pricing model, allowing customers to store massive volumes of security data at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional SIEM solutions. Allows multiple analytics engines like Kusto, Spark, and ML to run on a single data copy, simplifying management, reducing costs, and supporting deeper security analysis. Integrates with GitHub Copilot and VS Code empowering SOC teams to automate enrichment, anomaly detection, and forensic analysis. Supports AI agents via the MCP server, allowing tools like GitHub Copilot to query and automate security tasks. The MCP Server layer brings intelligence to the data, offering Semantic Search, Query Tools, and Custom Analysis capabilities that make it easier to extract insights and automate workflows. Provides streamlined onboarding, intuitive table management, and scalable multi-tenant support, making it ideal for MSSPs and large enterprises. The Sentinel data lake is designed for security workloads, ensuring that processes from ingestion to analytics meet evolving cybersecurity requirements. Is Microsoft Sentinel SIEM going away? No. Microsoft is expanding Sentinel into an AI powered end-to-end security platform that includes SIEM and new platform capabilities - Security data lake, graph-powered analytics and MCP Server. SIEM remains a core component and will be actively developed and supported. Getting started What are the prerequisites for Sentinel data lake? To get started: Connect your Sentinel workspace to Microsoft Defender prior to onboarding to Sentinel data lake. Once in the Defender experience see data lake onboarding documentation for next steps. Note: Sentinel is moving to the Microsoft Defender portal and the Sentinel Azure portal will be retired by March 31, 2027. I am a Sentinel-only customer, and not a Defender customer. Can I use the Sentinel data lake? Yes. You must connect Sentinel to the Defender experience before onboarding to the Sentinel data lake. Microsoft Sentinel is generally available in the Microsoft Defender portal, with or without Microsoft Defender XDR or an E5 license. If you have created a log analytics workspace, enabled it for Sentinel and have the right Microsoft Entra roles (e.g. Global Administrator + Subscription Owner, Security Administrator + Sentinel Contributor), you can enable Sentinel in the Defender portal. For more details on how to connect Sentinel to Defender review these sources: Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal In what regions is Sentinel data lake available? For supported regions see: Geographical availability and data residency in Microsoft Sentinel | Azure Docs. Is there an expected release date for Microsoft Sentinel data lake in GCC, GCC-H, and DoD? While the exact date is not yet finalized, we plan to expand Sentinel data lake to the US Government environments. . How will URBAC and Entra RBAC work together to manage the data lake given there is no centralized model? Entra RBAC will provide broad access to the data lake (URBAC maps the right permissions to specific Entra role holders: GA/SA/SO/GR/SR). URBAC will become a centralized pane for configuring non-global delegated access to the data lake. For today, you will use this for the “default data lake” workspace. In the future, this will be enabled for non-default Sentinel workspaces as well – meaning all workspaces in the data lake can be managed here for data lake RBAC requirements. Azure RBAC on the Log Analytics (LA) workspace in the data lake is respected through URBAC as well today. If you already hold a built-in role like log analytics reader, you will be able to run interactive queries over the tables in that workspace. Or, if you hold log analytics contributor, you can read and manage table data. For more details see: Roles and permissions in the Microsoft Sentinel platform | Microsoft Learn Data ingestion and storage How do I ingest data into the Sentinel data lake? To ingest data into the Sentinel data lake, you can use existing Sentinel data connectors or custom connectors to bring data from Microsoft and third-party sources. Data can be ingested into the analytics tier or the data lake tier. Data ingested into the analytics tier is automatically mirrored to the lake (at no additional cost). Alternatively, data that is not needed in the analytics tier can be ingested directly into the data lake. Data retention is configured directly in table management, for both analytics retention and data lake storage. Note: Certain tables do not support data lake-only ingestion via either API or data connector UI. See here for more information: Custom log tables. What is Microsoft’s guidance on when to use analytics tier vs. the data lake tier? Sentinel data lake offers flexible, built-in data tiering (analytics and data lake tiers) to effectively meet diverse business use cases and achieve cost optimization goals. Analytics tier: Is ideal for high-performance, real-time, end-to-end detections, enrichments, investigation and interactive dashboards. Typically, high-fidelity data from EDRs, email gateways, identity, SaaS and cloud logs, threat intelligence (TI) should be ingested into the analytics tier. Data in the analytics tier is best monitored proactively with scheduled alerts and scheduled analytics to enable security detections Data in this tier is retained at no cost for up to 90 days by default, extendable to 2 years. A copy of the data in this tier is automatically available in the data lake tier at no extra cost, ensuring a unified copy of security data for both tiers. Data lake tier: Is designed for cost-effective, long-term storage. High-volume logs like NetFlow logs, TLS/SSL certificate logs, firewall logs and proxy logs are best suited for data lake tier. Customers can use these logs for historical analysis, compliance and auditing, incident response (IR), forensics over historical data, build tenant baselines, TI matching and then promote resulting insights into the analytics tier. Customers can run full Kusto queries, Spark Notebooks and scheduled jobs over a single copy of their data in the data lake. Customers can also search, enrich and promote data from the data lake tier to the analytics tier for full analytics. For more details see documentation. What does it mean that a copy of all new analytics tier data will be available in the data lake? When Sentinel data lake is enabled, a copy of all new data ingested into the analytics tier is automatically duplicated into the data lake tier. This means customers don’t need to manually configure or manage this process, every new log or telemetry added to the analytics tier becomes instantly available in the data lake. This allows security teams to run advanced analytics, historical investigations, and machine learning models on a single, unified copy of data in the lake, while still using the analytics tier for real-time SOC workflows. It’s a seamless way to support both operational and long-term use cases—without duplicating effort or cost. What is the guidance for customers using data federation capability in Sentinel data lake? Starting April 1, 2026, federate data from Microsoft Fabric, ADLS, and Azure Databricks into Sentinel data lake. Use data federation when data is exploratory, infrequently accessed, or must remain at source due to governance, compliance, sovereignty, or contractual requirements. Ingest data directly into Sentinel to unlock full SIEM capabilities, always-on detections, advanced automation, and AI‑driven defense at scale. This approach lets security teams start where their data already lives — preserving governance, then progressively ingest data into Sentinel for full security value. Is there any cost for retention in the analytics tier? Analytics ingestion includes 90 days of interactive retention, at no additional cost. Simply set analytics retention to 90 days or less. Analytics retention beyond 90 days will incur a retention cost. Data can be retained longer within the data lake by using the “total retention” setting. This allows you to extend retention within the data lake for up to 12 years. While data is retained within the analytics tier, there is no charge for the mirrored data within the lake. Retaining data in the lake beyond the analytics retention period incurs additional storage costs. See documentation for more details: Manage data tiers and retention in Microsoft Sentinel | Microsoft Learn What is the guidance for Microsoft Sentinel Basic and Auxiliary Logs customers? If you previously enabled Basic or Auxiliary Logs plan in Sentinel: You can view Basic Logs in the Defender portal but manage it from the Log Analytics workspace. To manage it in the Defender portal, you must change the plan from Basic to Analytics. Once the table is transitioned to the analytics tier, if desired, it can then be transitioned to the data lake. Existing Auxiliary Log tables will be available in the data lake tier for use once the Sentinel data lake is enabled. Billing for these tables will automatically switch to the Sentinel data lake meters. Microsoft Sentinel customers are recommended to start planning their data management strategy with the data lake. While Basic and Auxiliary Logs are still available, they are not being enhanced further. Sentinel data lake offers more capabilities at a lower price point. Please plan on onboarding your security data to the Sentinel data lake. Azure Monitor customers can continue to use Basic and Auxiliary Logs for observability scenarios. What happens to customers that already have Archive logs enabled? If a customer has already configured tables for Archive retention, existing retention settings will not change and will be automatically inherited by the Sentinel data lake. All data, including existing data in archive retention will be billed using the data lake storage meter, benefiting from 6x data compression. However, the data itself will not move. Existing data in archive will continue to be accessible through Sentinel search and restore experiences: o Data will not be backfilled into the data lake. o Data will be billed using the data lake storage meter. New data ingested after enabling the data lake: o Will be automatically mirrored to the data lake and accessible through data lake explorer. o Data will be billed using the data lake storage meter. Example: If a customer has 12 months of total retention enabled on a table, 2 months after enabling ingestion into the Sentinel data lake, the customer will still have access to 10 months of archived data (through Sentinel search and restore experiences), but access to only 2 months of data in the data lake (since the data lake was enabled). Key considerations for customers that currently have Archive logs enabled: The existing archive will remain, with new data ingested into the data lake going forward; previously stored archive data will not be backfilled into the lake. Archive logs will continue to be accessible via the Search and Restore tab under Sentinel. If analytics and data lake mode are enabled on table, which is the default setting for analytics tables when Sentinel data lake is enabled, all new data will be ingested into the Sentinel data lake. There will only be one storage meter (which is data lake storage) going forward. Archive will continue to be accessible via Search and Restore. If Sentinel data lake-only mode is enabled on table, new data will be ingested only into the data lake; any data that’s not already in the Sentinel data lake won’t be migrated/backfilled. Only data that was previously ingested under the archive plan will be accessible via Search and Restore. What is the guidance for customers using Azure Data Explorer (ADX) alongside Microsoft Sentinel? Some customers might have set up ADX cluster for their DIY lake setup. Customers can choose to continue using that setup and gradually migrate to Sentinel data lake for new data that they want to manage. The lake explorer will support federation with ADX to enable the customers to migrate gradually and simplify their deployment. What happens to the Defender XDR data after enabling Sentinel data lake? By default, Defender XDR tables are available for querying in advanced hunting, with 30 days of analytics tier retention included with the XDR license. To retain data beyond this period, an explicit change to the retention setting is required, either by extending the analytics tier retention or the total retention period. You can extend the retention period of supported Defender XDR tables beyond 30 days and ingest the data into the analytics tier. For more information see Manage XDR data in Microsoft Sentinel. You can also ingest XDR data directly into the data lake tier. See here for more information. A list of XDR advanced hunting tables supported by Sentinel are documented here: Connect Microsoft Defender XDR data to Microsoft Sentinel | Microsoft Learn. KQL queries and jobs Is KQL and Notebook supported over the Sentinel data lake? Yes, via the data lake KQL query experience along with a fully managed Notebook experience which enables spark-based big data analytics over a single copy of all your security data. Customers can run queries across any time range of data in their Sentinel data lake. In the future, this will be extended to enable SQL query over lake as well. Note: Triggering a KQL job directly via an API or Logic App is not yet supported but is on the roadmap. Why are there two different places to run KQL queries in Sentinel experience? Advanced hunting queries both XDR and analytics tables, with compute cost included. Data lake explorer only queries data in the lake and incurs a separate compute cost. Consolidating advanced hunting and KQL explorer user interfaces is on the roadmap. This will provide security analysts a unified query experience across both analytics and data lake tiers. Where is the output from KQL jobs stored? KQL jobs are written into existing or new custom tables in the analytics tier. Is it possible to run KQL queries on multiple data lake tables? Yes, you can run KQL interactive queries and jobs using operators like join or union. Can KQL queries (either interactive or via KQL jobs) join data across multiple workspaces? Security teams can run multi-workspace KQL queries for broader threat correlation Pricing and billing How does a customer pay for Sentinel data lake? Billing is automatically enabled at the time of onboarding based on Azure Subscription and Resource Group selections. Customers are then charged based on the volume of data ingested, retained, and analyzed (e.g. KQL Queries and Jobs). See Sentinel pricing page for more details. 2. What are the pricing components for Sentinel data lake? Sentinel data lake offers a flexible pricing model designed to optimize security coverage and costs. At a high level, pricing is based on the volume of data ingested/processed, the volume of data retained, and the volume of data processed. For specific meter definitions, see documentation. 3. How does the business model for Sentinel SIEM change with the introduction of the data lake? There is no change to existing Sentinel analytics tier ingestion business model. Sentinel data lake has separate meters for ingestion, storage and analytics. 4. What happens to the existing Sentinel SIEM and related Azure Monitor billing meters when a customer onboards to Sentinel data lake? When a customer onboards to the Sentinel data lake, nothing changes with analytic ingestion or retention. Customers using data archive and Auxiliary Logs will automatically transition to the new data lake meters. How does data lake storage affect cost efficiency for high volume data retention? Sentinel data lake offers cost-effective, long-term storage with uniform data compression of 6:1 across all data sources, applicable only to data lake storage. Example: For 600GB of data stored, you are only billed for 100GB compressed data. This approach allows organizations to retain greater volumes of security data over extended periods cost-effectively, thereby reducing security risks without compromising their overall security posture. here How “Data Processing” billed? To support the ingestion and standardization of diverse data sources, the Data Processing feature applies a $0.10 per GB (US East) charge for all data ingested into the data lake. This feature enables a broad array of transformations like redaction, splitting, filtering and normalization. The data processing charge is applied per GB of uncompressed data Note: For regional pricing, please refer to the “Data processing” meter within the Microsoft Sentinel Pricing official documentation. Does “Data processing” meter apply to analytics tier data mirrored in the data lake? No. Data processing charge will not be applied to mirrored data. Data mirrored from the analytic tier is not subject to either data ingestion or processing charges. How is retention billed for tables that use data lake-only ingestion & retention? Sentinel data lake decouples ingestion, storage, and analytics meters. Customers have the flexibility to pay based on how data is retained and used. For tables that use data lake‑only ingestion, there is no included free retention—unlike the analytics tier, which includes 90 days of analytics retention. Retention charges begin immediately once data is stored in the data lake. Data lake storage billing is based on compressed data size rather than raw ingested volume, which significantly reduces storage costs and delivers lower overall retention spend for customers. Does data federation incur charges? Data federation does not generate any ingestion or storage fees in Sentinel data lake. Customers are billed only when they run analytics or queries on federated data, with charges based on Sentinel data lake compute and analytics meters. This means customers pay solely for actual data usage, not mere connectivity. How do I understand Sentinel data lake costs? Sentinel data lake costs driven by three primary factors: how much data is ingested, how long that data is retained, and how the data is used. Customers can flexibly choose to ingest data into the analytics tier or data lake tier, and these architectural choices directly impact cost. For example, data can be ingested into the analytics tier—where commitment tiers help optimize costs for high data volumes—or ingested data directly into the Sentinel data lake for lower‑cost ingestion, storage, and on‑demand analysis. Customers are encouraged to work with their Microsoft account team to obtain an accurate cost estimate tailored to their environment. See Sentinel pricing page to understand Sentinel pricing. How do I manage Sentinel data lake costs? Built-in cost management experiences help customers with cost predictability, billing transparency, and operational efficiency. Reports provide customers with insights into usage trends over time, enabling them to identify cost drivers and optimize data retention and processing strategies. Set usage-based alerts on specific meters to monitor and control costs. For example, receive alerts when query or notebook usage passes set limits, helping avoid unexpected expenses and manage budgets. See our Sentinel cost management documentation to learn more. If I’m an Auxiliary Logs customer, how will onboarding to the Sentinel data lake affect my billing? Once a workspace is onboarded to Sentinel data lake, all Auxiliary Logs meters will be replaced by new data lake meters. Do we charge for data lake ingestion and storage for graph experiences? Microsoft Sentinel graph-based experiences are included as part of the existing Defender and Purview licenses. However, Sentinel graph requires Sentinel data lake and specific data sources to build the underlying graph. Enabling these data sources will incur ingestion and data lake storage costs. Note: For Sentinel SIEM customers, most required data sources are free for analytics ingestion. Non-entitled sources such as Microsoft Entra ID logs will incur ingestion and data lake storage costs. How is Entra asset data and ARG data billed? Data lake ingestion charges of $0.05 per GB (US EAST) will apply to Entra asset data and ARG data. Note: This was previously not billed during public preview and is billed since data lake GA. To learn more, see: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/sentinel/datalake/enable-data-connectors When a customer activates Sentinel data lake, what happens to tables with archive logs enabled? To simplify billing, once the data lake is enabled, all archive data will be billed using the data lake storage meter. This provides consistent long-term retention billing and includes automatic 6x data compression. For most customers, this change results in lower long‑term retention costs. However, customers who previously had discounted archive retention pricing will not automatically receive the same discounts on the new data lake storage meters. In these cases, customers should engage their Microsoft account team to review pricing implications before enabling the Sentinel data lake. Thank you Thank you to our customers and partners for your continued trust and collaboration. Your feedback drives our innovation, and we’re excited to keep evolving Microsoft Sentinel to meet your security needs. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out—we’re here to support you every step of the way. Learn more: Get started with Sentinel data lake today: https://aka.ms/Get_started/Sentinel_datalake Microsoft Sentinel AI-ready platform: https://aka.ms/Microsoft_Sentinel Sentinel data lake videos: https://aka.ms/Sentineldatalake_videos Latest innovations and updates on Sentinel: https://aka.ms/msftsentinelblog Sentinel pricing page: https://aka.ms/MicrosoftSentinel_Pricing
