Security Copilot for SOC: bringing agentic AI to every defender
Cybersecurity has entered an era of relentless complexity. As threat actors increasingly leverage artificial intelligence to automate attacks, evade detection, and scale their tactics, defenders are challenged to keep up. In this new era, security operations centers (SOCs) must transform to not just react, but to anticipate, disrupt, and outpace the next wave of cyberthreats. Microsoft’s goal is to empower every organization to meet this challenge head-on by transforming how security operates. We believe the future of the SOC is more than just agentic: it’s predictive and proactive. This means moving beyond fragmented tools and manual processes, and instead embracing a unified, intelligent approach where AI-driven skills and agents work in concert with human expertise. To bring this vision to life, it’s essential to look at the SOC through the lens of its lifecycle—a dynamic continuum that spans from anticipation and prevention through to recovery and optimization—and to recognize the unique challenges and opportunities within each stage. With Security Copilot’s GenAI and agentic capabilities woven across this lifecycle, Microsoft is delivering an integrated defense platform that enables defenders to move faster, act smarter, and stay ahead of adversaries. Introducing agentic innovation across the SOC lifecycle At Ignite, our agentic innovations are concentrated in three of the five SOC lifecycle pillars, and each one represents a leap forward in how analysts anticipate, detect, triage and investigate threats. Predict and prevent Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent: Introduced in March, this agent has already helped security teams move from reactive to anticipatory defense. At Ignite, we’re announcing that the Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent is now fully embedded in the Microsoft Defender portal, delivering daily, tailored briefings that synthesize Microsoft’s unparalleled global intelligence with organization-specific context in just minutes. Teams no longer need to spend hours gathering TI from disparate sources—the agent automates this process, offering the most current and relevant insights. Analysts can reference the summary to prioritize action, using the agent’s risk assessments, clear recommendations, and links to vulnerable assets to proactively address exposures. Detect and disrupt Dynamic Threat Detection Agent: Detections have long been bottlenecked by the limitations of traditional alerting systems, which rely on predefined logic that can’t scale fast enough to match the speed and variability of modern attacks— resulting in blind spots and missed threats. The Dynamic Threat Detection Agent addresses this challenge head-on. Instead of depending on static rules or isolated input, it continuously analyzes incidents and telemetry, searching for gaps in coverage and correlating signals across the entire security stack. For example, this is how it surfaced a recent AWS attack: a threat actor used an EntraID account to federate into an AWS admin account to exfiltrate sensitive data. The Dynamic Threat Detection Agent generated an alert before the intruder even authenticated into the single sign-on flow, driven by a correlated signal from Sentinel. That alert didn’t exist beforehand; the agent created it on the fly to stop the attack. The result is an adaptive system that extends Microsoft’s industry-leading, research-based detections with context-aware alerts tailored to each organization, closing gaps and revealing threats that legacy systems miss. Triage and investigate Security Alert Triage Agent (previously named Phishing Triage Agent): In March 2025, we introduced the Security Alert Triage Agent, built to autonomously handle user-submitted phishing reports at scale. The agent classifies incoming alerts and resolves false positives, escalating only the malicious cases that require human expertise. At Microsoft Ignite, we’re announcing its general availability, backed by strong early results: the agent identifies 6.5 times more malicious alerts, improves verdict accuracy by 77%, and frees analysts to spend 53% more time investigating real threats. St. Luke’s even said it’s saving their team nearly 200 hours each month. Coming soon, we’ll be extending these autonomous triage capabilities beyond phishing to identity and cloud alerts, bringing the same precision and scale to more SOC workflows. Note: The Phishing Triage Agent has since been expanded and is now called the Security Alert Triage Agent. Learn more at aka.ms/SATA Threat Hunting Agent: this agent reimagines the investigation process. Instead of requiring analysts to master complex query languages or sift through mountains of data, Threat Hunting Agent enables natural language investigations with contextual insight. Analysts can vibe with the agent by asking questions in plain English, receive direct answers, and be guided through comprehensive hunting sessions. It levels up the existing Security Copilot NL2KQL capability by enabling teams to explore patterns, pivot intuitively and uncover hidden signals in real time for a fluid, context-aware experience. This not only accelerates investigations but makes advanced threat hunting accessible to every member of the SOC, regardless of experience level. Agents built into your workflows To make the agents easily accessible and help security teams get started more quickly, we are excited to announce that Security Copilot will be available to all Microsoft 365 E5 customers. Rollout starts today for existing Security Copilot customers with Microsoft 365 E5 and will continue in the upcoming months for all Microsoft 365 E5 customers. Customers will receive 30-day advanced notice before activation. Learn more: https://aka.ms/SCP-Ignite25 Discover more: the Security Store The Security Store, now generally available, is the central hub for discovering, deploying, and managing first-party and third-party security agents. Today, it provides instant access to 20+ agents deployable directly in the Microsoft Defender portal, all within a broader ecosystem of 100+ trusted security solutions. Whether you're investigating incidents, hunting threats, or automating response, the Security Store extends Defender with vetted, scenario-aligned tools that can be set up in minutes. Learn more in this blog. Introducing new GenAI embedded capabilities Security Copilot isn’t just growing through agents—it’s also gaining new embedded capabilities: GenAI skills that help SOC teams work faster, operate at greater scale, and get upleveled directly inside Microsoft Defender. Today, we’re excited to introduce new innovations: Analyst Notes represent a meaningful shift in how investigation work is captured and shared. For organizations that choose to opt into this capability, Copilot automatically reconstructs an analyst’s investigation session—from the moment they open an incident to the moment they close it—and turns that activity into clear, structured notes. The system can even track multiple sessions in parallel and attribute actions to the right incident, and analysts can fully review and edit the generated notes before saving them. This not only saves teams valuable time and effort, it preserves the actual investigation path with far greater accuracy and consistency than manual documentation ever could. The result is a living, cumulative record of how the SOC investigates threats: easier handoffs, stronger auditability, faster onboarding, and a deeper shared understanding of how incidents unfold across multiple SecOps members and phases. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for guided response allows organizations to upload their own internal procedures so Security Copilot can align its recommendations with established guidebooks and compliance requirements. Guided response is one of the ways Copilot helps analysts navigate an incident: it offers one-click actions across triage, containment, investigation and remediation that teams can take immediately. With SOPs uploaded, these recommendations draw directly from organizational workflows and policy standards, ensuring they are contextually relevant and trusted. For defenders, this translates into greater confidence and faster, more consistent decision-making. We’re also eager to share that we’re introducing auto-generated content configuration for Security Copilot’s incident summaries. This new feature allows security admins to decide how and when summaries are produced, choosing between always auto-generating, manual trigger only, or auto-generating based on incident severity. The configuration is managed directly in the Microsoft Defender portal, giving organizations flexibility to fine-tune Copilot’s outputs to their operational needs. Join us at Ignite We invite you to learn more and see these innovations in action at Microsoft Ignite. Don’t miss our featured sessions: Microsoft Defender: Building the agentic SOC with guest Allie Mellen on Wednesday, November 19 th with Allie Mellen, Corina Feuerstein, and Rob Lefferts. Learn more. Empowering the SOC: Security Copilot and the rise of Agentic Defense on Friday, November 21 st with Corina Feuerstein and Cristina da Gama. Learn more. Join us to discover how Microsoft is shaping the future of cybersecurity—making intelligent, agentic defense accessible to every organization.What’s new in Microsoft Defender XDR at Secure 2025
Protecting your organization against cybersecurity threats is more challenging than ever before. As part of our 2025 Microsoft Secure cybersecurity conference announcements, we’re sharing new product features that spotlight our AI-first, end-to-end security innovations designed to help - including autonomous AI agents in the Security Operations Center (SOC), as well as automatic detection and response capabilities. We also share information on how you can expand your protection by bringing data security and collaboration tools closer to the SOC. Read on to learn more about how these capabilities can help your organization stay ahead of today’s advanced threat actors. Expanding AI-Driven Capabilities for Smarter SOC Operations Introducing Microsoft Security Copilot’s Security Alert Triage Agent (previously named Phishing Triage Agent) Today, we are excited to introduce Security Copilot agents, a major step in bringing AI-driven automation to Microsoft Security solutions. As part of this, we’re unveiling our newest innovation in Microsoft Defender: the Security Alert Triage Agent. Acting as a force multiplier for SOC analysts, it streamlines the triage of user-submitted phishing incidents by autonomously identifying and resolving false positives, typically cleaning out over 95% of submissions. This allows teams to focus on the remaining incidents – those that pose the most critical threats. Phishing submissions are among the highest-volume alerts that security teams handle daily, and our data shows that at least 9 in 10 reported emails turn out to be harmless bulk mail or spam. As a result, security teams must sift through hundreds of these incidents weekly, often spending up to 30 minutes per case determining whether it represents a real threat. This manual triage effort not only adds operational strain but also delays the response to actual phishing attacks, potentially impacting protection levels. The Security Alert Triage Agent transforms this process by leveraging advanced LLM-driven analysis to conduct sophisticated assessments –such as examining the semantic content of emails– to autonomously determine whether an incident is a genuine phishing attempt or a false alarm. By intelligently cutting through the noise, the agent alleviates the burden on SOC teams, allowing them to focus on high-priority threats. Figure 1. A phishing incident triaged by the Security Copilot Security Alert Triage Agent To help analysts gain trust in its decision-making, the agent provides natural language explanations for its classifications, along with a visual representation of its reasoning process. This transparency enables security teams to understand why an incident was classified in a certain way, making it easier to validate verdicts. Analysts can also provide feedback in plain language, allowing the agent to learn from these interactions, refine its accuracy, and adapt to the organization’s unique threat landscape. Over time, this continuous feedback loop fine-tunes the agent’s behavior, aligning it more closely with organizational nuances and reducing the need for manual verification. The Security Copilot Security Alert Triage Agent is designed to transform SOC operations with autonomous, AI-driven capabilities. As phishing threats grow increasingly sophisticated and SOC analysts face mounting demands, this agent alleviates the burden of repetitive tasks, allowing teams to shift their focus to proactive security measures that strengthen the organization’s overall defense. Note: The Phishing Triage Agent has since been expanded and is now called the Security Alert Triage Agent. Learn more at aka.ms/SATA Security Copilot Enriched Incident Summaries and Suggested Prompts Security Copilot Incident Summaries in Microsoft Defender now feature key enrichments, including related threat intelligence and asset risk –enhancements driven by customer feedback. Additionally, we are introducing suggested prompts following incident summaries, giving analysts quick access to common follow-up questions for deeper context on devices, users, threat intelligence, and more. This marks a step towards a more interactive experience, moving beyond predefined inputs to a more dynamic, conversational workflow. Read more about Microsoft Security Copilot agent announcements here. New protection across Microsoft Defender XDR workloads To strengthen core protection across Microsoft Defender XDR workloads, we're introducing new capabilities while building upon existing integrations for enhanced protection. This ensures a more comprehensive and seamless defense against evolving threats. Introducing collaboration security for Microsoft Teams Email remains a prevalent entry point for attackers. But the fast adoption of collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams has opened new attack surfaces for cybercriminals. Our advancements within Defender for Office 365 allow organizations to continue to protect users in Microsoft Teams against phishing and other emerging cyberthreats with inline protection against malicious URLs, safe attachments, brand impersonation protection, and more. And to ensure seamless investigation and response at the incident level, everything is centralized across our SOC workflows in the unified security operations platform. Read the announcement here. Introducing Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations for the SOC Understanding the extent of the data that has been impacted to better prioritize incidents has been a challenge for security teams. As data remains the main target for attackers it’s critical to dismantle silos between security and data security teams to enhance response times. At Microsoft, we’ve made significant investments in bringing SOC and data security teams closer together by integrating Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Purview. We are continuing to build upon the rich set of capabilities and today, we are excited to announce that Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations (DSI) can be initiated from the incident graph in Defender XDR. Ensuring robust data security within the SOC has always been important, as it helps protect sensitive information from breaches and unauthorized access. Data Security Investigations significantly accelerates the process of analyzing incident related data such as emails, files, and messages. With AI-powered deep content analysis, DSI reveals the key security and sensitive data risks. This integration allows analysts to further analyze the data involved in the incident, learn which data is at risk of compromise, and take action to respond and mitigate the incident faster, to keep the organization’s data protected. Read the announcement here. Figure 2. An incident that shows the ability to launch a data security investigation. OAuth app insights are now available in Exposure Management In recent years, we’ve witnessed a substantial surge in attackers exploiting OAuth applications to gain access to critical data in business applications like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. To address this threat, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is now integrating OAuth apps and their connections into Microsoft Security Exposure Management, enhancing both attack path and attack surface map experiences. Additionally, we are introducing a unified application inventory to consolidate all app interactions into a single location. This will address the following use cases: Visualize and remediate attack paths that attackers could potentially exploit using high-privilege OAuth apps to access M365 SaaS applications or sensitive Azure resources. Investigate OAuth applications and their connections to the broader ecosystem in Attack Surface Map and Advanced Hunting. Explore OAuth application characteristics and actionable insights to reduce risk from our new unified application inventory. Figure 3. An attack path infused with OAuth app insights Read the latest announcement here AI & TI are critical for effective detection & response To effectively combat emerging threats, AI has become critical in enabling faster detection and response. By combining this with the latest threat analytics, security teams can quickly pinpoint emerging risks and respond in real-time, providing organizations with proactive protection against sophisticated attacks. Disrupt more attacks with automatic attack disruption In this era of multi-stage, multi-domain attacks, the SOC need solutions that enable both speed and scale when responding to threats. That’s where automatic attack disruption comes in—a self-defense capability that dynamically pivots to anticipate and block an attacker’s next move using multi-domain signals, the latest TI, and AI models. We’ve made significant advancements in attack disruption, such as threat intelligence-based disruption announced at Ignite, expansion to OAuth apps, and more. Today, we are thrilled to share our next innovation in attack disruption—the ability to disrupt more attacks through a self-learning architecture that enables much earlier and much broader disruption. At its core, this technology monitors a vast array of signals, ranging from raw telemetry data to alerts and incidents across Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems. This extensive range of data sources provides an unparalleled view of your security environment, helping to ensure potential threats do not go unnoticed. What sets this innovation apart is its ability learn from historical events and previously seen attack types to identify and disrupt new attacks. By recognizing similar patterns across data and stitching them together into a contextual sequence, it processes information through machine learning models and enables disruption to stop the attack much earlier in the attack sequence, stopping significantly more attacks in volume and variety. Comprehensive Threat Analytics are now available across all Threat Intelligence reports Organizations can now leverage the full suite of Threat Analytics features (related incidents, impacted assets, endpoints exposure, recommended actions) on all Microsoft Threat Intelligence reports. Previously only available for a limited set of threats, these features are now available for all threats Microsoft has published in Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI), offering comprehensive insights and actionable intelligence to help you ensure your security measures are robust and responsive. Some of these key features include: IOCs with historical hunting: Access IOCs after expiration to investigate past threats and aid in remediation and proactive hunting. MITRE TTPs: Build detections based on threat techniques, going beyond IOCs to block and alert on specific tactics. Targeted Industries: Filter threats by industry, aligning security efforts with sector-specific challenges. We’re proud of our new AI-first innovations that strengthen security protections for our customers and help us further our pledge to customers and our community to prioritize cyber safety above all else. Learn more about the innovations designed to help your organization protect data, defend against cyber threats, and stay compliant. Join Microsoft leaders online at Microsoft Secure on April 9. We hope you’ll also join us in San Francisco from April 27th-May 1 st 2025 at the RSA Conference 2025 to learn more. At the conference, we’ll share live, hands-on demos and theatre sessions all week at the Microsoft booth at Moscone Center. Secure your spot today.Microsoft 365 E5 Security is now available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 Business Premium
The threat landscape continues to evolve creating ongoing challenges for small and medium businesses (SMBs) that are faced with increased regulations and cyberinsurance requirements. Today, Microsoft 365 Business Premium delivers core security solutions to SMBs that help safeguard data, defend against cyberthreats, and manage access and devices. With the growing volume of attacks and increased sophistication of threats, there are SMBs that want enhanced cybersecurity protection for their business. We are pleased to announce that Business Premium customers are now able to purchase Microsoft 365 E5 Security as an add-on to further enhance their security. E5 Security brings new security value on top of Business Premium with Microsoft Entra ID Plan 2, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. (ENHANCED) Identity and access controls Business Premium includes Microsoft Entra ID P1, which provides single sign-on, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and conditional access to help SMBs manage user identities and enable access to applications and resources from trusted users, devices, and locations. 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. (NEW) Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Microsoft Defender XDR delivers a unified and efficient approach to incident-level visibility across the attack lifecycle. Together XDR and exposure management (XSPM) consolidate multiple siloed security solutions to provide best-of-breed capabilities across identities, endpoints, apps, and email. (NEW) Identity threat detection and response (ITDR) Identities are one of the most common attack vectors making identity-specific threat detection and response a critical element to secure your business. 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. (ENHANCED) Device security Microsoft Defender for Business (MDB) already brings enterprise-grade device protection capabilities to Business Premium customers across Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices. It includes vulnerability management, next-generation antivirus protection, AI-powered endpoint detection and response with automatic attack disruption, and automated investigation and remediation. With streaming APIs, customers and partners can build Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services with Defender for Business. For customers who need advanced hunting, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2 adds advanced hunting, and 6 months of data retention on the device, along with endpoint security for IoT devices. (ENHANCED) Email and Collaboration security Microsoft Defender for Office 365 P1 in Business Premium includes SafeLinks with time of click URL filtering, safe attachments with real-time attachment scanning in sandbox, and phishing and malware defense across email, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. It also has AI-powered LLM-based threat protection with 99.995% attacker intent detection accuracy. With 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. (NEW) Software-as-a-service (SaaS) security 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 GenAI apps by combing 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. E5 Security delivers added protection to meet the growing needs of SMBs in a package that is cost-effective. Purchasing E5 Security has 57% savings when compared to the cost of separately purchasing the individual products that are included. FAQ When will E5 Security be available for purchase? E5 Security is available for purchase as an add-on to Business Premium starting today, 3/6. How can I purchase E5 Security? You can purchase E5 Security as an add-on to Business Premium through Microsoft Security for SMBs website or through your Partner. Does Microsoft 365 Business Premium plus Microsoft 365 E5 Security allow mixed licensing for endpoint security solutions? 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 365 E5 Security 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 365 E5 Security) and then contact Microsoft Support to request the switch for your tenant. You can learn more here. What are the differences between Microsoft Defender for Business and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2? MDB includes many of the same features as MDE P2, including enterprise-grade device protection for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices, vulnerability management, next-generation antivirus protection, AI-powered endpoint detection and response with automatic attack disruption, and automated investigation and remediation. MDE P2 adds endpoint security for IoT devices, threat hunting, and 6 months of data retention on the device. A detailed comparison is available here. As a Partner, how do I build Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services with MDB? 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. Partners can access training resources, customer decks and deployment checklists from our Business Premium Partner Playbook and find additional resources for Microsoft Security for Partners.
Defending Container Runtime from Malware with Microsoft Defender for Containers
In cloud-native environments, malware protection is no longer traditional antivirus — it is runtime workload security, ensuring containerized applications remain safe throughout their lifecycle. Many organizations focus on scanning container images before deployment. While image scanning is important, this does not stop runtime attacks. Image scanning protects before deployment, but malware detection protects during execution. Malware can enter cloud environments through container images, compromised CI/CD pipelines, exposed services, or misuse of legitimate administrative tools, making runtime malware detection an essential security control rather than an optional enhancement. Runtime Malware detection and Prevention acts as the last line of defence when preventive controls fail. If malware executes successfully inside a container, it may attempt Privilege escalation, Container escape and Host compromise. Antimalware in Defender for Containers Defender for Containers antimalware, powered by Microsoft Defender Antivirus cloud protection, near-real-time malware detection directly into container environments. The antimalware feature is available via Helm with sensor version 0.10.2 for AKS, GKE, and EKS. Defender for Containers Sensor Defender for Containers Antimalware provides: Runtime monitoring of container activity Malware detection on Container Workloads Malware detection for Kubernetes nodes Alerts integrated into Defender XDR Anti-malware detection and blocking - Microsoft Defender for Cloud | Microsoft Learn Container antimalware protection in Defender for Containers is powered by three main components: 1) Defender Sensor - version 0.10.2 installed via Helm or arc-extension The Defender sensor runs inside the Kubernetes cluster and monitors workload activity in real time. It provides: Runtime visibility into container processes Binary execution monitoring Behavioral inspection Alert and Block Malware execution Multicloud Support (Azure Kubernetes Service, AWS EKS, GCP GKE) Prerequisites: Ensure the following components of the Defender for containers plan are enabled: Defender sensor Security findings Registry access Kubernetes API access To Install Defender Sensor for Antimalware, ensure there are sufficient resources on your Kubernetes Cluster and outbound connectivity. In addition to the core sensor memory and CPU requirements, you need: Component Request Limit CPU 50m 300m Memory 128Mi 500Mi All sensor components use outbound-only connectivity (no inbound access required). To install Defender for Containers sensor follow the guidance here To Verify the sensor deployed successfully on all nodes, use the commands as screenshot below: You should see the collectors pods in Running state with 3/3 containers. 2) Antimalware Policy Engine Policies define what happens when malware is detected: Alert only Block execution Ignore (allowlisted cases) Policies can be scoped to Azure subscriptions, AWS Accounts and GCP Projects and also to Specific clusters, Namespaces, Pods, Images, Labels or workloads. This allows organizations to reduce false positives while enforcing strict security where needed. Host vs Workload Protection — How Sensor Covers Both Antimalware Rules can be applied to Resource scopes: Scope What Is Protected Workload (Container) Processes inside containers Host (Node) Kubernetes node OS and runtime Default rules include: Default antimalware workload rule Default antimalware host rule This matters because attackers often escape containers and target kubelet, container runtime, and node filesystem. Blocking malware at both workload and host layers prevents cluster takeover. To configure the Antimalware policy follow the guidance here To verify the antimalware policy is deployed to the cluster, login to your K8s cluster and use the commands as screenshot below: 3) Cloud Protection (Microsoft Defender Antivirus Cloud) Defender for Containers Sensor integrates with Microsoft Defender Antivirus cloud protection, which provides Global threat intelligence, Machine learning classification, Reputation scoring, Zero-day detection. When suspicious binaries appear, cloud analysis determines whether they should be allowed or blocked. To test Malware detection and blocking, upload an EICAR file to a running Container on your cluster. If policy action = Block Malware, the sensor performs enforcement. Blocking actions include, Killing malicious process and Generates Defender for Cloud alert as below: The malware is detected and execution is blocked. Defender for Cloud Alerts are also available in Defender XDR portal. Security Operations teams can further investigate the infected file by navigating to the Incidents and Alerts section in the Defender portal. When a container or pod is determined to be compromised, Defender XDR enables Security Operations Team to take response actions. For more details : Investigate and respond to container threats in the Microsoft Defender portal Binary Drift Detection and Prevention : Containers are expected to be immutable. Running containers should only execute binaries that came from the original container image. This is extremely important because most container attacks involve Curl/wget downloading malware, Crypto miners dropped post-compromise, Attack tools installed dynamically. For more details refer Binary drift detection and blocking Defender detects runtime drift, such as New binaries downloaded after deployment Files written into container filesystem Tools installed via reverse shell Payloads dropped by attackers To Configure drift detection and prevention policy follow the guidance here . When a drift is detected on a container workload, Defender for Container sensor detects drift and prevents it from being drifted. To test drift prevention, deploy a container and introduce a drift in the running container. The drift will be detected by the sensor and prevents drift, and alert is generated as shown in the screenshot below: References: Anti-malware detection and blocking Install Defender for Containers sensor using Helm Binary drift detection and blocking Investigate and respond to container threats in the Microsoft Defender portal Reviewed by: Eyal Gur, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft Defender for CloudHyperscale ML threat intelligence for early detection & disruption
Co-author: Amir Gharib In today's rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, the ability to swiftly identify and mitigate threats is more critical than ever. Attackers are increasingly well-resourced, enabling them to keep adding new components to their toolkits that keep their infrastructure fresh and hard to detect. Traditional labeling methods used to identify and block malicious infrastructure are struggling to keep up. At Microsoft, we recognize the pressing need for innovative solutions that not only keep pace with these threats but stay ahead of them. This past Ignite, we announced Threat Intelligence Tracking via Dynamic Networks (TITAN)—a groundbreaking approach that uses the power of machine learning to transform threat intelligence and attack disruption by automatically neutralizing malicious activity at scale. By leveraging real-time ML-driven analytics, TITAN uncovers previously hidden threat actor infrastructure, enabling the disruption capabilities built into our unified security operations platform to detect and stop attacks significantly earlier in the attack chain (Figure 1). The power of machine-scale threat intelligence TITAN represents a new wave of innovation built on Microsoft threat intelligence capabilities, introducing a real-time, adaptive threat intelligence (TI) graph that integrates first and third-party telemetry from the unified security operations platform, Microsoft Defender for Threat Intelligence, Microsoft Defender for Experts, and customer feedback. This graph employs guilt-by-association techniques to propagate known TI labels to unknown neighboring entities (e.g., IP, file, email) at machine scale. By analyzing relationships between entities, TITAN can identify attacker infrastructure before they are leveraged in attacks, providing an invaluable window of opportunity to prevent harm. Figure 1. Architectural overview of TITAN, comprising four key steps: (1) constructing a graph using telemetry from 1 st and 3 rd party detectors in the Unified Security Operations Platform, (2) integrating known threat intelligence from across Microsoft, (3) applying reputation propagation algorithms to classify previously unknown entities as either benign or malicious, and (4) updating the reputation score for each entity in the graph. By leveraging guilt-by-association methods, TITAN can swiftly identify hidden threat actor infrastructure through cross-organizational associations with known malicious entities within the TI graph. Specifically, we employ a semi-supervised label propagation technique that iteratively assigns reputation scores to nodes based on their neighbors’ scores, refining the graph’s score distribution until convergence. These high-confidence entity reputation scores empower the unified security operations platform to implement proactive containment and remediation actions via attack disruption. A key advantage of our constantly evolving threat intelligence is that we can provide clear and explainable reputation scores for each entity by examining the neighboring entities that contribute to the overall score. Preventing attacks before they happen Consider a scenario where TITAN detects unusual activity from a seemingly benign IP address that has connections to known malicious domains. Traditional systems might not flag this IP until after malicious activity is confirmed. However, TITAN's guilt-by-association techniques elevate the reputation score of the IP address, immediately triggering detection and disruption rules that block the threat before any damage occurs. With an impressive average macro-F1 score of 0.89 and a precision-recall AUC of 0.94, TITAN identifies millions of high-risk entities each week, enabling a 6x increase in non-file threat intelligence. Since its deployment, TITAN has reduced the time to disrupt by a factor of 1.9x while maintaining 99% precision, as confirmed by customer feedback and thorough manual evaluation by security experts—ultimately saving customers from costly security breaches. Dynamic threat intelligence graph construction At the heart of TITAN is a dynamic, time-evolving threat intelligence graph that captures complex relationships between millions of interlinked entities, alerts, and incidents. By combining telemetry across both 1 st and 3 rd party sources in the unified security operations platform, TITAN is uniquely positioned for comprehensive view of the threat landscape, essential for early detection and disruption. Key features include: Real-time updates – In cybersecurity, speed is critical. TITAN operates in real-time, with graph creation and reputation propagation algorithms running every hour. This frequency ensures that security teams receive fresh and active threat intelligence, enabling swift and effective responses to emerging threats. The ability to act quickly can mean the difference between thwarting an attack and being breached. Infusing security domain knowledge via edge weights – Edges in the TI graph carry weights that signify the strength or relevance of the relationships between entities. We introduce edge weight decay functions that automatically reduce edge weights based on the time elapsed since the edge was formed. This ensures that newer and more relevant relationships have a greater impact on reputation assessments, aligning the dynamic graph with the real-time nature of security incidents. Pruning outdated nodes and edges – To maintain the relevance and efficiency of the TI graph, we implement pruning mechanisms that remove nodes and edges when their weights fall below certain thresholds. This approach keeps the graph focused on the most current and meaningful connections, ensuring optimal performance. Evolving cybersecurity defense with TI TITAN represents a monumental step forward in the mission to protect organizations from cyber threats. By infusing the power of AI with advanced threat intelligence, we are equipping security teams with the tools they need to stay ahead of the attackers. This is only possible with a unified platform that consolidates threat intelligence across 1 st and 3 rd party workloads and products, organizations benefit not only from streamlining their security operations but also gain deeper insights into potential threats and vulnerabilities. TITAN is just one of the many examples of how powerful bringing together the full capabilities of an industry-leading cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM), comprehensive extended detection and response (XDR), and generative AI built specifically for cybersecurity. Integrating all of this data, advanced analysis, threat intel and automation enables an entirely new era of defense for security teams and we’re so energized by the potential. TITAN is just the start – look forward to new capabilities announced in the coming months. Learn More Check out our resources to learn more about our new approach to AI-driven threat intelligence, and our recent security announcements: See TITAN in action in the session delivered at Ignite Read the full paper on the TITAN architecture Read the Copilot for Security Guided Response paper & blog Read the unified security operations platform GA announcementOnboarding MDE with Defender for Cloud (Problem)
Hello Community, In our Customer i have a strange problem. We onboarded with Azure Arc server and activate a Defender for Cloud servises only for Endpoint protection. Some of this device onboarded into Microsoft Defender portale, but not appears as a device, infact i don't have opportunity to put them into a group to apply policy. I have check sensor of Azure Arc and all works fine (device are in Azure Arc, are in the defender portal and see them on Intune (managed by MDE)). From Intune portal From Defender portal But in difference from other device into entra ID exists only the enterprise application and not device I show the example of device that works correctly (the same onboarding method) Is there anyone who has or has had this problem? Thanks and Regards, GuidoFrom signal to strategy: Closing attack paths with identity intelligence
Compromised credentials remain one of the most common entry points for attackers. In the first half of 2025 alone, identity-based attacks surged more than 32% and its estimated that 97% of them are password focused. While that scale is overwhelming, it only takes a single exposed account to give an attacker a foothold from which they can move laterally towards the critical assets they are after. At today’s attack scale, identity signals need to be connected with broader context to stop attacks earlier in the kill chain. Today we are excited to share more about how Microsoft Defender can help security professionals proactively understand how identity-related risks, like leaked credentials, relate back to critical assets, helping security professionals proactively close potential entry points before they can be exploited. Understanding leaked credentials and attack paths: Leaked credentials refer to valid usernames and passwords that have been exposed beyond their intended scope. Whether this exposure occurs as part of a data breach, phishing attack, or postings on dark web forums, the result is the same: an attacker may be using legitimate credentials to access your organization. Similarly, attack paths describe the sequence of misconfigurations, permissions, and trust relationships that an attacker can chain together to move from an initial foothold to high‑value resources. Rather than relying on a single vulnerability, attackers tend to think in graphs, following paths of least resistance to systematically escalate privileges and expand access. This makes identities the primary control plane they target and leaked credentials as an extremely common entry point. The recent Microsoft digital defense report put this into focus, stating that more than 61% of attack paths lead to a sensitive user. These user accounts have elevated privileges or access to critical resources meaning that if they were to be attacked or misused it would significantly impact the organization. Microsoft’s differentiated approach Most solutions stop at the alert and can only tell you that a password was exposed, found, or leaked. That information matters, but it is incomplete, it describes an event, not the risk. The real differentiation starts with the next question: what does this exposure mean for my environment right now. Not every exposed password creates the same level of risk. Context is what determines impact. Which identity does the password belong to? What assets can that identity access? Does that access still exists? And are those assets truly sensitive? That is why exposed password detection is a starting point, not an end state. Effective protection begins when organizations move beyond technical alerts and toward an identity-aware understanding. This shift from detection to context is where better decisions are made and where meaningful security value is created. This is why we took our identity alerts a step further, connecting these risks with broader security context to reveal how an initial identity signal can lead to sensitive users, critical assets, and core business operations. This perspective moves security beyond isolated alerts to prioritized, actionable insight that shows not just if risk exists, but how identity‑based threats could unfold and where to intervene to stop them before they have impact. In the case of leaked credentials, Microsoft continuously scans for exposed accounts across public and private breach sources. If a match is found, Microsoft’s Advanced Correlation Engine (MACE) automatically identifies the affected user within your organization and surfaces the exposure with clear severity and context. By bringing this powerful detection into Defender, teams can investigate and respond with better context, allowing leaked credentials to be evaluated alongside endpoint, email, and app activity, giving teams additional context needed to prioritize response. Additionally, for Microsoft Entra ID accounts we can go a step further validating whether the discovered credentials actually corresponds to a real, usable password for an identity in the tenant. This confirmation further reduces unnecessary noise and gives defenders an early signal - often before any malicious activity begins. Next, Microsoft Defender steps in to correlate these signals with your organization’s unique security context. Connecting the alert and associated account with other signals and like unusual authentications, lateral movement attempts, or privilege escalations, elevating the isolated alert into a complete story about any potential incidents related to that vulnerability. At the same time, Microsoft Exposure management is analyzing the same data to create a potential attack path related to the exposed credentials. By tracing permissions, consents, and access relationships, Attack Paths show exactly which routes an attacker could take and what controls will break that path. When these capabilities work together, visibility becomes action. MACE identifies who is exposed, Defender connects other signals into an incident level view and Attack Paths reveal where the attacker could go next. The result is a single, connected workflow that transforms early exposure data into prioritized, measurable risk reduction. Conclusion Leaked credentials should be treated as the beginning of a story, not an isolated event. Microsoft Defender is uniquely able to enrich security teams visibility and understanding of Identity-related threats from initial exposure to detection, risk prioritization, and remediation. This connected visibility fundamentally changes how defenders manage identity risk, shifting the focus from reacting to individual alerts to continuously reducing exposure and limiting blast radius. One leaked password doesn’t have to become a breach. With Microsoft’s identity security capabilities, it becomes a closed path, and a measurable step toward greater resilience. Learn more about attack paths and the new leaked credentials capabilities in Defender.Microsoft Defender for Cloud Customer Newsletter
What's new in Defender for Cloud? Now in public preview, Microsoft Security Private Link allows for private connectivity between Defender for Cloud and your workloads. For more information, see our public documentation. Blogs of the month In January, our team published the following blog posts we would like to share: Guarding Kubernetes Deployments: Runtime gating for vulnerable images now GA Architecting Trust: A NIST-Based Security Governance Framework for AI Agents Defender for Cloud in the field Revisit the announcement on the CloudStorageAggregatedEvents table in XDR’s Advanced Hunting experience. Storage aggregated logs in XDR’s advanced hunting Visit our YouTube page GitHub Community Update your Defender for SQL on machines extension at scale Update Defender for SQL extension at scale Visit our GitHub page Customer journey Discover how other organizations successfully use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to protect their cloud workloads. This month we are featuring Toyota Leasing Thailand. Toyota Leasing Thailand, a financial services subsidiary of Toyota, provides financing, insurance and mobility services and is entrusted with sensitive personal data. Integrating with Defender, Entra and Purview, Security Copilot provided the SOC and the IT team a unified view, streamlined operations and reporting to reduce response times on phishing attacks from hours to minutes. Join our community! We offer several customer connection programs within our private communities. By signing up, you can help us shape our products through activities such as reviewing product roadmaps, participating in co-design, previewing features, and staying up-to-date with announcements. Sign up at aka.ms/JoinCCP. We greatly value your input on the types of content that enhance your understanding of our security products. Your insights are crucial in guiding the development of our future public content. We aim to deliver material that not only educates but also resonates with your daily security challenges. Whether it’s through in-depth live webinars, real-world case studies, comprehensive best practice guides through blogs, or the latest product updates, we want to ensure our content meets your needs. Please submit your feedback on which of these formats do you find most beneficial and are there any specific topics you’re interested in https://aka.ms/PublicContentFeedback. Note: If you want to stay current with Defender for Cloud and receive updates in your inbox, please consider subscribing to our monthly newsletter: https://aka.ms/MDCNewsSubscribe
