Custom detection rules get a boost—explore what’s new in Microsoft Defender
Co-author - Jeremy Tan In today's rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, staying ahead of threats is crucial. Microsoft Defender's custom detection rules offer a powerful way to proactively monitor and respond to security threats. These user-defined rules can be configured to run at regular intervals to detect security threats—generating alerts and triggering response actions when threats are detected. If you are a Microsoft Sentinel user and have connected your Sentinel workspace to Microsoft Defender, you are probably more familiar with analytics rules in Microsoft Sentinel and are looking to explore the capabilities and benefits of custom detections. Understanding and leveraging custom detection rules can significantly enhance your organization's security posture. This blog will delve into the benefits of custom detections and showcase scenarios that highlight their capabilities, helping you make the most of this robust feature. We are excited to release these brand-new enhancements that are now available in public preview. What’s new in custom detections? The improvements in custom detections aim to enhance their functionality and usability, making it easier to manage and respond to security threats effectively. Unified user defined detection list: Manage all your user-defined detections from Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel in one place. Filtering capabilities for every column. Search freely using rule title or rule ID. View the new workspace ID column (filterable) for multi-workspace organizations that onboarded multiple workspaces to the unified SOC platform. Manage all detections from MTO portal across all your tenants. Show details pane for every rule (whether custom detection or analytics rule). Perform the following actions on rules: Turn on/off Delete Edit Run (only for custom detections) Open rule’s page (only for custom detections) Migrate eligible scheduled custom detections to near real-time custom detections with one click using the new migration tool. Dynamic alert titles and descriptions: Dynamically craft your alert’s title and description using the results of your query to make them accurate and indicative. Advanced entity mapping: Link a wide range of entity types to your alerts. Enrich alerts with custom details: Surface details to display in the alert side panel. Support Sentinel-only data: Custom detections support Microsoft Sentinel data only without dependency on Microsoft Defender XDR data. Flexible and high frequency support for Sentinel data: Custom detections support high and flexible frequency for Microsoft Sentinel data. The benefits of custom detections Let’s examine some of the key benefits of custom detections: Query data from Defender XDR and Sentinel seamlessly: You can create custom detection rules that query data from both Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR tables seamlessly, without the need of sending Defender XDR data to Sentinel. Cost efficiency: Save on ingestion costs if you don’t need to retain Microsoft Defender XDR data in analytics tier for more than 30 days but have detection use cases involving both Defender XDR and Sentinel data. Detect threats immediately and remove dependency on quick ingestion: near real time (NRT) custom detections monitor events as they stream, while standard custom detections evaluate both the event ingestion time and the time the event was generated. Unlimited NRT detections: NRT custom detections are unlimited, you can create as many as you need. Since they are based on a streaming technology, they are not generating any load on the system. Native remediation actions: You can configure custom detection rule to automatically take actions on devices, files, users, or emails that are returned by the query when your detection query is correlating Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel data, or Defender XDR data only. Entity mapping: Entities are automatically mapped to the alert for all XDR tables. Out of the box alert de-duplication: To reduce alert fatigue when alert generated with the same impacted entities, custom details, title and description - they will merge to the same alert (keeping all raw events linked to the single alert). With this capability you don’t need to worry about duplicated alerts – we take care of it for you. Built-in functions: You can leverage built-in enrichment functions when you build your custom detection queries, such as FileProfile(), SeenBy(), DeviceFromIP() and AssignedIPAddresses(). Extended lookback period: Custom detections have a long lookback period of up to 30 days for rules that run once a day, ideal for historical trending detections. Common scenarios To truly understand the power and versatility of custom detection rules in Microsoft Defender, it's essential to see them in action. In this section, we'll explore several common use cases that demonstrate how these new capabilities can be leveraged to enhance your organization's security posture. These scenarios highlight the benefits of the capabilities, providing you with actionable insights to implement in your own environment. Use Case – detecting potential malicious activity In this use case, we aim to detect potential malicious activity by monitoring logon attempts from different IP addresses. We will implement a custom detection rule that: Monitors successful logon by a user from one IP address and a failed logon attempt from a different IP address (may indicate a malicious attempt at password guessing with a known account). Enriches alerts with user's information from Microsoft Defender for Identity’s IdentityInfo table, including Job title, Department, Manager’s name, and assigned roles. If the user has been found in the 'Terminated Employees’ watchlist, indicating that the user has been notified for termination or marked as terminated, reflect this in the alert name and description. Runs once a day with a lookback period of 30 days, avoiding duplicate alerts on subsequent intervals. Let’s walk through the creation of the custom detection rule and examine the outcome. 1. Here is the sample KQL query we will run in advanced hunting page to create the custom detection. let logonDiff = 10m; let Terminated_Watchlist = _GetWatchlist("TerminatedEmployees") | project tolower(SearchKey);// Get the TerminiatedEmploees Watchlist let aadFunc = (tableName:string) { table(tableName) | where ResultType == "0" | where AppDisplayName !in ("Office 365 Exchange Online", "Skype for Business Online") // To remove false-positives, add more Apps to this array | extend SuccessIPv6Block = strcat(split(IPAddress, ":")[0], ":", split(IPAddress, ":")[1], ":", split(IPAddress, ":")[2], ":", split(IPAddress, ":")[3]) | extend SuccessIPv4Block = strcat(split(IPAddress, ".")[0], ".", split(IPAddress, ".")[1]) | project SuccessLogonTime = TimeGenerated, UserPrincipalName, SuccessIPAddress = IPAddress, SuccessLocation = Location, AppDisplayName, SuccessIPBlock = iff(IPAddress contains ":", strcat(split(IPAddress, ":")[0], ":", split(IPAddress, ":")[1]), strcat(split(IPAddress, ".")[0], ".", split(IPAddress, ".")[1])), Type | join kind= inner ( table(tableName) | where ResultType !in ("0", "50140") | where ResultDescription !~ "Other" | where AppDisplayName !in ("Office 365 Exchange Online", "Skype for Business Online") | project FailedLogonTime = TimeGenerated, UserPrincipalName, FailedIPAddress = IPAddress, FailedLocation = Location, AppDisplayName, ResultType, ResultDescription, Type ) on UserPrincipalName, AppDisplayName | where SuccessLogonTime < FailedLogonTime and FailedLogonTime - SuccessLogonTime <= logonDiff and FailedIPAddress !startswith SuccessIPBlock // Compare the success and failed logon time | summarize FailedLogonTime = max(FailedLogonTime), SuccessLogonTime = max(SuccessLogonTime) by UserPrincipalName, SuccessIPAddress, SuccessLocation, AppDisplayName, FailedIPAddress, FailedLocation, ResultType, ResultDescription, Type | extend Timestamp = SuccessLogonTime | extend UserInTerminatedWatchlist = iif(UserPrincipalName in (Terminated_Watchlist), 'True', 'False') // Check if the impacted user is found in the Watchlist | extend AlertName = iif(UserInTerminatedWatchlist == 'True', "Successful logon by a 'Terminated Employees Watchlist' user from one IP and a failed logon attempt from a different IP","Successful logon from IP and failure from a different IP") // This is the define the dynamic alert value | extend AlertDescription = iif(UserInTerminatedWatchlist == 'True', "A Successful logon by a 'Terminated Employees Watchlist' user onto an Azure App from one IP and within 10 mins failed to logon to the same App via a different IP (may indicate a malicious attempt at password guessing with known account). ","A user account successfully logs onto an Azure App from one IP and within 10 mins failed to logon to the same App via a different IP (may indicate a malicious attempt at password guessing with known account).") // This is to define the dynamic alert description | extend UserPrincipalName = tolower(UserPrincipalName)}; let aadSignin = aadFunc("SigninLogs"); let aadNonInt = aadFunc("AADNonInteractiveUserSignInLogs"); union isfuzzy=true aadSignin, aadNonInt | extend Name = tostring(split(UserPrincipalName,'@',0)[0]), UPNSuffix = tostring(split(UserPrincipalName,'@',1)[0]) | join kind=leftouter ( IdentityInfo // Correlate with IdentityInfo table | summarize arg_max (TimeGenerated,AccountObjectId, Department, JobTitle, Manager, AssignedRoles, ReportId, IsAccountEnabled) by AccountUpn | extend UserPrincipalName=tolower(AccountUpn) ) on UserPrincipalName 2. On the top right corner of the advance hunting page, select ‘create custom detection’ under Manage rules. 3. Populate the relevant rule’s information. 4. Specify alert title and description by referencing the AlertName and AlertDescription fields defined in the query, as we will dynamically craft the alert title and description, depending on whether the impacted user is found in the 'Terminated Employees’ watchlist. 5. In the entity mapping section, you will find some entity mappings that we have pre-populated for you, which would save you some time and effort. You can update or add the mappings as you wish. 6. Let’s add some additional mappings. In this example, I will add IP entities under Related Evidence. 7. In the Custom details section, I will add the following key-value pairs to surface additional information of the impact user in the alert. 8. On the Automated actions page, because we are correlating Sentinel data with Defender XDR table (IdentityInfo), you have the option to select first-party remediation actions, which is ‘Mark user as compromised’ in our case. 9. Review the configuration of the rule and click Submit. 10. Now, let’s examine how the incident/alert would look. Below is a sample incident triggered. 11. Select the alert and you will find the custom details on the right pane, surfacing additional information such as Job title, Department, Manager’s name and Assigned roles that we configured. 12. The impacted user from the above incident was not found in the 'Terminated Employees’ watchlist. Now, let’s examine how the incident/alert would look when the impacted user is found in the watchlist. 13. In my environment, I have configured the watchlist and will be using ‘MeganB’ for simulation. 14. Notice how the alert title and description is different from the one generated earlier, to reflect user found in the watchlist. 15. The rule will run once a day with a look back period of 30 days. However, custom detection will not create duplicate alerts if the same impacted entities are found in the subsequent runs. Instead, you will find the Last activity time being updated and more events showing up in the result table of the alert page. Conclusion Custom detection rules in Microsoft Defender offer a powerful and flexible way to enhance your organization's security posture. By leveraging these user-defined rules, you can proactively monitor and respond to security threats, generating detailed and actionable alerts. The recent enhancements—such as unified detection lists, dynamic alert titles, and advanced entity mapping—further improve the functionality and usability of custom detections. Ready to enhance your threat detection capabilities? Start exploring and implementing custom detection rules in Microsoft Defender today to safeguard your digital assets and maintain a strong security posture. Useful links Overview of custom detections in Microsoft Defender XDR - Microsoft Defender XDR | Microsoft Learn Create and manage custom detection rules in Microsoft Defender XDR - Microsoft Defender XDR | Microsoft Learn
Protect against OAuth Attacks in Salesforce with Microsoft Defender
An ongoing campaign of security incidents has been observed across multiple large enterprises, involving unauthorized access to the organizational Salesforce CRM systems using OAuth applications - resulting in data breaches and exfiltration - underscore both the escalating pace of cloud-based attacks and the importance of addressing SaaS application security. In response, Salesforce has started to enforce improved OAuth app blocking policies. The activity has been partially attributed to a threat actor publicly dubbed and known as ShinyHunters, which led to breaches at multiple global firms. These incidents demonstrate how OAuth trusts can be weaponized: attackers use OAuth-based attacks because they can bypass traditional security controls focused on devices, are difficult to detect, and provide direct access to business-critical systems such as CRM and Support systems which often may enable attackers to extract additional tokens for other SaaS applications for further lateral movements. Based on the information and intel observed so far, there are two recent campaigns both focused to target Salesforce instances of multiple large organizations in different ways and with different intrusion techniques. The first wave of attacks (disclosed earlier in June 2025) seems to be based on social engineering and vishing to abuse permissions through a modified version of Salesforce Data Loader application; the second, more recent campaign surfaced during end of August 2025, instead seems to originate from a separate security incident reported by Salesloft Drift vendor and affecting their cloud application integrated with Salesforce. In this blog post, we will delve only into the earlier Salesforce OAuth attack campaign and provide guidance on how organizations can use Microsoft Defender to protect against this and similar SaaS attack campaigns. Specifically, we will: Break down the earlier Salesforce OAuth attacks abusing a modified Data Loader application Demonstrate how Defender capabilities can detect and discover intrusions Provide an overview of analyst investigation tools in Defender Highlight response actions available to contain the threat and harden your organizational security posture Attack overview – OAuth consent phishing This attack combined social engineering tactics with OAuth abuse to steal data and extort victims. Unlike malware-based intrusions, this campaign relied on exploiting the OAuth authorization flow of a trusted SaaS service. Below is an overview of how the attack unfolded and its high impact: Figure 1: Attack chain illustration Phase 1: Initial vishing contact The attack began with a phone call. Posing as IT support—sometimes even claiming to be from Salesforce—threat actors contacted company employees under the guise of resolving a “support ticket” or other urgent issue. The goal was simple: build trust and prepare the victim to follow instructions. Phase 2: Malicious OAuth app consent Once trust was established, the caller guided the victim to Salesforce’s Connected Apps page and instructed them to enter a special “connection code.” Unbeknownst to the user, this code corresponded to a malicious OAuth app-controlled registration by the attackers—a malicious version of the Salesforce Data Loader tool. By granting consent, the victim unknowingly gave the attackers OAuth access to their Salesforce data. , Salesforce , Salesforce , Salesforce, admin page Phase 3: Data exfiltration and lateral movement After obtaining the OAuth refresh token from the connected app, the attackers exploited it to query and download large amounts of Salesforce CRM data such as customer information, support tickets and sales records. In some cases, the exfiltration began during or right after the call—so quickly that security teams initially didn’t realize an attack had occurred. All data requests appeared as legitimate API calls from an authorized app, helping the attackers blend in. Additionally, the attackers often collected the user’s login credentials and MFA codes during the call under the guise of ‘verification.’ Using the stolen credentials (for providers like Okta), the threat actors demonstrated a form of “lateral movement” to other SaaS apps—like accessing Office 365 mailboxes, file storage services, or Slack—to steal additional data and expand their foothold. Illustration Phase 4: Extortion and threats With the valuable data in hand, the threat actor moved to extortion. They contacted the company, demanding ransom payments (often in cryptocurrency) under threat of leaking the stolen data publicly. In some cases, they falsely claimed ties to other notable extortion groups to pressure victims. If a victim refused to pay, the group would follow through by posting the data online or in dark web marketplaces. This double-pronged impact—data breach and public leak—put organizations in a vulnerable position. According to reports, the attackers primarily relied on email-based extortion rather than immediate data dumps, but the constant risk of a large-scale leak kept victims on edge. OAuth application supply chain attack Recent (August 2025) attacks While organizations responded to the above-mentioned consent attacks involving Data Loader application, major firms reported later another wave of OAuth app-based attacks targeting Salesforce instances of the victims. In this second campaign, the threat actors leveraged compromised OAuth tokens potentially captured from the Salesloft Drift app, a third-party Salesforce integration for automating sales workflows, to gain unauthorized access to hundreds of Salesforce environments. As the investigation on these attacks continue and it’s evolving, the key insight is the unusual spike in Salesforce API activities and access anomalies in the victim organizations during the attack. Protect with Defender Defender provides the visibility, detection, and remediation capabilities needed to protect your environment against these stealthy, high-impact OAuth-based attacks. Discovery of OAuth applications Early detection is essential in defending against OAuth-based attacks. Defender can discover suspicious activities such as registration of OAuth applications that could be easily missed. In this scenario described, there were several subtle red flags that Defender is equipped to unveil. To allow visibility, first connect the Salesforce app in Defender by navigating to Settings → Cloud Apps → App connectors and confirming prerequisites (API enabled, Event Monitoring). See detailed instruction in the Defender public documentation. This step is required for all subsequent steps. Defender provides visibility into third-party OAuth apps that have been granted access in your environment. This unified view allows security administrators to see, for example, that a new app called “My Ticket Portal” or “Data Loader” (with publisher “Unknown”) was authorized by users and request read/write access to data. Application assets page, Salesforce tab, Defender portal By proactively using Defender, organizations can be alerted within minutes of the malicious consent, or as soon as the attacker starts pulling unusual amounts of data, rather than discovering a breach days later after significant data loss has already occurred. Investigation: Understanding the full scope of the attack Once a suspicious OAuth is detected, Defender provides a rich toolset to investigate the full scope of the incident. Below is an example of how security analysts can use Defender to investigate the attack in-depth: Advanced hunting: To get more visibility and to investigate ongoing events in-depth, security teams can use advanced hunting queries to explore organization-wide data and identify ongoing malicious activity. Audit Salesforce connected applications to ensure that only trusted and approved applications are in use. The following query will shed light on Salesforce Oauth apps with suspicious API usage, suggesting malicious behavior. CloudAppEvents | where Application == "Salesforce" | where ActionType == "ApiTotalUsage" // Event for REST/SOAP/Bulk API query | extend ConnectedAppName = tostring(RawEventData.CONNECTED_APP_NAME), ConnectedAppId = tostring(RawEventData.CONNECTED_APP_ID), UserName = tostring(RawEventData.USER_NAME) | where isnotempty(ConnectedAppName) | summarize RequestCount=count(), UniqueUsers=dcount(UserName), Users=make_set(UserName) by ConnectedAppName, ConnectedAppId Salesforce activity records are pulled for that user around the time of the incident. A surge of API calls like Query or Data Export operations initiated by the OAuth app. For example, Defender’s log might show dozens of queries executed by “My Ticket Portal (OAuth App)” on Salesforce objects (Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities) within a short timeframe. CloudAppEvents | where Application == "Salesforce" | where ActionType == "ApiTotalUsage" | extend ConnectedAppName = tostring(RawEventData.CONNECTED_APP_NAME), ObjectType = tostring(RawEventData.ENTITY_NAME) | where isnotempty(ConnectedAppName) | summarize RequestCount=count() by bin(Timestamp, 30m), ConnectedAppName, ObjectType | render timechart Hunt for IOCs like malicious IPs, UserAgents etc. used by threat actors to look for malicious activity. For instance, here is a list of IOCs shared by Salesloft recently. The following query can be used in Advanced Hunting to search for any activity based on the provided IPs on the IOC list. CloudAppEvents | where Application == “Salesforce” | where IPAddress in ("154.41.95.2","176.65.149.100","179.43.159.198","185.130.47.58","185.207.107.130","185.220.101.133","185.220.101.143","185.220.101.164","185.220.101.167","185","220.101.169","185.220.101.180","185.220.101.185","185.220.101.33","192.42.116.179","192.42.116.20","194.15.36.117","195.47.238.178","195.47.238.83","208.68.36.90","44.215.108.109") In addition to that list, the following indicators have been observed performing malicious activity: Value Type Description 193[.]36[.]132[.]21 IPv4 Tor exit node If the attackers also used Okta credentials to log into Microsoft 365, the analyst can check the Microsoft Entra ID sign-in logs or Defender logs for unusual sign-ins. Analysts will be able to see if the same user account had successful logins to Microsoft 365 from a specific IP shortly after the Salesforce breach. Review alerts relevant to Salesforce activity: Look for any alerts with the title “Possible Salesforce scraping activity” in the Alerts and/or Incidents pages. This alert is triggered when a large number of Salesforce API requests from the same account are observed in a short period of time. This might also indicate an automated scraping activity. It's important to investigate this activity to determine whether a threat actor might be monitoring or launching an attack so you can mitigate it, or if it has something to do with an internal audit. Note that this alert is not targeted at the attacks referenced earlier, but may detect the activity involved - as this pattern matches the signature of the attack described in the blog post. Security admins also have the option to create ad-hoc custom detection rules for specific behaviors they want to track to detect OAuth apps attacks in the future. Response and remediation When attackers exploit OAuth app consent, speed is critical. Defender helps security teams move fast by revoking malicious apps, containing compromised accounts, and guiding admins through remediation steps in Salesforce. Remove app access: With Defender, security teams can proactively identify OAuth Revoke app and ban options in Defender Figure 6: Revoke app option, Salesforce admin pageapps in the Applications page and either ban them or fully revoke their permissions. See more in our documentation. Contain the user: Require user to sign in again (session invalidation) and, if needed, Suspend user in Salesforce via governance actions. In case the consenting user was also compromised. Manual remediation in Salesforce: Application owners and security teams may also reach the registered OAuth application in Salesforce admin page via Home → Administration → Users → Users → OAuth Apps → Revoke; to manually revoke them, if preferred. Harden Salesforce: Security teams or application owners can require admin approval for critical connected apps in Salesforce; and regularly audit connected apps. Additionally, Salesforce has introduced new permissions such as: “Approve Uninstalled Connected Apps” user permission which must be assigned to users with careful consideration as this will allow them to authorize to uninstalled apps in the organization. Revoke app option, Salesforce admin page API Access Control which can be used to manage access to Salesforce APIs through a connected app in your organization. This Salesforce article can help you prepare for these upcoming changes. In case of supply chain attacks, track updates and follow vendor remediations in timely and careful manner. For instance, refer to Salesloft's latest security update here. Focus on internal education: Security teams are encouraged to raise awareness within their organization on the importance of not giving authorization keys over any medium (inc. via phone calls), and assimilate the understanding that OAuth registration is equivalent, in its harming potential, to giving away their personal password. This attack demonstrated a sophisticated SaaS OAuth-based technique. With no malware deployed and no vulnerability exploited, traditional security tools focused on endpoint threats or network signatures offered little defense. It also highlights a growing trend in recent SaaS attacks, where adversaries use new methods for lateral movement, persistence, defense evasion, and data exfiltration across SaaS environments, all without direct interaction with physical devices. Defender address this challenge by monitoring signals across SaaS services, detecting anomalies such as unusual OAuth activities, and enabling security teams to quickly investigate and stop such threats. Defender protects both human and non-human identities, while giving customers full visibility into their SaaS applications landscape with capabilities like app-to-app protection, SaaS security posture management, continuous threat protection, and more. Learn more: Learn more about SaaS security with Microsoft Defender Integrate the Salesforce app Learn more about governance actions for oAuth applications Salesloft security response: https://trust.salesloft.com/?uid=Drift%2FSalesforce+Security+Notification Salesforce security response: Ongoing Security Response to Third-Party App IncidentProtect Copilot Studio AI Agents in Real Time with Microsoft Defender
Building AI agents has never been easier. Platforms like Microsoft Copilot Studio democratize the creation of AI agents and empower non-technical users to build intelligent agents that automate tasks and streamline business processes. These agents can answer questions, orchestrate complex tasks, and integrate with enterprise systems to boost productivity and creativity. Organizations are embracing a future where every team has AI agents working alongside them to increase efficiency and responsiveness. While AI agents unlock exciting new possibilities, they also introduce new security risks, most notably prompt injection attacks and a broader attack surface. Attackers are already testing ways to exploit them, such as abusing tool permissions, sneaking in malicious instructions, or tricking agents into sharing sensitive data. Prompt injection is especially concerning because it happens when an attacker feeds an agent malicious inputs to override the agent’s intended behavior. These risks aren’t due to flaws in Copilot Studio or any single platform — they’re a natural challenge that comes with democratizing AI development. As more people build and deploy agents, strong, real-time protection will be critical to keeping them secure. To help organizations safely unlock the potential of generative AI, Microsoft Defender has introduced innovations ranging from shadow AI discovery to out-of-the-box threat protection for both pre-built and custom-built generative AI apps. Today, we’re excited to take the next step in securing AI agents: Microsoft Defender now delivers real-time protection during agent runtime for AI agents built with Copilot Studio. It automatically stops agents from executing unsafe actions during runtime if suspicious behavior, such as a prompt injection attack attempt, is detected and notifies security teams with a detailed alert in the Defender portal. Defender’s AI agent runtime protection is part of our broader approach to securing Copilot Studio AI agents, as outlined in this blog post. Monitor AI agent runtime activities and detect prompt injection attacks Prompt injections are particularly dangerous because they exploit the very AI logic that powers these agents. A well-crafted input can trick an agent’s underlying language model into ignoring its safety guardrails or revealing secrets it was supposed to keep. With thousands of agents operating and interacting with external inputs, the risk of prompt injection is not theoretical - it’s a pressing concern that grows with every new agent deployed. The new real-time protection for AI agents built with Copilot Studio adds a safety net at the most critical point when the agent is running and acting. It helps safeguard AI agents during their operation, reducing the chance that malicious inputs can exploit them during runtime. Microsoft Defender now monitors agent tool invocation calls in real time. If a suspicious or high-risk action is detected, such as a known prompt injection pattern, the action is blocked before it is executed. The agent halts processing and informs the user that their request was blocked due to a security risk. For example, if an HR chatbot agent is tricked by a hidden prompt to send out confidential salary information, Defender will detect this unauthorized action and block it before any tool is invoked. Investigate suspicious agent behaviors in a unified experience See the full attack story, not just the alerts. Today’s attacks are targeted and multi‑stage. When Defender stops risky Copilot Studio AI agent activity at runtime, it raises an alert - and immediately begins correlating related signals across email, endpoints, identities, apps, and cloud into a single incident. That builds the complete attack narrative, often before anyone even opens the queue, so the SOC can see how they’re being targeted and what to do next. In the Microsoft Defender portal, incidents arrive enriched with timelines, entity relationships, relevant TTPs, and threat intelligence. Automated investigation and response gathers evidence, determines scope, and recommends or executes remediation to cut triage time. With Security Copilot embedded, analysts get instant incident summaries, guided response and hunting in natural language, and contextualize threat intelligence to accelerate deeper analysis and stay ahead of threats. If you use Microsoft Sentinel, the unified SOC experience brings Defender XDR incidents together with third‑party data. And with the new Microsoft Sentinel data lake (preview), teams can retain and analyze years of security data in one place, then hunt across that history using natural‑language prompts that Copilot translates to KQL. Because runtime protection already stops the unsafe actions of Copilot Studio AI agents, most single alerts don’t require immediate intervention. But the SOC still needs to know when they’re being persistently targeted. Defender automatically flags emerging patterns, such as sustained activity from the same actor or technique, and, when warranted and a supporting scenario like ransomware, can trigger automatic attack disruption to contain active threats while analysts' review. For Copilot Studio builders, Defender extends the same protection to AI agents: real‑time runtime protection helps prevent unsafe actions and prompt‑injection attempts, and detections are automatically correlated and investigated, without moving data outside a trusted, industry‑leading XDR. By embedding security into the runtime of AI agents, Microsoft Defender helps organizations embrace the full potential of Copilot Studio while maintaining the trust and control they need. Real-time protection during agent runtime is a foundational step in Microsoft’s journey to secure the future of AI agents, laying the foundation for more advanced capabilities coming soon to Microsoft Defender. It reflects our belief that innovation and security go hand in hand. With this new capability, organizations can feel more confident using AI agents, knowing that Microsoft Defender is monitoring in real time to keep their environments protected. Learn more: Read the blog to learn more about securing Copilot Studio agents Check the documentation to learn how Defender blocks agent tool invocation in real time Explore how to build and customize agents with Copilot Studio Agent BuilderMonthly news - September 2025
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - September 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from August 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. New Virtual Ninja Show episodes: Announcing Microsoft Sentinel data lake. Inside the new Phishing Triage Agent in Security Copilot. Microsoft Defender Public Preview items in advanced hunting: The new CloudStorageAggregatedEvents table is now available and brings aggregated storage activity logs, such as operations, authentication details, access sources, and success/failure counts, from Defender for Cloud into a single, queryable schema. You can now investigate Microsoft Defender for Cloud behaviors. For more information, see Investigate behaviors with advanced hunting. The IdentityEvents table contains information about identity events obtained from other cloud identity service providers. You can now enrich your custom detection rules in advanced hunting by creating dynamic alert titles and descriptions, select more impacted entities, and add custom details to display in the alert side panel. Microsoft Sentinel customers that are onboarded to Microsoft Defender also now have the option to customize the alert frequency when the rule is based only on data that is ingested to Sentinel. The number of query results displayed in the Microsoft Defender portal has been increased to 100,000. General Availability item in advanced hunting: you can now view all your user-defined rules - both custom detection rules and analytics rules - in the Detection rules page. This feature also brings the following improvements: You can now filter for every column (in addition to Frequency and Organizational scope). For multiworkspace organizations that have onboarded multiple workspaces to Microsoft Defender, you can now view the Workspace ID column and filter by workspace. You can now view the details pane even for analytics rules. You can now perform the following actions on analytics rules: Turn on/off, Delete, Edit. (General Availability) Defender Experts for XDR and Defender Experts for Hunting customers can now expand their service coverage to include server and cloud workloads protected by Defender for Cloud through the respective add-ons, Microsoft Defender Experts for Servers and Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting - Servers. Learn more (General Availability) Defender Experts for XDR customers can now incorporate third-party network signals for enrichment, which could allow our security analysts to not only gain a more comprehensive view of an attack's path that allows for faster and more thorough detection and response, but also provide customers with a more holistic view of the threat in their environments. (General Availability) The Sensitivity label filter is now available in the Incidents and Alerts queues in the Microsoft Defender portal. This filter lets you filter incidents and alerts based on the sensitivity label assigned to the affected resources. For more information, see Filters in the incident queue and Investigate alerts. (Public Preview) Suggested prompts for incident summaries. Suggested prompts enhance the incident summary experience by automatically surfacing relevant follow-up questions based on the most crucial information in a given incident. With a single click, you can request deeper insight (e.g. device details, identity information, threat intelligence) and obtain plain language summaries from Security Copilot. This intuitive, interactive experience simplifies investigations and speeds up access to critical insights, empowering you to focus on key priorities and accelerate threat response. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (Public Preview) Multi-tenant endpoint security policies distribution is now in Public Preview. Defender for Endpoint security policies can now be distributed across multiple tenants from the Defender multi-tenant portal. (Public Preview) Custom installation path support for Defender for Endpoint on Linux is available in public preview. (Public Preview) Offline security intelligence update support for Defender for Endpoint on macOS is in public preview. Microsoft Defender for Identity (Public Preview) Entra ID risk level is now available on the Identity Inventory assets page, the identity details page, and in the IdentityInfo table in advanced hunting, and includes the Entra ID risk score. SOC analysts can use this data to correlate risky users with sensitive or highly privileged users, create custom detections based on current or historical user risk, and improve investigation context. (Public Preview) Defender for Identity now includes a new security assessment that helps you identify and remove inactive service accounts in your organization. This assessment lists Active Directory service accounts that have been inactive (stale) for the past 180 days, to help you mitigate security risks associated with unused accounts. For more information, see: Security Assessment: Remove Inactive Service Accounts (Public Preview) A new Graph-based API is now in preview for initiating and managing remediation actions in Defender for Identity. For more information, see Managing response actions through Graph API. (General Availability) Identity scoping is now generally available across all environments. Organizations can now define and refine the scope of Defender for Identity monitoring and gain granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. For more information, see Configure scoped access for Microsoft Defender for Identity. (Public Preview) The new security posture assessment highlights unsecured Active Directory attributes that contain passwords or credential clues and recommends steps to remove them, helping reduce the risk of identity compromise. For more information, see: Security Assessment: Remove discoverable passwords in Active Directory account attributes. Detection update: Suspected Brute Force attack (Kerberos, NTLM). Improved detection logic to include scenarios where accounts were locked during attacks. As a result, the number of triggered alerts might increase. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 SecOps can now dispute Microsoft's verdict on previously submitted email or URLs when they believe the result is incorrect. Disputing an item links back to the original submission and triggers a reevaluation with full context and audit history. Learn more. Microsoft Security Blogs Dissecting PipeMagic: Inside the architecture of a modular backdoor framework A comprehensive technical deep dive on PipeMagic, a highly modular backdoor used by Storm-2460 masquerading as a legitimate open-source ChatGPT Desktop Application. Think before you Click(Fix): Analyzing the ClickFix social engineering technique The ClickFix social engineering technique has been growing in popularity, with campaigns targeting thousands of enterprise and end-user devices daily. Storm-0501’s evolving techniques lead to cloud-based ransomware Financially motivated threat actor Storm-0501 has continuously evolved their campaigns to achieve sharpened focus on cloud-based tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).Scope Identity Protection with Defender for Identity is Now Generally Available
I am excited to announce the general availability (GA) of domain-based scoping for Active Directory within Microsoft Defender for Identity. This is a foundational step in extending role-based access control (RBAC) as part of the broader XDR URBAC initiative. This new capability enables SOC analysts to define and refine the scope of Microsoft Defender for Identity monitoring, providing more granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. What is “scoping” and why does it matter? As organizations grow, so does their identity fabric and as security professionals look to manage these increasingly complex identity environments, the ability to control who can access what -and where- is critical. Whether for legal or efficiency reasons many organizations need a way to delegate access based on responsibility or ownership. The new scoping capability is part of Microsoft Defender's unified role-based access control (URBAC) model which allows customers to refine investigation and administration experiences by Active Directory domains, providing: Optimize performance - improve efficiency by focusing analysts on critical assets without the noise of other non-essential alerts and data outside their purview. Enhance visibility control - visibility on specific Active Directory domains. Support operational boundaries - align access and responsibility across SOC analysts, identity admins, and regional teams. This enhancement is part of Microsoft Defender XDR’s unified role-based access control (URBAC) model and sets the foundation for even more granular controls in the future. What can be scoped? Users assigned to scoped roles will only see data, such as alerts, identities, and activities, related to the Active Directory domains included in the assignment in the XDR role. This ensures that security teams can focus on the assets they are responsible for, without being exposed to information from outside their organizational boundaries. Today this includes: Alerts and incidents: Analysts will only see alerts and incidents related to identities within the scoped Active Directory domains within their queue. Entity pages: Users can only access the account details of identities within the Active Directory domains they are scoped for. Advanced hunting and investigations: Data is automatically filtered to include only scoped data. For the full list of supported experiences, see our documentation. How to configure scoping rules: This release is part of our ongoing XDR URBAC effort, bringing consistent and unified role-based access control across Microsoft Defender products. Domain-based scoping is now available for public preview in Microsoft Defender for Identity and aligns with the same RBAC principles used across the XDR platform. To enable the feature, follow these steps: Navigate to XDR permissions page --> Microsoft Defender XDR --> Roles. You can edit existing roles or create a new custom role Add an assignment and create a scoping role with the same set of permissions Define Entra ID user or groups to be assigned to the role Choose Microsoft Defender for Identity as a data source and select User groups (AD domains) that will be scoped to the assignment. Once configured, customers can restrict SOC analysts to viewing only specific entities, ensuring they have access only to the data relevant to their responsibilities and improving security control. Before enabling scoping, ensure that: You have Microsoft Defender for Identity sensor installed. The Identity workload for URBAC is activated. To manage roles without Global Administrator or Security Administrator privileges, customers must configure Authorization permissions through URBAC. Learn more here. What’s next Some experiences are still in progress and will be expanded over time. For setup guidance and more details, visit the Defender for Identity documentation. To stay informed about upcoming enhancements and expanded support for scoping experiences, follow our What’s New documentation page.Monthly news - August 2025
Microsoft Defender XDR Monthly news - August 2025 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from July 2025. Defender for Cloud has it's own Monthly News post, have a look at their blog space. Microsoft Defender Microsoft Sentinel is moving to the Microsoft Defender portal to deliver a unified, AI-powered security operations experience. Many customers have already made the move. Learn how to plan your transition and take advantage of new capabilities in the this blog post. Introducing Microsoft Sentinel data lake. We announced a significant expansion of Microsoft Sentinel’s capabilities through the introduction of Sentinel data lake, now rolling out in public preview. Read this blog post for a look at some of Sentinel data lake’s core features. (Public Preview) The GraphApiAuditEvents table in advanced hunting is now available for preview. This table contains information about Microsoft Entra ID API requests made to Microsoft Graph API for resources in the tenant. (Public Preview) The DisruptionAndResponseEvents table, now available in advanced hunting, contains information about automatic attack disruption events in Microsoft Defender XDR. These events include both block and policy application events related to triggered attack disruption policies, and automatic actions that were taken across related workloads. Increase your visibility and awareness of active, complex attacks disrupted by attack disruption to understand the attacks' scope, context, impact, and actions taken. Introducing Summary Rules Templates: Streamlining Data Aggregation in Microsoft Sentinel. Microsoft Sentinel’s new Summary Rules Templates offer a structured and efficient approach to aggregating verbose data - enabling security teams to extract meaningful insights while optimizing resource usage. Automating Microsoft Sentinel: Playbook Fundamentals. This is the third entry of the blog series on automating Microsoft Sentinel. In this post, we’re going to start talking about Playbooks which can be used for automating just about anything. Customer success story: Kuwait Credit Bank boosts threat detection and response with Microsoft Defender. To modernize its security posture, the bank unified its security operations under Microsoft Defender XDR, integrating Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Purview. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps App Governance is now also available in Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, Arab Emirates and Asia Pacific. For more details, see our documentation.. Updated network requirements for GCC and Gov customers. To support ongoing security enhancements and maintain service availability, Defender for Cloud Apps now requires updated firewall configurations for customers in GCC and Gov environments. To avoid service disruption, take action by August 25, 2025, and update your firewall configuration as described here. Discover and govern ChatGPT and other AI apps accessing Microsoft 365 with Defender for Cloud Apps. In this blog post, we’ll explore how Defender for Cloud Apps helps security teams gain enhanced visibility into the permissions granted to AI applications like ChatGPT as they access Microsoft 365 data. We’ll also share best practices for app governance to help security teams make informed decisions and take proactive steps to enable secure usage of AI apps accessing Microsoft 365 data. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (General Availability) Microsoft Defender Core service is now generally available on Windows Server 2019 or later which helps with the stability and performance of Microsoft Defender Antivirus. Microsoft Defender for Identity Expanded coverage in ITDR deployment health widget. With this update, the widget also includes deployment status for ADFS, ADCS, and Entra Connect servers - making it easier to track and ensure full sensor coverage across all supported identity infrastructure. Time limit added to Recommended test mode. Recommended test mode configuration on the Adjust alert thresholds page, now requires you to set an expiration time (up to 60 days) when enabling it. The end time is shown next to the toggle while test mode is active. For customers who already had Recommended test mode enabled, a 60-day expiration was automatically applied. Identity scoping is now available in Governance environments. Organizations can now define and refine the scope of Defender for Identity monitoring and gain granular control over which entities and resources are included in security analysis. For more information, see Configure scoped access for Microsoft Defender for Identity. New security posture assessments for unmonitored identity servers. Defender for Identity has three new security posture assessments that detect when Microsoft Entra Connect, Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), or Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) servers are present in your environment but aren't monitored. Learn more in our documentation. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Protection against multi-modal attacks with Microsoft Defender. This blog post showcases how Microsoft Defender can detect and correlate certain hybrid, multi-modal attacks that span across email, Teams, identity, and endpoint vectors; and how these insights surface in the Microsoft Defender portal. Users can report external and intra-org Microsoft Teams messages from chats, standard and private channels, meeting conversations to Microsoft, the specified reporting mailbox, or both via user reported settings. Microsoft Security Blogs Frozen in transit: Secret Blizzard’s AiTM campaign against diplomats. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a cyberespionage campaign by the Russian state actor we track as Secret Blizzard that has been ongoing since at least 2024, targeting embassies in Moscow using an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) position to deploy their custom ApolloShadow malware. Sploitlight: Analyzing a Spotlight-based macOS TCC vulnerability. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has discovered a macOS vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-31199, that could allow attackers to steal private data of files normally protected by Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC), including the ability to extract and leak sensitive information cached by Apple Intelligence. Disrupting active exploitation of on-premises SharePoint vulnerabilities. Microsoft has observed two named Chinese nation-state actors, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, exploiting vulnerabilities targeting internet-facing SharePoint servers.
Discover risks in AI model providers and MCP servers with Microsoft Defender
AI model providers and Model Context Protocol (MCP) are being adopted at an unprecedented pace. As these new AI tools become deeply integrated into business operations and bring endless opportunities for productivity, security must not be ignored. MCP and AI model providers enable seamless communication between AI agents, tools, and models - but this convenience comes with significant security risks. MCP can expose sensitive information to unverified context providers, creating data leaks, malicious agent chaining, and supply chain attacks - all without consistent logging or enforcement. Microsoft Defender is expanding its capabilities to protect AI MCP use across the enterprise. Building on recent enhancements in Microsoft Defender for Cloud which now provides visibility into containers running MCP across AWS, GCP, and Azure, we're now adding support in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to help security teams discover, manage, and protect not only generative AI apps, but also AI model providers and MCP servers. As AI tools spread, so does shadow AI - unauthorized or unmanaged use of AI tools that bypass IT and security controls. MCP servers and AI model providers explained MCP servers take productivity a step further by enabling AI to operate in real-time context. As intelligent intermediaries, MCP servers connect models to live enterprise data and applications - standardizing interactions and removing silos between tools, systems, and information. This unlocks the full potential of AI: not just generating insights, but acting autonomously, adapting to business conditions, and streamlining operations without any human in the loop. SaaS-based AI model providers are services that deliver sophisticated AI capabilities through simple APIs, allowing companies to integrate intelligence without massive infrastructure investments or specialized machine learning expertise. However, as productivity evolves, unauthorized or unmanaged use of AI tools that bypass IT and security controls evolve too. Software engineering teams can easily configure the AI model provider or MCP server to an unsanctioned one in their AI code assistant. These integrations can inadvertently expose sensitive information, violate compliance policies, or introduce threats like tool shadowing and prompt injections. As AI becomes deeply embedded across the enterprise, visibility and governance must keep pace to ensure security is never compromised. How Microsoft Defender secures the use of AI model providers and MCP servers Based on an extensive customer survey with large enterprises, we now understand the first step to securing AI use is gaining visibility into which of these services are in use across the organization. The cloud app catalog already provides a comprehensive list of over 35,000 discoverable cloud apps. It helps analyze traffic logs, gain visibility into cloud use, and assess the risk posture of these apps to manage security and compliance effectively. The catalog includes detailed risk parameters, such as data handling practices, authentication methods, and integration scopes. Starting today, the catalog has expanded to include AI model providers and MCP servers, enabling security teams to assess usage patterns and understand the risk posture of each. In addition to this expanded catalog, we aim to provide more security insights to customers, based on customer feedback on AI model providers and MCP servers, to help reduce the risks they introduce. Furthermore, if you're hosting your own MCP server Defender for Cloud, AI Security Posture Management can help you discover all MCP servers hosted across multi-cloud environments, identify misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in the AI application and agents using them, and prioritize remediation process based on attack path analysis. Microsoft Defender now helps you discover, monitor, and govern the use of AI model providers and MCP servers - giving you visibility, control, and protection against shadow AI risks with automated policies and real-time enforcement. Learn more How to use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to stay safe in the Gen AI era Check out our website to learn more about Defender for Cloud Apps Not a customer, yet? Start a free trial today Visit our Cloud App Catalog documentation Learn more about AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM)
