Microsoft Intune Archives | Microsoft Security Blog http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/product/microsoft-intune/ Expert coverage of cybersecurity topics Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:58:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Microsoft a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Endpoint Management Platforms http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2026/06/25/microsoft-a-leader-in-the-forrester-wave-for-endpoint-management-platforms/ Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:00:00 +0000 Microsoft named a Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Management Platforms, Q2 2026, with the highest scores in the current offering and strategy categories.

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The endpoint management category is being redefined in real time. Organizations no longer need tools that only inventory devices or enforce configuration policies; they need a platform that connects identity, security, compliance, and AI governance across every endpoint where work happens. Microsoft’s recognition as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Endpoint Management Platforms, Q2 2026 report reflects that shift—and the role Microsoft Intune plays in helping organizations manage what’s next.

Why Microsoft Intune is a leader in endpoint management

The Forrester Wave™ Endpoint Management Platforms, Q2 2026 report includes eight endpoint management platform providers, assessed across current offering, strategy, and customer feedback. Forrester’s assessment of Microsoft reflects how Intune is built. The vision Forrester describes is one built on Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Defender, Windows, and Windows 365 as a connected system, not a collection of adjacent tools. Customers can enforce conditional access, apply compliance policies, and correlate device health signals from a single admin center. That reach is what the cross-platform, cloud-native architecture is built for.

Microsoft Intune offers a strong platform for Windows environments, as customer feedback in the Forrester report notes, and Intune brings management across Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android together in the same admin console. That leadership extends from information worker devices to the frontline worker endpoints that are increasingly critical to business operations. On macOS specifically, Intune uses declarative device management to apply configuration and compliance policies natively, without requiring a separate tool or an additional management layer. Frontline workers on shared kiosks and handheld scanners, and information workers on corporate laptops, fall under the same policies without requiring parallel toolchains.

Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) received explicit recognition from Forrester, which noted that AI embedded in Intune powers EPM and device onboarding workflows to help IT analyze device data and troubleshoot issues. Elevating or restricting privileges used to require manual review cycles. With AI in that workflow, admins make faster decisions on which requests to approve, deny, or escalate.

Security Copilot in Intune operates directly within the admin experience, operating on the same data and policy surface IT teams already use. From policy configuration, to identifying vulnerabilities, and recommending remediation, agentic assistance handles investigation and triage so admins focus on decisions that need judgment. The recent public preview of the Vulnerability Remediation Agent extends that further, drawing on Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management to surface CVEs across Intune-managed Windows devices and apps, with Copilot-assisted impact summaries, suggested actions, and step-by-step remediation guidance, all without leaving the console.

These capabilities do not stand alone. Forrester also recognized a superior partner strategy. Our strategy helps connect endpoint management to the service desk, device procurement, and mobile threat defense tools already in the environment. Endpoint management that stops at the device boundary does not close the loop on risk. Intune, with capabilities such as EPM and AI-assisted remediation, brings its partner ecosystem together to help turn Zero Trust from core principles into daily IT practice: apply least privilege, verify explicitly, and enforce through policy to prevent breach.

On licensing, Forrester’s independent customer feedback pointed to the economic value of Microsoft simplified, bundled pricing. Intune is included in Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5. Starting this month, advanced management solutions of the Intune Suite, including EPM, join those plans automatically. Full details are in our announcement blog: Microsoft 365 adds advanced Microsoft Intune solutions at scale. We continue to invest in areas such as unattended remote access sign-in for Intune Remote Help and automatic updates of required apps for Intune Enterprise Application Management, both of which will roll out for general availability in July 2026, and Intune now supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and 10.

Governing AI for the future of work

Every organization putting AI to work in practice needs IT and security teams that can say yes confidently: Yes to new device types, yes to modern workloads, and yes to agents running alongside users. Trust and confidence are requirements for safe AI adoption. Microsoft Agent 365 gives organizations a control plane for agents they can trust, and confidence comes from having a platform where identity, device management, and security policy are already connected. A unified platform does not just reduce complexity. It changes what teams are able to do with their time, and what the organization is able to do with AI.

AI agents are now endpoints, and Intune is the policy layer for Agent 365 that governs how they run. Through Microsoft Execution Containers, Intune gates local agent runtime execution directly on Windows devices, requiring isolation with guardrails like filesystem rules so agents run in controlled environments rather than with unchecked access to host systems. Windows 365 for Agents extends that model to cloud PCs provisioned specifically for agent workloads: Each agent Cloud PC is Entra-joined and Intune-managed, configured with the same security, compliance, and policy controls as user devices, so governance scales without new infrastructure.

For shadow AI, Intune is one of three signals alongside Defender and Entra that surface unmanaged agents. Defender discovers agents and adds inline protection; Intune applies policies to block common execution methods and device-level runtime security policies, giving multiple connected signals and one coordinated posture rather than multiple parallel workflows. That is how AI moves from an isolated pilot into the daily practice of how organizations operate, govern and protect AI, not just enable it.

At Microsoft, we believe Forrester’s assessment reflects where the market is heading, where governance, identity, and security work as one system. Each capability is more effective because it operates on shared signal, not siloed data. Microsoft Intune helps organizations reduce complexity, strengthen security, and make AI adoption practical at scale—governed and protected.

Learn more about Microsoft Intune solutions. Bookmark the Microsoft Intune blog to keep up with our expert coverage on endpoint management.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.


Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. This report is part of a broader collection of Forrester resources, including interactive models, frameworks, tools, data, and access to analyst guidance. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here 

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Microsoft Build 2026: Securing code, agents, and models across the development lifecycle http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2026/06/02/microsoft-build-2026-securing-code-agents-and-models-across-the-development-lifecycle/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:15:18 +0000 Discover how Microsoft enables fast, secure AI development with MDASH and new security capabilities.

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Today, developers and security teams are caught in growing tension. AI is accelerating development and introducing new issues around insecure code, opaque models, data exposure, and compliance. Add the challenges of shadow AI and tool sprawl and the result is a widening gap between innovation and control. As developers move faster, security teams struggle to keep up with visibility, governance, and oversight. The resulting friction across the development lifecycle is forcing a tradeoff between speed and safety that doesn’t need to exist. Security needs to move upstream to become part of how developers actually work: built into their day-to-day tools and connected to the tools security teams use.

At Microsoft Build 2026, we are announcing new security tools and capabilities to give developers clear guidance in real time, scale with the complexity of tasks, and provide security teams with a consistent view across the full lifecycle so innovation can move fast and securely without the business losing control. Learn more about our solutions to help secure your code, secure your agents, and secure your models.

Secure your code

Today’s headlines reflect the tension around the power of AI models and the potential threat they pose when used to find and exploit vulnerabilities. It is forcing a shift as security teams look for solutions to help them safely harness the power of these models. At the same time, developers want to use these same models to efficiently identify real, exploitable risk and remediate it within their flow of work. That’s why we developed the Microsoft Security multi-model agentic scanning harness (codename MDASH) and added native integration between Microsoft Defender and GitHub Code Security (part of the former GitHub Advanced Security suite) to help both security and developer teams identify and close gaps early.

Discover and validate exploitable vulnerabilities with codename MDASH

The new Microsoft Security multi-model agentic scanning harness (codename MDASH) is available in an expanded preview for eligible organizations and now includes integration with Microsoft Defender. This new agentic security system orchestrates a pipeline of more than 100 specialized AI agents using an ensemble of models to discover, validate, and prove exploitability across codebases written in popular programming languages.

This approach is unique in the industry. Our multi-model agentic scanning harness uses a configurable panel of models, ranging from state-of-the-art (SOTA) models as the heavy reasoners, to more cost-effective models for high-volume operations. This allows us to trade speed, recall, and cost, and minimize dependency on any specific model.

The combination of multiple models, hundreds of agents, and over 100 trillion signals a day helps identify real risk over theoretical noise, to help teams focus on what can be exploited. The strategic implication is clear: AI vulnerability discovery has crossed from research curiosity into production-grade defense at enterprise scale, and the durable advantage lies in the agentic system around the model rather than any single model itself. MDASH recently jumped roughly 10% in less than three weeks to a new CyberGym industry benchmark score of 96.55%.

“At Accenture, we’re always looking toward the next frontier in protecting our clients and our enterprise. What Microsoft is building with MDASH reflects a meaningful shift from reactive, rule-based scanning to agentic systems that can reason across complex codebases like a skilled security researcher,” says Kris Burkhardt, Chief Information Security Officer at Accenture. Accenture is one of a select group of Security partners and Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) members that are engaged in the preview to shape MDASH and accelerate agentic AI vulnerability discovery.

Our partner engagements reflect a shared focus on moving from reactive detection to proactive identification of exploitable risk. “We’re seeing cyber threats evolve rapidly, with AI accelerating both the scale and sophistication of attacks. Microsoft’s investment in MDASH reflects a strong commitment to helping organizations stay ahead of this curve. Based on our early discussions and exposure to the innovation, we see strong potential for MDASH to simplify and strengthen SecOps, helping organizations operate with greater resilience and confidence,” says Morgan Adamski, Principal and Deputy Platform Leader of Cyber, Data, and Tech Risk at PwC US.

Together, we are partnering across the industry to use leading models paired with our platforms and expertise to deliver protection at scale. “We’re excited to work with Microsoft on MDASH because it addresses one of the most pressing challenges our customers face: reducing the time between discovering a vulnerability and taking meaningful action. Microsoft’s role as a trusted security vendor matters here—customers need innovation, but they also need confidence, governance, and a partner they can rely on. Our early experience with MDASH has been encouraging, and we see real opportunity for it to help organizations modernize how they approach vulnerability discovery and remediation,” says Jason Rader, Insight CISO.  

Reach out to your Microsoft account representative for more information on the expanded preview of codename MDASH.

Prioritize and remediate code vulnerabilities with Microsoft Defender and GitHub Code Security

While codename MDASH identifies and validates what’s truly exploitable, the integration between Microsoft Defender and GitHub Code Security (part of the former GitHub Advanced Security suite), now generally available, brings runtime context into development and security workflows so that teams can prioritize and address risks early minimizing the impact to human resources. Vulnerabilities discovered in code are automatically enriched with real production signals, such as internet exposure and data sensitivity to inform prioritization. Developers can then remediate issues using AI-assisted fixes that are generated, assigned, and validated through GitHub Copilot Autofix and the GitHub Copilot cloud agent.

To support responsible, coordinated disclosure of findings that represent both real and potential vulnerabilities, role-based access controls ensure that only authorized individuals can view and act on them. Together, the production signal enrichment, AI-assisted remediation, and secure handling of findings within a single workflow help security and developer teams focus on real risk and enable teams to act quickly.

Secure your agents

Agents are quickly becoming a new layer of the application stack. As developers build agents and move them into production, they need the tools to ship fast without sacrificing security, including built-in identity, governance, and safety testing. Security teams have overlapping needs: visibility into what’s running, control over what agents can access, and consistent governance across clouds and endpoints. Microsoft is delivering new solutions to help.

Build secure agents from day one

At Build 2026, Microsoft is introducing new capabilities to help developers build secure, enterprise-ready agents by default. With the general availability of the Agent 365 SDK, developers can integrate controls directly into their development workflows, bringing observability, access controls, and compliance enforcement into how agents are designed and deployed. This enables teams to build custom agents for any AI platform that are compliant, and enterprise-ready, and compose well with Agent 365.

Security extends beyond development and into how agents run. On Windows, the Microsoft Execution Container (MXC) SDK provides OS-level control over agent execution, giving developers and IT teams the ability to define containment and policy, applied by the OS through isolation technologies such as process and session isolation. Windows 365 for Agents, now generally available, enables you to run any agent in a fully isolated, policy-governed Cloud PC. Native Windows integration with Agent 365 provides a common foundation for observability, security, and governance, including built-in Intune capabilities to set policies that govern agent runtime execution and control how agents operate.

These new capabilities are now in early preview.

Observe, govern, and secure agents at scale with Agent 365—now including local agents

As agents proliferate across environments, gaining visibility and control over them becomes critical. Agent 365 introduces new capabilities to manage agent sprawl and risk, including an Agent 365 Agent Registry that surfaces unmanaged local agents discovered by Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Intune—all working together. The registry supports more than 20 types of local agents, including coding agents, AI desktop applications, and both local and remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. From there, Intune policies can be used to block common execution methods for OpenClaw agents.

Security teams also need the ability to defend against emerging threats without slowing developer productivity. Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Intune work together to provide the visibility, runtime protections, and context needed to manage agent risk without slowing developer productivity. Defender enables analysts to investigate agent activity using advanced hunting and provides an exposure graph that helps teams understand how agents are connected across the network. Preview of these capabilities coming soon.

Protecting data is foundational to securing agents at scale. Microsoft Purview controls to prevent data exfiltration, Data Security Posture Management risk discovery, and agentic risk detection for coding agents Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, and OpenClaw. This enables visibility on how local agents access sensitive data, runtime protections for risky prompts, and insights into unsafe agent behaviors. Microsoft Purview Audit also logs all agent activity for full traceability. Preview of these capabilities coming soon.

Trust agents with your data

Developers also need direct, real-time insight into data security posture and risk signals associated with the agents they build. With Purview data risk signals embedded in the Foundry Control Plane, generally available, these signals provide guidance to developers on where to enforce protections before sensitive data is exposed. For example, Purview flags in real time when an agent surfaces sensitive financial data during testing and guides developers to mask or restrict access before deployment.

To further reduce risk, Purview introduces runtime data loss prevention (DLP) for agent prompts in Foundry, in preview with Agent 365. This capability detects, blocks, and audits sensitive data before it is processed by the agent, ensuring that sensitive information never reaches AI models.

Secure your models

Before AI reaches production, teams need to verify that the models they depend on are safe. Now developers can inspect model artifacts, whether platform-native or bring-your-own, with Defender AI model scanning, in preview. To help close gaps early model Defender AI model scanning detects and blocks potentially vulnerable or compromised models across registries, workspaces, and CI/CD pipelines to verify model integrity before deployment.

Trust starts with security

There should never be a choice between innovation and safety.

The capabilities announced today span the full development lifecycle: discovering what’s exploitable, governing what’s running, protecting the data AI depends on, and verifying that agents behave as intended before they reach production. Microsoft security is embedded directly into the platforms and workflows developers already use, supporting innovation across Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Studio, GitHub, and open-source frameworks, and bringing discovery and governance to shadow AI.

But real progress in AI depends on more than breakthrough capabilities—it depends on whether organizations can trust the systems they are building and deploying. That is the common thread across the innovations announced at Build 2026 and the principle guiding our approach. Because the future of AI will belong not just to those who move fastest, but to those who can innovate with trust.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity. To learn more about how security is built into the Windows platform, explore the Windows Security book and Windows Server Security book.

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Microsoft Agent 365, now generally available, expands capabilities and integrations http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2026/05/01/microsoft-agent-365-now-generally-available-expands-capabilities-and-integrations/ Fri, 01 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000 ​Today we’re announcing the general availability of Agent 365, plus previews of new capabilities to discover and manage shadow AI agents, including local agents like OpenClaw and Claude Code.

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Microsoft Agent 365

Now generally available for commercial customers.

Choose an ecosystem partner for agent security and governance

AI agents aren’t coming—they’re already in your environment. They show up in places you expect (like Microsoft CopilotMicrosoft Teams, and Microsoft 365) and even more places as technology evolves (a local autonomous personal AI assistant or a new software as a service (SaaS) agent connected to your sensitive data.)

The problem isn’t that agents exist. It’s that they proliferate fast, span apps, endpoints and cloud, and often operate outside the visibility and control of the teams accountable for risk. When an agent can invoke tools, access data, and interact with other agents, any “helpful” workflow can turn into data oversharing, tool misuse, or over-privileged actions in seconds. And as agents become even easier to create and deploy, your attack surface grows with them. 

That’s why end-to-end observability matters: you can’t govern what you can’t see, and you can’t secure what you don’t understand—especially when the number of agents is a moving target. 

Microsoft Agent 365 helps you take control of agent sprawl as your control plane to observe, govern, and secure agents and their interactions—including agents built with Microsoft AI and agents from our ecosystem partners—using the admin and security workflows your teams already run. 

General availability starts today for Agent 365.

Additionally, we’re announcing the previews of new Agent 365 capabilities and integrations to help you scale agent adoption with the right controls in place. 

  • Observability, governance, and security for agents operating independently—Agent 365 is expanding to cover agents that operate with their own credentials and permissions.
  • Discovery of agents and shadow AI, using capabilities of Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Intune for both local and cloud agents.
  • A secured, managed environment for agents to work in Windows 365 for Agents.
  • Coverage for a wide ecosystem of SaaS agents, including agents innovated by software development companies (SDCs).
  • Support for evaluation, adoption, and usage from Microsoft and ecosystem partners worldwide.

Manage agents with a single control plane, regardless of how or where they work

As organizations move from pilot to adoption, AI agents are being deployed across increasingly diverse use cases. Some act with delegated access, working on behalf of users; others operate with their own credentials and permissions, participating in team workflows or operating behind the scenes. 

With Agent 365, you can observe, govern, and secure AI agents whether they act on behalf of users with delegated access—for example, an agent that helps employees organize their inbox—or agents that operate with their own access and scope of work—such as an agent autonomously triaging support tickets. 

Supported by Agent 365
Agents working on behalf of
users (delegated access) 
Generally available 
Agents operating behind
the scenes (own access) 
Generally available 
Agents participating in team
workflows (own access) 
Public Preview   

Discover and manage local and cloud-hosted agents 

Users are installing agents like OpenClaw and Claude Code on their devices and adopting SaaS agents built by developers on new and emerging platforms. Many of these local and cloud-hosted agents run unmanaged and outside of traditional governance, as they autonomously execute tasks, modify code, or access confidential information, creating a new wave of shadow AI.  

To help organizations address accelerating agent sprawl and the rise of unmanaged agents, we’re introducing new capabilities as part of Agent 365, Microsoft Defender, and Intune so you can discover shadow agents, and apply appropriate controls, such as blocking unmanaged agents. 

Discover and manage local agents

With Microsoft Defender and Intune, organizations will be able to discover and manage local AI agents running on Windows devices, starting with OpenClaw agents and expanding soon to other widely used agents like GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Code. Customers enrolled in the Frontier program can see if OpenClaw agents are being used in the organization, which devices they are running on, and use Intune policies to block common ways that OpenClaw runs on the new Shadow AI page in Agent 365 in the Microsoft 365 admin center and in the Intune admin center. Through Agent 365 registry, the inventory of local agents will be available in Defender and Intune so IT, endpoint management, and security teams can get a consistent view of discovered local agents in their environment and take appropriate action.

Starting in June 2026, Microsoft Defender will also provide asset context mapping for each agent including the devices they run on, MCP servers configured for those agents, the identities associated with them, and the cloud resources those identities can reach. This will give security teams the context needed to assess exposure and potential blast radius. They can then investigate agent activity, such as file access and network behavior, using familiar endpoint data, and use those insights to identify misconfigurations and even define custom detections.

Beyond monitoring, organizations will be able to apply policy-based controls to set guardrails for what agents are allowed to do—helping protect both agents and organizations from compromise and misuse—with initial support delivered for OpenClaw through Intune. If a managed agent exhibits malicious behavior patterns, such as attempting to access or exfiltrate sensitive data, Defender will be able to block coding agents in runtime and generate alerts with rich incident context to support investigation and response.  

Context mapping capabilities, policy-based controls, plus runtime blocking and alerts will be available in Agent 365 through Intune and Defender public preview in June 2026. 

Visibility across clouds and AI-builder platforms

As developers are rapidly building agents with Microsoft Foundry, AWS Bedrock, and Google Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Google Vertex AI) and deploying cloud agents across multicloud and multi-platform environments, the agent sprawl challenge intensifies. To manage potential security risks or vulnerabilities before they become breaches, security and IT teams need visibility to which cloud agents are running, what models these agents are built on, and what resources they’re accessing.

Today, we are excited to announce the public preview of Agent 365 registry sync with AWS Bedrock and Google Cloud connections, enabling IT teams to automatically discover, inventory, and, soon, perform basic lifecycle governance—for example, start, stop, delete agents—across these platforms.

Manage a wide ecosystem of SaaS agents 

Agent 365 works with prebuilt agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams, agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio or Microsoft Foundry for your organization, and agents built by software development companies partnered with Microsoft.

Delivering on our promise of control plane for the broad agent ecosystem, we’re excited to announce ecosystem partner agents fully configured to be managed by Agent 365, including Genspark, Zensai, Egnyte, and Zendesk, and agents built on agent factories, including Kasisto, Kore, and n8n. Organizations can observe, govern, and secure these agents in the Agent 365 control plane, with no integration work by IT or security teams.  

Agent 365 software development company launch partners

Enterprises can easily build AI agents today, but scaling them with trust and governance is where most initiatives stall. With Kore.ai deeply integrated into Microsoft Agent 365, identity, security, and governance are built in from the start—empowering enterprises to move from pilots to AI at scale with confidence.

—– Raj Koneru, Chief Executive Officer of Kore.ai

The Agent 365 developer and ecosystem partners play a critical role in extending agents into line-of-business systems, building vertical and scenario-specific integrations, modernizing legacy automation into agent workflows, extending Copilot experiences with custom agents, and helping customers operationalize agent ecosystems at scale. These Agent 365 enabled agents are then observable, governable, and securable in the Agent 365 control plane, accelerating adoption for your organization.

Secure agents as they work in Windows 365 

While Agent 365 provides the control plane to observe, govern, and secure agent activity across the enterprise, Windows 365 for Agents—now available in public preview (in the United States only)—provides a secured, managed environment where agents can carry out that work. It introduces a new class of Cloud PCs purpose-built for agentic workloads and managed in Intune, allowing agents to run in policy-controlled environments, interact with applications, and operate with the same identity, security, and management controls already used for employees.

Now, with Agent 365, you can also observe and secure agents running on Windows 365 for Agents in Microsoft 365 admin center, understanding which agents are connected to the cloud-powered compute. Together, they enable organizations to move from visibility and governance of agents to confidently running them in production environments. 

Secure agents against internet threats with network controls  

AI agents can operate much faster than human users. Without proper guardrails, they can connect to risky web destinations, interact with unsanctioned AI services, handle sensitive files unsafely, or be manipulated through malicious prompt-based attacks. These risks are harder to manage when security teams lack consistent visibility and controls for agent traffic to internet, SaaS, and AI services. 

To give security teams a consistent way to inspect agent traffic at the network layer, in general availability today, Agent 365 extends Microsoft Entra network controls to Microsoft Copilot Studio agents and agents running on user endpoint devices, including local agents such as OpenClaw. These controls can help identify unsanctioned AI usage, restrict connections to only approved web destinations, filter risky file movement, and help block malicious prompt-based attacks before they lead to harmful actions. 

Confidently scale and govern AI agents while maintaining security and control 

Agent 365 extends even further beyond Microsoft platforms to discover, observe, govern, and secure local, SaaS, and cloud agents across your agentic AI ecosystem. Each of today’s announcements build upon Agent 365 capabilities we shared in March 2026 as well as detailed feedback of customers using the Frontier program, developers integrating with the platform, and partners testing Agent 365 capabilities. 

With Agent 365, we can scale and govern AI agents with confidence, while maintaining enterprise grade security and control. Agent 365 enables organizations to move beyond experimentation, driving tangible business value and innovation through trusted AI adoption. By providing a robust and integrated platform, Agent 365 empowers teams to confidently embrace AI and accelerate transformation across the enterprise.

—Yuji Shono, Head of the Global AI Office, NTT DATA Group Corporation, a global infrastructure, networking, and IT services provider.

As organizations begin to adopt Agent 365 at scale, we’ve collaborated with strategic partners to create targeted services to help customers onboard, tackle governance challenges and realize the platform’s full value.

Partner services offered today include expertise and guidance for: 

  • Inventory and ownership: What agents exist, who owns them, and where they run.
  • Least privilege: Right-sizing permissions and enforcing access guardrails without slowing delivery.
  • Compliance and data protection: Preventing oversharing and producing audit-ready evidence.
  • Threats and multi-platform estates: Understanding attack paths and governing across vendors and clouds.
  • Ongoing operations: Lifecycle management, monitoring, and continuous governance hygiene. 

These valuable services are typically scoped as workshops and assessments (diagnose and roadmap), governance and enablement (stand up the control plane and guardrails), managed services (run and improve continuously), advisory and readiness (operating model and adoption readiness), and security and integration (harden posture and integrate third-party agents.)

How to get started with Agent 365  

Agent 365 is now available in Microsoft 365 E7 or standalone at USD15 per user per month. Each Agent 365 license covers an individual who manages or sponsors agents, or uses agents to do work on their behalf, ensuring all agent activity is consistently governed across the organization in a way that’s predictable for scaled growth.  

In addition to the expertise of your Microsoft 365 team and partners, Agent 365 resources to support your experience include:

Plus, on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, a team of Agent 365 experts are hosting a live “Ask Microsoft Anything” to answer your questions about Agent 365—we hope you’ll join for the discussion.

Microsoft Agent 365

Now generally available for commercial customers.

Choose an ecosystem partner for agent security and governance

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Secure agentic AI for your Frontier Transformation http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2026/03/09/secure-agentic-ai-for-your-frontier-transformation/ Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:00:00 +0000 We are announcing the next step to make Frontier Transformation real for customers across every industry with Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365, and Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite.

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Today we shared the next step to make Frontier Transformation real for customers across every industry with Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365, and Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite.

As our customers rapidly embrace agentic AI, chief information officers (CIOs), chief information security officers (CISOs), and security decision makers are asking urgent questions: How do I track and monitor all these agents? How do I know what they are doing? Do they have the right access? Can they leak sensitive data? Are they protected from cyberthreats? How do I govern them?

Agent 365 and Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite, generally available on May 1, 2026, are designed to help answer these questions and give organizations the confidence to go further with AI.

Agent 365—the control plane for agents

As organizations adopt agentic AI, growing visibility and security gaps can increase the risk of agents becoming double agents. Without a unified control plane, IT, security, and business teams lack visibility into which agents exist, how they behave, who has access to them, and what potential security risks exist across the enterprise. With Microsoft Agent 365 you now have a unified control plane for agents that enables IT, security, and business teams to work together to observe, govern, and secure agents across your organization—including agents built with Microsoft AI platforms and agents from our ecosystem partners—using new Microsoft Security capabilities built into their existing flow of work.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

As we are now running Agent 365 in production, Avanade has real visibility into agent activity, the ability to govern agent sprawl, control resource usage, and manage agents as identity-aware digital entities in Microsoft Entra. This significantly reduces operational and security risk, represents a critical step forward in operationalizing the agent lifecycle at scale, and underscores Microsoft’s commitment to responsible, production-ready AI.

—Aaron Reich, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Avanade

Key Agent 365 capabilities include:

Observability for every role

With Agent 365, IT, security, and business teams gain visibility into all Agent 365 managed agents in their environment, understand how they are used, and can act quickly on performance, behavior, and risk signals relevant to their role—from within existing tools and workflows.

  • Agent Registry provides an inventory of agents in your organization, including agents built with Microsoft AI platforms, ecosystem partner agents, and agents registered through APIs. This agent inventory is available to IT teams in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Security teams see the same unified agent inventory in their existing Microsoft Defender and Purview workflows.
  • Agent behavior and performance observability provides detailed reports about agent performance, adoption and usage metrics, an agent map, and activity details.
  • Agent risk signals across Microsoft Defender*, Entra, and Purview* help security teams evaluate agent risk—just like they do for users—and block agent actions based on agent compromise, sign-in anomalies, and risky data interactions. Defender assesses risk of agent compromise, Entra evaluates identity risk, and Purview evaluates insider risk. IT also has visibility into these risks in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
  • Security policy templates, starting with Microsoft Entra, automate collaboration between IT and security. They enable security teams to define tenant-wide security policies that IT leaders can then enforce in the Microsoft 365 admin center as they onboard new agents.

*These capabilities are in public preview and will continue to be on May 1.

Secure and govern agent access

Unmanaged agents may create significant risk, from accessing resources unchecked to accumulating excessive privileges and being misused by malicious actors. With Microsoft Entra capabilities included in Agent 365, you can secure agent identities and their access to resources.

  • Agent ID gives each agent a unique identity in Microsoft Entra, designed specifically for the needs of agents. With Agent ID, organizations can apply trusted access policies at scale, reduce gaps from unmanaged identities, and keep agent access aligned to existing organizational controls.
  • Identity Protection and Conditional Access for agents extend existing user policies that make real-time access decisions based on risks, device compliance from Microsoft Intune, and custom security attributes to agents working on behalf of a user. These policies help prevent compromise and help ensure that agents cannot be misused by malicious actors.
  • Identity Governance for agents enables identity leaders to limit agent access to only resources they need, with access packages that can be scoped to a subset of the users permissions, and includes the ability to audit access granted to agents.

Prevent data oversharing and ensure agent compliance

Microsoft Purview capabilities in Agent 365 provide comprehensive data security and compliance coverage for agents. You can protect agents from accessing sensitive data, prevent data leaks from risky insiders, and help ensure agents process data responsibly to support compliance with global regulations.

  • Data Security Posture Management provides visibility and insights into data risks for agents so data security admins can proactively mitigate those risks.
  • Information Protection helps ensure that agents inherit and honor Microsoft 365 data sensitivity labels so that they follow the same rules as users for handling sensitive data to prevent agent-led sensitive data leaks.
  • Inline Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for prompts to Microsoft Copilot Studio agents blocks sensitive information such as personally identifiable information, credit card numbers, and custom sensitive information types (SITs) from being processed in the runtime.
  • Insider Risk Management extends insider risk protection to agents to help ensure that risky agent interactions with sensitive data are blocked and flagged to data security admins.
  • Data Lifecycle Management enables data retention and deletion policies for prompts and agent-generated data so you can manage risk and liability by keeping the data that you need and deleting what you don’t.  
  • Audit and eDiscovery extend core compliance and records management capabilities to agents, treating AI agents as auditable entities alongside users and applications. This will help ensure that organizations can audit, investigate, and defensibly manage AI agent activity across the enterprise.
  • Communication Compliance extends to agent interactions to detect and enable human oversight of risky AI communications. This enables business leaders to extend their code of conduct and data compliance policies to AI communications.

Defend agents against emerging cyberthreats

To help you stay ahead of emerging cyberthreats, Agent 365 includes Microsoft Defender protections purpose-built to detect and mitigate specific AI vulnerabilities and threats such as prompt manipulation, model tampering, and agent-based attack chains.

  • Security posture management for Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio agents* detects misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in agents so security leaders can stay ahead of malicious actors by proactively resolving them before they become an attack vector.
  • Detection, investigation, and response for Foundry and Copilot Studio agents* enables the investigation and remediation of attacks that target agents and helps ensure that agents are accounted for in security investigations.
  • Runtime threat protection, investigation, and hunting** for agents that use the Agent 365 tools gateway, helps organizations detect, block, and investigate malicious agent activities.

Agent 365 will be generally available on May 1, 2026, and priced at $15 per user per month. Learn more about Agent 365.

*These capabilities are in public preview and will continue to be on May 1.

**This new capability will enter public preview in April 2026 and continue to be on May 1.

Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite

Microsoft 365 E7 brings together intelligence and trust to enable organizations to accelerate Frontier Transformation, equipping employees with AI across email, documents, meetings, spreadsheets, and business application surfaces. It also gives IT and security leaders the observability and governance needed to operate AI at enterprise scale.

Microsoft 365 E7 includes Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agent 365, Microsoft Entra Suite, and Microsoft 365 E5 with advanced Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview security capabilities to help secure users, delivering comprehensive protection across users and agents. It will be available for purchase on May 1, 2026, at a retail price of $99 per user per month. Learn more about Microsoft 365 E7.

End-to-end security for the agentic era

Frontier Transformation is anchored in intelligence and trust, and trust starts with security. Microsoft Security capabilities help protect 1.6 million customers at the speed and scale of AI.1 With Agent 365, we are extending these enterprise-grade capabilities so organizations can observe, secure, and govern agents and delivering comprehensive protection across agents and users with Microsoft 365 E7.

Secure your Frontier Transformation today with Agent 365 and Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite. And join us at RSAC Conference 2026 to learn more about these new solutions and hear from industry experts and customers who are shaping how agents can be observed, governed, secured, and trusted in the real world.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.


1Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call.

The post Secure agentic AI for your Frontier Transformation appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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Agents built into your workflow: Get Security Copilot with Microsoft 365 E5 http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2025/11/18/agents-built-into-your-workflow-get-security-copilot-with-microsoft-365-e5/ Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:00:00 +0000 At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we are not just announcing new features—we are redefining what’s possible, empowering security teams to shift from reactive responses to proactive strategies.

The post Agents built into your workflow: Get Security Copilot with Microsoft 365 E5 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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The cybersecurity landscape is at a historic inflection point. As cyberattackers wield AI to automate cyberattacks at extraordinary speed and scale, the challenge before us is not just to keep pace—but to leap ahead. There are over four million unfilled cybersecurity jobs, so depending solely on human resources isn’t enough to safeguard our digital future.1 To close this gap, it’s important to empower security professionals, enhancing their capabilities through intelligent agents—AI collaborators designed to augment human expertise and help transform organizational security.

That is why we are making security agents available in the everyday flow of work of security teams, embedded right in the tools they love and use. At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we are not just announcing new features—we are redefining what’s possible, empowering security teams to shift from reactive responses to proactive strategies.

Unlocking AI-first security with Microsoft Security Copilot

A Microsoft 365 E5 subscription delivers security across your organization, including threat protection with Microsoft Defender, identity and access management through Microsoft Entra, endpoint device management via Microsoft Intune, and data security provided by Microsoft Purview. Microsoft Security Copilot amplifies these capabilities with built-in agents that act as a force multiplier across the security stack. Security teams are empowered with adaptive agents, running side by side with them to accelerate investigations, streamline tasks and deliver faster, smarter outcomes.

To make it easier to harness the power of these agents and get started more quickly, we are excited to announce that Microsoft Security Copilot will be included for all Microsoft 365 E5 customers.* The rollout begins today for existing Security Copilot customers with Microsoft 365 E5 and will continue in the upcoming months for all Microsoft 365 E5 customers.

Existing Security Copilot customers with Microsoft 365 E5 subscriptions can get started with the agents today at no additional cost*:

All other Microsoft 365 E5 customers will receive a 30-day advanced notification before activation and can learn more in the documentation.

Welcome to a new era of cybersecurity: where agents are built in, easy to use, and ready to help your team stay ahead of cyberthreats.

Expanding our agent portfolio for stronger security outcomes

We’re not only making these agents more easily accessible, we’re extending the ecosystem even further. Adding to the 37 Security Copilot agents already available, we’re introducing more than 40 new Microsoft and partner-built agents.

12 new Microsoft-built agents across Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview are available today in preview. Additionally, more than 30 new partner-built agents extend protection end-to-end. These agents automate large-scale tasks, which allows security teams to dedicate more time to strategic initiatives.

Extensive portfolio with new agents

Security operations teams can harness agents that triage alerts in real time, surface actionable threat intelligence, and enable natural language threat hunting—so defenders can focus on what matters most: staying ahead of cyberattackers.

Identity and access admins can deploy new agents in Microsoft Entra to protect across layers of identity: proactively remediating risky users, optimizing Conditional Access policies, streamlining access reviews, and managing app lifecycles to reduce risk and improve efficiency.

Data security professionals can use agents in Microsoft Purview, to strengthen data security by discovering, analyzing, and remediating sensitive data risks—combining proactive posture management with intelligent triage to reduce manual work and help continuous risk reduction.

IT admins can use the new agents in Microsoft Intune to make complex tasks easier and security stronger by turning requirements into policies, assessing changes before they impact productivity, and identifying devices for removal— for smarter decisions, better compliance, and reduced risk.

Agents across all roles through partner ecosystem: additionally, there are more than 30 new partner-built agents available today in the Microsoft Security Store. These agents support security roles across the industry, with skills and capabilities like simplifying incident analysis, enhancing data protection, and ensuring security tools are aligned with industry standards. To learn more about these agent offerings, visit Microsoft Security Store.

If you don’t find exactly what you need among the dozens of ready-to-use agents, Security Copilot gives you the flexibility to create your own. Since announcing this capability in September, customers have already built more than 370 unique agents—tailored to their environments and designed for their specific use cases.

Evolving agent capabilities for deeper collaboration

With the interactive agent experience, now in public preview, security teams can engage in scoped, focused chats tailored to each agent’s expertise. Dynamic workflows and built-in starter prompts keep investigations on track, while prompt suggestions surface in real time, helping humans and agents collaborate for quicker, more effective security and IT results.

And to truly empower agents, context and data are key. Security Copilot taps into Microsoft’s threat intelligence—powered by more than 100 trillion signals processed daily—and unifies insights through Microsoft Sentinel. Now, with enterprise knowledge integration in preview, agents can reason over your organization’s internal data, delivering contextual recommendations unique to your environment. This means every interaction is informed, precise, and tailored to accelerate your security and IT operations.

Agents accelerating cybersecurity outcomes

This is not just vision—it’s reality. Security Copilot agents are already delivering transformative outcomes:

  • SOC analysts have detected malicious emails up to 550% faster with the Phishing Triage Agent in Microsoft Defender—based on controlled comparisons of detection speed in simulated phishing scenarios.2
  • Identity admins have achieved up to 204% greater accuracy in identifying missing Zero Trust policies with the Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra—measured against baseline policy audits in enterprise environments.3

Shape the future of security with Microsoft

Microsoft is committed to helping organizations become true “Frontier Firms”—pioneers who harness agentic AI to transform security and IT operations. Microsoft Ignite is your invitation to be part of this movement: connect with our experts, experience the future firsthand, and discover how Security Copilot can help you realize your boldest ambitions.

Visit our Meet the Experts booths (#2330 and #2320), attend security sessions, and visit the Microsoft Security Store to explore available Microsoft and partner-built agents. The future of defense is not just about keeping up—it’s about leading the way.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

Security in the agentic era:

The core primitive

Envision a future where defenders and AI agents work together. Hear Charlie Bell and Vasu Jakkal share how leading organizations are securing AI innovation at scale—plus get demos and actionable steps.

Vasu Jakkal and Charlie Bell discussing with one another on stage

* Eligible Microsoft 365 E5 customers will have 400 Security Compute Units (SCUs) per month for every 1,000 user licenses, up to 10,000 SCUs per month. This included capacity is expected to support typical scenarios. Customers will have an option to pay for scaling beyond the allocated amount at a future date with $6 per SCU on a pay-as-you-go basis, and will get a 30-day advanced notification when this option is available. Learn more.

1 Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap, World Economic Forum. 2025.

2Randomized Controlled Trial for Phishing Triage Agent, James Bono, Microsoft Corporation. October 2025.

3 Randomized Controlled Trial for Conditional Access Optimization Agent, James Bono, Beibei Cheng, Joaquin Lozano, Microsoft Corporation. October 2025.

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​​Ambient and autonomous security for the agentic era​​  http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2025/11/18/ambient-and-autonomous-security-for-the-agentic-era/ Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:00:00 +0000 In the agentic era, security must be ambient and autonomous, like the AI it protects. This is our vision for security, where security becomes the core primitive.

The post ​​Ambient and autonomous security for the agentic era​​  appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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Over the past year, I’ve had countless conversations with customers who are striving to unlock human ambition with AI. They are on their journey to become Frontier Firms, where humans and agents push the boundaries of innovation and create new possibilities, empowering humans to become limitless.

As agents become ubiquitous, security leaders are asking urgent questions: How do we onboard, manage, and govern these agents? How do we protect the data they access and create? How do we protect them from cyberthreats? How do we monitor them to ensure their trustworthiness, and ensure they are not double agents? And how can we use agents to protect, defend, and respond at the speed of AI?

The answer starts with trust and security has always been, and will always be, the root of trust. In the agentic era, security must be ambient and autonomous, like the AI it protects. It must be woven into and around everything we build—from silicon to operating systems, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and clouds—and throughout everything we do. This is our vision for security, where security becomes the core primitive.

At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we’re delivering on that vision with solutions that help customers observe, secure, and govern AI agents and apps, protect the platforms and clouds they are built on, and put agentic AI to work for security and IT teams. We are announcing new innovations across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Sentinel—solutions used by more than 1.5 million customers today—to help customers secure every layer of the AI stack with industry-leading offerings.1,2

Securing AI agents and apps

Let’s start with the first layer of that stack: the AI agents and apps that are helping us across our work, and how we are securing them end to end.

Microsoft Agent 365

Today we announced Microsoft Agent 365, the control plane for AI agents. Agent 365 brings observability at every level of the AI stack. Whether you create agents with Microsoft tools, open-source frameworks, or third-party platforms, Agent 365 helps you observe, manage, secure, and govern them. Security teams can now address agent sprawl, detect shadow agents, and protect agents comprehensively.

Agent 365 capabilities include:

  • Registry: With Microsoft Entra registry, IT leaders get the complete inventory of all agents that are being used in their organization, including agents with Microsoft Entra Agent ID, agents that they decide to register themselves, and—coming soon—shadow agents. The registry also allows IT admins to quarantine unsanctioned agents to help ensure that they cannot be discovered by users or connect to other agents and organizational resources.
  • Access control: With Agent Policy Templates, customers can enforce standard security policies from day one. As agents integrate into organizational workflows, Microsoft Entra enforces adaptive access policies that respond to real-time context and risk, and blocks agents that may have been compromised from accessing organization resources.
  • Visualization: A unified dashboard and advanced analytics provide a complete map of connections among agents and users, other agents, and resources in your organization. Role-based reporting with tailored metrics and analytics helps IT, security, and business leaders see what matters most, right in their flow of work.
  • Interop: Agents don’t just automate tasks for users, they amplify the work. With Work IQ, agents help accelerate time to value by accessing your organization’s unique data and context. Integrated with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Word, and Excel, agents take actions, build content, and collaborate seamlessly alongside users. Agent 365 works across Microsoft platforms, open-source frameworks and partner ecosystems.
  • Security: Security is non-negotiable which is why Agent 365 uses Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview to deliver comprehensive protection from external and internal threats. Security leaders can proactively assess posture and risk, detect vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, protect against AI cyberattacks such as prompt injections, prevent agents from processing or leaking sensitive data, identify risky behaviors, and give organizations the ability to audit agent interactions, assess compliance readiness, policy violations, and recommend controls for evolving regulatory requirements.

Microsoft Foundry Control Plane

We announced Foundry Control Plane, a new experience in Microsoft Foundry, which makes it easier for developers to build, manage, and secure agent fleets at scale. Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview capabilities are natively integrated into Foundry Control Plane, so developers and security teams can share unified security controls, policies, and real-time risk insights, ensuring that agents and apps are protected from code development to runtime. Developers can also use Foundry Control Plane to publish agents directly to Agent 365 for IT enablement and activation, ensuring the same shared security foundations.

Microsoft Security Dashboard for AI

As AI adoption accelerates, the need for unified visibility into the security posture, risks, and regulatory compliance of their AI agents, apps, and platforms becomes more important than ever for security teams. The Security Dashboard for AI, announced today, centralizes discovery, protection, and governance by aggregating signals from Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. This helps chief information security officers (CISOs) and AI risk leaders to manage security posture and mitigate risks across their entire AI estate. For example, you can see your full AI inventory and get visibility into a quarantined agent, flagged for high data risk due to oversharing sensitive information in Microsoft Purview. The dashboard then correlates that signal with identity insights from Microsoft Entra and threat protection alerts from Microsoft Defender to provide a complete picture of exposure.

Microsoft Purview expansion for Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft Purview expanded data security and compliance controls for Microsoft 365 Copilot to include comprehensive data oversharing reports within the Microsoft 365 admin center, automated bulk remediation of overshared links, and data loss prevention for Microsoft 365 Copilot and chat prompts. Organizations can also benefit from automated deletion schedules for Microsoft Teams transcripts containing sensitive data, and enhanced controls to exclude processing of sensitive files in government cloud environments. These capabilities empower security and compliance teams to rapidly detect, protect, and remediate data risks in real time, and at scale.

All of these new solutions add to existing tools that help you secure and govern your AI estate.

Securing platforms and clouds

Now let’s look at the second layer of the stack: the platforms and clouds your agents and AI apps run on, and the innovations we announced to protect them.

Microsoft Defender and GitHub Advanced Security

Developers are under pressure to deliver rapid innovation while security teams are inundated with alerts and growing risk. New integration between Microsoft Defender and GitHub Advanced Security helps developers and security teams work together to secure code and infrastructure, using familiar tools. Security can recommend that developers address vulnerable code and developers can remediate with Copilot Autofix. Security can then validate fixes in Microsoft Defender, closing the loop and accelerating the “shift left” approach to security.

Microsoft Baseline Security Mode

As cyberattackers increasingly use AI to exploit legacy configurations, Baseline Security Mode, now generally available, uses Microsoft-recommended settings to help mitigate legacy risks and improve cloud security posture. A guided admin experience helps to identify potential gaps, simulate changes with “What If” analysis, and deploy broad protections designed to minimize disruption to business-critical workflows. It helps support compliance and audit readiness, provides greater visibility through built-in dashboards and telemetry, and promotes predictability with major updates approximately every six to 12 months.

Microsoft Intune and Windows Security

Windows, built to harness AI and the cloud, helps employees be more productive while you remain secure and in control. Support for post-quantum cryptography helps future-proof your organization against emerging cyberthreats while hardware-accelerated BitLocker protects data without performance trade-offs. And with the Windows Resilience Initiative, we’re making recovery faster and more reliable so when issues occur, you can return to business quickly.

Managing Windows at scale just got easier—and more secure—with new capabilities in Microsoft Intune. These enhancements give IT and security leaders the confidence to embrace AI while minimizing risk. Phased deployments simplify AI rollouts by reducing risk and validating security before scaling, ensuring smooth adoption without disruption. Recovery is faster and more reliable, transforming manual, device-by-device fixes into remote management of the Windows Recovery Environment at scale, with hardware-bound certificates guaranteeing every action is authenticated and authorized. Maintenance windows provide precise control over update timing for operating systems, drivers, and firmware, helping organizations maintain patch compliance while minimizing disruption and keeping productivity high.

Securing with agentic AI

The security platform for the agentic era

Read more ›

To defend in the agentic age, we need agentic defense. This starts with having an agentic platform and security agents built into the flow of work. Microsoft Sentinel has evolved from its traditional role as a cloud security information and event management (SIEM) to an agentic security platform, powering Microsoft Security Copilot agents and new predictive protection in Microsoft Defender.

Agents built into your everyday flow of work with Security Copilot

With more than four million open roles in cybersecurity, it’s clear: human-scale defense alone cannot secure our digital future.3 The answer? Empowering every security professional with intelligent agents—AI partners that amplify human expertise and transform the very fabric of organizational security.

At Microsoft Ignite, we are introducing a dozen new and enhanced Microsoft Security Copilot agents, available in Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Intune, and Microsoft Purview, to empower security teams to shift from reactive responses to proactive strategies and help transform every aspect of organizational security.

These adaptive agents run side by side with security teams to triage incidents, optimize conditional access policies, surface threat intelligence, and maintain secure, compliant endpoints more easily. Our partner community also released more than 30 new Security Copilot agents, extending protection end-to-end.

To make it easier than ever for organizations to harness the power of Security Copilot agents to protect at the speed and scale of AI, we are thrilled to announce that Security Copilot will be included for all Microsoft 365 E5 customers.* The rollout starts today for Security Copilot customers with Microsoft 365 E5 and continues for all Microsoft 365 E5 customers in the upcoming months.

Predictive shielding with Microsoft Defender

Cyberattackers are using AI to increase the speed and scale of attacks, unleashing a barrage on defenders. Defender predictive shielding goes beyond automated cyberattack disruption and introduces a new capability that can anticipate cyberattacker movement and proactively harden attack pathways to protect critical assets. It forecasts likely attacker pivots using graph insights and threat intelligence from the 100 trillion signals Microsoft analyzes daily. Then, it applies targeted, just-in-time hardening actions to block exploitation of adjacent resources. This strategic and coordinated response minimizes business disruption and gives security teams a powerful advantage over increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats.

Securing with a new suite of expert-led services

To help organizations easily access security expertise, we’re introducing the Microsoft Defender Experts Suite, a new offering that brings together human-led, AI-powered managed extended detection and response, end-to-end proactive incident response services, and direct access to designated Microsoft security advisors. The expert-led services will help you defend against cyberthreats, build cyber resilience, and transform your security operations. Defender Experts Suite will be available early 2026 to help you accelerate security outcomes. We are also announcing that Microsoft is now an approved incident response partner of Beazley, a specialist insurer. The collaboration will provide Microsoft customers with a streamlined claims process and faster action following a cyber event.

Security is the core primitive

In the agentic AI era, digital trust is paramount: security, safety, ethics, and privacy will underpin progress, and security has been, and always will be, the root of trust. This is why we prioritize security above all else through the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative—an ongoing effort to improve security for Microsoft, our customers, and the ecosystem. It is also why we believe security must be ambient and autonomous, woven into and around everything we build—from silicon to operating systems, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and clouds—and throughout everything we do. This is our vision for security as the core primitive.

Security in the agentic era:

The core primitive

Envision a future where defenders and AI agents work together. Hear Charlie Bell and Vasu Jakkal share how leading organizations are securing AI innovation at scale—plus get demos and actionable steps.

Vasu Jakkal and Charlie Bell discussing with one another on stage

We are excited to connect with you, the defenders, at Ignite to explore these innovations and more throughout the week. And we look forward to working together to build a safer future for all.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security Blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.


* Eligible Microsoft 365 E5 customers will have 400 Security Compute Units (SCUs) per month for every 1,000 user licenses, up to 10,000 SCUs per month. This included capacity is expected to support typical scenarios. Customers will have an option to pay for scaling beyond the allocated amount at a future date with $6 per SCU on a pay-as-you-go basis, and will get a 30-day advanced notification when this option is available. Learn more.

1 Microsoft is a recognized leader in cybersecurity, Microsoft Security. 2025.

2 Microsoft FY25 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call, Jonathan Neilson, Satya Nadella, Amy Hood. July 30, 2025

3 Bridging the Cyber Skills Gap, World Economic Forum. 2025.

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Improving IT efficiency with Microsoft Security Copilot in Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2025/07/14/improving-it-efficiency-with-microsoft-security-copilot-in-microsoft-intune-and-microsoft-entra/ Mon, 14 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000 Announcing the general availability of Microsoft Security Copilot capabilities for IT with Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra, offering AI-powered efficiency and enhanced security for your operations.

The post Improving IT efficiency with Microsoft Security Copilot in Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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When Microsoft introduced Microsoft Security Copilot last year, our vision was to empower organizations with generative AI that helps security and IT teams simplify operations and respond faster. Since then, we’ve continuously innovated and learned alongside our customers. They consistently tell us that practitioners love it when Copilot is built directly into the tools they use every day.

That’s why we’re focused on delivering deeply integrated, scenario-based experiences that align with Zero Trust principles, making it easier for IT and security professionals to ask questions, take action, and gain insights directly within their existing workflows. These experiences not only reduce friction but also help IT teams stay in flow, making smarter decisions faster and with greater confidence. And the impact is real: organizations using Security Copilot have seen a 54% reduction in time to resolve device policy conflicts, and a 22.8% drop in alerts per incident within three months of adoption, freeing up teams to focus on more strategic work.

We’re excited to announce the Security Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra have moved from preview to general availability. This milestone reflects the critical role Intune and Entra play in modern security strategies, serving as the foundation for implementing a Zero Trust model. Intune enforces device compliance, app protection, and endpoint privilege management, while Entra governs identity access with Conditional Access policies and granular authentication controls. Together, they create a unified security posture that aligns with Zero Trust principles across devices, users, applications, and even agents. Security Copilot amplifies this foundation by providing AI-assisted guidance, autonomous agents, and insights accessible through natural language, helping IT teams scale operations, accelerate skilling, and proactively remediate threats at machine speed.

Reimagining IT workflows with Security Copilot in Intune

IT administrators often face a daily flood of data, alerts, and configuration details, making it difficult to quickly find the right information and act with confidence. AI is changing how people work, and Copilot in Intune is evolving how IT admins interact with and act on their endpoint management data. The Security Copilot in Intune general availability release introduces a brand new, Copilot-assisted data exploration capability. IT admins now have a dedicated page in the Intune admin center to ask Copilot for the data they need, take action, and complete endpoint management tasks, all without leaving their workflow. This capability allows admins to extract insights across Intune domains—devices, apps, security policies, users, compliance data, app configurations, and more—and act on it using its deep integration into the Intune functionality they are familiar with. It represents the first step in a foundational shift from traditional reporting and queries to Copilot-powered investigation and IT-empowered action.

This new Security Copilot capability is designed to simplify the most time-consuming IT workflows, like assessing security posture, managing updates, troubleshooting issues, and generating custom reports. Whether it’s identifying non-compliant devices, tracking patch failures, previewing policy impact, or automating remediation, Copilot brings together the data and actions IT needs in one place.

Admins can ask natural language questions like, “Show me devices that are not on the latest version of Windows and Office,” or “Which of my Endpoint Privilege Management rules are in conflict and what are the source profiles?” and take action instantly, without switching context.

Figure 1. New experience to explore your Intune data with Copilot assistance across workloads.

The new Explorer experience also includes support for Windows 365 Cloud PCs, giving IT administrators a consistent way to view and act on device details across both cloud and physical endpoints. We are excited to share that in the coming weeks, we’ll introduce additional AI capabilities in Intune with Copilot assistance for Windows 365, offering insights into Cloud PC connectivity and connection quality, licensing optimization, and performance issues tied to compute resources. These capabilities build on the momentum of virtual computing and the ability to stream Windows from the Cloud, enhancing the IT experience and delivering even more endpoint management value—especially for Windows-based environments.

The general availability release of Security Copilot in Intune also provides chat-based contextual assistance and includes integration with core and Microsoft Intune Suite solutions. Intune Advanced Analytics multiple device query (MDQ), and Copilot help admins write detailed Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries and Endpoint Privilege Management with Copilot assesses app risks for admins to make informed decisions before approving Windows users’ elevation requests. And with the Surface Management Portal in Intune, Copilot provides unified visibility and controls for IT across Surface devices, further strengthening security posture and streamlining operations.

Just as Security Copilot is transforming endpoint management in Intune, it’s also reshaping how identity is managed in Microsoft Entra.

Security Copilot in Entra brings clarity and speed to identity security

Identity environments evolve daily—new user, apps, and permissions are constantly introduced, making it difficult for IT and identity admins to keep policies up to date and user access properly governed. Manual investigations done the traditional way can be very time-consuming and reactive, giving cyberattackers more time to exploit gaps. With more than 600 million identity-based attacks happening daily, organizations can’t afford slow, manual investigations or infrequent policy reviews.1

Security Copilot in Microsoft Entra, now generally available, brings AI-assisted reasoning, natural language prompts, and real-time insights across your identity and access estate, all within the Microsoft Entra admin center. We’ve made major enhancements to improve performance, scalability, and accuracy, enabling Security Copilot to better understand user intent, handle more complex questions, and deliver clearer answers.

 We’ve also expanded coverage to support a broader set of real-world identity scenarios. Copilot in Entra now helps admins investigate users, troubleshoot sign-ins, manage access reviews and entitlements, monitor tenant health and service-level agreement (SLAs), optimize license usage, and analyze role assignments and recommendations—all grounded in Microsoft Graph data.

Admins can now ask natural language questions like, “Which enterprise applications have credentials about to expire?” and “What role does the user have?” to quickly surface insights and take action. Whether it’s reviewing access packages, identifying risky apps, or checking license availability, Security Copilot in Entra helps teams move faster, stay ahead of cyberthreats, and focus on what matters most.

Purpose-built agents for real-world IT challenges

At Microsoft Secure 2025, as part of our vision to deliver an AI-first, end-to-end security platform, Microsoft announced 11 AI-powered Security Copilot agents that are seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Security and partner solutions. These agents autonomously handle high-volume, high-value tasks, learn from feedback, adapt to workflows, and operate securely, reflecting our commitment to helping organizations achieve what was previously impossible—at machine speed.

Today marks a meaningful milestone in our journey toward an AI-first, end-to-end security platform: we’re announcing the general availability of the Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra. This launch brings AI-powered automation to IT and security operations, helping teams bring proactive protection directly into identity workflows.

The Conditional Access Optimization Agent runs autonomously, scanning your environment for gaps, overlaps, and outdated policy assignments. It then recommends precise, one-click remediations to help close the gaps fast, turning reactive cleanup into proactive defense.

The Conditional Access Optimization Agent provides:

  • Autonomous protection, every day—Automatically detects newly created users or apps not covered by Conditional Access policies, reducing risk between manual audits.
  • Real-time, explainable decisions—Every recommendation includes a plain-language summary and visual activity map showing how the agent reached its conclusion.
  • Continuous adaptability to your organization’s needs—Support for custom business rules, the agent can learn based on your natural-language feedback (for example, excluding break-glass accounts).
  • Full auditability—Agent actions like install, enable and disable, and recommendations are recorded in the audit log for compliance and operational transparency.

With the Conditional Access Optimization Agent, policy coverage becomes continuous. You gain daily protection, policy clarity, and built-in expertise without the manual lift. As one security leader put it:

“The Conditional Access Optimization Agent is like having a security analyst on call 24/7. It proactively identifies gaps in our Conditional Access policies and ensures every user is protected from day one, and with report-only mode and AI-driven recommendations, we can test and refine access policies without disruption. It’s a secure path to innovation that every chief information security officer can trust.”

—Julian Rasmussen, Senior consultant and Partner, Point Taken, Microsoft MVP

Step into the future of IT with Security Copilot

We’re in a new era of AI that has implications for IT operations and security. Now with Microsoft Security Copilot in Intune and Entra, you can make your organization future-ready with AI solutions that help organizations transform IT and security at machine speed.

As part of our ongoing commitment to enhancing the embedded experience of Security Copilot across Microsoft Security products, we’re excited to introduce a new in-portal capacity calculator available in the Security Copilot standalone experience (Azure account required). This tool allows organizations to estimate the number of Security Compute Units (SCUs) they may need based on the number of Security Copilot users in each Microsoft Security product. Users can generate a quick estimate, providing a practical starting point for capacity planning. SCU allocations can be adjusted at any time as real-world usage patterns emerge. Learn more.

Explore more use cases for IT and identity admins in the Security Copilot adoption hub. Explore Copilot in Intune and Entra and take these steps to learn more:

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.


1Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024.

The data, insights, and events in this report represent July 2023 through June 2024 (Microsoft fiscal year 2024), unless otherwise noted.

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​​Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in the 2025 Zero Trust Platforms Wave™ report http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2025/07/10/forrester-names-microsoft-a-leader-in-the-2025-zero-trust-platforms-wave-report/ Thu, 10 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000 Employing a Zero Trust strategy is an effective way to modernize security infrastructure to protect against ever evolving security challenges.

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We are proud to share that Forrester has named Microsoft a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Platforms, Q3 2025 report, ranking us highest in the strategy category.

The Forrester Wave: Zero Trust Platforms, Q 3 2025 report.

With so many strong vendors and solutions in the Zero Trust space, you need solid data to make the right choice for your organization. That’s why Forrester’s analysis matters. They provide detailed comparisons of vendor capabilities and strategic vision, helping security leaders evaluate which platforms are best equipped to meet today’s evolving challenges.

Your decision matters now more than ever. The security landscape is evolving rapidly with the rise of generative and agentic AI—where intelligent agents can create and collaborate with other agents, collaborate autonomously, and scale faster than traditional models can keep up. Systems once built for human identities must now manage a growing web of machine identities, each with its own access and risk profile.

In this landscape, adhering to the principles of Zero Trust is critical for protecting sensitive resources, so you can:

  • Expand visibility across your digital environment to reduce security vulnerabilities.
  • Secure your most critical assets while ensuring compliance.
  • Deploy generative AI with confidence.

Microsoft’s end-to-end, integrated approach to Zero Trust

The Forrester report cited our vision for proactive security architecture powered by innovative AI agents that automate complex security, IT, and productivity tasks. But what we believe really caught their attention was our integrated approach—how we bring together capabilities across security, compliance, identity, device management, and privacy, all informed by more than 84 trillion threat signals a day.1 As they noted, “Microsoft excels at tool consolidation and integration, helping reduce costs and overhead.”

Customers interviewed for the report recognized that our “deep cross-platform integration” delivers “real business value” without making customers stitch different solutions together manually. This integration spans the entire Microsoft Security portfolio—Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Sentinel, and Microsoft Entra—to provide a unified platform that secures identities, endpoints, data, apps, infrastructure, and AI. At the heart of this integration are the strong identity management capabilities of Microsoft Entra, which Forrester noted for “deliver[ing] effective least-privilege access enforcement” while enabling data security controls and endpoint management.

Picture a typical attack pattern. Malicious activity in an on-premises system might be detected by Defender for Identity, a compromised device flagged by Defender for Endpoint, and risky insider behavior identified by Purview. These signals converge in Entra conditional access, your centralized policy engine, enabling real-time, risk-based access controls that adapt to emerging threats and, when necessary, block access automatically.

Powered by AI and threat intelligence, our unified security platform surfaces high-priority incidents and recommends next actions, transforming security from a collection of tools into a cohesive defense. You can work within our unified platform to prevent, detect, and respond to incidents across a single integrated system—no jumping between dashboards or correlating signals manually. All of this comes together with Microsoft Security Exposure Management to give full visibility into all your assets and help you proactively reduce risk.

An integrated approach doesn’t mean using only Microsoft solutions. We believe security is a team sport. In fact, the Forrester report recognized the maturity and scale of our global partner ecosystem. We’ve invested heavily in these partnerships because they provide additional signals and specialized protections that make the entire security community stronger. The report also cited our standout community, which provides education, training, and guidance on building Zero Trust architectures to ensure customers have the support they need at every step.

Our commitment to customers and the industry

Through our Secure Future Initiative, we continuously evaluate and strengthen our own security posture, improve the security of our products to better protect customers, and share progress and learnings with the industry. We are also committed to standards, guidelines, and best practices from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), The Open Group, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and MITRE—not as compliance checkboxes, but because they provide proven frameworks and common vocabulary for implementing effective security.

Take action to improve your security posture

Threats are evolving faster than ever, but so are defenses. With the right Zero Trust security strategy, you can embrace AI’s transformative power while keeping your organization secure. Microsoft’s leadership in Zero Trust, as reflected for us in the latest Forrester Wave™, highlights our commitment to helping you meet these security demands.

For more information on this recognition, check out the full Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Platforms, Q3 2025 report.

Ready to evaluate your Zero Trust readiness for the AI era? Start with our Zero Trust assessment, host an implementation workshop, or dive into our step-by-step implementation guides.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.


The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Platforms, Q3 2025, Joshep Blankenship, Faith Born, and Peter Harrison. July 10, 2025. 

Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here .

1Based on Microsoft internal data. Accurate as of July 2025.

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Faster, more personalized service begins at the frontline with Microsoft Intune http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2025/04/28/faster-more-personalized-service-begins-at-the-frontline-with-microsoft-intune/ Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:00:00 +0000 Secure, cloud-based endpoint management helps healthcare providers empower frontline staff and improve patient care.

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In healthcare, patient trust often begins at the frontline with people who deliver care, respond to questions, and manage crucial in-the-moment decisions. Increasingly, those experiences are shaped by the tools frontline workers use. When devices are secure, responsive, and tailored to clinical workflows, they enable faster, more informed, and more compassionate care.

For chief technology officers (CTOs), this raises important questions: How can frontline devices enhance productivity and responsiveness? And just as critically, how can organizations ensure those devices are secure, compliant, and ready to go at a moment’s notice?

Healthcare isn’t alone in these challenges. Industries like retail, where frontline teams also engage directly with the public in fast-paced, high-stakes environments, face similar pressures around device management, security, and scalability. This blog focuses on how modern endpoint management supports care and delivery at the frontline, with parallel insights drawn from the retail world to highlight shared strategies and solutions.

Learn how Microsoft Intune can help your organization securely manage frontline devices.

Microsoft Intune

Secure and manage every device from one place.

Top-down view of a bearded man in a gray/blue shirt seated at a desk working on a Surface laptop connected to three large monitors. Desktop has phone, glasses, mouse and other laptops on it.

Why endpoint management matters at the frontline

Every frontline interaction is a potential brand moment that impacts trust and outcomes. A poor experience can ripple quickly, but the right tools in the hands of frontline staff can lead to faster, more personalized service. To deliver those experiences at scale, CTOs should consider three foundational principles for frontline device strategy:

  1. Recognize that many devices are shared. With shift-based work, secure and seamless sign-on backed by a Zero Trust approach helps provide the right person access to the right tools, without delay.
  2. Use a cloud-native approach to manage all devices. Whether company-issued or bring-your-own device (BYOD), cross-platform management keeps devices are up-to-date and ready to go, reducing setup times and support tickets.
  3. Embrace innovations like Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365. AI-powered tools and Cloud PCs help organizations scale faster, enhance security, and give workers access to the latest experiences, without disruption.

Now let’s explore what this looks like in practice, starting with healthcare.

Healthcare in focus: Modern management for care delivery

In healthcare, frontline workers rely on shared devices that must be secure, personalized, and compliant. Microsoft Intune has helped hospitals like Milton Keynes University Hospital implement endpoint management for shared tablets used in nurse stations—tools that support real-time monitoring and communication.

Because staff rotate across shifts, easy sign-in is essential, and devices must only receive updates during defined maintenance windows. These shared tablets also require network restrictions and strict access controls to meet security standards without interrupting care.

Intune also supports iPad OS and configuration, helping frontline staff access patient information quickly and securely at the bedside, reducing friction and improving the overall care experience.

With AI-powered tools like Microsoft Copilot in Intune, healthcare IT teams can proactively identify issues, troubleshoot devices, and maintain compliance, all while reducing operational burden. As new AI agent capabilities emerge, they’ll enable even faster remediation of vulnerabilities, protecting sensitive patient data in an evolving cyberthreat landscape.

And with Windows 365 Frontline, healthcare organizations can provide scalable, secure access to virtual desktops for rotating clinical staff, delivering performance without the need to deploy and manage a physical device for every user.

Retail in focus: Elevating service and speed on the store floor

In retail environments, every frontline interaction is a brand opportunity, and device performance can make or break that moment.

At the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference in January 2025, companies like IKEA and Levi’s showcased how giving employees access to personalized devices helps them visualize products with customers and provide more tailored service.

Retail staff often rely on shared devices across shifts, so it’s critical that sign-in is fast, interfaces are familiar, and access is secure but streamlined. Temporary session PINs and pre-configured apps let employees start working, and serving customers, immediately.

At Schwarz Group (which includes 575,000 employees across 13,900 stores in 32 countries, including the Lidl and Kaufland retail brands) Intune supports staging and managing tens of thousands of employee devices. IT can remotely provision new devices with pre-defined configurations, eliminating time-consuming setups and ensuring tools are ready before the employee even logs in.

Retailers can also take advantage of Windows 365 Cloud PCs and Windows 365 Frontline to give employees secure access to key tools across locations and shifts, while simplifying management and keeping costs down.

A better frontline experience leads to better outcomes

Whether it’s a customer shopping in store or a patient receiving care, the frontline experience shapes how people perceive your organization. When frontline tools are secure, responsive, and tailored to the user, staff can serve with confidence—and people feel the difference.

Now is the time to reassess your endpoint strategy. For healthcare organizations, secure, cloud-native device management can be one of the most powerful levers for improving patient outcomes and operational efficiency. And for industries with similar frontline demands, like retail, the same principles can deliver meaningful gains in speed, security, and customer satisfaction.

Explore how other leading organizations are benefiting from modern, cloud-native endpoint management. For more, check out Intune’s recent “From the frontlines” blog for retail or for healthcare, or other examples of Intune customer stories.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Intune.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

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Rethinking remote assistance security in a Zero Trust world http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/security/blog/2025/02/26/rethinking-remote-assistance-security-in-a-zero-trust-world/ Wed, 26 Feb 2025 17:00:00 +0000 The rise in sophisticated cyberthreats demands a fundamental shift in our approach. Organizations must rethink remote assistance security through the lens of Zero Trust, using the three key principles of Verify Explicitly, Use Least Privilege, and Assume Breach as a guide and ensuring that every session, user, and device is verified, compliant, and monitored before access is granted.

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The recent breach of the United States Treasury underscores a stark reality: cyber adversaries are no longer just looking for gaps in traditional network security—they are actively exploiting the tools organizations rely on for daily operations. Remote assistance technologies, essential for IT support and business continuity, have become prime targets for credential theft, moving within the network, and system exploitation. The message is clear: securing remote assistance is no longer optional; it is a fundamental requirement for maintaining operational resilience.  

A multi-pronged approach to securing remote assistance with Zero Trust

For too long, remote assistance security has been presumed rather than intentionally designed into its architecture. The rise in sophisticated cyberthreats demands a fundamental shift in our approach. Organizations must rethink remote assistance security through the lens of Zero Trust, using the three key principles of verify explicitly, use least privilege, and assume breach as a guide and ensuring that every session, user, and device is verified, compliant, and monitored before access is granted. 

Discover how implementing Zero Trust can fortify your remote assistance security by visiting our Zero Trust Workshop, where you’ll find an interactive guide to embedding security into your IT operations.  

This requires a structured approach with a foundation of: 

  1. Identity and access control—ensuring that only authenticated, compliant users and devices can initiate or receive remote assistance. 
  2. Endpoint security and compliance—enforcing security baselines and conditional access across all managed devices. 
  3. Embedded security in remote assistance—building security into the very foundation of remote assistance tools, eliminating gaps that cyberattackers can exploit. 

      Identity and access control: The first line of cybersecurity defense

      Identity security is the cornerstone of any secure remote assistance strategy. A compromised identity is often the first step in a cyberattack, making it critical to ensure only verified users and devices can initiate or receive remote assistance sessions. Organizations must enforce: 

      • Explicit identity verification—using multi-factor authentication (MFA) and risk-based conditional access to ensure only authorized users gain access. 
      • Least privilege access—ensuring remote assistance is granted only for the necessary duration and with minimal privileges to reduce the risk of exploitation. 
      • Real-time risk assessment—continuously evaluating access requests for anomalies or suspicious activity to prevent unauthorized access. 

      By shifting the security perimeter to identity, organizations create an environment where trust is earned dynamically, not assumed.  

      Closing the gaps with endpoint security and compliance with Microsoft Intune

      Cyberattackers frequently exploit outdated, misconfigured, or non-compliant endpoints to gain a foothold in enterprise environments. IT and security leaders must ensure that remote assistance is built on a strong endpoint security foundation, where every device connecting to corporate resources meets strict compliance standards. This highlights the need for organizations to establish consistent security policies across all devices, ensuring they are up to date and compliant before being granted remote access.  

      Microsoft Intune provides the necessary tools to: 

      • Enforce compliance policies—restrict remote assistance to managed, up-to-date, and policy-compliant devices. 
      • Apply security baselines—standardize configurations across endpoints to minimize security gaps. 
      • Integrate with Microsoft’s security ecosystem—connecting remote assistance workflows with Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Defender product family, and other security tools for real-time monitoring and cyberthreat mitigation.  

      Remote Help: Secure remote assistance built for Zero Trust 

      As organizations work toward a Zero Trust model, secure remote assistance must align with core security principles. This means moving beyond reactive security measures and embedding proactive, policy-driven controls into every remote session. Microsoft Intune Remote Help was designed with these imperatives in mind, providing a robust solution that enhances IT support while minimizing security risks. 

      While legacy remote assistance tools can lack enterprise-grade security controls, Remote Help is built to align with Zero Trust principles. Unlike traditional solutions, Remote Help: 

      • Integrates directly with Microsoft Entra ID—enhancing security where authentication and access controls can consistently take place. 
      • Provides session transparency—IT teams can track and monitor remote assistance activity in real time. 
      • Enforces compliance requirements—only compliant, managed devices can participate in remote assistance sessions.  

      For highly regulated industries, Remote Help offers an alternative to third-party tools that may introduce security blind spots. By embedding security directly into remote assistance workflows, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access.  

      Engaging customers and partners to strengthen cyber resilience 

      Cybersecurity is a team sport. As cyberthreat actors grow more sophisticated, collaboration across industries is essential. Microsoft is committed to engaging with customers and partners to drive security innovation and resilience. Initiatives such as the Windows Resiliency Initiative (WRI) focus on: 

      • Reducing the need for admin privileges—helping organizations adopt a least privilege approach at scale.
      • Enhancing identity protection—strengthening defenses against phishing and identity-based attacks.
      • Quick machine recovery—empowering IT teams with tools to rapidly store compromised devices remotely.

      By fostering collaboration and continuously evolving security measures, Microsoft is helping organizations stay ahead of emerging cyberthreats. These on-going conversations with our customers and partners are crucial in shaping resilient security strategies that adapt to an ever-changing cyberthreat landscape.   

      A security-first approach for the future 

      The increasing reliance on remote assistance demands a security-first mindset. Organizations must recognize that every remote access session presents an opportunity for exploitation from an ever-evolving cast of cyberattackers. Rather than treating security as an afterthought, it must be deeply integrated into the architecture of the remote assistance solutions. A modern approach requires proactive risk mitigation, continuous verification, and seamless security controls that support productivity without compromising protection.  

      Now is the time for IT and security leaders to: 

      • Evaluate your current remote assistance tools—identifying the gaps and areas for improvement. 
      • Adopt Zero Trust principles—ensuring the access is verified and explicitly and continuously monitored. 
      • Leverage solutions like Microsoft Intune and Remote Help—deploying secure, enterprise-grade remote assistance capabilities. 

      By taking these steps, you can strengthen your security posture, minimize risk, and ensure that remote assistance remains a tool for operational efficiency rather than a gateway for cyberthreats.  

      To explore how Zero Trust can enhance your remote assistance security, visit the Zero Trust Workshop, an interactive, step-by-step guide to embedding security into every layer of IT operations, ensuring a comprehensive and measurable approach to security transformation. 

      Learn more with Microsoft Security

      To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity. 

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