Here’s what’s new:

Extend protection and support investigations with Microsoft Defender

Bring more context into email investigation and hunting with Microsoft Security Copilot

Available for organizations using both Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Security Copilot, a new email detonation summary delivers AI-generated explanations of URL and file sandboxing results, helping SOC teams investigate faster by reducing the manual effort required to correlate detonation evidence and contextual signals.

Protect sensitive data in motion with Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Entra

Stop sensitive data from reaching shadow AI over the network

Now generally available, Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Entra Global Secure Access bring data security to the network across human actions and on-behalf-of (OBO) agentic traffic. Context-aware Microsoft Purview classification and policies are enforced by Entra at the network layer. Organizations can discover sensitive files and text in real time and block them from being shared to risky destinations. For example, if an employee or OBO agent tries to upload a sensitive document to an unsanctioned AI tool, the policy can stop the transfer before the data leaves.

Protect, investigate, and clean up enterprise data with Microsoft Purview

Manage labeling at enterprise scale with less administrative overhead

Microsoft Purview auto-labeling helps organizations automatically apply data security controls to sensitive content at enterprise scale. New auto-labeling enhancements improve policy scale, admin experience, and reporting. Policies now support simulations of up to 20 million items and up to 50,000 sites through adaptive scopes. Administrators can edit a policy without re-running simulation. New audit insights and reporting show policy coverage and processing activity. Together, these enhancements help organizations scale auto-labeling across larger environments with less administrative effort.

Investigate content created in Copilot apps such as Microsoft Loop, Copilot pages through established compliance processes

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery now supports search, hold, review, and export content in user-owned SharePoint embedded containers, to help streamline eDiscovery processes for legal, regulatory, and internal investigations. Investigators can find content from AI-powered experiences, including Microsoft Loop, Copilot Pages, Copilot Notebooks, and applications, such as Outlook newsletters, mapped to a user without requesting the container URL from a SharePoint administrator. An optional HTML conversion produces a more readable version for downstream legal tools, improving the review and export experience for experts.

Archive and permanently remove inactive content to improve AI readiness

With Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management, administrators can now archive inactive SharePoint content without archiving the entire site. Archived content remains subject to retention and legal hold policies, and remains discoverable for eDiscovery, while dropping out of Microsoft 365 Copilot indexing (until reactivated). Organizations can also use Priority Cleanup to permanently delete approved content, including stale Teams recordings and transcripts, so it is no longer discoverable in eDiscovery, SharePoint search, or Microsoft 365 Copilot. Together, these capabilities help organizations meet compliance regulations, including those in highly regulated industries.

Advanced endpoint management extends to GCC High and DoD with Microsoft Intune

Bring modern endpoint management to regulated environments

Microsoft Intune Enterprise Application Management, Microsoft Cloud PKI, and Intune Remote Help are coming to Government Community Cloud with High security needs (GCC High), with Enterprise Application Management also being offered to organizations of the Department of Defense (DoD). These capabilities help government and defense organizations simplify application management, modernize certificate lifecycle management, resolve device issues faster, and reduce total cost of ownership, all while operating within their accredited cloud environment.

Stay in the Loop

Microsoft Security continually ships meaningful innovations across our portfolio, as well as research-driven insights and reports for the security community. In the Loop posts are your reliable source of what’s new across Microsoft Security and what it means for your security strategy. Check back for the next drop.

And join us at Microsoft Ignite, from November 17 to 20, 2026, in San Francisco or online, to see Microsoft Security innovations in action and go hands-on with the team that built it.

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 post ​​​​​​​​What’s new in Microsoft Security: September 2026​​ appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Cyberattackers are using agents to automate execution at unprecedented scale. What once required entire teams now requires a single operator and an agent framework.

That shift has exposed a hard truth: security cannot operate at AI speed when protection and operations are built as separate systems. Every handoff, integration, and boundary slows defenders down. Agents inherit that complexity.

For agentic security to work, the industry needs a different model. It needs a modern cyber stack with the breadth to see across the environment and the depth to investigate and act. Security operations and native protection must function as one system. This is the integrated security operations center (ISOC).

Today we are announcing ISOC in Microsoft Defender: a foundation built for agentic security that brings leading solutions for security information and event management (SIEM) and threat protection together. It gives people and agents a shared foundation to see, understand, and act across the environment, without the complexity of operating separate systems.

Built for agentic security

In July 2026, we introduced the end-to-end cyber stack alongside Project Perception, with the focus of delivering the right models, a harness, and specialized agents to help defenders perceive, reason, and act at machine speed. But we are innovating at every layer of the stack, because intelligence and orchestration alone are not enough. Agents depend on the rest of the stack working as one.

They need signals and sensors that provide visibility, context that turns those signals into understanding, and actuators that translate decisions into protection. With ISOC, these layers work in unison, so agents can move beyond isolated tasks and help operate an agentic SOC.

Signals and sensors give the system awareness.

Context turns those signals into understanding.

Actuators turn insights into protective action.

ISOC brings these capabilities together as a foundation, so humans and agents can operate as one system, each contributing what they do best. Agents provide the speed and scale to execute continuously, while people set priorities, apply judgment, and define the outcomes that matter. Together, they empower defenders to keep pace with AI-powered threat actors and achieve better security outcomes.

Integrated protection loop

With ISOC enabling signals, context, and controls to work as one, it breaks the pattern of linear security workflows. The result is an integrated protection loop that continuously turns what defenders learn into stronger pre-breach protection.

Attack disruption in Microsoft Defender shows what this makes possible. Rich telemetry and controls enable the system to detect, predict, and adapt to an attacker while the attack is still unfolding. It disrupts threats in progress and anticipates where attackers may move next. It’s a protection loop that uses exposure insights to strengthen protection in near real-time with threat intelligence focusing the loop on the threats that matter most.

ISOC brings together the capabilities needed to make this loop native, eliminating the burden of assembling, tuning, and maintaining it yourself. And as protection advances, new capabilities can become part of that loop. The result is stronger protection and a different way of working, where practitioners spend less time chasing individual signals and more time applying judgment, setting priorities, and driving security outcomes.

Designed for the practitioner

For too long, practitioners have had to compensate for the boundaries in their security architecture, stitching together signals, rebuilding context, and moving between tools just to get the information and controls needed to act.

ISOC changes their starting point. The capabilities practitioners need to investigate, hunt, automate, manage incidents, understand threats, and take action are brought together and available by default. Instead of organizing their work around the boundaries between tools, teams can organize around the security outcome they are trying to achieve.

And that foundation gets more powerful as autonomy grows. The integrated protection loop can take on more of the continuous work of detecting and defending against threats, while agents help practitioners investigate, reason, and act using the same context and controls already available to them.

There’s no separate agentic layer to assemble or new operating model to stitch together. Practitioners can multiply their expertise where they already work, shifting more of their time from operating the security stack to directing the defense.

The path forward

Security has always been a race between attackers and defenders. AI changes the speed, scale, and economics of that race. The next SOC will not be defined by how many AI features it has, but by whether people and agents can perceive, reason, and act across an environment as one system.

Integrated security operations center (ISOC) in Microsoft Defender is available in preview today. Watch a recording of the full announcement or download the whitepaper: Agentic SOC: The new operating model for continuous defense.

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 post Reimagining the SOC for the agentic era in Microsoft Defender appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

We introduced Secure Now within Microsoft Security Exposure Management in May 2026 to help practitioners prioritize the action they need to take to be prepared for this shift. It provides actionable guidance for strengthening the foundational security needed for AI adoption, with recommendations focused on areas where autonomous attacks can create outsized exposure.

We continue to see evidence that AI is reshaping the threat landscape. These developments reinforce many of the foundational practices we use internally to secure Microsoft, while also expanding our understanding of where organizations need additional visibility, governance, and control. The examples in this blog illustrate how familiar weaknesses are evolving in the AI era and why continuous exposure reduction remains essential.

When AI agents test their boundaries

Recent frontier model-related agentic security disclosures offered early lessons in how autonomous agents may test the boundaries of their instructions and environments.

In an incident disclosed by OpenAI, agents moved beyond their intended isolation, exploited vulnerabilities in shared Hugging Face infrastructure, and reached production systems. In separate incidents disclosed by Anthropic, agents exploited familiar weaknesses, including SQL injection, exposed credentials, weak passwords, and a malicious PyPI package.

Our customers are asking us how they can reduce this risk by governing agent identities and tools, isolating execution, restricting outbound connectivity, monitoring behavior, and defending against increasingly autonomous external cyberthreats, so that an unexpected agent action or exposed weakness do not become a path across the enterprise.

Explore recommended controls for this attack path.

When trusted paths cross attack surfaces

Microsoft Threat Intelligence recently observed Storm-2945, a subcluster of Midnight Blizzard, manipulating DNS and HTTP traffic across hospitality networks in the CaptiveCrunch campaign. Travelers were redirected into two attack paths: device-code phishing through a legitimate Microsoft sign-in page, or fake software updates that delivered malware.

One network interaction could therefore become either cloud identity access or endpoint compromise. The malware could collect multiple categories of host intelligence, including credentials, session tokens, security configurations, and remote-access history.

Identity remains a leading attack surface, and protecting it requires securing the authentication flow as well as the credential. Security leaders can expand phishing-resistant authentication, block device-code flow where it is unnecessary, and constrain legitimate use through Conditional Access and sign-in risk policies. Endpoint protections can disrupt the parallel malware path.

Explore recommended controls for this attack path.

When cyberattackers exploit everyday operations

A third campaign began with attackers impersonating IT support through Microsoft Teams. After persuading a user to grant control through legitimate remote-support software, they used PowerShell to download a malicious Windows Installer (MSI) package, stage a portable Node.js runtime, and establish persistent command-and-control. From that endpoint, the operator mapped Active Directory and attempted to use WinRM to reach dozens of systems, including domain controllers and certificate authorities.

Each step relied on technology common in enterprise environments—a Teams conversation, remote-support software, Windows Installer, a legitimate runtime, and a native administrative protocol—enabling the cyberattacker to move laterally while blending with expected operations.

Security leaders can disrupt that path with phishing-resistant access controls, managed-device requirements, endpoint attack surface-reduction rules, and tighter restrictions on remote-support tools and WinRM.

Explore recommended controls for this attack path.

Security fundamentals work together

Cyberattackers are moving laterally across surfaces, and security fundamentals matter most at the intersections between them. Through the Secure Future Initiative, Microsoft is operationalizing security as a continuous discipline and applying and sharing lessons from strengthening our own environment. Guided by Zero Trust principles—verify explicitly, use least privilege, and assume breach—we will continue to make high-impact protections easier to adopt and enabled by default where appropriate.

Governed identities, well-defined permissions, protected data, and visibility into AI systems and agents provide resilience as organizations accelerate AI adoption. They also give AI-powered security the context and trusted mechanisms needed to help defenders prioritize risk and act faster. Strengthening these foundations reduces exposure today while preparing organizations for what comes next.

On Secure Now—within Microsoft Security Exposure Management—security leaders can now find information on recent threats paired with focused initiatives across security domains. This brings together guidance on recommended controls and enables customers to take relevant actions to continuously strengthen your posture.

Visit Secure Now to understand recent threats, identify areas of focus, and take action.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Security Exposure Management.

FastTrack provides eligible customers with access to technical specialists as an included benefit at no additional cost to help strengthen foundational security controls, reduce exposure to cyberthreats, and prepare for broader AI adoption. Get started now.

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 post From guidance to action: Security fundamentals that materially reduce risk  appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

For five consecutive quarters Microsoft has published email security benchmarking reports to provide greater transparency into real-world protection outcomes. The results have shown strong Microsoft Defender performance across pre-delivery and post-delivery scenarios, while revealing where threats and defenses continue to evolve.

This quarter’s benchmark examines how continuous measurement informs protection across prevention, detection, and adaptation, and how those insights are helping improve customer outcomes.

Key takeaways

• Defender again missed the fewest high-severity threats among the solutions evaluated, about 55% fewer than the next-closest secure email gateway (SEG) vendor.
• Layered security adds the most value in promotional and bulk filtering and works; gains for spam and malicious email remain comparatively modest.

Benchmarking results for SEG vendors

In the latest quarterly SEG comparison from May 2026 through July 2026, Defender missed 221 high-severity threats per 1,000 protected users, 55.4% fewer than the next-closest SEG vendor. The benchmark measures missed threats instead of the total number of malicious emails that were caught and filtered, because catch totals can reflect differences in threat volume and exposure across vendor environments. By normalizing missed threats per 1,000 users we are able to provide a more consistent side-by-side comparison.

If you’ve read our previous blogs, you’ll see that missed threats have increased across multiple reporting periods, including for Microsoft. This aligns with broader trends we’re seeing as AI makes it easier for cyberattackers to gather public information, tailor messages, and create more convincing impersonation attempts. It reinforces the need for protection that continuously adapts.

Benchmarking results for ICES vendors

Effective email detection combines pre-delivery filtering with post-delivery detection and remediation. This benchmark helps customers evaluate where each layer contributes measurable value.

Similarly to previous quarters, integrated cloud email security (ICES) solutions continue adding the most value in promotional and bulk filtering. We saw an improvement in ICES vendor malicious catch at 0.30% versus 0.13% in the last quarter and spam catch going up to 0.52% versus 0.28% compared to last quarter.

Defender caught 92% of post-delivery malicious messages on average during the benchmark period, highlighting how the combination of pre-delivery and post-delivery remediation delivers strong results for customers.

At the same time it’s key to understand that Defender doesn’t treat post-delivery remediation as a point-in-time action after the email was first delivered to the inbox. Even after a message reaches the inbox, new threat intelligence can reveal risks that were not apparent at the time of delivery. Defender continuously reevaluates delivered messages and remediates threats as new indicators, campaign intelligence, and threat signals emerge.

How our benchmarking is helping shape product innovation

The value of benchmarking is what happens after measurement. Insights from customer feedback, threat telemetry, and benchmarking have informed recent Microsoft Defender investments:

• More control over promotional mail: Across multiple benchmarking periods, we observed that ICES solutions often delivered the greatest incremental benefit in filtering promotional and bulk email. The new Promotions folder in Outlook builds on these insights by helping users reduce inbox clutter while keeping legitimate marketing and bulk messages accessible.
• Redesigned machine learning and AI model stack: By analyzing and incorporating natural language processing signals, including message topic, alongside other AI detection signals, Defender can improve detection accuracy. During a consecutive four-week period, Microsoft research observed a roughly two-thirds reduction in false negatives and a nearly one-fifth reduction in false positives for Defender customers.
• Protection for people and AI: We built prompt injection protection to detect and isolate malicious AI instructions in email before delivery—helping protect not only people, but also Copilot, agents, and other AI systems that read and act on inbox content. This innovation demonstrates how we continue evolving our defenses to address the latest cyberattack techniques and stay ahead of emerging threats.

Looking ahead

Since July 2025, our goal has been to bring greater transparency to email security effectiveness. Today, we are using benchmarking to help customers understand how cyberthreats evolve, where defenses add value, and how protection improves over time.

Benchmarking is not simply about demonstrating effectiveness, it is about learning from real-world outcomes and translating those insights into stronger protection. As cyberattackers continue to innovate, we remain committed to sharing evidence, improving our technology, and helping customers stay ahead of emerging cyberthreats.

To explore the latest benchmarking data and learn more about how Defender and ICES partners work together, access the benchmarking site.

Learn more

Learn more about Microsoft Defender.

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 post Improving email security outcomes with real-world Microsoft Defender insights appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Understanding why this trend matters and what it means for security teams is critical to shaping a modern protection strategy. The tactics are the same ones cyberattackers have always refined: urgency, curiosity, and impersonation of something familiar to lower a user’s guard. What has changed is the wrapper. A message about a new model release, a policy update from a familiar AI assistant, or a plugin that promises to make the workday easier is today’s version of the fake invoice or the shipping notification. AI-themed lures deserve attention not because they are a passing trend tied to one product cycle, but because AI remains a genuine source of excitement and urgency for employees and consumers alike, and cyberattackers are exploiting the human instinct to explore what is new, useful, or urgent.

The attack pattern is evolving

Microsoft’s research team recently observed several AI brand campaigns including:

• A ChatGPT-themed phishing kit built to harvest credit card data.
• A Claude-themed campaign that harvested credentials and access tokens through adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) techniques.
• Malvertising for a fake AI Windows plugin that delivered the Vidar stealer.
• Fraudulent DeepSeek installers distributed through GitHub.

In one case, an initial access broker tracked as Storm-3075 used AI-themed malvertising to distribute payloads for multiple downstream actors, a sign of how quickly this tactic is being commoditized across the criminal ecosystem.

What ties these campaigns together is not sophistication in the traditional sense. It is patience and precision in exploiting a moment. Threat actors are capitalizing on anticipated launches and emerging trends, layering multi-stage redirection chains and disposable infrastructure to slip past both users and defenses. That has real implications for security leaders: it means these incidents cannot be evaluated one surface at a time. A single AI-themed lure can begin as an email, become a malicious link, trigger a suspicious download, and end as an identity or endpoint compromise. Organizations that assess each of those as an isolated event are always a step behind. Organizations that connect them see the full shape of the cyberattack, often early enough to stop it.

Turning AI lures into dead ends with Microsoft Defender

In practice, protection starts before the user ever engages with the lure. Microsoft Defender’s anti-phishing policies can help detect spoofing and impersonation attempts, including user and domain impersonation, first-contact messages, mailbox intelligence signals, and other suspicious sender characteristics. For an AI-themed lure, that might look like a fake “Copilot policy update,” a spoofed support notice, or a lookalike domain designed to make a credential collection page feel legitimate.

If the campaign relies on links, Defender’s Safe Links provides URL scanning and detonation during mail flow, plus time-of-click verification when a user selects a link in email, Microsoft Teams, or supported Microsoft 365 apps. That is important when cyberattackers use redirect chains, delayed activation, or links that appear benign at delivery but later resolve to phishing infrastructure, fake sign-in pages, or malicious downloads.

For campaigns that use fake installers, malicious downloads, or weaponized attachments, Safe Attachments adds another layer by detonating attachments in a virtual environment before delivery when policies are configured. For example, if a message promotes a “new AI plugin” but includes a harmful attachment, Safe Attachments can analyze the file for malware, ransomware, or phishing behavior before it reaches the user. If a cyberthreat is identified after delivery, Defender’s post-delivery filtering capabilities help remove malicious content from mailboxes and reduce the window of exposure.

Protect against multi-stage attacks with attack disruption

But AI-powered attacks don’t stop at email. Their objective is to gain the highest level of access possible, using compromised accounts as a foothold to move across identities, devices, and data. When a cyberattack moves beyond the inbox, Defender helps connect the evidence. Signals from email and collaboration tools, endpoints, identities, and software as a service (SaaS) apps are correlated into an attack story so analysts can see whether the same lure led to a clicked link, a downloaded payload, risky sign-in behavior, or endpoint activity.

As cyberattackers expand beyond email to gain broader access across the environment, Defender moves from detection to disruption. For multi-stage, multi-domain attacks like business email compromise or AiTM, Defender’s powerful, built-in response capability, attack disruption, will contain the compromised asset during the attack to prevent further lateral movement while security teams investigate and remediate. Attack disruption contains more than 81,000 compromised user accounts monthly and is now disrupting more than 45,000 AiTM attacks each month.

In a recent case study, Defender disrupted a business email compromise attack within four minutes of the initial activity (Figure 4). While response times may vary by scenario, this case shows the impact of attack disruption on a real cyberthreat. The cyberattacker used a convincing document-sharing lure to trick a user to start a legitimate Microsoft device code sign-in flow, which avoided traditional credential theft techniques. Defender recognized the resulting device code authentication and follow-on activity as suspicious, correlated signals across identity and email telemetry, and disrupted the attack within four minutes before the attacker could establish persistence, create inbox rules, or execute payroll fraud.

The takeaway

AI brands are the new bait, but the underlying lesson is bigger than any single campaign. As cyberattackers continue to exploit the momentum around AI, organizations should expect social engineering to become more targeted, more believable, and more difficult to evaluate in isolation.

The answer is not to treat every new lure as a brand-new category of risk. It is to build a protection model that makes trust harder to exploit across the full attack chain. Microsoft Defender helps organizations do that by connecting prevention, detection, investigation, and response across the attack path, so AI-themed lures are harder to deliver, harder to trust, and harder to turn into broader compromise.

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.

¹AI brands as bait: How threat actors are using the AI hype in social engineering, Microsoft Threat Intelligence. June 8, 2026.

The post Detect and disrupt AI-themed attacks with Microsoft Defender appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Here’s what’s new:

Extend expert-led protection with new capabilities from Microsoft Defender Experts

Microsoft Defender Experts Threat Intelligence delivers expert-led threat intelligence and actionable insights tailored to your geography, industry, and risk profile to help security teams anticipate cyberthreats, assess risk, and take informed action. Microsoft Defender Experts MDR now covers third-party data sources ingested through Microsoft Sentinel. This extends around-the-clock managed detection and response and threat hunting to deliver protection across both Microsoft native and third-party data sources, including Palo Alto Networks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Okta, and more. This coverage is available through Microsoft Defender Experts MDR P2.

Strengthen identity foundations for the AI era with Microsoft Entra

Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance brings an organization’s tenants into a single view to help address security gaps and blind spots. Centralized policies and cross-tenant delegated administration of multi-tenant environments help reduce shadow-tenant risk, configure policies, monitor configuration drift, and strengthen identity foundations for AI-powered operations.

Accelerate your move to cloud-native endpoint management with Microsoft Intune

Windows Autopilot device association lets admins link devices to their tenant and configure pre-enrollment experiences. Admins can optimize the out-of-box experience and rename devices, reducing onboarding friction.

Windows Unattended Support with Remote Sign-In allows IT and support staff to sign in to devices remotely, without involving the user. Role-based permissions, compliance checks, and session auditing are built in.

Speed up Microsoft Copilot readiness with scalable Microsoft Purview auto-labeling

Auto-labeling policies in Microsoft Purview now process up to 500,000 SharePoint and OneDrive files per day, up from 100,000. This increased limit helps organizations label and protect more content, extending data protection coverage. Because sensitivity labels help apply key security controls, including encryption and data loss prevention (DLP), organizations can extend data protection across more content and support their Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption efforts.

Contain agents with Microsoft Security Exposure Management

New Secure Now guidance for agentic containment helps organizations put controls in place before autonomous agent action expands across the environment. The recommendations focus on constraining agent-initiated actions that occur without explicit user approval, and hardening attack surfaces, limiting impact, governing identities and permissions, and increasing visibility across the environment.

Stay in the Loop

Microsoft Security is focused on delivering innovations across our portfolio, along with research-driven insights and reports for the security community. In the Loop posts are your reliable source of what’s new across Microsoft Security and what it means for your security strategy. Check back for the next drop.

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 post ​​​​​​What’s new in Microsoft Security: August 2026 appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

We are excited to announce that we have been named a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape: Worldwide MDR/MXDR for the Enterprise Vendor Assessment (Doc #US54792426, July 2026). Read the excerpt here.

Expert-led MDR, built on the Microsoft Defender platform

Microsoft Defender Experts MDR is a round-the-clock, expert-led managed detection and response service that helps security teams triage, investigate, and respond to incidents so they can stop cyberattackers in their tracks and prevent future compromise. Rather than bolting a separate stack of tools and connectors onto your environment, the service operates natively on Microsoft Defender, with built-in protection across endpoints, identities, email, cloud apps, cloud workloads, and network security, as well as around-the-clock proactive threat hunting with Microsoft Defender Experts Hunting.

Because the service is delivered on the same platform it monitors, detection and intelligence improvements reach customers continuously. The insights our experts generate also strengthen protection across the broader Defender ecosystem, so every customer benefits from what we learn defending the next environment.

Threat intelligence at internet scale

Great detection starts with great intelligence. Defender Experts MDR draws on Microsoft’s global threat intelligence: more than 10,000 security researchers and 100 trillion signals analyzed every day across billions of users and millions of organizations.¹ That breadth lets our analysts recognize subtle patterns early, often before a campaign escalates, and respond with higher-confidence attribution than intelligence sourced from any single customer’s telemetry could provide.

AI-accelerated operations, expert-led decisions

Defender Experts MDR also combines advanced AI and generative AI with seasoned human experts. AI filters noise, grades and classifies incidents, and accelerates investigation at machine speed and scale, while our analysts own the outcome. According to the IDC MarketScape, “70% AI-assisted workflows are enabled through automated noise filtering, AI-based grading, and agentic operations while maintaining expert decision-making.” Furthermore, “quantified outcomes noted include 97% AI classification accuracy, 77% malware/phishing agent-investigated, 72% faster resolution combining AI and humans, and 45% autonomous investigations.”

The impact shows up in the work. Over the past year, Defender Experts mitigated 27,000 high-severity incidents, and the team’s threat research now contributes a meaningful share of all Defender detections, enriching protection for customers well beyond the MDR service itself. Throughout, a dedicated security delivery expert and on-demand access to our experts keep customers informed with proactive check-ins, live dashboards, and clear, actionable reporting.

Managed threat hunting, included

Many providers treat proactive threat hunting as a premium add-on. Defender Experts MDR includes it as a core part of the service with Defender Experts Hunting, extending your team with Microsoft experts who continuously look for advanced threats across your environment. These hunts are informed by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Defender telemetry, and human analysis, in order to better identify malicious activity and improve security operations center (SOC) response.

When a threat is found, Defender Expert notifications appear as incidents in the Defender portal with technical context, recommended remediation, and, when needed, access to on-demand support for additional guidance. The work also feeds back into hunter-trained AI and reporting, so customers can see what was investigated, how the activity maps to MITRE tactics, and how threats are categorized by behavior, characteristics, and impact.

Get started

Read the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide MDR/MXDR for the Enterprise 2026 Vendor Assessment excerpt, and visit the Microsoft Defender Experts MDR webpage to see how expert-led, round-the-clock managed detection and response can extend your team, drive SOC efficiency, and help you stay ahead of emerging cyberthreats.

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

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025.

The post Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape for MDR/MXDR for the Enterprise  appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Microsoft has long helped organizations secure their digital estates using Zero Trust principles. That leadership was recently recognized by KuppingerCole analysts, which named Microsoft as the Overall Leader in its Zero Trust Platform Leadership Compass, ranking Microsoft highest for both product and innovation leadership.

As organizations accelerate AI adoption, secure software development becomes more important than ever. That’s why we are expanding the Zero Trust for AI strategy with two major additions: a new AI-focused Zero Trust Assessment experience and a new DevSecOps pillar in the Zero Trust Workshop. Together, they help organizations get ready for AI by assessing exposure, risks, prioritizing remediation, and securing AI-enabled development from source code to deployment.

• Zero Trust Assessment tool updates: New set of assessment checks for AI, Security Operations (SecOps), and Infrastructure.
• Zero Trust Workshop updates: New dedicated pillar focused on Developer Security (DevSecOps) and additional guidance for AI Memory.
• New guidance: New practical guidance for security practitioners and a new e-book titled Zero Trust for AI, rebuilding security controls for autonomous and agentic systems.

This builds directly on the Zero Trust for AI strategy announced at RSA Conference 2026 and moves the conversation from architecture to implementation. If that announcement was about establishing Zero Trust for AI, this one is about operationalizing it: giving security, engineering, and platform teams the specific controls they need to act.

To learn more about our work in applying Zero Trust for AI and agents watch this Microsoft Mechanics video:

New AI pillar in Zero Trust Assessment tool

The Zero Trust Assessment provides an automated view of security posture by evaluating tenant configuration and activity signals across the environment and translating those findings into prioritized recommendations. As organizations adopt AI agents, Copilots, developer tools, and autonomous workflows, the Assessment helps security and platform teams establish a baseline, measure progress, and identify gaps across both traditional and AI-powered environments. It now includes expanded coverage with new pillars for AI, Security Operations, and Infrastructure (in addition to existing Identity, Devices, Network, and Data pillars), with Zero Trust for AI-focused checks that help organizations evaluate the controls required for secure AI adoption.

Additionally, enhanced reporting delivers both practitioner-level guidance and executive-ready summaries that communicate risk, progress, and next steps. Results map directly into the Zero Trust Workshop’s First, Then, Next framework, transforming assessment findings into a prioritized roadmap for remediation and implementation. Together, the Assessment and Workshop help organizations move from understanding risk to executing a structured plan for continuous improvement across their Zero Trust and AI security journey.

What’s New in the Zero Trust Workshop

AI is fundamentally changing software development. Developers increasingly rely on AI assistants to generate code, recommend packages, create infrastructure configurations, and automate testing. While these capabilities accelerate delivery, they also amplify the consequences of governance gaps, excessive permissions, insecure dependencies, and compromised supply chains.

That is why Microsoft is introducing a new DevSecOps pillar (with 15 control groups and 91 tasks that help teams apply Zero Trust from source code to cloud deployment) in the Zero Trust Workshop. The pillar translates the three Zero Trust principles—verify explicitly, use least privilege, and assume breach—into practical guidance and controls for developer platforms, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, source repositories, dependencies, artifacts, and infrastructure-as-code.

The Zero Trust Workshop also improves the AI pillar to include guidance based on the Microsoft AI Memory framework, helping teams treat memory as a governed security boundary with clear intent, provenance, lifecycle visibility, and user control.

How to run Zero Trust Workshop

The Zero Trust Workshop follows a simple three-step motion: plan the right pillars and stakeholders, run the Zero Trust Assessment to establish a baseline, and use the facilitated workshop to turn findings into a 12- to 24-month roadmap.

Tasks are organized into First, Then, Next phases so teams can start with foundational controls and build momentum. The new DevSecOps pillar also highlights cross-pillar work that strengthens Identity, Infrastructure, and Security Operations, plus four tasks focused directly on AI-assisted development: code governance, tool allowlisting, data protection, and AI and machine learning pipeline supply-chain security.

Get practical guidance in the new Zero Trust for AI e-book

To help organizations navigate this shift, Microsoft recently published Zero Trust for AI: Rebuilding security controls for autonomous and agentic systems, a practical guide that applies Zero Trust principles to AI agents, tools, memory, data, and runtime operations. The e-book provides security leaders, architects, and practitioners with a framework for evaluating AI risks and implementing controls that scale with AI adoption.

Zero Trust for AI e-book

Practical guidance for securing AI systems.

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Knowing what to do is one thing. Knowing how to operationalize it at scale is another. Our patterns and practices provide repeatable, proven approaches to the most complex AI security challenges, much like software design patterns offer reusable solutions to common engineering problems.

The table below highlights our practical recommendations aligned with Zero Trust principles to help practitioners translate strategy into concrete implementation.

How can partners help?

Partners can use the Zero Trust Assessment tool and Workshop to turn broad security interest into a focused, outcome-driven customer engagement. The Assessment tool helps establish a baseline across one or more Zero Trust pillars, including AI and DevSecOps scenarios, so customers can see where they are today and where to prioritize first. The Workshop then translates those findings into an executive summary, prioritized recommendations, and a phased roadmap. For customers, this creates a clear path from risk visibility to practical action plans that partners—as trusted advisors—can help prioritize and execute.

Learn how Microsoft partners deliver the Zero Trust Workshop through Frontier Accelerate for Security: Envisioning and POC.

Customer success stories

Ford Motor Company: Microsoft Security solutions offered Ford a unified, AI-powered platform to detect, address, and prevent cyberthreats across its hybrid environment. Grounded in a Zero Trust architecture, every access request—whether from users, devices, or applications—is continuously verified. This principle guided Ford’s approach to securing its hybrid environment, reinforcing protection before expanding visibility. Read more about how Ford builds trust across global operations.

The Microsoft security stack is more than technology. It contributes to Ford’s business in moving faster against cyberthreats and building a more secure future.”

—Weston Maggetti, Platform Manager, Ford Motor Company

SEB Group: SEB based its Zero Trust journey on identity, deploying Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Defender for Identity. It removed online identity exposure with Windows Hello for passwordless access, and extended protection with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Read more about how SEB implements Zero Trust.

Our Microsoft Security solutions are vital to our Zero Trust journey. That enhanced visibility helps to keep our SaaS (software as a service) landscape as simple as possible so that it’s easier to defend.”

—Ulf Larsson, Security Chief Technology Officer (CTO), SEB Group

Get started

To get started, use the Assessment and Workshop together to turn Zero Trust for AI into a practical implementation plan:

• Use the Zero Trust Assessment tool to establish a baseline and prioritize the Workshop roadmap across Identity, Devices, Data, Infrastructure, and Network.
• Run the Zero Trust Workshop with the new DevSecOps pillar to secure developer platforms, pipelines, code, and artifacts.
• Complement your Zero Trust journey by assessing your posture and acting where attackers strike most. SecureNow, in Microsoft Security Exposure Management, helps you improve security across patching, open-source software, source code, internet-facing assets, and hygiene.

Learn more about Microsoft Security solutions on our website and bookmark the Microsoft Security blog for expert insights on security matters. Follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest cybersecurity news and updates.

The post Advance Zero Trust for AI: New tools and guidance to secure AI agents and DevSecOps appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

What happened?

The investigation revealed a multi-stage intrusion that blended familiar ransomware activity with quieter, more deliberate techniques designed to establish deep and lasting access. DART found that Storm-2603 had been targeting on-premises SharePoint servers since mid-2025, exploiting known vulnerabilities while simultaneously probing for additional entry points through reconnaissance activity—such as requests for sensitive configuration files often used to validate local file inclusion weaknesses. In this case, initial access was likely attempted through a separate vulnerability, with requests for files like win.ini and web.config, indicating probing for local file inclusion. While exploitation wasn’t confirmed, the timing and activity suggest reconnaissance for entry points.

Once inside, the threat actor shifted focus to persistence and control. Using legitimate tools to blend in, they deployed Velociraptor with SYSTEM-level privileges to map the environment, then established multiple remote access channels through Cloudflare tunneling, Zoho Assist, and Secure Shell (SSH) connections configured through Visual Studio Code. Velociraptor, a legitimate forensic and incident response tool, was deployed by the threat actor to map the environment and operate with high-level privileges—blending malicious activity with trusted administrative behavior. Privilege escalation followed, with new local and domain administrator accounts created to maintain access, while defense evasion techniques—including the use of a vulnerable driver to tamper with memory and disable protections—helped reduce their visibility.

As DART correlated activity across the environment, investigators uncovered signs of a second, unrelated threat actor operating in parallel. Malicious dynamic link library (DLL) sideloading and custom backdoors—techniques not associated with Storm-2603—introduced an additional layer of complexity, obscuring attribution and complicating detection. Together, these overlapping activity streams enabled sustained access while masking the full scope of the intrusion.

How did Microsoft respond?

DART moved quickly to contain the active intrusion involving multiple threat actors and stabilize the environment, activating a structured response playbook focused on limiting threat actor impact and restoring control. By correlating telemetry across identities, endpoints, and cloud resources, responders established a unified view of the intrusion, enabling them to detect abnormal behavior, uncover credential misuse, and track threat actor activity as it evolved. Continuous coordination with the customer, including daily briefings, ensured that containment actions were timely, aligned, and effective in reducing further threat actor movement.

At the same time, collaboration with Microsoft Threat Intelligence provided critical context that reshaped the investigation. By connecting incident data with broader intelligence, DART identified two distinct threat actors operating simultaneously within the same environment—each masking the other’s activity and complicating detection. Beyond containment, the team delivered targeted guidance to strengthen the organization’s security posture, helping close visibility gaps and improve resilience against future identity compromise and ransomware-driven attacks.

What can customers do to strengthen their defenses?

This case underscores the importance of closing common gaps across exposure, identity, and visibility. Organizations should prioritize rigorous patching and vulnerability management—especially for internet-facing systems—to reduce the risk of initial access. At the same time, strengthening identity security is critical to limiting threat actor escalation and persistence. At a high level, customers can avoid similar cyberattacks by focusing on ways to:

• Establish broad, continuous visibility:
  Deploy endpoint protection widely and retain telemetry centrally to support detection, investigation, and correlation.
• Monitor and restrict trusted tools:
  Validate and oversee the use of remote access, tunneling, and administrative tools that threat actors may exploit for persistence and lateral movement.
• Prepare for rapid, coordinated response:
  Maintain tested incident response playbooks and ensure teams can quickly isolate compromised users, devices, and access paths to reduce dwell time.

Today’s modern cyberattacks can quickly evolve beyond a single incident-blending tactic, spanning environments, and even involving multiple threat actors operating in parallel. For security teams, the takeaway is clear: isolated signals rarely tell the full story. Organizations that invest in connected telemetry, coordinated response, and operational preparedness will be better positioned to detect adversary activity such as credential abuse and lateral movement earlier, contain active intrusions faster, and limit their overall impact.

What is the Cyberattack Series?

In our Cyberattack Series, customers discover how DART investigates unique and notable attacks. For each cyberattack story, we share:

• How the cyberattack happened.
• How the breach was discovered.
• Microsoft’s investigation and eviction of the threat actor.
• Strategies to avoid similar cyberattacks.

DART is made up of highly skilled investigators, researchers, engineers, and analysts who specialize in handling global security incidents. We’re here for customers with dedicated experts to work with you before, during, and after a cybersecurity incident.

Learn more

To learn more about DART capabilities, please visit our website, or contact your Microsoft account manager or Premier Support contact. To learn more about the cybersecurity incidents described above, including more insights and information on how to protect your own organization, download the full report.

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 post One intrusion, two cyberattackers: Uncovering parallel threat activity appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

In the report, Forrester writes that “Microsoft articulates a compelling vision to build a Frontier approach to security, bringing people and AI together while the platform continuously shields against and disrupts attacks.”

A new frontier for XDR

That recognition reflects how Microsoft sees the next phase of XDR evolution. As cyberattackers use AI to scale and accelerate their campaigns, defenders need more than correlated signals. They need a system that brings together data, people, and workflows so security can operate with the same speed and coordination.  

At Microsoft, XDR is that foundation. It connects signals across identities, endpoints, email, software as a service (SaaS) apps, and cloud workloads into a shared layer of context bringing together the signals, workflows, and actions security runs on. 

That foundation extends directly into how protection and operations are delivered. Microsoft Defender’s native capabilities continuously shield against attacks with built-in, system-level defenses, while embedded agents help triage alerts, hunt for threats, and deliver intelligence in the flow of work. The result is a shift from fragmented response to coordinated, system-level defense—where decisions, actions, and protection move together by default.

Attack disruption is one of the clearest expressions of that vision today. It uses cross-domain signals and AI to stop multi-stage cyberattacks like ransomware and adversary-in-the-middle attacks while they are active and unfolding.

Forrester specifically notes attack disruption in the report, “As well as its roadmap, it (Microsoft) has built unique features, like automatic attack disruption, to help deliver on its vision.”

World-class threat intelligence at the core

Threat intelligence is a brand-new evaluation criterion in this Wave and Microsoft earned the highest possible score. This reflects a broader shift: intelligence is no longer a bolt-on, but fundamental to how modern XDR platforms detect, prioritize, and disrupt cyberattacks.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence is built on a broad vantage point, analyzing 100 trillion signals each day. That intelligence is delivered directly into the analyst experience, which provides context on threat actors: their motivations and tactics appear inside incidents, alongside affected assets, and tied to response actions.

The intelligence is built into detections, attack disruption, hunting, and AI that helps analysts make sense of what they’re seeing. It’s also continuously informed by Microsoft’s global security research teams tracking nation-state actors, ransomware groups, and emerging cyberthreats, which brings frontline insight directly to defenders.

Innovation that reinforces continued leadership

We believe Microsoft’s ranking as a leader in this report is a reflection of the pace of innovation across the Defender portfolio over the past year. Highlights include:

Adaptive defense to contain active attacks: Attack disruption now expands autonomous protection to predict and shield against a threat actor’s next move during active cyberattacks. It acts just in time to defend against common attacker tactics such as group policy objects (GPOs), Safeboot, and identity compromise, with new controls that now include device isolation.

Native protection across cloud, identity, and SIEM: Microsoft delivers differentiated protection across cloud and identity by natively harnessing signals from Azure and Microsoft 365 coverage. Combined with Microsoft Sentinel’s powerful security information and event management (SIEM) and threat hunting capabilities, this foundation goes beyond detection, enabling disruption of attacks directly within the SOC for critical data sources including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Okta, and Proofpoint, fundamentally turning your SIEM into a threat protection solution. 

Microsoft Security Copilot alert triage agent: Security Copilot agents in Defender help security operations center (SOC) teams investigate faster, automate response, and prioritize high-risk cyberthreats. Microsoft recently extended the Security Copilot alert triage agent to cloud and identity, extending assistive and autonomous AI to two of the most critical attack surfaces security teams defend every day. By helping analysts triage alerts faster, surface high-value context, and move more quickly from signal to action, these new capabilities strengthen the SOC where speed and precision matter most. That momentum reinforces that Microsoft received the highest possible scores in both identity detection and cloud detection.

Securing local AI agents: Microsoft recently announced endpoint security for local AI agents at Microsoft Build 2026. Defender helps security teams gain visibility into AI agents running on devices, assess exposure across identities and resources, block malicious activity in real time, and investigate agent activity through Advanced Hunting.

What this recognition means for our customers

Being named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Extended Detection and Response Platforms, Q2 2026 reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to helping defenders stay ahead of modern cyberattacks. We believe this recognition reflects the strength of our vision, the breadth of our protection across identities, endpoints, email, cloud, and applications, and our continued investment in bringing people and AI together in the SOC.

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, we remain focused on helping customers investigate faster, respond more effectively, and strengthen their security operations with an integrated platform built for today’s cyberattacks.

Learn more

• Access the full Forrester Wave™ report to read the full analysis behind Microsoft’s positioning as a Leader.
• Learn more about Microsoft Defender.
• Try Microsoft Defender today with a free trial.

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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