{"id":20623,"date":"2025-10-16T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=20623"},"modified":"2026-06-17T09:19:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T16:19:50","slug":"vuln-ai-our-ai-powered-leap-into-vulnerability-management-at-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/vuln-ai-our-ai-powered-leap-into-vulnerability-management-at-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"Vuln.AI: Our AI-powered leap into vulnerability management at Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In today\u2019s hyperconnected enterprise landscape, vulnerability management is no longer a back-office function\u2014it\u2019s a frontline defense. With thousands of devices from a multitude of vendors, and a relentless stream of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), here at Microsoft we faced a challenge familiar to every IT decision maker: how to scale vulnerability response without scaling cost, complexity, or risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile AI enables amazing capabilities for knowledge workers, it also increases the threat landscape, since bad actors using AI are constantly probing for vulnerabilities. Vuln.AI helps keep Microsoft safe by identifying and accelerating the mitigation of vulnerabilities in our environment.\u201d<\/p>\nBrian Fielder, vice president, Microsoft Digital <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Enter Vuln.AI, an intelligent agentic system developed by our team in Microsoft Digital\u2014the company\u2019s IT organization\u2014to transform how we identify, prioritize, and resolve vulnerabilities across our enterprise network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a company, we detect over 600 million cybersecurity threats every day, according to our latest Digital Defense Report<\/a>. Some of those signals are bad actors probing our internal network and infrastructure looking for unpatched vulnerabilities. Our infrastructure supports over 300,000 employees and vendors, 25,000 network devices, and over 560 buildings across 102 countries. This scale means we face a constant stream of vulnerabilities\u2014each requiring triage, impact analysis, and remediation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile AI enables amazing capabilities for knowledge workers, it also increases the threat landscape, since bad actors using AI are constantly probing for vulnerabilities. Vuln.AI helps keep Microsoft safe by identifying and accelerating the mitigation of vulnerabilities in our environment,\u201d says Brian Fielder, a vice president within Microsoft Digital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Historically, our Infrastructure, Networking, and Tenant team here in Microsoft Digital relied on manual assessments to determine which network devices were impacted by new vulnerabilities. Traditional vulnerability scanning tools generate a lot of false positives and false negatives, and a significant amount of analysis still falls to security engineers, requiring manual validation before any vulnerability impact can be communicated to device owners. These manual methods were time-consuming, error-prone, and reactive\u2014our security engineers were spending hours on each vulnerability, at times missing critical threats or sinking too much time into false alarms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAI\u2019s true power lies in the problem it\u2019s applied to. Start by identifying the most time-consuming or painful task in your organization-then explore how AI can augment or improve it. Begin with a small, targeted enhancement and iterate continuously.\u201d<\/p>\nAnkit Bansal, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n With the vast number of vulnerabilities coming in every day, security engineers needed a scalable way to quickly analyze, prioritize, and respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We already achieved dramatic impact with our AI Ops and Network Infrastructure Copilot<\/a>, which is on track to save us over 11,000 hours of network service management time per year. We built Vuln.AI on top of that investment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Together, these agents are significantly improving our network security operations. The results we\u2019re seeing so far are compelling:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our gains translate to lower operational risk, faster response times, and more resilient infrastructure\u2014critical outcomes for any enterprise navigating today\u2019s threat landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAI\u2019s true power lies in the problem it\u2019s applied to,\u201d says Ankit Bansal, a senior product manager within Microsoft Digital. \u201cStart by identifying the most time-consuming or painful task in your organization-then explore how AI can augment or improve it. Begin with a small, targeted enhancement and iterate continuously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The system continuously ingests our CVE data from our device suppliers\u2019 API feeds and a publicly available database of known cybersecurity vulnerabilities. It correlates that data with device attributes such as its hardware model and OS to identify the potential impact on the network and surface actionable insights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engineers interact with the system via Copilot, Teams, or custom tooling, which allows seamless integration with our network security teams\u2019 daily workflows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We built a hybrid approach in Vuln.AI to guide LLMs through complex security advisories,\u201d says Blaze Kotsenburg, a software engineer in Microsoft Digital. \u201cBy combining structured function calls, templated prompts, and data validation, we keep the model focused on producing reliable, actionable insights for vulnerability mitigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe chose Durable Functions for Vuln.AI because it allowed us to confidently orchestrate complex, stateful research. The reliability and simplicity of the framework meant we could shift our focus to engineering the intelligence behind the agent, especially the prompting strategies used in Vuln.AI\u2019s backend processing.\u201d<\/p>\nMike Lollis, a senior software engineer in Microsoft Digital.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n When it came to building Vuln.AI, we relied heavily on our own technology platforms, including: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe chose Durable Functions for Vuln.AI because it allowed us to confidently orchestrate complex, stateful research,\u201d says Mike Lollis, a senior software engineer in Microsoft Digital. \u201cThe reliability and simplicity of the framework meant we could shift our focus to engineering the intelligence behind the agent, especially the prompting strategies used in Vuln.AI\u2019s backend processing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider a common scenario: a new CVE that affects a network switch has just been published. Vuln.AI\u2019s research agent immediately flags the vulnerability, maps it to potentially affected devices in our network inventory, and pushes the findings to an internal database.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAI is only as good as the data you provide. Much of the success with Vuln.AI came from our dedicated efforts to source comprehensive vulnerability data and device attributes. For effective AI-powered solutions, you really need to invest in a strong data foundation and a strategy for how to integrate into the rest of your infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\nLinda Lee, product manager II, Microsoft Digital<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This data then becomes immediately accessible in our internal tools, where it is validated and approved by security engineers. Following this, network engineers are provided with precise information about their vulnerable devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engineers can prompt Vuln.AI\u2019s interactive agent to instantly retrieve the following information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c12 devices impacted by CVE-2025-XXXX. Would you like me to suggest some next steps for mitigation or remediation?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n With Vuln.AI, network engineers can now begin vulnerability response operations much more quickly\u2014no spreadsheet wrangling and no delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAI is only as good as the data you provide,\u201d says Linda Lee, a product manager II within Microsoft Digital. \u201cMuch of the success with Vuln.AI came from our dedicated efforts to source comprehensive vulnerability data and device attributes. For effective AI-powered solutions, you really need to invest in a strong data foundation and a strategy for how to integrate into the rest of your infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s about automating manual workflows and research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVuln.AI has reduced our triage time by over 50%,\u201d says Vincent Bersagol, a principal security engineer in Microsoft Digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is allowing our engineers to focus on deeper analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe synergy between security and AI engineering has unlocked a new level of precision in vulnerability insights,\u201d Bersagol says. \u201cThis is just the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our journey with AI-powered vulnerability management has only just begun. Looking ahead, our roadmap for Vuln.AI includes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These enhancements will further reduce risk, accelerate response times, and empower engineers to focus on more strategic initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Trust is the foundation of everything we do in Microsoft Digital,\u201d Bansal says. \u201cSecuring our network is essential to upholding that trust. Intelligent solutions like Vuln.AI not only help us stay ahead of emerging threats\u2014they also establish the blueprint for integrating AI more deeply into our security operations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For IT leaders, Vuln.AI offers a blueprint for modern vulnerability management:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a world where every second counts and any threat can be costly, Vuln.AI transforms vulnerability management from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage for Microsoft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Key takeaways<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n As your organization looks for ways to improve security and threat response in a fast-changing landscape, consider the following insights on how AI is reshaping vulnerability management at Microsoft:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Try it out<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Related links<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n In today\u2019s hyperconnected enterprise landscape, vulnerability management is no longer a back-office function\u2014it\u2019s a frontline defense. With thousands of devices from a multitude of vendors, and a relentless stream of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), here at Microsoft we faced a challenge familiar to every IT decision maker: how to scale vulnerability response without scaling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":20625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_hide_featured_on_single":false,"_show_featured_caption_on_single":true,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[383,115,849,689,848],"coauthors":[644],"class_list":["post-20623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-digital","tag-azure-networking","tag-microsoft-azure","tag-network-and-infrastructure","tag-network-security","tag-security-and-risk-management","m-blog-post"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Manual methods can\u2019t keep up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The solution: Vuln.AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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How Vuln.AI works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Vuln.AI in action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The journey ahead<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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