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.

The post Microsoft Build 2026: Securing code, agents, and models across the development lifecycle appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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.

The post Microsoft Build 2026: Securing code, agents, and models across the development lifecycle appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

We are at an inflection point in cybersecurity.

Recent advances in AI model capabilities are changing how vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited. AI models can autonomously discover weaknesses, chain multiple lower-severity issues into working end-to-end exploits, and produce working proof-of-concept code. This significantly compresses the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation.

These changes require organizations to rethink exposure, response, and risk. However, the same capabilities that can give attackers an advantage also create a unique opportunity for defenders. When applied correctly, they can accelerate vulnerability discovery, improve detection engineering, and reduce time to mitigation. We look forward to working together as an industry to use these AI model capabilities as part of enterprise-grade solutions to tilt the balance in favor of defenders.

Partnering with leading model providers

Security has been and remains the top priority at Microsoft. Over the last two years, through our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), we have strengthened our security foundations for this age of AI, in part by using AI to accelerate vulnerability discovery and remediation and help defend against threats. We have also invested in fundamental AI for security research, including the development of open-source industry benchmarks that can be used to evaluate whether models are ready for real-world security work.

As we move forward, we are accelerating this work and partnering with the industry to use leading models, paired with our platforms and expertise, to turn AI-driven discovery into protection at scale.

Through Project Glasswing, Microsoft is working closely with Anthropic and industry partners to test Claude Mythos Preview, identify and mitigate vulnerabilities earlier, and coordinate defensive response. We evaluated Mythos using CTI-REALM, our open-source benchmark for real-world detection engineering tasks, and the results showed substantial improvements relative to prior models.

Microsoft is also evaluating other models. As part of our overall security approach, we continuously evaluate models from multiple providers as they are made available and integrate them into our enterprise-grade security platform. This multi-model approach is intentional as no single model defines our strategy.

Taking action in three fundamental areas

Defenders need to move faster to keep pace with AI-driven threats. We are focusing on three areas to help customers reduce risk and improve resilience.

1. AI-led vulnerability discovery and mitigations to stay current on software

We plan to incorporate advanced AI models, like Claude Mythos Preview, directly into our Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to identify vulnerabilities and develop mitigations and updates. This allows us to discover more issues more quickly across a broader surface area than previous methods and address them earlier in the lifecycle.

AI-assisted discoveries are handled through our existing Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) processes, including Update Tuesday—our predictable and systematic way of distributing updates to customers—and out-of-band updates, where appropriate. Customers using Microsoft platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) cloud services do not need to take any action; mitigations and updates are applied automatically. For customers who deploy Microsoft products on their own infrastructure, whether on-premises or self-hosted, staying current on all security updates is now not only the best practice; it is a fundamental requirement for staying secure against AI exposure.

We will deploy detections to Microsoft Defender, our threat protection solution, when updates are released and share details through the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) partners to help mitigate risk. We are also using advanced AI models to proactively scan select open-source codebases. Identified issues will be addressed through coordinated vulnerability disclosure.

2. AI-ready posture to reduce exposure

Patching, while critical, is not sufficient on its own. We have identified the five dimensions where autonomous AI driven attacks gain disproportionate advantage—patching, open-source software, customer source code, internet-facing assets, and baseline security hygiene.

For each dimension, Microsoft Security Exposure Management provides guidance and capabilities that customers can use to:

• Assess their current state.
• Understand prioritized actions to reduce risk.
• Evaluate “what-if” scenarios before making changes.
• Apply automation to remediate issues at scale.

These capabilities include tools like Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM) for continuous discovery of internet-facing assets, GitHub Advanced Security with CodeQL, Copilot Autofix for open-source and first-party code, and Microsoft Baseline Security Mode (BSM) to apply foundational controls across Exchange, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Office, and Microsoft Entra—with impact simulation before enforcement.

Others in the industry have shared guidance and rightly emphasized the importance of continuous asset discovery and posture management. We are delivering an integrated experience through a new Microsoft Security Exposure Management blade—Secure Now—that combines guidance with the ability to act, so customers proactively reduce their exposure. Secure Now is available today at https://security.microsoft.com/securenow

3. AI-powered solutions to defend at scale

Beyond plans to use advanced AI models directly into our Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), we are separately building new solutions to help customers leverage advanced AI models to improve their security at enterprise scale.

• Rapidly deployed Defender detections developed for AI-discovered vulnerabilities, sim-shipping with corresponding updates to help mitigate risk immediately.
• We have learned through our own testing that model capability to discover potential vulnerabilities is only the beginning. Organizations must also be able to use AI to validate and prioritize based on exploitability and impact, and build the fix. To help we plan to productize a new multi-model AI-driven scanning harness developed internally and make it available to customers to streamline their experience and deliver outcomes more quickly. This solution is expected to be available in preview in June 2026.

Our goal is to ensure findings are actionable. While models are powerful on their own, without prioritization and context, large volumes of results can overwhelm development teams. These new solutions are designed to pair model output with the context and security solutions needed for enterprises to drive security effectiveness at scale.

Get started today

Customers can get started now by reviewing the guidance at https://security.microsoft.com/securenow. Any customer with a Microsoft Entra ID will be able to access the guidance. In addition, Microsoft Security customers will have access to capabilities that enable them to assess their exposure and take action.

We have also mobilized our Customer Success organization to support customers in implementing this guidance.

What’s ahead

This work is ongoing. We will continue to share updates as testing progresses, new models emerge, and new guidance and solutions become available. The threat landscape will continue to evolve, but so will our defenses—and we are committed to ensuring that our customers have the tools, guidance, and partnership they need to stay ahead.

Security is a team sport. The organizations that act on this shift—by staying current on patches, reducing exposure, and leveraging AI-powered security solutions—will be significantly harder to compromise than those that do not. The time to act is now and we look forward to partnering with the industry to build a safer world 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.

The post AI-powered defense for an AI-accelerated threat landscape appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

We are at an inflection point in cybersecurity.

Recent advances in AI model capabilities are changing how vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited. AI models can autonomously discover weaknesses, chain multiple lower-severity issues into working end-to-end exploits, and produce working proof-of-concept code. This significantly compresses the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation.

These changes require organizations to rethink exposure, response, and risk. However, the same capabilities that can give attackers an advantage also create a unique opportunity for defenders. When applied correctly, they can accelerate vulnerability discovery, improve detection engineering, and reduce time to mitigation. We look forward to working together as an industry to use these AI model capabilities as part of enterprise-grade solutions to tilt the balance in favor of defenders.

Partnering with leading model providers

Security has been and remains the top priority at Microsoft. Over the last two years, through our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), we have strengthened our security foundations for this age of AI, in part by using AI to accelerate vulnerability discovery and remediation and help defend against threats. We have also invested in fundamental AI for security research, including the development of open-source industry benchmarks that can be used to evaluate whether models are ready for real-world security work.

As we move forward, we are accelerating this work and partnering with the industry to use leading models, paired with our platforms and expertise, to turn AI-driven discovery into protection at scale.

Through Project Glasswing, Microsoft is working closely with Anthropic and industry partners to test Claude Mythos Preview, identify and mitigate vulnerabilities earlier, and coordinate defensive response. We evaluated Mythos using CTI-REALM, our open-source benchmark for real-world detection engineering tasks, and the results showed substantial improvements relative to prior models.

Microsoft is also evaluating other models. As part of our overall security approach, we continuously evaluate models from multiple providers as they are made available and integrate them into our enterprise-grade security platform. This multi-model approach is intentional as no single model defines our strategy.

Taking action in three fundamental areas

Defenders need to move faster to keep pace with AI-driven threats. We are focusing on three areas to help customers reduce risk and improve resilience.

1. AI-led vulnerability discovery and mitigations to stay current on software

We plan to incorporate advanced AI models, like Claude Mythos Preview, directly into our Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to identify vulnerabilities and develop mitigations and updates. This allows us to discover more issues more quickly across a broader surface area than previous methods and address them earlier in the lifecycle.

AI-assisted discoveries are handled through our existing Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) processes, including Update Tuesday—our predictable and systematic way of distributing updates to customers—and out-of-band updates, where appropriate. Customers using Microsoft platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) cloud services do not need to take any action; mitigations and updates are applied automatically. For customers who deploy Microsoft products on their own infrastructure, whether on-premises or self-hosted, staying current on all security updates is now not only the best practice; it is a fundamental requirement for staying secure against AI exposure.

We will deploy detections to Microsoft Defender, our threat protection solution, when updates are released and share details through the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) partners to help mitigate risk. We are also using advanced AI models to proactively scan select open-source codebases. Identified issues will be addressed through coordinated vulnerability disclosure.

2. AI-ready posture to reduce exposure

Patching, while critical, is not sufficient on its own. We have identified the five dimensions where autonomous AI driven attacks gain disproportionate advantage—patching, open-source software, customer source code, internet-facing assets, and baseline security hygiene.

For each dimension, Microsoft Security Exposure Management provides guidance and capabilities that customers can use to:

• Assess their current state.
• Understand prioritized actions to reduce risk.
• Evaluate “what-if” scenarios before making changes.
• Apply automation to remediate issues at scale.

These capabilities include tools like Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM) for continuous discovery of internet-facing assets, GitHub Advanced Security with CodeQL, Copilot Autofix for open-source and first-party code, and Microsoft Baseline Security Mode (BSM) to apply foundational controls across Exchange, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Office, and Microsoft Entra—with impact simulation before enforcement.

Others in the industry have shared guidance and rightly emphasized the importance of continuous asset discovery and posture management. We are delivering an integrated experience through a new Microsoft Security Exposure Management blade—Secure Now—that combines guidance with the ability to act, so customers proactively reduce their exposure. Secure Now is available today at https://security.microsoft.com/securenow

3. AI-powered solutions to defend at scale

Beyond plans to use advanced AI models directly into our Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), we are separately building new solutions to help customers leverage advanced AI models to improve their security at enterprise scale.

• Rapidly deployed Defender detections developed for AI-discovered vulnerabilities, sim-shipping with corresponding updates to help mitigate risk immediately.
• We have learned through our own testing that model capability to discover potential vulnerabilities is only the beginning. Organizations must also be able to use AI to validate and prioritize based on exploitability and impact, and build the fix. To help we plan to productize a new multi-model AI-driven scanning harness developed internally and make it available to customers to streamline their experience and deliver outcomes more quickly. This solution is expected to be available in preview in June 2026.

Our goal is to ensure findings are actionable. While models are powerful on their own, without prioritization and context, large volumes of results can overwhelm development teams. These new solutions are designed to pair model output with the context and security solutions needed for enterprises to drive security effectiveness at scale.

Get started today

Customers can get started now by reviewing the guidance at https://security.microsoft.com/securenow. Any customer with a Microsoft Entra ID will be able to access the guidance. In addition, Microsoft Security customers will have access to capabilities that enable them to assess their exposure and take action.

We have also mobilized our Customer Success organization to support customers in implementing this guidance.

What’s ahead

This work is ongoing. We will continue to share updates as testing progresses, new models emerge, and new guidance and solutions become available. The threat landscape will continue to evolve, but so will our defenses—and we are committed to ensuring that our customers have the tools, guidance, and partnership they need to stay ahead.

Security is a team sport. The organizations that act on this shift—by staying current on patches, reducing exposure, and leveraging AI-powered security solutions—will be significantly harder to compromise than those that do not. The time to act is now and we look forward to partnering with the industry to build a safer world 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.

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