Across many industries, organizations are unifying security and putting AI agents to work. Security teams are utilizing agents that reason, decide, and act on their behalf, under their governance. At Microsoft, we see this firsthand—more than 80% of the Fortune 500 are already using AI.¹ The promise of this moment is enormous. The responsibility that comes with it is just as significant. This year, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study for our AI-first, end-to-end security platform.

What end-to-end security delivers

Based on in-depth interviews with a survey of 362 customers and 11 security decision-makers using Microsoft Security solutions, the Forrester study revealed the impact of consolidating with Microsoft Security. To model the financial impact, Forrester aggregated insights into a single composite organization—a global business-to-business (B2B) company with 10,000 employees—and constructed a TEI framework that quantifies costs, benefits, and risks. Through its study, Forrester projected that an organization would experience the following over three years.

• Up to 30% reduction in the likelihood of a breach
  Integrated protection across identities, endpoints, data, and infrastructure helps prevent attacks before they succeed.

• Up to 25% reduction in cost to remediate remaining attacks
  End-to-end visibility and coordinated response cut the cost of incidents that do occur.

• Up to 23% reduced annual technology spend
  Consolidating point solutions eliminates redundant tooling and the licensing and services that come with it.

• Up to 32% avoided headcount growth
  Automation, integration, and self-service let teams scale without scaling proportionally.

• 20% lower total cost of ownership—$3.0M in TCO savings
  A unified platform reduces the operating drag of running disconnected tools.

Based on interviews, Forrester’s financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences $30.0 million in benefits over three years versus $13.4 million in costs, resulting in a net present value (NPV) of $16.6 million and an ROI of 124%.

Read the full Forrester TEI study for a complete methodology, assumptions, and detailed financial analysis.

Microsoft Security allows us to deploy modern solutions and be on the leading edge of technologies at enterprise scale.” 

—Senior information security officer, NGO

Value beyond what’s measured

The numbers tell part of the story. What we hear from defenders and what the Forrester study reinforces is that the real value of consolidation shows up in the work itself: faster decisions, less friction, more time spent on the cyberthreats that matter. That’s especially true as AI changes both what cyberattackers can do and what defenders can build.

• Security for AI – New solutions like Microsoft Agent 365 with foundations of Microsoft Security, extend identity, governance, and control to AI agents, so customers can adopt them with confidence. 

• AI for Security – Microsoft Security Copilot, together with Microsoft Defender, Entra and Purview provides AI-assisted insights to help defenders investigate, prioritize, and respond to security incidents.

• Security foundations for Zero Trust – Identity and access controls work consistently across the environment, without stitching together multiple vendors. 

• Simplified hiring and skill development – Building on tools security teams already know makes it easier to recruit, onboard, and grow talent. 

• Improved employee experience – Single sign-on and streamlined device onboarding reduce friction, so people can focus on their work. 

I like Microsoft because it’s the only vendor that provides a single view or a single location for all the security needs: cloud posture, endpoint protection management, data loss prevention. You don’t have that many vendors today that have the Swiss Army Knife-style platform.”

—Regional chief information security officer (CISO), engineering

An evolving playbook for the agentic era

An integrated approach to security is especially important as threat complexity grows—some organizations use an average of 45 security tools,² which can increase operational overhead and limit visibility. At the same time, AI-powered threats are accelerating. As human-led AI agents begin to respond to threats, a connected security model becomes even more critical—extending consistent protections not only to traditional surfaces, but also to emerging layers such as prompts, models, plug-ins, and the agents themselves.

Security as the core primitive of the AI stack

As security systems evolve to meet the demands of the agentic era, we see security differently. In the agentic era, security should be the core primitive of the AI stack—woven into and around every layer, ambient, and autonomous, like the AI it protects.

This principle is why we built our platform end-to-end—from identity and endpoint management to data security, compliance, and threat protection—creating an agentic defense platform that unifies the security operations center (SOC) and uses AI to help defenders operate at machine speed with Microsoft Security Copilot. Microsoft Agent 365 extends on this foundation as the control plane for agents, giving security, IT, and business teams the visibility and controls they need to govern agents at scale. Built to work together natively, these aren’t separate products that happen to integrate. They’re a single platform designed for end-to-end security in the age of AI.

Microsoft has done an excellent job developing security agents such as identity and intelligence… Microsoft is innovating as fast as tech startups in the space.” 

—Global CISO, professional services

Built to secure what comes next

The era of agentic AI doesn’t just raise the stakes for security. It changes what security should be. Alongside our customers and our partners, we’re building the future of security. Read the full Forrester Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Security study. Explore end-to-end Security for AI to learn how to safeguard your AI platforms, apps, and agents with comprehensive solutions.

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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¹Cyber Pulse: An AI Security Report. Microsoft Security Insider.

²Gartner Identifies the Top Cybersecurity Trends for 2025,” March 3, 2025. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-03-03-gartner-identifiesthe-top-cybersecuri…

The post New Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study projects a 124% ROI from unifying with Microsoft Security appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

World Passkey Day is a chance to reflect on progress toward a shared goal: reducing our reliance on passwords and other phishable authentication methods by accelerating passkey adoption. As cyberattacks become more automated and AI-powered, each account is only as secure as its weakest credential. Real progress requires more than adding stronger sign-in options—it requires removing phishable credentials and strengthening common attack paths like recovery flows. In partnership with the FIDO Alliance, Microsoft is committed to advancing passkey adoption through ongoing standards work, active participation in working groups, and other contributions to a passwordless future.

Passwords remain a major source of risk; they’re difficult to manage and easy to steal. Along with weaker forms of multifactor authentication, they’re also highly vulnerable to phishing: AI-powered campaigns drive click-through rates as high as 54%.¹ In response, Microsoft is expanding passkey adoption across our ecosystem. We’re reducing reliance on legacy authentication and strengthening account recovery so it won’t become a backdoor for cyberattackers.

“Instead of vulnerable secrets or potentially identifiable personal information, a passkey uses a private key stored safely on the user’s device. It only works on the website or app for which the user created it, and only if that same user unlocks it with their biometrics or PIN. This means passkey users can’t be tricked into signing in to a malicious lookalike website, and a passkey is unusable unless the user is present and consenting. These are some qualities that make passkeys a ‘phishing-resistant’ form of authentication.”

From Microsoft Digital Defense Report.

Passkey adoption continues to grow industry wide

Passkey adoption is accelerating: FIDO Alliance estimates 5 billion passkeys already in use worldwide.² Across Microsoft’s consumer services, including OneDrive, Xbox, and Copilot, hundreds of millions of users sign in with passkeys every day.

There are many reasons to choose passkeys as the standard authentication method over passwords. Sign-in success rates are significantly higher than with passwords, and exposure to credential-based attacks is significantly lower.³ Organizations and individual users alike prefer the simpler, more secure sign-in experience passkeys offer.⁴

Inside Microsoft, we’ve eliminated weaker authentication methods and rolled out phishing-resistant authentication, covering 99.6% of users and devices in our environment.⁵ It’s made signing in a lot simpler: no codes to enter, no extra prompts to manage, just a straightforward experience for everyone.

Product updates across sign-in and recovery

Across Microsoft, we’ve been steadily building passkey support into every layer of the identity experience from consumer accounts to enterprise access with Microsoft Entra, and from device-based authentication like Windows Hello to Microsoft’s password manager. This work ensures people can create and use passkeys wherever they sign in, with a consistent, phishing-resistant experience across devices, apps, and environments.

To make passkeys more accessible, we’re expanding where and how people can use them:

• Synced passkeys and passkey profiles in Microsoft Entra ID make it easier to scale passwordless sign-in across diverse environments. We’re expanding flexibility in cloud passkey management, including support for larger and more complex policies, and transitioning tenants to a unified passkey profile model.
• Entra passkeys on Windows make it simple for users to create and use device-bound passkeys directly on personal or unmanaged Windows devices using Windows Hello, and will be generally available in late May 2026.
• Passkeys for Microsoft Entra External ID will be generally available late May 2026, so your customer-facing applications can offer a more seamless, consumer-grade sign-in experience.
• Passkey-preferred authentication in Microsoft Entra ID (preview) detects registered methods and prompts the strongest one first. If a passkey is registered, that’s what the user sees—immediately. 
• On the consumer side, with Microsoft Password Manager, users can now save and sync passkeys across devices signed in with their Microsoft account, with support for iOS and Android rolling out soon through Microsoft Edge. 

Account recovery also plays a critical role in maintaining the integrity of identity systems. Historically, it’s been vulnerable to cyberattackers who try to hijack the recovery process, for example by impersonating legitimate users and requesting new credentials.

Microsoft Entra ID account recovery, generally available today, strengthens security for recovery flows by enabling users to regain access to their accounts through a robust identity verification process. Users can regain access after losing all authentication methods by using government-issued ID and biometric face checks. At general availability, we are expanding our identity verification ecosystem with two new partners—1Kosmos and CLEAR1—joining our existing partners Au10tix, IDEMIA, and TrueCredential. 

Removing phishable credentials from user accounts

Strengthening authentication is important, but reducing risk means eliminating phishable credentials entirely. Microsoft is continuing to phase out legacy methods and move users toward phishing-resistant authentication. Starting in January 2027, security questions will be removed as a password reset option in Microsoft Entra ID due to their susceptibility to guessing and social engineering.

The rationale is straightforward: improving strong methods while removing weak ones shrinks the attack surface. This is increasingly urgent as AI agents act on behalf of users. If an identity is compromised, cyberattackers can leverage those agents to access systems, execute workflows, and operate within existing permissions. Organizations need to address this risk quickly.

A more secure and usable future

Last year, Microsoft joined dozens of organizations in taking the Passkey Pledge, a commitment to accelerating the adoption of phishing-resistant authentication and to moving beyond passwords. Since then, we’ve seen meaningful progress, from hundreds of millions of better-protected consumer accounts to large-scale deployments across organizations like our own.

What once felt like a long-term shift is finally gaining real momentum: authentication is becoming simpler, safer, and passwordless.

For a more in-depth perspective on how cyberattackers try to bypass authentication through fallback methods and recovery flows—and how to address those gaps—read our companion post.

Getting started

Organizations that want to strengthen their identity security posture can enable passkeys for their users and extend policy protections across both sign-in and recovery scenarios.

Get started with a phishing-resistant passwordless authentication deployment in Microsoft Entra ID.

Individuals can create and use passkeys for their personal accounts for better security and convenience.

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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¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025.

²FIDO Alliance reports mainstream global usage on World Passkey Day. FIDO Alliance, 2026.

³Synced passkeys and high assurance account recovery, Microsoft Entra blog. December 16, 2025.

⁴FIDO Alliance Champions Widespread Passkey Adoption and a Passwordless Future on World Passkey Day 2025, FIDO News Center. May 1, 2025.

⁵Microsoft Security and Future Initiative (SFI) Progress Report—November 2025.

The post World Passkey Day: Advancing passwordless authentication appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

World Passkey Day is a chance to reflect on progress toward a shared goal: reducing our reliance on passwords and other phishable authentication methods by accelerating passkey adoption. As cyberattacks become more automated and AI-powered, each account is only as secure as its weakest credential. Real progress requires more than adding stronger sign-in options—it requires removing phishable credentials and strengthening common attack paths like recovery flows. In partnership with the FIDO Alliance, Microsoft is committed to advancing passkey adoption through ongoing standards work, active participation in working groups, and other contributions to a passwordless future.

Passwords remain a major source of risk; they’re difficult to manage and easy to steal. Along with weaker forms of multifactor authentication, they’re also highly vulnerable to phishing: AI-powered campaigns drive click-through rates as high as 54%.¹ In response, Microsoft is expanding passkey adoption across our ecosystem. We’re reducing reliance on legacy authentication and strengthening account recovery so it won’t become a backdoor for cyberattackers.

“Instead of vulnerable secrets or potentially identifiable personal information, a passkey uses a private key stored safely on the user’s device. It only works on the website or app for which the user created it, and only if that same user unlocks it with their biometrics or PIN. This means passkey users can’t be tricked into signing in to a malicious lookalike website, and a passkey is unusable unless the user is present and consenting. These are some qualities that make passkeys a ‘phishing-resistant’ form of authentication.”

From Microsoft Digital Defense Report.

Passkey adoption continues to grow industry wide

Passkey adoption is accelerating: FIDO Alliance estimates 5 billion passkeys already in use worldwide.² Across Microsoft’s consumer services, including OneDrive, Xbox, and Copilot, hundreds of millions of users sign in with passkeys every day.

There are many reasons to choose passkeys as the standard authentication method over passwords. Sign-in success rates are significantly higher than with passwords, and exposure to credential-based attacks is significantly lower.³ Organizations and individual users alike prefer the simpler, more secure sign-in experience passkeys offer.⁴

Inside Microsoft, we’ve eliminated weaker authentication methods and rolled out phishing-resistant authentication, covering 99.6% of users and devices in our environment.⁵ It’s made signing in a lot simpler: no codes to enter, no extra prompts to manage, just a straightforward experience for everyone.

Product updates across sign-in and recovery

Across Microsoft, we’ve been steadily building passkey support into every layer of the identity experience from consumer accounts to enterprise access with Microsoft Entra, and from device-based authentication like Windows Hello to Microsoft’s password manager. This work ensures people can create and use passkeys wherever they sign in, with a consistent, phishing-resistant experience across devices, apps, and environments.

To make passkeys more accessible, we’re expanding where and how people can use them:

• Synced passkeys and passkey profiles in Microsoft Entra ID make it easier to scale passwordless sign-in across diverse environments. We’re expanding flexibility in cloud passkey management, including support for larger and more complex policies, and transitioning tenants to a unified passkey profile model.
• Entra passkeys on Windows make it simple for users to create and use device-bound passkeys directly on personal or unmanaged Windows devices using Windows Hello, and will be generally available in late May 2026.
• Passkeys for Microsoft Entra External ID will be generally available late May 2026, so your customer-facing applications can offer a more seamless, consumer-grade sign-in experience.
• Passkey-preferred authentication in Microsoft Entra ID (preview) detects registered methods and prompts the strongest one first. If a passkey is registered, that’s what the user sees—immediately. 
• On the consumer side, with Microsoft Password Manager, users can now save and sync passkeys across devices signed in with their Microsoft account, with support for iOS and Android rolling out soon through Microsoft Edge. 

Account recovery also plays a critical role in maintaining the integrity of identity systems. Historically, it’s been vulnerable to cyberattackers who try to hijack the recovery process, for example by impersonating legitimate users and requesting new credentials.

Microsoft Entra ID account recovery, generally available today, strengthens security for recovery flows by enabling users to regain access to their accounts through a robust identity verification process. Users can regain access after losing all authentication methods by using government-issued ID and biometric face checks. At general availability, we are expanding our identity verification ecosystem with two new partners—1Kosmos and CLEAR1—joining our existing partners Au10tix, IDEMIA, and TrueCredential. 

Removing phishable credentials from user accounts

Strengthening authentication is important, but reducing risk means eliminating phishable credentials entirely. Microsoft is continuing to phase out legacy methods and move users toward phishing-resistant authentication. Starting in January 2027, security questions will be removed as a password reset option in Microsoft Entra ID due to their susceptibility to guessing and social engineering.

The rationale is straightforward: improving strong methods while removing weak ones shrinks the attack surface. This is increasingly urgent as AI agents act on behalf of users. If an identity is compromised, cyberattackers can leverage those agents to access systems, execute workflows, and operate within existing permissions. Organizations need to address this risk quickly.

A more secure and usable future

Last year, Microsoft joined dozens of organizations in taking the Passkey Pledge, a commitment to accelerating the adoption of phishing-resistant authentication and to moving beyond passwords. Since then, we’ve seen meaningful progress, from hundreds of millions of better-protected consumer accounts to large-scale deployments across organizations like our own.

What once felt like a long-term shift is finally gaining real momentum: authentication is becoming simpler, safer, and passwordless.

For a more in-depth perspective on how cyberattackers try to bypass authentication through fallback methods and recovery flows—and how to address those gaps—read our companion post.

Getting started

Organizations that want to strengthen their identity security posture can enable passkeys for their users and extend policy protections across both sign-in and recovery scenarios.

Get started with a phishing-resistant passwordless authentication deployment in Microsoft Entra ID.

Individuals can create and use passkeys for their personal accounts for better security and convenience.

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

---

¹Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025.

²FIDO Alliance reports mainstream global usage on World Passkey Day. FIDO Alliance, 2026.

³Synced passkeys and high assurance account recovery, Microsoft Entra blog. December 16, 2025.

⁴FIDO Alliance Champions Widespread Passkey Adoption and a Passwordless Future on World Passkey Day 2025, FIDO News Center. May 1, 2025.

⁵Microsoft Security and Future Initiative (SFI) Progress Report—November 2025.

The post World Passkey Day: Advancing passwordless authentication appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Next week, RSAC™ Conference celebrates its 35-year anniversary as a forum that brings the security community together to address new challenges and embrace opportunities in our quest to make the world a safer place for all. As we look towards that milestone, agentic AI is reshaping industries rapidly as customers transform to become Frontier Firms—those anchored in intelligence and trust and using agents to elevate human ambition, holistically reimagining their business to achieve their highest aspirations. Our recent research shows that 80% of Fortune 500 companies are already using agents.¹

At the same time, this innovation is happening against a sea change in AI-powered attacks where agents can become “double agents.” And chief information officers (CIOs), chief information security officers (CISOs), and security decision makers are grappling with the resulting security implications: How do they observe, govern, and secure agents? How do they secure their foundations in this new era? How can they use agentic AI to protect their organization and detect and respond to traditional and emerging threats?

The answer starts with trust, and security has always been the root of trust. In this agentic era, security must be woven into, and around, every layer of the AI estate. It must be ambient and autonomous, just like the AI it protects. This is our vision for security as the core primitive of the AI stack.

At RSAC 2026, we are delivering on that vision with new purpose-built capabilities designed to help organizations secure agents, secure their foundations, and defend using agents and experts. Fueled by more than 100 trillion daily signals, Microsoft Security helps protect 1.6 million customers, one billion identities, and 24 billion Copilot interactions.² Read on to learn how we can help you secure agentic AI.

Secure agents

Earlier this month, we announced that Agent 365 will be generally available on May 1. Agent 365—the control plane for agents—gives IT, security, and business teams the visibility and tools they need to observe, secure, and govern agents at scale using the infrastructure you already have and trust. It includes new Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview capabilities to help you secure agent access, prevent data oversharing, and defend against emerging threats.

Agent 365 is included in Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite along with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Entra Suite, and Microsoft 365 E5, which includes many of the advanced Microsoft Security capabilities below to deliver comprehensive protection for your organization.

Secure your foundations

Along with securing agents, we also need to think of securing AI comprehensively. To truly secure agentic AI, we must secure foundations—the systems that agentic AI is built and runs on and the people who are developing and using AI. At RSAC 2026, we are introducing new capabilities to help you gain visibility into risks across your enterprise, secure identities with continuous adaptive access, safeguard sensitive data across AI workflows, and defend against threats at the speed and scale of AI.

Gain visibility into risks across your enterprise

As AI adoption accelerates, so does the need for comprehensive and continuous visibility into AI risks across your environment—from agents to AI apps and services. We are addressing this challenge with new capabilities that give you insight into risks across your enterprise so you know where AI is showing up, how it is being used, and where your exposure to risk may be growing. New capabilities include:

• Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and security teams with unified visibility into AI-related risk across the organization. Now generally available.
• Entra Internet Access Shadow AI Detection uses the network layer to identify previously unknown AI applications and surface unmanaged AI usage that might otherwise go undetected. Generally available March 31.
• Enhanced Intune app inventory provides rich visibility into your app estate installed on devices, including AI-enabled apps, to support targeted remediation of high-risk software. Generally available in May.

Secure identities with continuous, adaptive access

Identity is the foundation of modern security, the most targeted layer in any environment, and the first line of defense. With Microsoft Entra, you can secure access and deliver comprehensive identity security using new capabilities that help you harden your identity infrastructure, improve tenant governance, modernize authentication, and make intelligent access decisions.

• Entra Backup and Recovery strengthens resilience with an automated backup of Entra directory objects to enable rapid recovery in case of accidental data deletion or unauthorized changes. Now available in preview.
• Entra Tenant Governance helps organizations discover unmanaged (shadow) Entra tenants and establish consistent tenant policies and governance in multi-tenant environments. Now available in preview.
• Entra passkey capabilities now include synced passkeys and passkey profiles to enable maximum flexibility for end-users, making it easy to move between devices, while organizations looking for maximum control still have the option of device-bound passkeys. Plus, Entra passkeys are now natively integrated into the Windows Hello experience, making phishing-resistant passkey authentication more seamless on Windows devices. Synced passkeys and passkey profiles are generally available, passkey integration into Windows Hello is in preview. 
• Entra external Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) allows organizations to connect external MFA providers directly with Microsoft Entra so they can leverage pre-existing MFA investments or use highly specialized MFA methods. Now generally available.
• Entra adaptive risk remediation helps users securely regain access without help-desk friction through automatic self-remediation across authentication methods, adapting to where they are in their modern authentication journey. Generally available in April.
• Unified identity security provides end-to-end coverage across identity infrastructure, the identity control plane, and identity threat detection and response (ITDR)—built for rapid response and real-time decisions. The new identity security dashboard in Microsoft Defender highlights the most impactful insights across human and non-human identities to help accelerate response, and the new identity risk score unifies account-level risk signals to deliver a comprehensive view of user risk to inform real-time access decisions and SecOps investigations. Now available in preview.

Safeguard sensitive data across AI workflows

With AI embedded in everyday work, sensitive data increasingly moves through prompts, responses, and grounding flows—often faster than policies can keep up. Security teams need visibility into how AI interacts with data as well as the ability to stop data oversharing and data leakage. Microsoft brings data security directly into the AI control plane, giving organizations clear insight into risk, real-time enforcement at the point of use, and the confidence to enable AI responsibly across the enterprise. New Microsoft Purview capabilities include:

• Expanded Purview data loss prevention for Microsoft 365 Copilot helps block sensitive information such as PII, credit card numbers, and custom data types in prompts from being processed or used for web grounding. Generally available March 31.
• Purview embedded in Copilot Control System provides a unified view of AI‑related data risk directly in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Generally available in April.
• Purview customizable data security reports enable tailored reporting and drilldowns to prioritized data security risks. Available in preview March 31.

Defend against threats across endpoints, cloud, and AI services

Security teams need proactive 24/7 threat protection that disrupts threats early and contains them automatically. Microsoft is extending predictive shielding to proactively limit impact and reduce exposure, expanding our container security capabilities, and introducing network-layer protection against malicious AI prompts.

• Entra Internet Access prompt injection protection helps block malicious AI prompts across apps and agents by enforcing universal network-level policies. Generally available March 31.
• Enhanced Defender for Cloud container security includes binary drift and antimalware prevention to close gaps attackers exploit in containerized environments. Now available in preview.
• Defender for Cloud posture management adds broader coverage and supports Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, delivering security recommendations and compliance insights for newly discovered resources. Available in preview in April.
• Defender predictive shielding dynamically adjusts identity and access policies during active attacks, reducing exposure and limiting impact. Now available in preview.

Defend with agents and experts

To defend in the agentic age, we need agentic defense. This means having an agentic defense platform and security agents embedded directly into the flow of work, augmented by deep human expertise and comprehensive security services when you need them.

Agents built into the flow of security work

Security teams move fastest with targeted help where and when work is happening. As alerts surface and investigations unfold across identities, data, endpoints, and cloud workloads, AI-powered assistance needs to operate alongside defenders. With Security Copilot now included in Microsoft 365 E5 and E7, we are empowering defenders with agents embedded directly into daily security and IT operations that help accelerate response and reduce manual effort so they can focus on what matters most.

New agents available now include:

• Security Analyst Agent in Microsoft Defender helps accelerate threat investigations by providing contextual analysis and guided workflows. Available in preview March 26.
• Security Alert Triage Agent in Microsoft Defender has the capabilities of the phishing triage agent and then extends to cloud and identity to autonomously analyze, classify, prioritize, and resolve repetitive low-value alerts at scale. Available in preview in April.
• Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra enhancements add context-aware recommendations, deeper analysis, and phased rollout to strengthen identity security. Agent generally available, enhancements now available in preview.
• Data Security Posture Agent in Microsoft Purview enhancements include a credential scanning capability that can be used to proactively detect credential exposure in your data. Now available in preview.
• Data Security Triage Agent in Microsoft Purview enhancements include an advanced AI reasoning layer and improved interpretation of custom Sensitive Information Types (SITs), to improve agent outputs during alert triage. Agent generally available, enhancements available in preview March 31.
• Over 15 new partner-built agents extend Security Copilot with additional capabilities, all available in the Security Store.

Scale with an agentic defense platform

To help defenders and agents work together in a more coordinated, intelligence-driven way, Microsoft is expanding Sentinel, the agentic defense platform, to unify context, automate end-to-end workflows, and standardize access, governance, and deployment across security solutions.

• Sentinel data federation powered by Microsoft Fabric investigates external security data in place in Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and Azure Data Lake Storage while preserving governance. Now available in preview.
• Sentinel playbook generator with natural language orchestration helps accelerate investigations and automate complex workflows. Now available in preview.
• Sentinel granular delegated administrator privileges and unified role-based access control enable secure and scaling management for partners and enterprise customers with cross-tenant collaboration. Now available in preview.
• Security Store embedded in Purview and Entra makes it easier to discover and deploy agents directly within existing security experiences. Generally available March 31.
• Sentinel custom graphs powered by Microsoft Fabric enable views unique to your organization of relationships across your environment. Now available in preview.
• Sentinel model context protocol (MCP) entity analyzer helps automate faster with natural language and harnesses the flexibility of code to accelerate responses. Generally available in April.

Strengthen with experts

Even the most mature security organizations face moments that call for deeper partnership—a sophisticated attack, a complex investigation, a situation where seasoned expertise alongside your team makes all the difference. The Microsoft Defender Experts Suite brings together expert-led services—technical advisory, managed extended detection and response (MXDR), and end-to-end proactive and reactive incident response—to help you defend against advanced cyber threats, build long-term resilience, and modernize security operations with confidence.

Apply Zero Trust for AI

Zero Trust has always been built on three principles: verify explicitly, use least privilege, and assume breach. As AI becomes embedded across your entire environment—from the models you build on, to the data they consume, to the agents that act on your behalf—applying those principles has never been more critical. At RSAC 2026, we’re extending our Zero Trust architecture, the full AI lifecycle—from data ingestion and model training to deployment agent behavior. And we’re making it actionable with an updated Zero Trust for AI reference architecture, workshop, assessment tool, and new patterns and practices articles to help you improve your security posture.

See you at RSAC

If you’re joining the global security community in San Francisco for RSAC 2026 Conference, we invite you to connect with us. Join us at our Microsoft Pre-Day event and stop by our booth at the RSAC Conference North Expo (N-5744) to explore our latest innovations across Microsoft Agent 365, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Sentinel, and Microsoft Security Copilot and see firsthand how we can help your organization secure agents, secure your foundation, and help you defend with agents and experts. The future of security is ambient, autonomous, and built for the era of AI. Let’s build it together.

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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¹Based on Microsoft first-party telemetry measuring agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio or Microsoft Agent Builder that were in use during the last 28 days of November 2025.

²Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call

The post Secure agentic AI end-to-end appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Next week, RSAC™ Conference celebrates its 35-year anniversary as a forum that brings the security community together to address new challenges and embrace opportunities in our quest to make the world a safer place for all. As we look towards that milestone, agentic AI is reshaping industries rapidly as customers transform to become Frontier Firms—those anchored in intelligence and trust and using agents to elevate human ambition, holistically reimagining their business to achieve their highest aspirations. Our recent research shows that 80% of Fortune 500 companies are already using agents.¹

At the same time, this innovation is happening against a sea change in AI-powered attacks where agents can become “double agents.” And chief information officers (CIOs), chief information security officers (CISOs), and security decision makers are grappling with the resulting security implications: How do they observe, govern, and secure agents? How do they secure their foundations in this new era? How can they use agentic AI to protect their organization and detect and respond to traditional and emerging threats?

The answer starts with trust, and security has always been the root of trust. In this agentic era, security must be woven into, and around, every layer of the AI estate. It must be ambient and autonomous, just like the AI it protects. This is our vision for security as the core primitive of the AI stack.

At RSAC 2026, we are delivering on that vision with new purpose-built capabilities designed to help organizations secure agents, secure their foundations, and defend using agents and experts. Fueled by more than 100 trillion daily signals, Microsoft Security helps protect 1.6 million customers, one billion identities, and 24 billion Copilot interactions.² Read on to learn how we can help you secure agentic AI.

Secure agents

Earlier this month, we announced that Agent 365 will be generally available on May 1. Agent 365—the control plane for agents—gives IT, security, and business teams the visibility and tools they need to observe, secure, and govern agents at scale using the infrastructure you already have and trust. It includes new Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Purview capabilities to help you secure agent access, prevent data oversharing, and defend against emerging threats.

Agent 365 is included in Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite along with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Entra Suite, and Microsoft 365 E5, which includes many of the advanced Microsoft Security capabilities below to deliver comprehensive protection for your organization.

Secure your foundations

Along with securing agents, we also need to think of securing AI comprehensively. To truly secure agentic AI, we must secure foundations—the systems that agentic AI is built and runs on and the people who are developing and using AI. At RSAC 2026, we are introducing new capabilities to help you gain visibility into risks across your enterprise, secure identities with continuous adaptive access, safeguard sensitive data across AI workflows, and defend against threats at the speed and scale of AI.

Gain visibility into risks across your enterprise

As AI adoption accelerates, so does the need for comprehensive and continuous visibility into AI risks across your environment—from agents to AI apps and services. We are addressing this challenge with new capabilities that give you insight into risks across your enterprise so you know where AI is showing up, how it is being used, and where your exposure to risk may be growing. New capabilities include:

• Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and security teams with unified visibility into AI-related risk across the organization. Now generally available.
• Entra Internet Access Shadow AI Detection uses the network layer to identify previously unknown AI applications and surface unmanaged AI usage that might otherwise go undetected. Generally available March 31.
• Enhanced Intune app inventory provides rich visibility into your app estate installed on devices, including AI-enabled apps, to support targeted remediation of high-risk software. Generally available in May.

Secure identities with continuous, adaptive access

Identity is the foundation of modern security, the most targeted layer in any environment, and the first line of defense. With Microsoft Entra, you can secure access and deliver comprehensive identity security using new capabilities that help you harden your identity infrastructure, improve tenant governance, modernize authentication, and make intelligent access decisions.

• Entra Backup and Recovery strengthens resilience with an automated backup of Entra directory objects to enable rapid recovery in case of accidental data deletion or unauthorized changes. Now available in preview.
• Entra Tenant Governance helps organizations discover unmanaged (shadow) Entra tenants and establish consistent tenant policies and governance in multi-tenant environments. Now available in preview.
• Entra passkey capabilities now include synced passkeys and passkey profiles to enable maximum flexibility for end-users, making it easy to move between devices, while organizations looking for maximum control still have the option of device-bound passkeys. Plus, Entra passkeys are now natively integrated into the Windows Hello experience, making phishing-resistant passkey authentication more seamless on Windows devices. Synced passkeys and passkey profiles are generally available, passkey integration into Windows Hello is in preview. 
• Entra external Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) allows organizations to connect external MFA providers directly with Microsoft Entra so they can leverage pre-existing MFA investments or use highly specialized MFA methods. Now generally available.
• Entra adaptive risk remediation helps users securely regain access without help-desk friction through automatic self-remediation across authentication methods, adapting to where they are in their modern authentication journey. Generally available in April.
• Unified identity security provides end-to-end coverage across identity infrastructure, the identity control plane, and identity threat detection and response (ITDR)—built for rapid response and real-time decisions. The new identity security dashboard in Microsoft Defender highlights the most impactful insights across human and non-human identities to help accelerate response, and the new identity risk score unifies account-level risk signals to deliver a comprehensive view of user risk to inform real-time access decisions and SecOps investigations. Now available in preview.

Safeguard sensitive data across AI workflows

With AI embedded in everyday work, sensitive data increasingly moves through prompts, responses, and grounding flows—often faster than policies can keep up. Security teams need visibility into how AI interacts with data as well as the ability to stop data oversharing and data leakage. Microsoft brings data security directly into the AI control plane, giving organizations clear insight into risk, real-time enforcement at the point of use, and the confidence to enable AI responsibly across the enterprise. New Microsoft Purview capabilities include:

• Expanded Purview data loss prevention for Microsoft 365 Copilot helps block sensitive information such as PII, credit card numbers, and custom data types in prompts from being processed or used for web grounding. Generally available March 31.
• Purview embedded in Copilot Control System provides a unified view of AI‑related data risk directly in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Generally available in April.
• Purview customizable data security reports enable tailored reporting and drilldowns to prioritized data security risks. Available in preview March 31.

Defend against threats across endpoints, cloud, and AI services

Security teams need proactive 24/7 threat protection that disrupts threats early and contains them automatically. Microsoft is extending predictive shielding to proactively limit impact and reduce exposure, expanding our container security capabilities, and introducing network-layer protection against malicious AI prompts.

• Entra Internet Access prompt injection protection helps block malicious AI prompts across apps and agents by enforcing universal network-level policies. Generally available March 31.
• Enhanced Defender for Cloud container security includes binary drift and antimalware prevention to close gaps attackers exploit in containerized environments. Now available in preview.
• Defender for Cloud posture management adds broader coverage and supports Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, delivering security recommendations and compliance insights for newly discovered resources. Available in preview in April.
• Defender predictive shielding dynamically adjusts identity and access policies during active attacks, reducing exposure and limiting impact. Now available in preview.

Defend with agents and experts

To defend in the agentic age, we need agentic defense. This means having an agentic defense platform and security agents embedded directly into the flow of work, augmented by deep human expertise and comprehensive security services when you need them.

Agents built into the flow of security work

Security teams move fastest with targeted help where and when work is happening. As alerts surface and investigations unfold across identities, data, endpoints, and cloud workloads, AI-powered assistance needs to operate alongside defenders. With Security Copilot now included in Microsoft 365 E5 and E7, we are empowering defenders with agents embedded directly into daily security and IT operations that help accelerate response and reduce manual effort so they can focus on what matters most.

New agents available now include:

• Security Analyst Agent in Microsoft Defender helps accelerate threat investigations by providing contextual analysis and guided workflows. Available in preview March 26.
• Security Alert Triage Agent in Microsoft Defender has the capabilities of the phishing triage agent and then extends to cloud and identity to autonomously analyze, classify, prioritize, and resolve repetitive low-value alerts at scale. Available in preview in April.
• Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra enhancements add context-aware recommendations, deeper analysis, and phased rollout to strengthen identity security. Agent generally available, enhancements now available in preview.
• Data Security Posture Agent in Microsoft Purview enhancements include a credential scanning capability that can be used to proactively detect credential exposure in your data. Now available in preview.
• Data Security Triage Agent in Microsoft Purview enhancements include an advanced AI reasoning layer and improved interpretation of custom Sensitive Information Types (SITs), to improve agent outputs during alert triage. Agent generally available, enhancements available in preview March 31.
• Over 15 new partner-built agents extend Security Copilot with additional capabilities, all available in the Security Store.

Scale with an agentic defense platform

To help defenders and agents work together in a more coordinated, intelligence-driven way, Microsoft is expanding Sentinel, the agentic defense platform, to unify context, automate end-to-end workflows, and standardize access, governance, and deployment across security solutions.

• Sentinel data federation powered by Microsoft Fabric investigates external security data in place in Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and Azure Data Lake Storage while preserving governance. Now available in preview.
• Sentinel playbook generator with natural language orchestration helps accelerate investigations and automate complex workflows. Now available in preview.
• Sentinel granular delegated administrator privileges and unified role-based access control enable secure and scaling management for partners and enterprise customers with cross-tenant collaboration. Now available in preview.
• Security Store embedded in Purview and Entra makes it easier to discover and deploy agents directly within existing security experiences. Generally available March 31.
• Sentinel custom graphs powered by Microsoft Fabric enable views unique to your organization of relationships across your environment. Now available in preview.
• Sentinel model context protocol (MCP) entity analyzer helps automate faster with natural language and harnesses the flexibility of code to accelerate responses. Generally available in April.

Strengthen with experts

Even the most mature security organizations face moments that call for deeper partnership—a sophisticated attack, a complex investigation, a situation where seasoned expertise alongside your team makes all the difference. The Microsoft Defender Experts Suite brings together expert-led services—technical advisory, managed extended detection and response (MXDR), and end-to-end proactive and reactive incident response—to help you defend against advanced cyber threats, build long-term resilience, and modernize security operations with confidence.

Apply Zero Trust for AI

Zero Trust has always been built on three principles: verify explicitly, use least privilege, and assume breach. As AI becomes embedded across your entire environment—from the models you build on, to the data they consume, to the agents that act on your behalf—applying those principles has never been more critical. At RSAC 2026, we’re extending our Zero Trust architecture, the full AI lifecycle—from data ingestion and model training to deployment agent behavior. And we’re making it actionable with an updated Zero Trust for AI reference architecture, workshop, assessment tool, and new patterns and practices articles to help you improve your security posture.

See you at RSAC

If you’re joining the global security community in San Francisco for RSAC 2026 Conference, we invite you to connect with us. Join us at our Microsoft Pre-Day event and stop by our booth at the RSAC Conference North Expo (N-5744) to explore our latest innovations across Microsoft Agent 365, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Sentinel, and Microsoft Security Copilot and see firsthand how we can help your organization secure agents, secure your foundation, and help you defend with agents and experts. The future of security is ambient, autonomous, and built for the era of AI. Let’s build it together.

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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¹Based on Microsoft first-party telemetry measuring agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio or Microsoft Agent Builder that were in use during the last 28 days of November 2025.

²Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call

The post Secure agentic AI end-to-end appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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

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

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

Agent 365—the control plane for agents

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

Here is what that looks like in practice:

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

—Aaron Reich, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Avanade

Key Agent 365 capabilities include:

Observability for every role

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

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

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

Secure and govern agent access

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

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

Prevent data oversharing and ensure agent compliance

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

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

Defend agents against emerging cyberthreats

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

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

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

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

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

Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite

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

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

End-to-end security for the agentic era

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

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

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

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¹Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call.

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

Women’s History Month—and International Women’s Day on March 8, 2026—always gives me pause for reflection. It’s a moment to think about how far we’ve come and think about who we choose to uplift as we look ahead.

Throughout my career, I’ve been inspired by extraordinary women leaders—trailblazers who broke barriers, opened doors, and reshaped what leadership in technology looks like. But today, I want to shine a light on another group that inspires me just as deeply: women early in their careers—the builders, learners, and question-askers who are defining the future of cybersecurity and developing their skills in the era of AI.

These women are entering the field at a moment of unprecedented complexity. Cyberthreats are accelerating. AI is reshaping how we defend, detect, and respond. And the stakes—for trust, safety, and resilience—have never been higher.

That’s exactly why it has never been more critical to have a wide range of experiences and perspectives in our defender community.

Why diversity of perspectives is not optional in cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is fundamentally about understanding people—how they behave, how they make decisions, how systems can be misused, and where harm can occur. That’s why diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and people is a security imperative.

The ISACA paper titled “The Value of Diversity and Inclusion in Cybersecurity” concludes that cybersecurity teams lacking diversity are at greater risk of engaging in limited threat modeling, exhibiting reduced innovation, and making less robust decisions in complex security environments. At Microsoft Security, we recognize that the cyberthreats we encounter are as varied and multifaceted as humanity itself.

To stay ahead, our teams must reflect that diversity across gender, background, culture, discipline, and lived experience.

When teams bring different perspectives to the table,

• They ask better questions;
• They surface risks earlier;
• They design systems that work for more people;
• And they build security that is resilient by design.

The power of women early in career and beyond

Women early in their career bring something incredibly powerful to cybersecurity and AI: fresh perspective paired with fearless curiosity. Women bring empathy, clarity, systems thinking, and collaborative leadership that directly strengthen our ability to detect cyberthreats, understand human behavior, and build secure products that work for everyone.

This makes me think of my valued friend and colleague, Lauren Buitta, who is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Girl Security. Lauren has been a tireless advocate for providing women early in career—especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, with the skills and confidence needed to enter security careers. She often says, “Security isn’t just a discipline—it’s empowerment through knowledge.” That philosophy extends to Girl Security’s work preparing the next generation to navigate and lead in an AI-powered world. Her efforts show us that nurturing curiosity early on can have lasting effects throughout life.

They challenge assumptions that may no longer hold. They ask “why” before accepting “how.” They’re often the first to notice gaps—in data, in design, in who is represented and who is missing. Supporting women at this stage isn’t just about equity. It’s about strengthening the future of security itself. These actions build a stronger, more resilient security ecosystem.

Building and cultivating pathways for the next generation

Investing in women early in their cybersecurity and AI security careers is essential. Early access to education, opportunity, and confidence building experiences helps more women see themselves in this field—and choose to stay.

But if we stop there, we shouldn’t be surprised when the numbers don’t move.  In fact, independent global analyses from the Global Cybersecurity Forum and Boston Consulting Group show that women represent just 24% of the cybersecurity workforce worldwide—a figure reinforced by LinkedIn’s real-time labor market data. What I’ve realized is this: To change outcomes, we have to cultivate women throughout their careers—from first exposure to technical mastery, from early roles to leadership, and from individual contributor to decisionmaker. Otherwise, we’ll continue to bring women into the field without creating the conditions that allow them to grow, advance, and remain.

That means pairing early career investment with sustained support, inclusive cultures, and everyday actions that reinforce belonging and opportunity over time.

Here are meaningful steps we can all take—not just to widen the pipeline, but to strengthen it end to end:

1. Share stories from a diverse set of role models at every career stage.
Representation fuels imagination. When women early in career see themselves reflected in cybersecurity, they’re more likely to enter the field. When women midcareer and in senior roles see paths forward, they’re more likely to stay and lead.

2. Reevaluate job descriptions at entry and beyond.
Rigid expectations or narrow definitions of technical expertise discourage qualified candidates from applying, and can also limit progression into advanced or leadership roles.

3. Invest in inclusive training and early career programs and sustain learning over time.
Accessible, hands-on learning builds confidence early. Continued upskilling, reskilling, and leadership development ensure women can evolve alongside rapidly changing security and AI technologies.

4. Volunteer with organizations driving cybersecurity and AI education.
Groups like Girl Security and Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) are changing outcomes for thousands of girls and women. Your time, mentorship, or sponsorship helps build momentum early—and reinforces pathways later. I welcome you to join Nicole Ford, Vice President Customer Security Officer at Microsoft, who will be hosting a leadership lunch at the WiCyS conference to discuss cultivating leaders for the future and though advocacy and sponsorship.

5. Partner with community groups offering mentorship and sponsorship opportunities.
Mentorship is one of the strongest predictors of early career success. Sponsorship—advocacy that opens doors to stretch roles, visibility, and advancement—is critical for long term progression.

6. Be an ally every day across the full career journey.
Introduce emerging talent to your networks. Encourage them to speak up. Create space for them to lead. Advocate for their ideas in rooms they aren’t in yet—especially as stakes and visibility increase.

Our commitment—and our opportunity

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. That starts by ensuring the next generation of cybersecurity and AI security professionals has equitable access to opportunity, education, and belonging.

This Women’s History Month, let’s celebrate not only the women who have led the way — but the women who are just getting started.

They’re actively shaping security today, not just influencing its future. Security is a team sport and we need everyone in this team because together, we can build a safer, more inclusive digital future for all.

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

The post Women’s History Month: Encouraging women in cybersecurity at every career stage appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

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

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

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

Agent 365—the control plane for agents

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

Here is what that looks like in practice:

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

—Aaron Reich, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Avanade

Key Agent 365 capabilities include:

Observability for every role

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

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

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

Secure and govern agent access

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

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

Prevent data oversharing and ensure agent compliance

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

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

Defend agents against emerging cyberthreats

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

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

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

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

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

Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite

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

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

End-to-end security for the agentic era

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

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

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

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¹Microsoft Fiscal Year 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call.

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Women’s History Month—and International Women’s Day on March 8, 2026—always gives me pause for reflection. It’s a moment to think about how far we’ve come and think about who we choose to uplift as we look ahead.

Throughout my career, I’ve been inspired by extraordinary women leaders—trailblazers who broke barriers, opened doors, and reshaped what leadership in technology looks like. But today, I want to shine a light on another group that inspires me just as deeply: women early in their careers—the builders, learners, and question-askers who are defining the future of cybersecurity and developing their skills in the era of AI.

These women are entering the field at a moment of unprecedented complexity. Cyberthreats are accelerating. AI is reshaping how we defend, detect, and respond. And the stakes—for trust, safety, and resilience—have never been higher.

That’s exactly why it has never been more critical to have a wide range of experiences and perspectives in our defender community.

Why diversity of perspectives is not optional in cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is fundamentally about understanding people—how they behave, how they make decisions, how systems can be misused, and where harm can occur. That’s why diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and people is a security imperative.

The ISACA paper titled “The Value of Diversity and Inclusion in Cybersecurity” concludes that cybersecurity teams lacking diversity are at greater risk of engaging in limited threat modeling, exhibiting reduced innovation, and making less robust decisions in complex security environments. At Microsoft Security, we recognize that the cyberthreats we encounter are as varied and multifaceted as humanity itself.

To stay ahead, our teams must reflect that diversity across gender, background, culture, discipline, and lived experience.

When teams bring different perspectives to the table,

• They ask better questions;
• They surface risks earlier;
• They design systems that work for more people;
• And they build security that is resilient by design.

The power of women early in career and beyond

Women early in their career bring something incredibly powerful to cybersecurity and AI: fresh perspective paired with fearless curiosity. Women bring empathy, clarity, systems thinking, and collaborative leadership that directly strengthen our ability to detect cyberthreats, understand human behavior, and build secure products that work for everyone.

This makes me think of my valued friend and colleague, Lauren Buitta, who is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Girl Security. Lauren has been a tireless advocate for providing women early in career—especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, with the skills and confidence needed to enter security careers. She often says, “Security isn’t just a discipline—it’s empowerment through knowledge.” That philosophy extends to Girl Security’s work preparing the next generation to navigate and lead in an AI-powered world. Her efforts show us that nurturing curiosity early on can have lasting effects throughout life.

They challenge assumptions that may no longer hold. They ask “why” before accepting “how.” They’re often the first to notice gaps—in data, in design, in who is represented and who is missing. Supporting women at this stage isn’t just about equity. It’s about strengthening the future of security itself. These actions build a stronger, more resilient security ecosystem.

Building and cultivating pathways for the next generation

Investing in women early in their cybersecurity and AI security careers is essential. Early access to education, opportunity, and confidence building experiences helps more women see themselves in this field—and choose to stay.

But if we stop there, we shouldn’t be surprised when the numbers don’t move.  In fact, independent global analyses from the Global Cybersecurity Forum and Boston Consulting Group show that women represent just 24% of the cybersecurity workforce worldwide—a figure reinforced by LinkedIn’s real-time labor market data. What I’ve realized is this: To change outcomes, we have to cultivate women throughout their careers—from first exposure to technical mastery, from early roles to leadership, and from individual contributor to decisionmaker. Otherwise, we’ll continue to bring women into the field without creating the conditions that allow them to grow, advance, and remain.

That means pairing early career investment with sustained support, inclusive cultures, and everyday actions that reinforce belonging and opportunity over time.

Here are meaningful steps we can all take—not just to widen the pipeline, but to strengthen it end to end:

1. Share stories from a diverse set of role models at every career stage.
Representation fuels imagination. When women early in career see themselves reflected in cybersecurity, they’re more likely to enter the field. When women midcareer and in senior roles see paths forward, they’re more likely to stay and lead.

2. Reevaluate job descriptions at entry and beyond.
Rigid expectations or narrow definitions of technical expertise discourage qualified candidates from applying, and can also limit progression into advanced or leadership roles.

3. Invest in inclusive training and early career programs and sustain learning over time.
Accessible, hands-on learning builds confidence early. Continued upskilling, reskilling, and leadership development ensure women can evolve alongside rapidly changing security and AI technologies.

4. Volunteer with organizations driving cybersecurity and AI education.
Groups like Girl Security and Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) are changing outcomes for thousands of girls and women. Your time, mentorship, or sponsorship helps build momentum early—and reinforces pathways later. I welcome you to join Nicole Ford, Vice President Customer Security Officer at Microsoft, who will be hosting a leadership lunch at the WiCyS conference to discuss cultivating leaders for the future and though advocacy and sponsorship.

5. Partner with community groups offering mentorship and sponsorship opportunities.
Mentorship is one of the strongest predictors of early career success. Sponsorship—advocacy that opens doors to stretch roles, visibility, and advancement—is critical for long term progression.

6. Be an ally every day across the full career journey.
Introduce emerging talent to your networks. Encourage them to speak up. Create space for them to lead. Advocate for their ideas in rooms they aren’t in yet—especially as stakes and visibility increase.

Our commitment—and our opportunity

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. That starts by ensuring the next generation of cybersecurity and AI security professionals has equitable access to opportunity, education, and belonging.

This Women’s History Month, let’s celebrate not only the women who have led the way — but the women who are just getting started.

They’re actively shaping security today, not just influencing its future. Security is a team sport and we need everyone in this team because together, we can build a safer, more inclusive digital future for all.

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

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