Top 5

  1. Send-from-alias GA in Exchange Online: Users can now send from any proxy address on their mailbox, not just the primary SMTP address. This closes a long-standing gap that forced workarounds like shared mailboxes or send-as delegation for alias-based identities. Review which mailboxes have proxy addresses that shouldn’t be exposed as sender addresses and confirm your DLP/transport rules account for the expanded sender surface.

  2. Purview DLP policies for Copilot grounding now GA: Two new Purview DLP policies ship this week: one restricts Copilot from grounding responses in external email (reducing prompt injection risk), and a second blocks sensitive data types from leaking into Copilot’s external web search queries. Both are actionable now and address real attack surface created by Copilot’s retrieval behavior. If you haven’t audited your Copilot DLP posture, these policies are the place to start.

  3. Project Perception multi-agent security defense GA: Microsoft Defender’s Project Perception orchestrates red, blue, and green AI agent teams to validate attacker reachability, generate KQL detections, harden posture, and push tested code fixes in minutes. The human-approval checkpoint before agent execution and the MCP plug-in for terminal-based management are the two details worth evaluating for your SOC workflows.

  4. Windows Update certificate rotation deadline: May and June 2027: Certificates used to establish trust with Windows Update servers expire May 17 and June 19, 2027. Devices that haven’t been updated before then will lose connectivity to Windows Update. Start identifying devices that are unlikely to receive updates naturally before those dates, particularly offline, air-gapped, or long-deferred endpoints.

  5. Entra ID Agent ID lifecycle policies now documented: Microsoft has published new documentation covering lifecycle policies for Entra Agent IDs, including sign-in health investigation for both interactive and autonomous agent sign-ins. As AI agents accumulate Entra identities in your tenant, these policies are the control plane for managing their access lifecycle. Worth reading before your agent footprint grows further.

Identity & Access

  • Post-quantum authentication: Why organizations should start testing certificate ecosystems now [GA] - Your existing PKI and certificate-dependent authentication flows will need to be PQC-compatible before quantum threats become practical, and the migration complexity means starting now is the right call. Microsoft’s PQC TLS Pilot Program gives organizations a structured path to test readiness without disrupting production. Identify your certificate dependencies and consider enrolling in the pilot.

  • 3 lessons from frontier AI vulnerability research [GA] - Microsoft’s FORGE Lab has extended AI-assisted vulnerability discovery from Windows to the Linux kernel, surfacing lessons relevant to any team running large-scale security research. The methodological takeaways around scaling, signal-to-noise, and human-AI collaboration are worth reviewing if your red team or AppSec function is evaluating AI tooling.

Endpoint & Device Management

  • Prepare for Windows Update certificate rotation in 2027 [GA] - Certificates anchoring trust for Windows Update connections expire May 17 and June 19, 2027; devices that miss the update carrying new certificates will lose Windows Update connectivity entirely. Microsoft is handling this automatically for most managed devices, but you need to identify exceptions: air-gapped endpoints, devices behind strict egress controls, and anything that hasn’t taken updates recently. Audit your device population now and plan remediation for outliers.

  • Remote PC connections in Windows App on Windows now GA [GA] - Windows App now supports direct remote PC connections alongside Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Dev Box in a single pane, without requiring a work or school account. This is a meaningful change for helpdesk, IT admin, and lab scenarios where you want unified remote access without additional licensing or identity dependencies. Evaluate whether this changes your VPN or remote access tooling decisions.

Collaboration & Productivity

  • Sending From Email Aliases - General Availability [GA] - Exchange Online users can now send mail from any proxy address on their mailbox, not just the primary SMTP address. This eliminates the need for shared mailboxes or delegate permissions to cover alias-based sending scenarios. Before communicating this to users, verify that your transport rules, DLP policies, and any external recipient filters account for mail originating from proxy addresses.

  • Microsoft Teams: View files and conversations side by side [Preview] - Opening a PDF, Markdown, or HTML file from Teams chat or a channel message will show the conversation panel alongside the file, anchored to where the file was shared. Reduces context-switching during document review cycles. GA expected November 2026.

  • Work IQ: Updating documents in Office [Preview] - Work IQ gains the ability to create and edit Office documents using organizational context through agents. Preview in November 2026, GA in January 2027. Plan your data governance posture around agent-authored document content before GA.

  • Microsoft Teams: Events now support up to 20,000 registrations [GA] - Teams Events capacity increases to 20,000 registrations for organizers with valid Attendee packs. If you’re planning large-scale events and were previously constrained by lower limits, this removes that ceiling. GA in November 2026.

  • Microsoft Teams: Event Chat for large-audience Events in GCC, GCC High, and DoD [GA] - Public event chat is now available for events over 1,000 attendees or any event optimized for a large audience in sovereign cloud environments. GA in November 2026. GCC and GCC High admins running large-audience events should confirm their moderation and information barrier policies cover event chat.

  • Microsoft Teams: Events in Meet app in Teams in GCC [GA] - The Meet app in Teams GCC is being renamed to Events app and now surfaces organization-wide event discovery, upcoming event tracking, and event planning. Rolling out October 2026. No admin action required, but communicate the rename to users who rely on the current Meet app experience.

AI & Copilot

  • Are bigger agents better? How to design agents that scale [GA] - Copilot Studio’s engineering blog makes the practical case that agent reliability degrades as scope expands unchecked: more tools and knowledge sources create more execution paths and more failure modes. If your teams are building agents, this is required reading before the next design review. The guidance on when to split agents versus extend them maps directly to supportable production architectures.

  • Copilot Studio Now Builds Agents, Workflows, Apps [GA] - Copilot Studio now covers agents (with model, skills, connectors, APIs, MCPs, knowledge, and memory), multi-step workflows involving other agents or human reviewers, and full-stack apps generated from natural language descriptions. This consolidates what previously required separate tooling into a single authoring surface.

  • Describe an App, Get a Working App [GA] - Copilot Studio Apps let makers describe a business app connected to Dataverse or SharePoint via connectors, generating summary tiles and detail views without writing code. Company branding can be applied through a follow-up natural language prompt. Assess your low-code governance policies to cover apps generated this way.

  • Build an AI Agent From One Prompt [GA] - Copilot Studio can generate a full agent, including reusable skills for requirement coverage and evidence verification, from a single descriptive prompt. Skills created this way are reusable across other agents in your tenant. Ensure your agent lifecycle governance covers auto-generated skills and their data access scope.

  • Add Human Review to an AI Agent Workflow [GA] - Copilot Studio workflows now include an if/else Human Review step that pauses automation when the agent flags a decision, routing to a human before continuing. Each workflow step can be tested independently. This is the pattern to adopt for any agent workflow touching regulated decisions or high-value data writes.

  • Microsoft Copilot: Sales Development Agent integrates with Salesforce [GA] - The Sales Development Agent now connects to Salesforce CRM via Microsoft’s Salesforce MCP server, enabling lead access, prospect record management, and activity logging directly in Salesforce from SDA. GA October 2026. If your org uses both M365 Copilot and Salesforce, this is the integration to evaluate for your sales teams.

  • Dynamics 365 Project Operations: Unify product receipt and item requirement posting [Preview] - A new feature combines purchase order product receipt posting and linked project item requirement consumption into a single atomic transaction, preventing duplicate project postings and rolling back both on error. Available for public preview now, useful for orgs running Project Operations with automatic item consumption enabled.

  • Dynamics 365 Project Operations: Import tasks from other projects [GA] - Project managers can now select and import tasks from one or more existing projects into a new project, replacing the previous workaround of full project copy or manual task entry via schedule APIs. GA now. If your project delivery teams have standardized task structures, this simplifies templating without the overhead of copying full project records.

  • Power Apps: Model-driven apps in Business Apps in Work IQ [Preview] - Power Apps model-driven apps surface in Work IQ as Business Apps, accessible via Copilot Studio or the Work IQ MCP with natural-language prompts for listing, reading, creating, updating, and deleting records. Proposed changes require explicit user confirmation before submission. Preview now, GA November 2026. Review which model-driven apps expose sensitive data and whether the Work IQ access path needs scoping before GA.

  • Microsoft Power Pages now available in Sweden Central and Italy North [GA] - Power Pages is now GA in two additional Azure regions, relevant for organizations with data residency requirements in Sweden or Italy. If you’ve been holding off on Power Pages deployments for residency reasons, these regions are now available.

Employee Experience

  • Microsoft Viva: Custom branding in Engage rolling out [GA] - Engage-level admins can now configure a tenant-wide brand identity across Engage web and mobile, including brand name, large and small logos, and a theme color, managed from a new Brand Center in the Viva Engage admin center. This rolled out GA in August 2026 and is now reaching tenants. Check the Brand Center in your Viva Engage admin settings if you want to align the Engage experience to your organization’s visual identity.

Security & Compliance

  • Fight AI with AI: Multi-Agent Security Defense (Project Perception) [GA] - Project Perception in Microsoft Defender orchestrates red, blue, and green AI agent teams against a specified threat actor profile, confirming attacker-reachable vulnerabilities, deploying KQL detections, hardening posture, and merging tested code fixes. Human approval gates are built in before agents take consequential actions; sessions can be managed from the Defender portal or a terminal via MCP plug-in. Token costs are contained by MAI Cyber Flash, a purpose-built security model. This is the most significant SOC workflow automation Microsoft has shipped to date.

  • Protecting Organizations from External Email Risks in Microsoft 365 Copilot [GA] - A new Purview DLP policy lets you restrict Copilot from grounding responses in external or unverified email, reducing cross-prompt injection risk while keeping internal email grounding intact. Configure this in the Purview compliance portal under DLP policies. If Copilot is in production in your tenant, this policy should be in your deployment baseline.

  • DLP for External Web Search in Microsoft 365 Copilot [GA] - A complementary Purview DLP policy detects and blocks sensitive data types (credit card numbers, passport numbers, SSNs) from being included in Copilot’s external Bing web search queries. Configure alongside the external email grounding policy for a complete Copilot data egress posture. Both policies are available now.

  • The Microsoft AI and Agent Platform: Securing and Governing Intelligent Agents [GA] - Part 2 of Microsoft’s AI and Agent Platform series covers how the security model changes when agents move from answering questions to taking actions: delegated identity, API calls, tool invocations, cross-agent collaboration, and persistent memory all expand the attack surface. Worth assigning to anyone designing or approving agent deployments in your environment.

  • CISO perspectives on managing vulnerability risks in the age of AI [GA] - Microsoft’s security blog covers how CISOs can apply AI-powered vulnerability management to increase resilience, including prioritization strategies and tooling considerations. Useful context for framing your own vulnerability management roadmap conversations with leadership.

Action Required

Documentation Updates

Identity & Access

  • Entra Agent ID lifecycle policies article added - New article documenting lifecycle policies for Entra Agent IDs, covering how to manage the identity lifecycle of AI agents registered in your tenant. Essential reading as agent identities accumulate in Entra.

  • Agent ID sign-in health investigation now documented - New guidance covers how to investigate sign-in health for both interactive and autonomous agent sign-ins in Entra ID, giving admins a concrete investigation path when agent authentication behaves unexpectedly.

  • Passkey nudge suppression terminology updated - The registration campaign nudge documentation now uses the correct “passkey” terminology for nudge suppression scenarios, aligning with current product behavior. Relevant if you’re configuring phishing-resistant MFA nudge policies.

  • Windows Hello for Business profile exception behavior clarified - Documentation now explicitly describes the exception behavior for Windows Hello for Business profiles in the context of passkey registration campaigns, clarifying when WHfB profiles suppress or allow nudges.