3 weeks ago
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Microsoft has announced the launch of its Security Copilot agents and its new AI-powered data security investigations and analysis platform, Microsoft Purview. The agents are designed to help security teams automate tasks and better manage the increasing volume and complexity of cyberattacks.
The announcement comes as security professionals face significant challenges, including a growing threat landscape, increasingly sophisticated attackers, and a shortage of skilled security personnel.
Security Copilot agents aim to relieve some of the burden on security teams by providing autonomous and adaptive automation for common tasks. This differs from traditional automation, which is often rigid, static, and requires manual updates. The agents, on the other hand, are designed to be dynamic, learning from new outcomes, user feedback, and changing contexts.
One of the six introduced agents is designed to help security teams triage phishing incidents. In a briefing to AIM, Andrew Conway, vice president of security product marketing at Microsoft, showed how the agent can analyse user-submitted phishing reports, identify false positives, and provide analysts with a clear view of the agent’s actions.
The other five agents include Conditional Access Optimisation Agent, Vulnerability Remediation Agent, Threat Intelligence Briefing Agent, and Alert Triage Agent.
These agents will focus on threat protection, data security, identity and access scenarios, device management, threat intelligence, and other capabilities built by Microsoft’s partners. They developed five agents as well.
Conway highlighted that the agents need initial learning to adapt to an organisation’s requirements. When asked if the learning would be time-consuming, Conway told AIM that while it may look like there’s extra time involved to help it learn and fine-tune it, it is still better than having a security team go through 100% of those incidents themselves.
He referenced the phishing triage agent demonstration and continued, “And in this case, the agent can do 95% of the incident resolution. So, some work is needed to fine-tune the agent, but the agent will also get smarter and better over time.”
Microsoft Security Copilot agents will be available in preview starting April 2025.
