"Another pair of eyes" - Microsoft launches all-new Security Copilot Agents to give security teams the upper hand

(Image credit: Future)

Microsoft is launching new AI agents for cybersecurity
Thenew Copilot-powered agents will help automate the defense process
Areas such as data security, identity management, and phishing could all get a boost

Microsoft is launching new Security Copilot Agents to help secure organizations with AI-first, end-to-end security platforms.

The company says its new agents are designed to “autonomously assist with critical areas” like data security, identity management, and phishing.

By working with some of the world’s top software companies, Microsoft hopes to deliver “game-changing” protections and help customers “scale, augment, and increase the effectiveness of their privacy operations” to help organizations navigate the increasingly complex threat landscape and regulatory requirements.

Core problems

Microsoft’s Global Head of Security, Vasu Jakkal, spoke to TechRadar Pro, to discuss the way that AI is changing the cybersecurity landscape, and how the new initiatives will help defenders use AI to their advantage.

Jakkal noted how AI is supercharging the volume of cyberattacks, and lowering the barriers for access to malicious campaigns, overwhelming security teams who often don’t have access to first-rate tools and rely on manual processes and ‘fragmented defenses’.

“So you look at these three core problems, threat landscape, operational complexity, and data security, there's no way humans can scale to keep up with these challenges. In fact, we don't have the human talent in security right now,” she warns.

To help security teams try and navigate this, Microsoft is unveiling 11 new Copilot agents.

Six of these agents will be available across the Microsoft end-to-end security platform, and are designed to assist with threat protection, data security, device management, identity and access, and threat intelligence.

The new launches come alongside Microsoft’s release of five new Agentic solutions to help bolster security teams worldwide.

These include a privacy breach response agent by OneTrust, a network supervisor agent by Aviatrix, a SecOps Tooling agent by BlueVoyant, an alert triage agent by Tanium, as well as a task optimizer agent by Fletch.

A helping hand

So that teams can keep up with the quickly evolving landscape, Security Copilot Agents will enable teams to handle high-volume security and IT tasks, and will work seamlessly alongside existing Microsoft security tools.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence now processes 84 trillion signals per day, revealing the exponential growth in cyber-attacks, including 7,000 password attacks per second.

Although you can’t ever eliminate the risk of human error entirely, these new tools will look to be a “another pair of eyes and pair of hands” to help double check things to reduce the risk factor, Jakkal explains.

“Last year, in one year, we saw 30 billion phishing emails. That's a lot. And this volume, you just can't keep up, humans can't triage these. And so the phishing agent now can triage these emails and alerts, and it can tell you, hey, this is a false alarm and this is a true alert, so it kind of reduces that volume”

The upper hand

Jakkal, like many others, describes cybersecurity as a cat and mouse game between cybercriminals and security teams.

Right now, AI is the attacker’s tool of choice and allows for a monumental number of intrusions, but the more attacks are leveraged, the more defenders can learn.

“Microsoft processes 84 trillion signals every single day. That signal intelligence, it's hard for humans to just work through that and scan through, but guess what tool works really great with data? AI.”

For security teams to gain the upper hand, defenders must embrace AI, Jakkal argues, as the talent gap and skills shortage is holding the industry back, and cybersecurity teams, “just don't have enough defenders in the world,” so must look to AI to keep up with demand.

The barrage of attacks isn’t likely to change anytime soon, either. Cyberattacks continue to be a profitable endeavour, and cybercrime is even helping fund rogue nations across the world, and with rising geopolitical tensions, cybersecurity teams must be more alert than ever before.

“Attacks are happening all around and because ransomware is a very lucrative industry and in fact global cybercrime costs us 9.2 trillion dollars, US dollars a year," Jakkal concludes.

"So as long as there's money to be made in it, we are going to see attacks and it can be even worse for a small and medium business because they don't have the staff to even tackle these problems.”

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Ellen has been writing for almost four years, with a focus on post-COVID policy whilst studying for BA Politics and International Relations at the University of Cardiff, followed by an MA in Political Communication. Before joining TechRadar Pro as a Junior Writer, she worked for Future Publishing’s MVC content team, working with merchants and retailers to upload content.