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The calculus of cybersecurity has changed. AI is reshaping how organizations build, deploy, operate, and defend digital systems. AI-powered development tools, agents, and autonomous workflows are accelerating innovation but they are also introducing new attack surfaces, new trust boundaries, and new security challenges.

Microsoft has long helped organizations secure their digital estates using Zero Trust principles. That leadership was recently recognized by KuppingerCole analysts, which named Microsoft as the Overall Leader in its Zero Trust Platform Leadership Compass, ranking Microsoft highest for both product and innovation leadership.

Learn more about Zero Trust for AI

As organizations accelerate AI adoption, secure software development becomes more important than ever. That’s why we are expanding the Zero Trust for AI strategy with two major additions: a new AI-focused Zero Trust Assessment experience and a new DevSecOps pillar in the Zero Trust Workshop. Together, they help organizations get ready for AI by assessing exposure, risks, prioritizing remediation, and securing AI-enabled development from source code to deployment.

• Zero Trust Assessment tool updates: New set of assessment checks for AI, Security Operations (SecOps), and Infrastructure.
• Zero Trust Workshop updates: New dedicated pillar focused on Developer Security (DevSecOps) and additional guidance for AI Memory.
• New guidance: New practical guidance for security practitioners and a new e-book titled Zero Trust for AI, rebuilding security controls for autonomous and agentic systems.

This builds directly on the Zero Trust for AI strategy announced at RSA Conference 2026 and moves the conversation from architecture to implementation. If that announcement was about establishing Zero Trust for AI, this one is about operationalizing it: giving security, engineering, and platform teams the specific controls they need to act.

To learn more about our work in applying Zero Trust for AI and agents watch this Microsoft Mechanics video:

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The Zero Trust Assessment provides an automated view of security posture by evaluating tenant configuration and activity signals across the environment and translating those findings into prioritized recommendations. As organizations adopt AI agents, Copilots, developer tools, and autonomous workflows, the Assessment helps security and platform teams establish a baseline, measure progress, and identify gaps across both traditional and AI-powered environments. It now includes expanded coverage with new pillars for AI, Security Operations, and Infrastructure (in addition to existing Identity, Devices, Network, and Data pillars), with Zero Trust for AI-focused checks that help organizations evaluate the controls required for secure AI adoption.

Additionally, enhanced reporting delivers both practitioner-level guidance and executive-ready summaries that communicate risk, progress, and next steps. Results map directly into the Zero Trust Workshop’s First, Then, Next framework, transforming assessment findings into a prioritized roadmap for remediation and implementation. Together, the Assessment and Workshop help organizations move from understanding risk to executing a structured plan for continuous improvement across their Zero Trust and AI security journey.

Explore the Zero Trust Assessment updates What’s New in the Zero Trust Workshop

AI is fundamentally changing software development. Developers increasingly rely on AI assistants to generate code, recommend packages, create infrastructure configurations, and automate testing. While these capabilities accelerate delivery, they also amplify the consequences of governance gaps, excessive permissions, insecure dependencies, and compromised supply chains.

That is why Microsoft is introducing a new DevSecOps pillar (with 15 control groups and 91 tasks that help teams apply Zero Trust from source code to cloud deployment) in the Zero Trust Workshop. The pillar translates the three Zero Trust principles—verify explicitly, use least privilege, and assume breach—into practical guidance and controls for developer platforms, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, source repositories, dependencies, artifacts, and infrastructure-as-code.

The Zero Trust Workshop also improves the AI pillar to include guidance based on the Microsoft AI Memory framework, helping teams treat memory as a governed security boundary with clear intent, provenance, lifecycle visibility, and user control.

See the updates in the Zero Trust Workshop How to run Zero Trust Workshop

The Zero Trust Workshop follows a simple three-step motion: plan the right pillars and stakeholders, run the Zero Trust Assessment to establish a baseline, and use the facilitated workshop to turn findings into a 12- to 24-month roadmap.

Tasks are organized into First, Then, Next phases so teams can start with foundational controls and build momentum. The new DevSecOps pillar also highlights cross-pillar work that strengthens Identity, Infrastructure, and Security Operations, plus four tasks focused directly on AI-assisted development: code governance, tool allowlisting, data protection, and AI and machine learning pipeline supply-chain security.

Get practical guidance in the new Zero Trust for AI e-book

To help organizations navigate this shift, Microsoft recently published Zero Trust for AI: Rebuilding security controls for autonomous and agentic systems, a practical guide that applies Zero Trust principles to AI agents, tools, memory, data, and runtime operations. The e-book provides security leaders, architects, and practitioners with a framework for evaluating AI risks and implementing controls that scale with AI adoption.

Zero Trust for AI e-book

Practical guidance for securing AI systems.

Get the e-book

Knowing what to do is one thing. Knowing how to operationalize it at scale is another. Our patterns and practices provide repeatable, proven approaches to the most complex AI security challenges, much like software design patterns offer reusable solutions to common engineering problems.

The table below highlights our practical recommendations aligned with Zero Trust principles to help practitioners translate strategy into concrete implementation.

Pattern and Practice GuidanceWhat it coversLeast privilege for AI agentsGuidance on applying Zero Trust to AI agents.Zero Trust for source code accessGuidance on building Zero Trust protections for source code security.Manage memory safety in agentic systemsGuidance for treating AI memory as a governed security boundary.Protect the software supply chainGuidance for applying Zero Trust across the software development lifecycle.Security adoption guidance for developmentGuidance on building secure development programs and governance. How can partners help?

Partners can use the Zero Trust Assessment tool and Workshop to turn broad security interest into a focused, outcome-driven customer engagement. The Assessment tool helps establish a baseline across one or more Zero Trust pillars, including AI and DevSecOps scenarios, so customers can see where they are today and where to prioritize first. The Workshop then translates those findings into an executive summary, prioritized recommendations, and a phased roadmap. For customers, this creates a clear path from risk visibility to practical action plans that partners—as trusted advisors—can help prioritize and execute.

Learn how Microsoft partners deliver the Zero Trust Workshop through Frontier Accelerate for Security: Envisioning and POC.

Customer success stories

Ford Motor Company: Microsoft Security solutions offered Ford a unified, AI-powered platform to detect, address, and prevent cyberthreats across its hybrid environment. Grounded in a Zero Trust architecture, every access request—whether from users, devices, or applications—is continuously verified. This principle guided Ford’s approach to securing its hybrid environment, reinforcing protection before expanding visibility. Read more about how Ford builds trust across global operations.

The Microsoft security stack is more than technology. It contributes to Ford’s business in moving faster against cyberthreats and building a more secure future.”

—Weston Maggetti, Platform Manager, Ford Motor Company

SEB Group: SEB based its Zero Trust journey on identity, deploying Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Defender for Identity. It removed online identity exposure with Windows Hello for passwordless access, and extended protection with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Read more about how SEB implements Zero Trust.

Our Microsoft Security solutions are vital to our Zero Trust journey. That enhanced visibility helps to keep our SaaS (software as a service) landscape as simple as possible so that it’s easier to defend.”

—Ulf Larsson, Security Chief Technology Officer (CTO), SEB Group

Get started

To get started, use the Assessment and Workshop together to turn Zero Trust for AI into a practical implementation plan:

• Use the Zero Trust Assessment tool to establish a baseline and prioritize the Workshop roadmap across Identity, Devices, Data, Infrastructure, and Network.
• Run the Zero Trust Workshop with the new DevSecOps pillar to secure developer platforms, pipelines, code, and artifacts.
• Complement your Zero Trust journey by assessing your posture and acting where attackers strike most. SecureNow, in Microsoft Security Exposure Management, helps you improve security across patching, open-source software, source code, internet-facing assets, and hygiene.

Get started with a Zero Trust strategy

Learn more about Microsoft Security solutions on our website and bookmark the Microsoft Security blog for expert insights on security matters. Follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest cybersecurity news and updates.

The post Advance Zero Trust for AI: New tools and guidance to secure AI agents and DevSecOps appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

In this article

1. What is device isolation?
2. Case study: QNET
3. Attack chain overview
4. MITRE ATT&CK techniques observed
5. References
6. Learn more

Microsoft Defender’s attack disruption now includes device isolation, a new response action that extends autonomous protection directly to compromised endpoints.

At QNET, an attacker initiated a multi-stage attack using a legitimate Windows tool on a compromised endpoint to retrieve a malicious remote payload–a classic living-off-the-land (LOL) technique that often evades traditional containment. By automatically enforcing the new device isolation action on the compromised endpoint, Defender attack disruption stopped the attack dead in its tracks. From the first high-severity alert to completed isolation, after only 128 seconds, Defender cut off the attack chain before the second-stage payload could establish persistence or move beyond the host.

The growing threat: when the endpoint is the blast radius

Attack disruption has proven highly effective at stopping multistage, cross-domain attacks by disrupting the attacker’s ability to move across the environment. In many identity-driven attack scenarios, containing the compromised user is enough to shut down the attack chain, preventing lateral movement and limiting the attacker’s ability to access additional systems, identities, and resources.

However, we are increasingly seeing a different class of high-severity incidents that begin with initial access directly on the device. Once adversaries establish a foothold on an endpoint, they can plant multiple persistence mechanisms and continue operating locally on the machine. This means that acting against the user’s identity alone is no longer enough to dismantle the threat.

In these scenarios, the attacker has multiple ways to communicate and operate on the device beyond the user entity; the malicious code is already executing locally on the machine. The attacker doesn’t have to move laterally immediately; they can establish persistence, steal credentials, inject into processes, and prepare follow-on stages directly from the compromised endpoint itself.

Previously, stopping these attacks required manual triage and response, giving attackers time to advance. Device isolation closes this gap by automatically correlating signals, assessing the threat, and isolating the compromised device within seconds.

Traditional response approaches often depend on static playbooks triggered by individual alerts and maintained through manual tuning. Attack disruption instead uses AI-driven correlation and real-time analysis to identify multi-stage attacks by connecting signals across the environment before taking action. Device isolation is enforced only when the disruption pipeline reaches a high-confidence verdict—a threshold maintained at 99% precision.

What is device isolation?

When Microsoft Defender determines with high confidence that an endpoint is compromised, it isolates the device to immediately stop attacker activity and reduce the risk of further impact, such as data exfiltration and lateral movement.

What happens during device Isolation

When a device is isolated, all external network connectivity is blocked while maintaining access to required security services like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Selective isolation is supported, allowing customer-defined services or exclusions to continue functioning.

Automatic device isolation is scoped to the affected device (supported today on onboarded MDE workstations), time-limited, and operator-controlled. Security teams can review context, take follow-up actions, and manually release isolation when it’s safe to do so.

Why it matters

Device isolation is a powerful containment control because it disrupts the attack regardless of how the device was compromised or what the attacker planned to do next. A single action cuts off network access, breaking lateral movement, command and control, credential theft, and rapid encryption–effectively stopping hands-on activity and preventing spread to other systems. It is designed to work hand in hand with user containment. Isolating only the device or only the user leaves gaps; together, each one makes up for the weaknesses of the other, thereby mitigating these gaps to more effectively contain the attack.

Case study: QNET

QNET is a global direct-selling company with a distributed workforce and a lean security operations center (SOC). Like most teams of its size, QNET runs Defender with attack disruption enabled and relies on it to handle the first five minutes of a high-severity incident so analysts can focus on finding the root cause.

In the incident detailed here, attack disruption proved decisive: it stopped a multi-stage attack on a single endpoint within 128 seconds by automatically enforcing device isolation, its newest disruption action. Without this autonomous disruption, the human-in-the-loop delay could have been the difference between a contained initial living-off-the-land binary (LOLBin) execution and a fully detonated second-stage payload that had achieved credential theft and persistence.

In the customer’s words

“At QNET, we’ve seen a real impact from Microsoft’s attack disruption capability. During a recent incident, the device isolation was triggered almost immediately, which gave us confidence that the threat was contained early before it had any chance to spread.

What stood out for us is how this changes the way the team operates. Instead of racing against time to investigate and contain an active threat, my team can step in knowing the situation is already under control. That shift allows us to focus more on root cause analysis and remediation, rather than spending critical time trying to piece together what’s happening while the risk is still ongoing.

From a day-to-day SOC perspective, it makes our response more efficient and far less reactive. The alerts are clear, the actions are meaningful, and the disruption happens early enough to actually make a difference, not after the damage is done.

Overall, it’s helped us streamline our incident response and reduce exposure, while giving the team more breathing room to focus on what really matters.”

—  Ben Bredenkamp, Group CIO, QI Group

Attack chain overview 08:30 – 09:22BaselineA user opened a malicious file, likely delivered through email or browser download. The file executed mshta.exe, a legitimate Windows utility commonly abused by attackers. The mshta.exe process contacted an attacker-controlled URL and retrieved a second-stage payload. Persistence artifacts were then prepared (RunMRU activity was observed shortly afterward).09:23:20Initial Access / ExecutionThe malicious second stage executed through mshta.exe, establishing code execution on the device. Observed activity included suspicious command execution and user-level persistence behavior (RunMRU registry interaction).  09:23:20DetectionTwo independent Defender detection engines triggered within the same second:

– Behavioral/execution-based detection flagged suspicious command activity (RunMRU abuse).

– The correlation engine identified the activity pattern as malicious and consistent with real attack behavior (not benign tooling usage).  09:25:02Disruption decisionThe disruption pipeline correlated the alerts, evaluated the threat model (single endpoint, no lateral movement signs, malicious code already executing under user context), and selected device isolation as the action most likely to immediately contain the attack.  09:25:16Playbook startDefender autonomously initiated the IsolateDevice response playbook – the same containment action a SOC analyst would trigger manually – with full audit logging and a built-in auto-release mechanism to prevent prolonged business impact.  09:25:28Device isolatedThe IsolateDevice action completed successfully. The endpoint was cut off from all external and internal network communication, allowing only Defender management traffic. Communication with attacker-controlled infrastructure was immediately terminated.  09:25 – onwardPost-isolationNo additional malicious activity was observed. The mshta-launched payload was unable to continue execution, retrieve additional stages, or establish persistence. With no lateral movement or follow-on activity, the incident remained fully contained to a single endpoint. The SOC inherits a contained incident.  

Total time from first detection to enforced isolation: 128 seconds.

The results

To summarize the results of the new device isolation response action:

• From first detection, Defender isolated the device in just 128 seconds.
• No second-stage payloads were observed after isolation. The mshta process was orphaned at the network layer; there was no outbound C2, and no follow-on download.
• No lateral movement attempts were observed before or after isolation.
• No SOC actions were required during the disruption window. The QNET SOC analyst who picked up the incident inherited an already-contained host and a complete action timeline.

MITRE ATT&CK techniques observed TacticTechnique IDTechnique nameObserved detailsInitial Access / ExecutionT1204.002User Execution: Malicious FileUser opened a malicious file delivered via browser download or email, resulting in execution of mshta.exe at approximately 09:23:20 UTC on device a3198469…b13.Defense EvasionT1218.005System Binary Proxy Execution: MshtaSigned Microsoft binary mshta.exe was abused to proxy execution of attacker-controlled HTA/script content and evade application trust controls.Command and ControlT1071.001Application Layer Protocol: Web Protocolsmshta.exe initiated outbound HTTP/HTTPS communication to attacker-controlled infrastructure to retrieve a second-stage payload.ExecutionT1059Command and Scripting InterpreterHTA-delivered script content executed through the mshta.exe host process, enabling attacker-controlled command execution in user context.PersistenceT1112Modify RegistrySuspicious RunMRU-related registry interaction indicated attempted user-level persistence preparation.Discovery / ExecutionT1057Process DiscoveryDefender behavioral detections observed suspicious command activity consistent with attacker reconnaissance and execution staging immediately after payload launch.Impact Mitigation (Defender response)–Device Isolation (Defender Automatic Attack Disruption)Defender correlated multiple high-confidence detections and autonomously executed the IsolateDevice response action at 09:25:16 UTC, completing isolation by 09:25:28 UTC.Command and Control (Prevented)T1105Ingress Tool TransferIsolation interrupted outbound connectivity before additional payload stages or tooling could be retrieved from attacker infrastructure.Lateral Movement (Prevented)TA0008Lateral MovementNo evidence of lateral movement activity was observed before containment; device isolation prevented any subsequent propagation opportunities.Persistence (Prevented)TA0003PersistenceAfter isolation, no additional persistence artifacts or follow-on malicious processes were observed on the endpoint. References

• Automatic attack disruption in Microsoft Defender XDR
• Automatic attack disruption — supported triggers and enforced actions
• Device Isolation in Attack Disruption
• MITRE ATT&CK T1218.005 — Mshta
• MITRE ATT&CK T1204 — User Execution

Learn more

For the latest security research from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community, check out the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Blog.

To get notified about new publications and to join discussions on social media, follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky.

To hear stories and insights from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence community about the ever-evolving threat landscape, listen to the Microsoft Threat Intelligence podcast.

Review our documentation to learn more about our real-time protection capabilities and see how to enable them within your organization.   

• Learn more about securing Copilot Studio agents with Microsoft Defender  
• Evaluate your AI readiness with our latest Zero Trust for AI workshop.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot AI security documentation 
• How Microsoft discovers and mitigates evolving attacks against AI guardrails 

The post 128 Seconds to disruption: Microsoft Defender stops ransomware at QNET  appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.

Article URL: https://thorium.edrlab.org/en/about/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171704

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Article URL: https://twitter.com/JensenHuang/status/2084656303046332747

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171694

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Article URL: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/04/1141098/the-download-robot-restrictions-ice-dna/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171688

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/massive-chaindrop-npm-supply-chain-attack-infects-hundreds-of-packages/

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Article URL: https://www.valleynewslive.com/2026/08/04/every-flock-camera-winona-minnesota-cut-down-stolen-coordinated-theft/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171656

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Article URL: https://github.com/advaith-1212/railwarden

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So here's the question I wanted to pose around AI usage. With modern advanced AI, much of the time, using AI consists of sending a message a waiting a long time (often an hour or more) before the AI finishes a task.

Which I think brings up an important question, is it okay to take short work breaks to send instructions to AI working on your personal projects during work hours?

Do any employers have policies around this? And how does it interact with legal standards?

Are the rules around work-product well suited to the modern AI age?

Does it matter if I'm hourly vs salaried?

Should we do the same thing for work (asking work AI to do things occasionally during personal time)?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171630

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Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-04/bending-spoons-to-buy-software-firm-airtable-for-2-3-billion

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171627

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Article URL: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171613

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Article URL: https://benchmark.rv-grid.com/revogrid-vs-bryntum-scheduling/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171596

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/fidji-simo-discusses-pots-diseases-chroniclebio-ai-startup-openai/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171594

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://twitter.com/GoodfireAI/status/2084671608028057737

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171592

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://twitter.com/vllm_project/status/2081788542079123939

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171574

Points: 1

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Article URL: https://tsunderesql.itch.io/tsunderesql

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171567

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Article URL: https://www.404media.co/microsoft-tells-engineers-tokenmaxxing-is-not-what-we-are-optimizing-for/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171565

Points: 3

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Article URL: https://github.com/Fergana-Labs/stash/blob/main/docs/ai-native-bookmarks.md

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171563

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