All news with #azure tag

Grok 4 Arrives in Azure AI Foundry for Business Use

🔒 Microsoft and xAI have brought Grok 4 to Azure AI Foundry, combining a 128K-token context window, native tool use, and integrated web search with enterprise safety controls and compliance checks. The release highlights first-principles reasoning and enhanced problem solving across STEM and humanities tasks, plus variants optimized for reasoning, speed, and code. Azure AI Content Safety is enabled by default and Microsoft publishes a model card with safety and evaluation details. Pricing and deployment tiers are available through Azure.

Microsoft Marketplace: Unified Cloud and AI Solutions

🚀 The reimagined Microsoft Marketplace is a unified destination to find, try, buy and deploy cloud solutions, AI apps and agents, combining Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource. It lists tens of thousands of offerings and more than 3,000 AI apps and agents with rapid provisioning into Microsoft environments using Model Context Protocol (MCP). Integrations with CSPs and channel partners support private offers, a resale-enabled preview and governance for enterprise deployment.

Global Harms of Restrictive Cloud Licensing: One Year

⚖️ A year after Google Cloud filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, restrictive cloud licensing by Microsoft remains entrenched and, according to recent disclosures, appears to be intensifying. Microsoft has described efforts to drive customers to Azure as a core growth pillar, while new licensing changes due at the end of September further restrict managed service providers from hosting workloads on competing clouds. Regulators such as the U.K.'s CMA have found these policies harm customers, competition, innovation, and cybersecurity, and multiple global authorities are now scrutinizing the practices.

Agent Factory: Building the Open Agentic Web Stack

🔧This wrap-up of the Agent Factory series lays out a repeatable blueprint for designing and deploying enterprise-grade AI agents and introduces the agentic web stack. It catalogs eight essential components—communication protocols, discovery, identity and trust, tool invocation, orchestration, telemetry, memory, and governance—and positions Azure AI Foundry as an implementation. The post stresses open standards such as MCP and A2A, emphasizes interoperability across organizations, and highlights observability and governance as core operational requirements.

Azure Cobalt 100 VMs Deliver Performance and Efficiency

⚡ Azure's in-house Arm-based Cobalt 100 VMs are now live in 29 regions and designed to deliver higher performance, energy efficiency, and lower costs for a broad set of cloud workloads. Customers and platform vendors — including Databricks, Snowflake, Siemens, and Temenos — report measurable throughput and price-performance gains, while Microsoft services like Teams and Defender for Endpoint show meaningful internal improvements. The post presents these results as validation of an end-to-end systems strategy that couples custom silicon with infrastructure-level optimization.

Nimbus Manticore Intensifies Cyber-Espionage in Europe

🔍 Check Point Research reports that Iranian-linked actor Nimbus Manticore has escalated cyber-espionage operations across Western Europe, with heightened targeting of organizations in Denmark, Sweden and Portugal. Attackers impersonate recruiters and use convincing fake career portals to deliver personalized credentials and malicious archives. The campaign leverages evolved backdoors—first seen as Minibike, now observed as MiniJunk and MiniBrowse—and employs multi-stage DLL sideloading into legitimate Windows binaries, including Microsoft Defender components, alongside valid code-signing certificates and compiler-level obfuscation to evade detection. Infrastructure hosted via Azure App Service and shielded by Cloudflare provides redundancy and rapid command-and-control recovery.

Microsoft accelerates migration and modernization with AI

🔧 Microsoft outlined a set of agentic AI tools to speed migration and modernization across applications and data. GitHub Copilot now automates Java and .NET upgrades and end-to-end app modernization flows, while Azure Migrate adds AI-driven guidance, connected Copilot workflows, and broader application-awareness. The Azure Accelerate program pairs expert deployment support and funding to reduce friction and help teams move projects faster.

npm Supply-Chain Worm 'Shai-Hulud' Compromises Packages

🛡️ CISA released an alert about a widespread software supply chain compromise affecting the npm registry: a self-replicating worm called 'Shai-Hulud' has compromised over 500 packages. The actor harvested GitHub Personal Access Tokens and cloud API keys for AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, exfiltrating them to a public repository and using them to publish malicious package updates. CISA recommends immediate dependency reviews, credential rotation, enforcing phishing-resistant MFA, pinning package versions to releases before Sept. 16, 2025, hardening GitHub settings, and monitoring for anomalous outbound connections.

Microsoft Fixes Entra ID Token Flaw Allowing Impersonation

🔒 Microsoft has patched a critical token validation failure in Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), tracked as CVE-2025-55241 and assigned a CVSS score of 10.0. The flaw combined misused service-to-service (S2S) actor tokens issued by the Access Control Service (ACS) with a validation gap in the legacy Azure AD Graph API that enabled cross-tenant impersonation, including Global Administrators. Microsoft released a fix on July 17, 2025 and said no customer action is required; there is no indication the issue was exploited in the wild. Security firms warned the vulnerability could bypass MFA, Conditional Access and logging, potentially enabling full tenant compromise.

Protect AI Development Using Falcon Cloud Security

🔒 Falcon Cloud Security provides end-to-end protection for AI development pipelines by embedding AI detection into CI/CD workflows, scanning container images, and surfacing AI-related packages and CVEs in real time. It extends visibility to cloud model services — including AWS SageMaker and Bedrock, Azure AI, and Google Vertex AI — revealing model provenance, dependencies, and API usage. Runtime inventory ties build-time detections to live containers so teams can prioritize fixes, govern models, and maintain delivery velocity without compromising security.

Iran-linked UNC1549 Compromises 34 Devices in Telecoms

🔒 PRODAFT links a recruitment-themed espionage campaign to an Iran-affiliated cluster tracked as Subtle Snail and attributed to UNC1549 (aka TA455), reporting infiltration of 34 devices across 11 telecommunications organizations in Canada, France, the UAE, the UK and the US. Operators posed as HR recruiters on LinkedIn and delivered a ZIP-based dropper that uses DLL side-loading to install the modular backdoor MINIBIKE, which harvests credentials, browser data, screenshots, keystrokes and system details. MINIBIKE communicates with C2 infrastructure proxied through Azure services, employs anti-analysis measures and achieves persistence via registry modifications to enable long-term access and data exfiltration.

Microsoft Named Leader in 2025 Gartner IIoT Report

🔷 Microsoft was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global Industrial IIoT Platforms, highlighting its industrial cloud portfolio. Azure’s adaptive cloud—anchored by Azure IoT, Azure Arc, Azure Digital Twins, and Microsoft Fabric—is positioned to unify cloud-to-edge data, enable real‑time intelligence, and scale AI-driven operations. The platform emphasizes security with Microsoft Defender for IoT, Microsoft Sentinel, and Microsoft Entra, while enabling brownfield integration and partner-led solutions to accelerate industrial modernization.

Blueprint for Building Safe and Secure AI Agents at Scale

🔒 Azure outlines a layered blueprint for building trustworthy, enterprise-grade AI agents. The post emphasizes identity, data protection, built-in controls, continuous evaluation, and monitoring to address risks like data leakage, prompt injection, and agent sprawl. Azure AI Foundry introduces Entra Agent ID, cross-prompt injection classifiers, risk and safety evaluations, and integrations with Microsoft Purview and Defender. Join Microsoft Secure on September 30 to learn about Foundry's newest capabilities.

Azure Container Storage v2.0.0: NVMe Boosts Kubernetes

⚡ Azure today released Azure Container Storage v2.0.0, a performance-first update that delivers up to 7× higher IOPS, 4× lower latency, and improved resource efficiency for Kubernetes stateful workloads. The release adds built-in support for local NVMe drives, removes prior pricing tiers for large pools, and is available as an open-source local CSI driver for non-AKS clusters. Optimized for storage- and GPU-optimized VM families, the update also enables single-node deployments and integrates with KAITO to speed AI model loading and scaling.

Microsoft Patches 80 Flaws, Including SMB Elevation

🔒 Microsoft released fixes for 80 security flaws across its products, including one publicly disclosed SMB privilege-escalation issue (CVE-2025-55234). Eight flaws are rated Critical and 72 Important, with a high proportion of elevation-of-privilege bugs. The update also includes a CVSS 10.0 Azure Networking fix and new auditing options to help administrators assess Windows SMB signing and Extended Protection compatibility before hardening.

Microsoft Enforces MFA for Azure Portal Sign-ins Globally

🔐 Microsoft has completed a global rollout enforcing multifactor authentication (MFA) for Azure Portal sign-ins across 100% of tenants as of March 2025. The rollout follows an initial enforcement announcement in May 2024 and prior warnings to Entra global admins to enable MFA to avoid access disruptions. Microsoft says this step strengthens account defenses and will be followed by mandatory MFA for Azure CLI, PowerShell, SDKs, and APIs in October 2025. The company cites internal research showing MFA dramatically reduces account takeover risk.

Azure Phase 2: Mandatory MFA for Resource Management

🔒 Microsoft is starting Phase 2 of mandatory multi-factor authentication for Azure resource management operations on October 1, 2025. Enforcement at the Azure Resource Manager layer will be applied gradually via Azure Policy, requiring users to complete MFA before performing management actions. Workload identities (managed identities and service principals) are not affected. Administrators should enable MFA, test policy in audit mode, and ensure Azure CLI 2.76 and Azure PowerShell 14.3 or later are in use for best compatibility.

Microsoft Cost Management: July-August 2025 Product Updates

💡 Microsoft Cost Management released a set of July–August 2025 updates to help organizations monitor and reduce Azure spend. The release adds service principal support for the Partner Admin Reader role, enabling EA indirect partners to programmatically access cost data without interactive accounts. Other highlights include a Pricing Calculator user tip, new cost-saving offers such as Azure Firewall ingestion-time transformation (GA) and the Azure Storage Mover preview, updated documentation on billing and reservations, and new instructional videos on cost allocation and Copilot for cost insights.

Agent Factory: From Prototype to Production with Foundry

🔧 Azure AI Foundry aims to accelerate the path from IDE prototypes to enterprise-grade AI agents. It emphasizes local-first prototyping, a single, consistent Model Inference API, and one-click deployment from VS Code and GitHub so developer code runs unchanged in production. Foundry supports popular frameworks like Semantic Kernel and AutoGen, embraces open protocols (MCP, A2A), and supplies prebuilt connectors, observability, and enterprise guardrails to scale agents securely.

Model Namespace Reuse: Supply-Chain RCE in Cloud AI

🔒 Unit 42 describes a widespread flaw called Model Namespace Reuse that lets attackers reclaim abandoned Hugging Face Author/ModelName namespaces and distribute malicious model code. The technique can lead to remote code execution and was demonstrated against major platforms including Google Vertex AI and Azure AI Foundry, as well as thousands of open-source projects. Recommended mitigations include version pinning, cloning models to trusted storage, and scanning repositories for reusable references.