All news with #microsoft azure tag

🚀 Microsoft announces the public preview of cross-cluster networking for Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager, bringing transparent east‑west multi-cluster connectivity powered by Advanced Container Networking Services. Built on Cilium and Kubefleet, this managed capability extends the Kubernetes networking model across clusters to enable direct pod-to-pod communication, policy enforcement, and observability while preserving cluster isolation. The managed approach reduces operational overhead for multi-cluster fleets and supports resilient, global, and shared‑services architectures.

🚀 Azure NetApp Files extends cloud storage performance for Electronic Design Automation (EDA) by delivering predictable, high-throughput shared storage at massive concurrency. New capabilities like large volumes and breakthrough mode enable thousands of parallel jobs with consistent latency, validated by SPECstorage® Solution 2020 EDA_BLENDED benchmarking. Leading semiconductor firms are adopting ANF for production EDA workloads.

🔐 Microsoft has reached general availability for Entra-Only identities for Azure Files SMB, enabling native Microsoft Entra ID authentication for SMB file shares using cloud-only identities. This eliminates the need for on-premises Active Directory, Entra Connect, or managed domain controllers, simplifying architecture and reducing operational overhead. Entra acts as the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC), issuing Kerberos tickets while preserving SMB protocol compatibility, and supports VDI scenarios with FSLogix, Managed Identities, macOS clients, and NTFS ACL editing. The capability is supported across HDD and SSD shares, available at no extra cost, and is being extended to sovereign cloud regions.

🔧Microsoft outlines its sustained investment in PostgreSQL through upstream contributions, managed services, developer tools, and community programs. The post highlights 345 commits to the latest PostgreSQL release, active Microsoft committers working upstream, and service offerings such as Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure HorizonDB. It also emphasizes AI integrations like vector search and model invocation alongside IDE tooling and community engagement.

🚀 At SAP Sapphire 2026, Microsoft and SAP announced expanded integrations to embed AI across SAP applications on Azure, emphasizing Microsoft IQ as a shared intelligence layer and agent-to-agent capabilities between Copilot and Joule. The updates include bi-directional, zero-copy delta sharing with SAP Business Data Cloud and Microsoft Fabric, sovereign cloud expansions, and an enlarged RISE with SAP acceleration program. These developments aim to move enterprises from experimentation to production-ready, governed AI at scale.

🔐 Modern DDoS attacks have evolved from simple volumetric floods to multi-vector, application-layer abuse amplified by AI-enabled tooling and expansive botnets. Microsoft reports a sharp rise in attack volume since mid‑March 2024 and urges a system-level, defense-in-depth approach that combines fingerprinting (JA4), layered controls, and operational visibility. Cloud-native protections such as Azure DDoS Protection and Azure WAF help when integrated with resilient application design and pretested graceful-degradation plans.

🔷 Microsoft is expanding Azure capacity across Europe to meet surging cloud and AI demand. Azure regions and sovereign offerings enable organizations to run sensitive workloads with control over data residency, compliance, and performance. The investments cover new regions and upgrades across Northern, Southern, and Central Europe to support multi-region architectures, digital transformation, and sector-specific AI initiatives.

🔐 ConsentFix v3 is an automated evolution of prior OAuth consent phishing techniques that targets Microsoft Azure environments by abusing pre-trusted first-party apps and the OAuth2 authorization code flow. Attackers conduct reconnaissance to harvest employee names, roles, and emails, host convincing phishing pages on Cloudflare Pages and DocSend, and use Pipedream webhooks to collect and immediately exchange authorization codes for refresh tokens. Phishing is often highly personalized and delivered via PDFs to evade filters. Captured tokens are imported into post-exploitation tools to access mail, files, and other resources permitted by the token.

🏆 Microsoft has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide API Management 2026 Vendor Assessment, reflecting its emphasis on scaling APIs and AI together. Built on a decade-old foundation, Azure API Management governs over 38,000 customers, nearly 3 million APIs, and 3 trillion monthly requests while extending to AI gateway capabilities used by 2,000+ enterprises. The platform provides a single, Azure-native control plane to enforce policy, observability, and cost controls for both APIs and AI workloads.

🔒 Microsoft announced that Azure Local now supports deployments of up to thousands of servers within a single sovereign environment. The platform extends the Azure operating model to customer-owned datacenters, edge sites and industrial facilities with local policy enforcement, role-based access control, auditing and compliance capabilities even when disconnected. Validated compute and storage partners, plus Intel® Xeon® 6 and GPU support, let organizations run large-scale, latency-sensitive AI and regulated workloads entirely within their sovereign boundary while retaining lifecycle management through Azure.

🔒 A high-severity authentication flaw in Azure SRE Agent exposed agent activity streams to unauthorized tenants, researcher Yanir Tsarimi of Enclave AI reported. Tracked as CVE-2026-32173 with a CVSS score of 8.6, the vulnerability stemmed from an Entra ID app registration configured as multi-tenant and a WebSocket hub that accepted tokens without tenant authorization checks. The hub broadcast agent prompts, internal reasoning, commands and outputs to all connected clients. Microsoft applied a server-side fix and says no customer action is required, but organizations that ran the agent during preview should review any credentials or sensitive data that may have traversed agent interactions.

☁️ Azure announces the general availability of smart tier for Blob and Data Lake Storage, a fully managed automated tiering service that continuously optimizes object placement across hot, cool, and cold tiers. It evaluates last-access timestamps—objects idle 30 days move to cool and after 60 more days move to cold—and promotes data back to hot on access. Enable during account creation or switch existing zonal accounts to start optimizing automatically.

🚨 An internal late-2024 government report reviewed by ProPublica found that Microsoft’s Government Community Cloud High lacked “proper detailed security documentation,” leaving evaluators with “a lack of confidence” in assessing the platform. One reviewer called the package “a pile of shit.” Despite those findings, FedRAMP authorized the product with a buyer-beware notice, a decision that helped Microsoft expand a multibillion-dollar federal cloud business.

🔒 Check Point reports an ongoing Iran-nexus password-spraying campaign against Microsoft 365 tenants, primarily impacting Israel and the U.A.E. in three waves on March 3, 13 and 23, 2026. The actor employed Tor exit nodes and commercial VPN infrastructure (AS35758) and used tools and techniques resembling Gray Sandstorm to scan, attempt logins, and exfiltrate mailbox content. Organizations are advised to enforce MFA, apply conditional access by geography, and monitor sign-in and audit logs for signs of compromise.

🔒 Microsoft and Armada are integrating Azure Local and Foundry Local into Armada’s Galleon modular datacenters to provide a customer-controlled cloud for intermittently connected, contested, or fully disconnected environments. The validated reference architecture supports Azure Local control plane and managed clusters with multi-rack scalability, flexible hyperconverged or SAN-backed storage, and resilient multi-network connectivity including satellite, LTE/5G, RF, and SD-WAN. Designed for defense, public safety, energy, and other regulated sectors, the solution preserves Azure’s cloud operating model while enabling local AI inference and analytics to meet sovereignty, latency, and regulatory requirements.

⚛️ Microsoft announces an AI for nuclear collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver an end-to-end, AI-powered foundation for nuclear project delivery. The initiative pairs Microsoft Azure, generative AI for permitting, and NVIDIA simulation and AI stacks to speed design, streamline licensing, and improve operations via Digital Twins. Early adopters — including Aalo Atomics, Southern Nuclear, and Idaho National Laboratory — report major time and cost reductions while preserving regulatory traceability and security.

🧩 Microsoft outlined a strategy at FabCon and SQLCon 2026 to converge its database portfolio and Microsoft Fabric into a single, unified data platform. Key highlights include the new Database Hub (early access) for unified estate management across Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server via Arc, and Fabric Databases. The company also showcased enhancements to OneLake, Runtime 2.0, Fabric IQ, agent experiences, migration assistants, and a database savings plan that can reduce costs up to 35% for eligible scenarios.

🛡️A hacktivist group with reported ties to Iran's intelligence services has claimed responsibility for a large-scale data-wiping incident against Stryker, a global medical technology company. The group, known as Handala, said it erased data from more than 200,000 systems and forced shutdowns across 79 countries while Stryker sent thousands of staff in Ireland home and reported a building emergency at its U.S. headquarters. Reporting and internal sources indicate attackers may have used Microsoft Intune to issue remote wipe commands; some employee devices were reportedly wiped and defaced.

🔒 Organizations are accelerating cloud migration to reduce IT operating costs, boost resilience, and prepare for expanded AI use, with IDC citing operational efficiency as the primary driver. Agentic AI automates discovery, orchestration, and continuous modernization across hybrid environments to shorten timelines and lower risk. Healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing face distinct regulatory, latency, and legacy constraints, and Microsoft positions Azure, Azure Copilot, and GitHub Copilot alongside migration frameworks, Azure Migrate, and the Azure Accelerate program to enable secure, industry-specific modernization informed by customer results.

🤖 Microsoft introduces agentic modernization capabilities across Azure Copilot and GitHub Copilot, unifying IT and developer workflows to accelerate cloud migration and application modernization. New public preview agents — the Azure Copilot migration agent and the GitHub Copilot modernization agent — automate discovery, dependency mapping, planning, code transformation, and deployment at scale. The approach emphasizes human-led control, integrated database modernization, and operationalized delivery through Cloud Accelerate Factory to make modernization repeatable and measurable.