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This article summarizes what's new in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It includes information about new features in preview or in general availability (GA), feature updates, upcoming feature plans, and deprecated functionality.
This page is updated frequently with the latest updates in Defender for Cloud.
Find the latest information about security recommendations and alerts in What's new in recommendations and alerts.
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May 2025
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| May 5 | Preview | Active User (Public Preview) |
Active User (Public Preview)
The Active User feature assists security administrators quickly identify and assign recommendations to the most relevant users based on recent control plane activity. For each recommendation, up to three potential active users are suggested at the resource, resource group, or subscription level. Administrators can select a user from the list, assign the recommendation, and set a due date—triggering a notification to the assigned user. This streamlines remediation workflows, reduces investigation time, and strengthens overall security posture.
April 2025
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| April 7 | Upcoming Change | Enhancements for Defender for app service alerts |
Enhancements for Defender for app service alerts
April 7, 2025
On April 30, 2025, Defender for App Service alerting capabilities will be enhanced. We'll add alerts for suspicious code executions and access to internal or remote endpoints. Additionally, we have improved coverage and reduced noise from relevant alerts by expanding our logic and removing alerts that were causing unnecessary noise. As part of this process, the alert "Suspicious WordPress theme invocation detected" will be deprecated.
March 2025
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| March 11 | Upcoming Change | Upcoming change to the recommendation severity levels |
Upcoming change to the recommendation severity levels
March 11, 2025
We're enhancing the severity levels of recommendations to improve risk assessment and prioritization. As part of this update, we reevaluated all severity classifications and introduced a new level — Critical. Previously, recommendations were categorized into three levels: Low, Medium, and High. With this update, there are now four distinct levels: Low, Medium, High, and Critical, providing a more granular risk evaluation to help customers focus on the most urgent security issues.
As a result, customers might notice changes in the severity of existing recommendations. Additionally, the risk level evaluation, which is available for Defender CSPM customers only, might also be affected as both recommendation severity and asset context are taken into consideration. These adjustments could affect the overall risk level.
The projected change will take place on March 25, 2025.
Important
The availability of File Integrity Monitoring in Azure China 21Vianet and in GCCM clouds is not currently planned to be supported.
February 2025
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| February 19 | Preview | MDC Cost Calculator (Preview) |
MDC Cost Calculator (Preview)
February 19, 2025
We're excited to introduce our new MDC Cost Calculator to help you easily estimate the costs associated with protecting your cloud environments. This tool is tailored to provide you with a clear and accurate understanding of your expenses, ensuring you can plan and budget effectively.
Why Use the Cost Calculator?
Our cost calculator simplifies the process of estimating costs by allowing you to define the scope of your protection needs. You select the environments and plans you want to enable, and the calculator automatically fills in the billable resources for each plan, including any applicable discounts. You're given a comprehensive view of your potential costs without any surprises.
Key Features:
Scope Definition: Select the plans and environments that interest you. The calculator performs a discovery process to automatically populate the number of billable units for each plan per environment.
Automatic and Manual Adjustments: The tool allows for both automatic collection of data and manual adjustments. You can modify the unit quantity and discount levels to see how changes affect the overall cost.
Comprehensive Cost Estimation: The calculator provides an estimate for each plan and a total cost report. You're provided a detailed breakdown of costs, making it easier to understand and manage your expenses.
Multicloud Support: Our solution works for all supported clouds, ensuring that you get accurate cost estimations regardless of your cloud provider.
Export and Share: Once you have your cost estimate, you can easily export and share it for budget planning and approvals.
January 2025
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| January 30 | GA | Update to scan criteria for container registries |
| January 29 | Change | Enhancements for the Containers Vulnerabilities Assessment scanning powered by MDVM |
Update to scan criteria for container registries
January 30, 2025
We are updating one of the scan criteria for registry images in the preview recommendation for registry images across all clouds and external registries (Azure, AWS, GCP, Docker, JFrog).
What's Changing?
Currently, we rescan images for 90 days after they have been pushed to a registry. This will now be changed to scan 30 days back.
Note
There are no changes for the related GA recommendations for container vulnerability assessment (VA) on registry images.
Enhancements for the Containers Vulnerabilities Assessment scanning, powered by MDVM
January 29, 2025
We are excited to announce enhancements to our container vulnerability assessment scanning coverage with the following updates:
Additional Programming Languages: Now supporting PHP, Ruby, and Rust.
Extended Java Language Support: Includes scanning for exploded JARs.
Improved Memory Usage: Optimized performance when reading large container image files.
November 2024
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| November 19 | Preview | Updated versions of CIS standards for managed Kubernetes environments and new recommendations |
| November 7 | GA | Enhanced Kubernetes (K8s) Alert Documentation and Simulation Tool |
Updated versions of CIS standards for managed Kubernetes environments and new recommendations
November 19, 2024
Defender for Cloud's regulatory compliance dashboard now offers updated versions of the Center for Internet Security (CIS) standards for assessing the security posture of managed Kubernetes environments.
From the dashboard, you can assign the following standards to your Azure Kubernetes resources:
- CIS Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) v1.5.0
To ensure the best possible depth of coverage for these standards, we've enriched our coverage by also releasing 79 new Kubernetes-centric recommendations.
To use these new recommendations, either assign the standards listed above or create a custom standard and include one or more of the new assessments in it.
Enhanced Kubernetes (K8s) Alert Documentation and Simulation Tool
November 7, 2024
Key features
- Scenario-based alert documentation: K8s alerts are now documented based on real-world scenarios, providing clearer guidance on potential threats and recommended actions.
- New Simulation Tool: A powerful simulation tool is available to test your security posture by simulating various attack scenarios and generating corresponding alerts.
Benefits
- Improved alert understanding: Scenario-based documentation provides a more intuitive understanding of K8s alerts.
- Enhanced threat response: Alerts are enriched with valuable context, enabling faster and more accurate responses.
- Proactive security testing: The new simulation tool allows you to test your security defenses and identify potential vulnerabilities before they're exploited.
October 2024
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| October 6 | Preview | Kubernetes Identity and Access information in the security graph |
Kubernetes Identity and Access information in the security graph (preview)
October 6, 2024
Kubernetes Identity and Access information is added to the security graph, including nodes that represent all Kubernetes Role Based Access Control (RBAC) related entities (service accounts, roles, role bindings, etc.), and edges that represent the permissions between Kubernetes objects. Customers can now query the security graph for their Kubernetes RBAC, and related relationships between Kubernetes entities (Can Authenticate As, Can Impersonate As, Grants Role, Access Defined By, Grants Access To, Has Permission To, etc.)
Full discovery of container images in supported registries
October 6, 2024
Defender for Cloud now collects inventory data for all container images in supported registries, providing full visibility within the security graph to all images in your cloud environments, including images that currently don't have any posture recommendations.
Querying capabilities through the Cloud Security Explorer are improved so users can now search for container images based on their metadata (digest, repository, OS, tag, and etc.)
September 2024
| Date | Category | Update |
|---|---|---|
| September 22 | Upcoming change | Cloud security explorer experience improvements |
| September 18 | Deprecation | Deprecation of MMA auto-provisioning capability |
| September 15 | GA | Integration with Power BI |
| September 9 | Deprecation | Defender for Servers feature deprecation |
Cloud security explorer experience improvements
September 22, 2024
Estimated date for change: October 2024
The Cloud Security Explorer is set to improve performance and grid functionality, provide more data enrichment on each cloud asset, improve search categories, and improve CSV export report with more insights on the exported cloud assets.
Deprecation of MMA auto-provisioning capability
September 18, 2024 As part of the MMA agent retirement, the auto provisioning capability that provides the installation and configuration of the agent for MDC customers, will be deprecated as well in two stages:
By the end of September 2024- auto provisioning of MMA will be disabled for customers that are no longer using the capability, as well as for newly created subscriptions. After end of September, the capability will no longer be able to be re-enabled on those subscriptions.
End of November 2024- auto provisioning of MMA will be disabled on subscriptions that haven't yet switched it off. From that point forward, it can no longer be possible to enable the capability on existing subscriptions.
Integration with Power BI
September 15, 2024
Defender for Cloud can now integrate with Power BI. This integration allows you to create custom reports and dashboards using the data from Defender for Cloud. You can use Power BI to visualize and analyze your security posture, compliance, and security recommendations.
Learn more about the new integration with Power BI.
Defender for Servers feature deprecation
September 9, 2024
Both Adaptive application controls, and Adaptive network hardening are now deprecated.
Remediate system updates and patches recommendations on your machines
September 8, 2024
You can now remediate system updates and patches recommendations on your Azure Arc-enabled machines and Azure VMs. System updates and patches are crucial for keeping the security and health of your machines. Updates often contain security patches for vulnerabilities that, if left unfixed, are exploitable by attackers.
Information about missing machine updates is now gathered using Azure Update Manager.
In order to maintain the security of your machines for system updates and patches, you'll need to enable the periodic assessment updates settings on your machines.
Defender for Storage (classic) per-transaction storage protection plan not available for new subscriptions
September 4, 2024
Estimated date for change: February 5, 2025
After February 5, 2025, you won't be able to activate the legacy Defender for Storage (classic) per-transaction storage protection plan unless it's already enabled in your subscription.