Microsoft is debuting a suite of security agents for Copilot that will take over repetitive and rote tasks burdening cybersecurity teams. This next evolution of Security Copilot with AI agents is designed to autonomously assist in critical areas such as phishing, data security, and identity management. “The relentless pace and complexity of cyberattacks have surpassed human capacity and establishing AI agents is a necessity for modern security,” notes the company. Microsoft Threat Intelligence is processing 84 trillion signals per day, indicating exponential growth in cyberattacks, including 7,000 password attacks per second, the company says.

“Microsoft built six of the new agents, while five come from third-party partners,” writes ZDNet, adding that “all will be available for preview starting in April.” The new tools are designed to help security teams manage high-volume security and IT tasks.

“Microsoft is the latest major vendor to embed autonomous AI agents directly into its security suite in an effort to reduce burnout for cyber pros and boost efficiency through AI-powered automation,” reports Axios. Such tools can ease hiring pressures resulting from the fact that “the U.S. only has enough cyber professionals to fill 83 percent of the available cyber jobs, according to federal data.”

Last year alone, Microsoft detected more than 30 billion phishing email attacks targeting its customers. “The volume of these cyberattacks overwhelms security teams relying on manual processes and fragmented defenses, making it difficult to both triage malicious messages promptly and leverage data-driven insights for broader cyber risk management,” Microsoft explains in an announcement.

While security teams will retain full control, agents will “accelerate responses, prioritize risks, and drive efficiency to enable proactive protection and strengthen an organization’s security posture,” Microsoft adds.

The 11 new task-specific AI agents for Security Copilot interact with products like Defender, Purview, Entra and Intune, notes The Register, which describes each agent and, in the case of third parties, identifies the contributors.

“Essentially, these agents use the natural language capabilities of generative AI to automate the summarization of high-volume data like phishing warnings or threat alerts so that human decision makers can focus on signals deemed to be the most pressing,” The Register explains.

Taking its cue from the Microsoft Zero Trust framework (formed in alignment with a government initiative) the agents will learn from user behaviors and adapt to internal workflows.