Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Microsoft is converging Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI) directly into Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel, which will provide world-class, real-time TI within a unified SecOps experience at no additional cost.

This convergence of MDTI value into Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR will take place over the course of several months and be completed by the first half of next year. It will grant customers access to Microsoft’s extensive repository of both raw and finished threat intelligence, developed from 84 trillion daily signals and backed by over 10,000 security professionals, eliminating the need for additional licensing and costly third-party solutions.

The following MDTI features will converge into Defender XDR and Sentinel:

Read the announcement post here:

• Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is Converging into Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/defenderthreatintelligence/mdti-is-converging-into-microsoft-sentinel-and-defender-xdr/4427991

We’re evolving our industry-leading Security Incidents and Event Management solution (SIEM), Microsoft Sentinel, to include a modern, cost-effective data lake. By unifying all your security data, Microsoft Sentinel data lake, now in public preview, accelerates agentic AI adoption and drives unparalleled visibility, empowering teams to detect and respond faster. With Sentinel data lake, you’re no longer forced to choose between retaining critical data and staying within budget.

Microsoft Sentinel Data Lake has a dramatically lower cost of storage, natively integrates with Sentinel querying & works with all existing Sentinel data connectors, including:

• All Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Sentinel data sources
• Microsoft 365
• Microsoft Entra ID
• Microsoft Resource Graph
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms
• Firewall and network logs
• Cloud infrastructure and workload telemetry
• Identity and access logs (Microsoft Entra, Okta, etc.)
• DNS, proxy, and email telemetry

GET STARTED
Join us as we redefine what’s possible in security operations:

• Start saving money by implementing Sentinel Data Lake
• Learn more about the latest news in our Sentinel Data Lake Tech Community blog
• Explore Sentinel Data Lake pricing
• Learn more about our Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence news
• Sign up for next wave of innovation at the “Microsoft Secure” broadcast – Sept 30th, 2025

Read the announcement blog post here:

• Microsoft Sentinel data lake: Unify signals, cut costs, and power agentic AI
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/07/22/microsoft-sentinel-data-lake-unify-signals-cut-costs-and-power-agentic-ai/

Unify your security for the AI era

Explore the latest solutions that can help you protect your data, cloud, and AI investments with an AI-first, end-to-end platform at Microsoft Secure. Learn how to recruit the right Security Copilot agents to harden defenses and boost your team’s efficiency, and how intelligent tools from Microsoft Security enables you to adapt to today’s threat landscape with limited resources.

At Microsoft Secure you’ll learn to:

• Stop attacks across clouds and platforms, harden your defenses in a cost-effective way, and secure AI with Microsoft Security Copilot agents, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview.
• Manage the total cost of your security toolset by consolidating with a platform approach.
• Understand how a unified SecOps toolset—powered by Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender—gives you comprehensive, proactive threat protection.

Featuring:

• Vasu Jakkal – Corporate Vice President – Microsoft Security Business
• Dorothy Li – Corporate Vice President, Security Copilot – Ecosystem and Marketplace, Microsoft
• Krishna Kumar Parthasarathy – Corporate Vice President – Sentinel Platform, Microsoft
• Herain Oberoi– Vice President – Data and AI – Security Marketing, Microsoft
• Scott Woodgate – General Manager – Threat Protection, Microsoft
• Jeremy Dallman – Senior Director – Microsoft Threat Intelligence

This event will be broadcasted in multiple time zones, offering opportunities to join engaging conversations with leaders, get questions answered by subject matter experts, and connect at a time that suits you best when you register below.

• EVENT: “Microsoft Secure” – Security Innovation
  September 30, 2025 | 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7)
  https://aka.ms/SecurityInnovationReg

The new =COPILOT() function in #Microsoft #Excel enables users to easily leverage AI directly within their spreadsheets to quickly populate cells with data or analyze columns with #AI.

For a 5min tutorial, visit: youtu.be/hjQitMNzSr0 or read the full blog post here:

• Bring AI to your formulas with the COPILOT function in Excel – Microsoft 365 Insider Blog
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/bring-ai-to-your-formulas-with-the-copilot-function-in-excel/4443487
• COPILOT Function
  https://www.aka.ms/copilotfunctionsupport

Accessing =COPILOT() function for Excel
To access the new =COPILOT() function, you must have a #Microsoft365 #Copilot license (Business/Enterprise) & be a Microsoft 365 Insider Beta Channel participant for access which will be made available over the next month or so. Individuals without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will see the following:

For those with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, visit https://aka.ms/MSFT365InsiderProgram for more information about participating in the Beta channel.

Details: (Gleaned from the above articles)

• COPILOT function for Excel uses gpt-4.1-mini (2025-04-14)
• Execution is model-grounded & does not currently leverage web-grounding or work-grounding
• You can calculate up to 100 COPILOT functions every 10 minutes – up to 300 calls per hour
• COPILOT function cannot calculate in workbooks labelled Confidential or Highly Confidential
• The COPILOT function cannot calculate in workbooks labelled Confidential or Highly Confidential
• Formula results may change over time, even with the same arguments. If you don’t want results to recalculate, consider converting them into values with Copy, Paste Values (select values, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + Shift + V).
• Your prompts and data supplied as context will not be used to train AI models.

Data from documents processed within Copilot Chat by users that do not have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license are not collected or used for training Microsoft’s artificial intelligence models.  This is covered by our documentation on Copilot Chat & the commitments & controls of Enterprise Data Protection:

• Enterprise data protection in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Privacy and Protections

File uploads in Microsoft 365 Copilot & Copilot Chat are simply copies made to OneDrive for Business to a special folder called “Microsoft Copilot Chat Files”.

• Uploaded files are stored in a user’s OneDrive for Business as part of enterprise data protection

Consequently, as OneDrive for Business stored data, not only do uploaded documents never leave the fully-encrypted boundaries of the organization’s Microsoft 365 cloud instance, these files are not used to train AI models & are also covered by the same privacy & data protections afforded to Copilot Chat conversations through Enterprise Data Protection.