“Even though it is early days…, there are quickly becoming too many agents to manage manually,” said Allie Mellen, an analyst at Forrester. A tool such as A365 can help IT and security teams “track, manage, and secure the agents in their organization,” she said. “AI agents are a new attack surface that we must protect given their access to sensitive data.”
A365 builds on three existing Microsoft tools: Defender, Entra, and Purview. Microsoft Defender helps detect and block known and emerging threats that target agents, while Purview, Microsoft’s data governance tool, is used to prevent agents from accessing — and then leaking — sensitive data.
Each agent is assigned a unique Microsoft Entra ID for IT to track usage and apply “adaptive, risk-based policies,” that can shut down compromised agents. “Microsoft has correctly identified that if agents are to do real work, they need ’employee’ IDs, not just software licenses,” said Alastair Woolcock, vice president analyst at Gartner.
