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Living definition

What is Microsoft Guardian Agents (Defender agent discovery, dynamic permissions)?

Cybersecurity & Threat DefenseSecurity & Identity

Kind
Product or service
Released
2026-10-22
Cohort
product_service-001

Description

What it is and what it is for

AI-assisted draft · independently checked

Companies are giving AI agents access to their files, tools and systems. Microsoft argues that an agent acting with its user's access can behave like an insider threat, a risk that comes from people who already have legitimate access, and that with thousands of agents, manually triaging every alert will not scale. Guardian Agents are AI agents that Microsoft describes as helping security teams supervise other AI agents, investigate why risk changed, and recommend or apply containment. Dynamic Permissions are a companion control: Microsoft says an agent should begin with no authority and receive only what an approved task needs, for only as long as the task requires. Microsoft announced both on 19 October 2026 as extensions of Project Perception, its system of red, blue and green security agents.

Written from primary sources and reference pages, and checked against them by an independent AI fact-checker. Drafted with AI assistance.

Primary sources

Where this description comes from

  1. Project PerceptionMicrosoftVendor
  2. Securing the agentic insiderMicrosoftVendor
  3. Agents are your newest insiders. Security must move at their speed.MicrosoftVendor

A plain-language summary that simplifies technical detail; it does not assess readiness, maturity or adoption.

Release record

Published description

Published on

Cohort
product_service-001
Root
sha256:72e105b5601978662afa48dd3642a304a0a0bbd31afe344014cd10afebc1bd04
Entry
sha256:386ed97dd06af312e4997b2a567dac8ec8ff1a9ea03b22b86ced60fb7ed72c87

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