Microsoft Technology Briefing - September 2026

GitHub’s flagship developer event uniting humans, agents, and the world’s code to build what’s next. October 28–29 / San Francisco, CA. in-person & virtual.

Join data leaders, Microsoft experts, and the local Fabric community for a day of learning, networking, and practical insights. Explore the latest innovations in data, analytics, AI, and Real-Time Intelligence through expert-led sessions, customer stories, and conversations with people who are solving similar challenges. Whether you're evaluating Fabric or scaling adoption, you'll leave with new ideas, new connections, and a clearer path forward.

Tune in for expert insights, product updates, and real-world customer stories focused on data, analytics, AI, and Real-Time Intelligence. Discover what's new in Microsoft Fabric, learn from practitioners and technical specialists, and explore practical strategies you can apply immediately. Get the insights of the roadshow experience with the flexibility to participate remotely.

Are you ready to build real AI solutions and tackle challenges hands-on? Join us for a practical, hands-on hackathon focused on Fraud Intelligence with multiagent systems. You’ll work through real-world challenges, collaborate with peers, and learn from Microsoft specialists. Focus on how to use agents to actually update a core process. Registration opens soon...

Explore how GitHub Copilot for Application Modernization can help accelerate the transformation of legacy .NET and Java applications. In this hands-on hack, you'll learn how to modernize application code, identify and remediate technical debt, and enhance applications with AI-powered capabilities. Location: United Spaces, Östra Hamngatan 16 Läs mer om Application Modernization with GitHub Copilot...

This event has become one of the largest gatherings of security leaders in Sweden, bringing together CxOs, business and IT decision makers and security practitioners to hear how today's most innovative organisations put AI at the core of their cybersecurity strategy. Alongside the sessions, the day is built for connection: time with Microsoft experts, our partner ecosystem in the expo area, and peers facing the same challenges.

Explore the latest innovations, hear practical insights, and build skills you can apply right away. Microsoft Ignite is at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, November 17–20, 2026, with an optional pre-day on November 16. The online event is November 17–19, 2026.

Välkommen till en exklusiv workshop med Microsoft och kollegor från hela den svenska offentliga sektorn. Vi utforskar hur modernisering av infrastruktur, program och data plattformar kan frigöra AI:s fulla värde – samtidigt som högsta möjliga nivå av säkerhet, regelefterlevnad och digital suveränitet upprätthålls. Location: Microsoft Office, Regeringsgatan 25 Läs mer om Modernisera med trygghet...

This year at Microsoft Ignite, we spotlight our AI-first, end-to-end security platform designed to protect identities, devices, data, applications, clouds, infrastructure, and the AI agents now working alongside your teams.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence examines CVE-2026-73570 exploitation in Zimbra, including observed attack paths, detection opportunities, and mitigation guidance.

Microsoft observed phishing campaigns that abused MSP360 RMM to deploy ScreenConnect, creating redundant remote-access channels for follow-on activity...

Explore how Storm-3068 turned a compromised identity into broader cloud access and the steps organizations can take to defend their identities, pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.

Since January 2026, Microsoft has observed Russian state threat actor Star Blizzard evolve their detection evasion capabilities through large-scale phishing campaigns, the use of accounts on compromised websites, and a novel malware delivery technique, tracked by Microsoft as “RedFlick”.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified NeedyMantis, a modular post-compromise malware framework used in targeted intrusions that combines custom loaders, encrypted archives, and extensible components to maintain long-term access and support follow-on operations.

Microsoft details JADEPUFFER-linked Azure reconnaissance, resource deletion, and credential access using compromised service principals, identifying the activity as associated with Storm-3168 and providing guidance for defenders.

Storm-2570 is a ransomware affiliate that uses consistent post-compromise tools and techniques across deployments involving Qilin, DragonForce, Anubis, and BERT ransomware, and provides guidance to help defenders detect and disrupt this activity before ransomware deployment.

This month's updates help you discover and control local AI agents, extend Zero Trust to agent traffic, and strengthen SOC foundations.

We are announcing ISOC in Microsoft Defender: a foundation built for agentic security that brings leading solutions for SIEM and threat protection together.

How much guidance does an AI coding agent actually need? See how we used evaluation data to target SPFx knowledge gaps, improving results without wasting tokens on what models already know.

Enterprise HR analytics increasingly depend on frictionless data integration across a diverse ecosystem of solutions to unlock deeper, actionable insight. With the introduction of programmatic survey export APIs—and a Visier connector built on top of them—Viva Glint enables customer data to flow securely into the analytics environments where business decisions are made.

Microsoft Teams Rooms gives organizations the flexibility to create high-quality collaboration experiences across meeting spaces of every kind and size. Often we hear from customers, “which device or which platform should I choose?” The way we think about it is simple...

Create full-stack business apps through conversation, grounded in your data with app building in Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio.

As previously communicated , support for Office LTSC 2021 will end on October 13, 2026 . After that date, no further updates, security fixes, or technical support will be available for this version of Office. While the applications may continue to function, using unsupported software could lead to potential security risks, compliance risks, system incompatibilities, and other issues.

We’re focusing Microsoft Graph PowerShell on the platform where we can give you the most reliable, capable, and well-maintained experience: PowerShell 7.x and later. Built on modern .NET, PowerShell 7.x resolves many of the underlying assembly-loading and dependency issues that affect Windows PowerShell 5.x today. Concentrating our engineering there means faster fixes, quicker delivery of...

ESPC Microsoft 365 and AI conference returns to Amsterdam from November 30 to December 3, 2026, bringing together thousands of IT professionals, business leaders, developers, architects, and consultants for four days of innovation, learning, and networking. With hundreds of sessions, workshops, and opportunities to connect with peers and industry experts, ESPC 2026 promises something for everyone in the Microsoft ecosystem.

The very first Copilot Dev Camp Summit will take place on September 30, 2026, at 8:00 AM Pacific Time, launching a new quarterly event for the Copilot Extensibility community. This free, quarterly online event brings together developers, makers, product experts, and the broader technical community to explore the evolving capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Cowork,

We’re reimagining Microsoft Copilot to enable work as it evolves and to help expand what every individual and every organization can accomplish in the flow of human ambition.

As organizations create, collaborate, and retain more content in Microsoft 365, storage needs rarely grow in a perfectly predictable way. IT leaders and admins need a practical way to respond to demand without overprovisioning capacity, disrupting users, or adding unnecessary licensing complexity. To help you with this, Microsoft 365 SharePoint Storage and Microsoft 365 OneDrive Storage are now in public preview.

Bring an existing agent plugin into Work IQ Developer Tools (WIQD) and the plugin registry or create a new plugin to utilize the full Microsoft Copilot packaging workflow. A plugin gives Microsoft Copilot new ways to get work done. It packages one or more capabilities, such as skills, MCP servers, or agents, so Copilot can...

New Copilot UX components heading to Generally Available in October 2026, SPFx 1.24 Beta 5 is now available, React 18 support is coming in 1.24. Updates coming in Node.js support.

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Modern List in Power Pages, a refreshed data presentation experience that helps makers showcase Dataverse data with modern Fluent UI components, seamless infinite scrolling, inline filtering, shimmer loading, flexible low-code customization and custom JavaScript support.

Server Logic enables makers and developers to execute business logic securely on the server. However, connected business applications often need website experiences to participate in processes that extend beyond the site. We are introducing support for invoking Power Automate cloud flows from Server Logic in Power Pages.

Power Platform Build hands-on Power Platform and AI expertise with Power Series Developed by the Power CAT team, Power Series is now available with 20 hands-on labs that help customers, partners, and field teams build practical Power Platform and AI skills at their own pace.

We’re excited to announce that Microsoft-managed SSL/TLS certificates are now available for custom domains in Power Pages. When you connect a custom domain, you can now choose an SSL/TLS certificate that Microsoft provisions, configures, and renews for you.

We’re excited to announce that the Standard Data Model (SDM) to Enhanced Data Model (EDM) migration utility in Microsoft Power Platform CLI is now generally available (GA) and it now also supports four key Dynamics 365 portal templates: New sites using these templates could be provisioned on EDM since June this year.

Every enterprise runs on business processes, but it’s the people that provide judgment, manage exceptions, and often connect systems that were never designed to work together.

Canvas apps agentic coauthoring is now generally available Today we’re excited to announce a major milestone for makers: canvas apps coauthoring with agents is now generally available.

Historically, Power Platform administrators and developers have automated management tasks through a mix of tools. A capability might exist in the admin center, use a different name in PowerShell, have a custom shape in a connector, or not yet be available in the command line. Each tool could be valuable, but moving between them often...

Lessons from an Azure Managed Redis migration for Copilot Studio agent flows: cache efficiency, client reliability, staged rollout, and lower costs.

The Auxiliary table plan in Azure Monitor Logs is a cost-effective option for ingesting and retaining high-volume, verbose logs used for compliance and auditing. Auxiliary Logs is now generally available in the sovereign clouds: Azure Government (Fairfax)

Azure Copilot Observability Agent, an AI-powered operational companion in Azure Monitor, is now covering Log Analytics data in Basic and Auxiliary table plans during interactive analysis and deep investigations. Teams can move high-volume telemetry - incl...

Learn how Microsoft used Azure Arc and Azure Virtual Desktop to simplify hybrid security operations, improve visibility, and scale globally.

Zone resiliency isn't a single number you apply to a whole workload. The useful question isn't “how many zones?” but “how many zones does each component need to survive the loss of one?” Decide zone patterns component by component, use service-managed zone redundancy wherever it fits, and reserve three-zone designs for the components that genuinely require a third failure domain.

High-scale mesh using connected group in Azure Virtual Network Manager is now in general availability. In available regions, customers may connect up to 3,000 virtual networks in a single mesh connectivity configuration by default and higher scale IP conn...

Updated troubleshooting guidance is now available for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server. You can use the expanded documentation to diagnose high CPU, memory, IOPS, temporary file usage, and autovacuum issues, helping you identify root causes a...

The best model for your business will keep changing. Adopting it should move your business forward, not send your team back to rebuild the architecture around it.

Our Virtual Machine Lifecycle policy guides how we manage these transitions, giving Azure customers transparency, predictability, and guidance.

The following updates and enhancements were made to Azure SQL: Scale larger workloads on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale Premium series with new 160-vCore and 192-vCore options, delivering up to 50% greater compute capacity than the previ...

The Laosv5 series and Lasv5 storage optimized VMs, based on the 5th Gen AMD EPYC™ processor (Turin), are now generally available.Lasv5 and Laosv5 VMs have sizes ranging from 2-160 vCPUs, with 8GiB of memory and 720GB of local NVMe disk capacity per vCPU.

Microsoft is advancing Azure cloud infrastructure with more efficient systems and Circular Centers that extend the useful life of datacenter hardware.

Discover Azure canvases for GitHub Copilot, interactive shared workspaces that bring Azure tools, dashboards, and guided workflows directly alongside your Copilot conversations. Explore Azure resources, analyze costs, and build hosted skills while keeping...

AI cost optimization goes beyond model selection. Discover how context engineering in Microsoft Foundry helps lower AI costs by improving knowledge retrieval, tool selection, memory, and agent performance at scale.

GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI's newest frontier model, begins rolling out today through the Microsoft Foundry Limited Access Program, with availability expanding to participating customers over the coming days.

The recognition for Microsoft over the past couple of weeks comes down to models, infrastructure, data, applications, and developer tools working as one system when AI moves into production.

Deleting a gateway is currently permanent, so administrators must recreate it if it is removed accidentally. With soft delete, supported gateways are retained for 30 days after deletion, giving authorized administrators time to restore them before permanent deletion. Soft delete feature currently is only available for standard mode of on-premises data gateways in Microsoft Fabric (Preview). Personal mode gateways and virtual network data gateways are not currently supported.

Beginning October 30, 2026, users will no longer be able to add new legacy Teams or legacy Outlook activities to pipelines. These legacy activities will no longer appear as options when users add new activities to a pipeline. Existing legacy activity instances can still be edited and used in existing pipelines. New notification scenarios should instead use the modern Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365 Email activities.

AI models are increasingly taking on work that extends far beyond a single prompt: building a feature across a codebase, investigating a complex issue, synthesizing hundreds of pages of information, or working through a multi-step business process.

If you haven't already, check out FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and Agents for a complete look at all of our FabCon Europe announcements across Fabric and Microsoft Databases. Microsoft IQ: One enterprise, acting on one live picture Organizations generate vast amounts of information every day across business systems, operational data, enterprise knowledge, communications, and the web.

With SQL Server on Azure Local, customers can modernize where their data resides while maintaining control over infrastructure, connectivity, and data placement.

Authors: Faisal Mohamood and Bogdan Crivat If you haven't already, check out FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and Agents for a complete look at all of our FabCon Europe announcements across Fabric and Microsoft Databases. Most enterprise analytics estates were assembled rather than designed. A tool for ingestion, another for transformation, a warehouse for data processing...

If you haven’t already, check out Arun Ulag’s hero blog “ FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and Agents ” for a complete look at all of our FabCon and SQLCon announcements across both Fabric and our database offerings. Getting a data project working is only the beginning. As AI makes it easier for more people to build applications, explore information, and create agents...

If you haven't already, check out FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and Agents for a complete look at all of our FabCon Europe announcements across Fabric and Microsoft Databases. An end-to-end look at what's new in Fabric Analytics and how governed e nterpri se d ata is mo ving clos er to the people and to ols that use it . Walking through Barcelona, it’s impossible not to be inspired by the Sagrada Familia.

If you haven't already, check out FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona: Building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and Agents for a complete look at all of our FabCon Europe announcements across Fabric and Microsoft Databases. Welcome to the September 2026 Fabric Feature Summary! As the Microsoft Fabric community gathers in Barcelona for the European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference, this month brings one of our biggest updates yet.

Today I will show you how we can tackle one of the most common tasks when working in a development team or managing an open-source project, and that is working with Pull Requests. While we’re going to be using the GitHub tooling within Visual Studio for this, the approach would be very similar with Azure...

A user asked for per-solution color themes. It already ships, and it goes further than they asked. You run several instances of Visual Studio side by side, one per solution, and they all look identical. Same taskbar icon, same alt-tab thumbnail, same chrome. So, you land in the wrong one, start typing, and realize thirty...

Learn how Microsoft used Azure Arc and Azure Virtual Desktop to simplify hybrid security operations, improve visibility, and scale globally.

We dive into these questions and other AI hot takes on the latest episode of the GitHub Podcast.

We’ve all experienced this, the desktop application is hanging, the window is greyed out, and we’re just waiting for it to start to respond. Or we’re on a website and are sure that it was going to load faster than this, but we’re just waiting the loading icon spin around and around. These sorts of...

New research from GitHub and Yale Program on Climate Change Communication finds strong demand for tools, measurement, and practical guidance that can help developers reduce wasted compute.

Describe the interface you need in plain English, then let the agent build a live surface you can both use and update—so you spend less time adapting to tools and more time getting work done.

The open source Git project just released Git 2.56. Here is GitHub's look at some of the most interesting features and changes introduced since last time.

A look at the targeted AI taskflows behind these findings, the critical Android bugs they uncovered, and how to run the same open-source agent on your own app.

Microsoft Fabric and SQL innovations announced at FabCon and SQLCon Barcelona 2026 help organizations build trusted data foundations for AI.

Explore GitHub’s latest transparency data and learn more about policy updates affecting developers and open source.

Bring your own AI model with updates to BYOM, fix NuGet vulnerabilities from the Error List, explore pull requests with the Git agent, see which operand decides an if condition, and attach to Podman containers.

Microsoft's 2026 Responsible AI Transparency Report highlights the progress we’ve made in building and deploying AI responsibly, supporting our customers, and strengthening our responsible AI governance, tools, and practices.

Once a Marine, always a Marine. That’s certainly true for Doug Pierson, a recently retired US Marine Corps Major General who manages our Microsoft Executive Support Team. As part of that role, he works with our company’s senior leaders and created an Executive Cyber Defense service offering to assist them with protecting themselves and the...

At Microsoft, we’ve been on our journey with AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot for a while now. We’ve made amazing strides and are still discovering new capabilities that are changing the way our employees work. But is it possible that we’ve fallen in love with the journey, while forgetting our destination? It’s easy to do.

A network connectivity incident doesn’t begin when someone asks whether they can get online. It starts earlier, with the signals coming from routers, switches, access points, circuits, and the tools that watch them. “We have different tools to detect if there’s some outage in the network. After we have those alerts converted into tickets, we...

What's changing for Azure Cosmos DB and Power Platform Developer Certifications? Developers aren't building the same applications they were just a few years ago. Today, they're creating cloud-native solutions, integrating AI experiences, connecting data across platforms...

AI can personalize learning, reduce administrative burden, accelerate research and expand access to high-quality instruction. It also brings real risk.

When organizations begin adopting AI, one of the first important questions to be answered is where to start. The needs and options across different teams and functions can feel overwhelming. Our Microsoft Finance organization was no different. When our leaders were preparing to add AI into everyday operations, the opportunities for significant efficiency gains were...

Two years ago, AI adoption at Microsoft felt kind of like pushing a boulder up a hill. We had the technology, the licenses, and the leadership mandate, but when it came to cultural embrace of this new era, we didn’t yet have the momentum to get that rock to the top. In those early days,

For Microsoft sellers, one challenge remains remarkably consistent: The more time they spend on administrative work, the less time they spend with customers and making sales. Opportunity records need updates. Forecast comments require review. Investment programs and licensing options live in different places...

Microsoft Learn is changing how it manages public documentation repositories. Learn what the changes mean for GitHub contributors and where to continue sharing feedback. If you contribute to Microsoft Learn documentation through GitHub, here’s what you need to know about upcoming changes to our public documentation repositories and what they mean for your contributions. Over the coming months, Microsoft Learn will retire...

Explore new Copilot modes, learn the basics of AI FinOps, and understand what’s next for agents. Microsoft is reimagining Copilot, bringing familiar tools together with new capabilities that help people and organizations build, customize, and scale AI across work. For a full overview of what’s new, read the Official Microsoft Blog. To help you make the most of what’s new, start with the new AI at Work playlist in AI Skills Navigator.

Build practical cybersecurity skills to help protect yourself and your environment while preparing for an AI-powered future. Cybersecurity is relevant to every role. Whether you build applications, manage data, lead a team, protect systems, or simply use digital tools, the decisions you make can contribute to a stronger security posture. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re offering a variety of practical ways to enhance your security skills.