Microsoft Agent 365: Govern and Secure AI Agents

Microsoft Agent 365 helps organizations discover, observe, govern, and secure AI agents by extending Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft 365 Admin Center capabilities to agent workloads.

As you deploy agents across business processes, IT and security teams need a way to understand what agents exist, who owns them, what data they can access, and how they are operating.

Agent 365 provides a centralized platform to help manage agent adoption at scale.

Why Do Organizations Need Agent 365?

Organizations are rapidly adopting AI agents to automate tasks, interact with business systems, access enterprise data, and perform work on behalf of employees.

These agents can access data, use tools, interact with applications, and act on behalf of users.

As agent adoption expands, organizations can quickly lose visibility into:

• What agents are running
• Who owns the agent
• What all data these agents can access, and
• Whether it complies with policy—especially when data quality, access controls, and governance have not been addressed.

Without proper oversight, agents can become another unmanaged technology estate. Agent 365 is designed to help organizations establish visibility, governance, and security before agent sprawl becomes a business risk.

What Does Microsoft Agent 365 Do?

Agent 365 addresses three governance challenges:

• Limited visibility: It is unclear what agents are active, who owns them, or how they are used.
• Inconsistent controls: Ownership, permissions, and lifecycle policies can vary by agent.
• Greater risk: Access to sensitive data and tools increases exposure to excessive permissions, data leakage, and AI-specific threats.

Observe: Gain Visibility into Your Agent Estate

Agent 365 provides a centralized view of AI agents operating across the organization. IT and security teams can discover agents, monitor activity, identify usage patterns, and understand how agents interact with users, data, and systems.

Key capabilities include:

• Agent Registry for agent inventory and visibility
• Agent Analytics for usage and performance insights
• Agent Map for visualizing relationships and dependencies
• Role-based visibility for business and security stakeholders

Govern: Control How Agents Operate

Once agents are visible, Agent 365 helps organizations establish guardrails for how they are onboarded, what they can access, and how they are managed throughout their lifecycle.

Governance capabilities include:

• Agent onboarding workflows
• Identity governance
• Access and integration controls
• Lifecycle management
• Audit logging
• Compliance monitoring
• Policy templates and governance automation

Secure: Protect Agents and Enterprise Resources

Agent 365 extends enterprise-grade identity, data security, and threat protection to agents and the resources they use.

Security capabilities include:

• Agent identity protection
• Conditional Access
• Data security controls
• Data loss prevention
• Threat detection
• Threat investigation
• Security posture management
• Support for AI-specific risks and vulnerabilities

This is also where the relationship between Agent 365 and Microsoft Purview becomes important: Agent 365 governs the agent, while Purview helps protect and govern the data the agent uses.

How is Microsoft Agent 365 different from Microsoft Purview?

Organizations adopting AI at scale will typically need both Microsoft Agent 365 and Microsoft Purview:

• Agent 365 governs the agents operating in your environment.
• Microsoft Purview protects and governs the data those agents interact with.

Purview helps protect the information agents interact with. It provides controls for data security, compliance, data loss prevention, auditing, retention, insider risk, and the protection of sensitive enterprise information.

Agent 365 addresses the governance of the agents operating on that information with insight into:

• What agents exist
• Who owns and uses them
• What organizational resources they can access
• Whether they are appropriately governed
• Where agent-related risks are emerging
• How each agent should be managed throughout its lifecycle

Microsoft Agent 365 vs. Microsoft Purview

How Does Agent 365 Licensing Work?

For agents operating on behalf of a user, licensing is assigned to the person benefiting from the agent’s actions rather than to the individual agent itself.

One license covers all applicable agents associated with that user.

Agent 365 is available:

• As a standalone license for $15 per user per month
• As part of Microsoft 365 E7

Pricing and licensing details are current as of August 2026 and are subject to change.

How Can Your Organization Get Started with Agent Governance?

Begin by inventorying active agents, assigning owners, reviewing access and data exposure, and setting lifecycle policies.

Talk to our experts about assessing your agent estate, defining a governance model, and preparing your organization to adopt Microsoft Agent 365 with confidence.