February 9 – February 16, 2026

What changed

Microsoft Sentinel added nine new out-of-the-box data connectors to general availability, including Mimecast Audit Logs, CrowdStrike Falcon Endpoint Protection, Vectra XDR, Palo Alto Networks Cloud NGFW, Proofpoint on Demand Email Security, and MongoDB. For a SOC, this means less custom-connector plumbing to onboard common third-party telemetry — you get supported ingestion, parsing, and content packages from the content hub instead of hand-rolled log pipelines. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)

A Microsoft 365 Copilot data connector is in public preview, pulling Microsoft 365 Copilot audit logs and activity data into Sentinel. Once ingested, that data can drive analytics rules, custom detections, hunting, and automation, giving analysts a way to spot Copilot misuse, anomalous prompts, and policy violations — and it can be routed to the Sentinel data lake for cheaper retention and graph/MCP scenarios. As Copilot adoption grows, this is the audit surface you'll be asked to monitor. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)

Multi-tenant content distribution is now in public preview from the Microsoft Defender portal. Partners and SOCs managing multiple Sentinel tenants can centrally replicate analytics rules, automation rules, workbooks, and alert tuning rules across tenants instead of rebuilding detections one environment at a time. This cuts configuration drift and speeds tenant onboarding while keeping detection execution local to each target tenant. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)

The UEBA Essentials solution got a public-preview refresh that extends anomaly detection across Azure, AWS, GCP, and Okta, with new queries powered by the anomalies table and 30+ prebuilt UEBA queries deployable from the content hub. Behavior analytics can be enabled automatically from the connectors page as data sources are added, and activity is mapped to MITRE ATT&CK. For analysts, it means faster surfacing of high-risk behavior across cloud and identity without stitching together noisy signals by hand. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)

Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations (DSI) is now generally available integrated with the Sentinel graph. It combines Purview's AI-driven content analysis with Sentinel's activity-centric graph analytics so a single investigation can show what sensitive data was touched, who accessed it, and how it moved. This gives SOC and data-security teams a blast-radius view that connects the data side of an incident to the identity and activity side. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)

Microsoft Defender for Cloud introduced a database-level recommendations experience for SQL Vulnerability Assessment in public preview on 10 February. Instead of aggregating findings at the server or instance level, each SQL VA rule now generates a separate assessment per affected database, surfaced as individual recommendations on the Defender for Cloud Recommendations page — across PaaS and IaaS SQL, Express and Classic. Scanning logic, rules, schedules, and pricing are unchanged; it only makes findings easier to consume and remediate, and (during preview) database-level assessments contribute to Secure Score in the Defender portal. For a SOC, per-database granularity means a vulnerable database no longer hides behind a green server-level rollup. (Microsoft Defender for Cloud release notes)

Also on 10 February, Defender for Cloud extended its container-image vulnerability scanning (powered by Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management) to Minimus and Photon OS images and reached general availability. As minimal and hardened base images become more common in production pipelines, coverage of these distributions closes a scanning blind spot — though note that scanning additional image types can increase your bill. If your workloads run on Photon OS (common on VMware/Tanzu) or Minimus images, their CVE findings now flow into the same recommendations and exposure view as the rest of your registry. (Microsoft Defender for Cloud release notes)

Microsoft Defender for Identity added two new identity security posture assessments this month: one that lists Active Directory service accounts with direct or nested membership in privileged groups, and one that locates accounts in built-in Operator groups (Account, Server, Backup, and Print Operators). Both surface standing privilege that's easy to lose track of — service accounts quietly nested into Domain Admins, or legacy operator-group membership that grants more than anyone remembers. For an identity-focused SOC, these are ready-made hunting leads for privilege-reduction work before an attacker finds the same paths. (What's new in Microsoft Defender for Identity)

Microsoft extended the deadline to retire the Microsoft Sentinel experience in the Azure portal to March 31, 2027. Sentinel is generally available in the Defender portal (including for customers without Defender XDR or an E5 license), and after that date it will only be available there. The extra runway doesn't change the direction — use it to validate the Defender portal experience, permissions, and any Azure-portal-only workflows your playbooks still depend on. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)

Worth knowing

February's Patch Tuesday (10 February 2026) was heavy: Microsoft fixed roughly 58 vulnerabilities, and six of them are being actively exploited as zero-days — three of which were also publicly disclosed before the fix. The exploited set is CVE-2026-21510 (Windows Shell — a SmartScreen/security-prompt bypass via a malicious link or shortcut), CVE-2026-21513 (MSHTML framework protection-mechanism bypass), CVE-2026-21514 (Microsoft Word OLE mitigation bypass, publicly disclosed), CVE-2026-21519 (Desktop Window Manager elevation of privilege to SYSTEM), CVE-2026-21533 (Remote Desktop Services elevation of privilege), and CVE-2026-21525 (Remote Access Connection Manager denial of service). The three security-feature-bypass flaws (21510, 21513, 21514) are the ones to verify first — they're the browser/Office delivery bugs attackers chain into initial access — followed by the two local EoPs on hosts an attacker already reached. Confirm patch coverage on internet-facing and RDP-exposed systems before you start hunting for exploitation. (Microsoft Security Update Guide)

Microsoft Threat Intelligence published research on "AI Recommendation Poisoning," a form of AI memory-poisoning attack where hidden instructions are embedded behind helpful-looking "Summarize with AI" buttons and share links. When a user clicks, the assistant silently processes a pre-filled prompt — laced with commands like "remember," "in future conversations," and "as a trusted source" — that biases the AI's stored memory so it steers later answers, even in unrelated chats, toward attacker-chosen products or outcomes. Notably, the cases Microsoft found involved real companies promoting themselves rather than classic malware operators, and off-the-shelf tools to build these poisoned links are already circulating. Treat agent memory and tool outputs as an attack surface, and keep the new Copilot/agent audit signals (see the Sentinel connector above) in scope for detection. (Microsoft Security Blog)

Two threads from this window are worth reading together for a Microsoft estate. The AI-poisoning research and the M365 Copilot audit connector point the same way — as Copilot and agents embed into daily workflows, their prompts and activity become telemetry you're expected to monitor, not a side channel. Meanwhile the platform keeps consolidating into the Defender portal: with the Azure-portal Sentinel retirement now set for March 2027 and features like multi-tenant content distribution and Purview DSI landing Defender-portal-first, the unified experience is where new capability ships. If your team still lives partly in the Azure portal, February is a good month to close that gap while the migration runway is long. (What's new in Microsoft Sentinel: February 2026)