As organizations rapidly adopt generative and agentic AI, ensuring robust and unified governance has never been more important. Therefore Microsoft is honored to be named a Leader in the 2025-2026 IDC MarketScape for Global Unified AI Governance Platforms. (Supplier Assessment (#US53514825, December 2025). We believe this recognition underscores our commitment to making AI innovation safe, accountable and enterprise-ready – so you can move quickly without compromising trust or compliance.
The urgency of a unified AI management strategy is driven by more stringent regulatory requirements, the sheer complexity of managing AI systems across different AI platforms and multi-cloud and hybrid environments, and management concerns about risks related to negative brand impact. Centralized, end-to-end governance platforms help organizations lower compliance barriers, reduce operational risk, and turn governance into a strategic driver of responsible AI innovation. In today’s environment, unified AI governance is not just a compliance obligation – it’s critical infrastructure for trust, transparency and sustainable business transformation.
Our own approach to AI is anchored in the Microsoft Responsible AI standard, supported by the dedicated Office of Responsible AI. We draw on our in-house experience building, securing and managing AI systems and translate that knowledge directly into our AI management tools and security platform. As a result, customers benefit from features such as transparency notes, fairness analysis, explanation tools, security guardrails, compliance assessments, agent identity, data security, vulnerability identification, and protection against cyber threats such as prompt-injection attacks. These tools enable them to develop, secure and manage artificial intelligence that is ethical and designed to help support regulatory compliance. By integrating these capabilities, we enable organizations to make ethical decisions and protect their business processes throughout the AI lifecycle.
Microsoft’s AI Governance capabilities aim to provide integrated and centralized governance for observability, governance and security across IT, developer and security teams to ensure integrated governance within their existing tools. Microsoft Foundry acts as our main control point for developing, evaluating, deploying, and monitoring models, offering a curated catalog of models, machine learning operations, robust evaluation, and built-in safety railings. Not yet available at the time of IDC’s publication, Microsoft Agent 365 provides a centralized control plane for IT that helps teams confidently deploy, manage and secure their agent AI published through Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry.
Deeply embedded security systems are an integral part of the Microsoft AI governance solution. Integrations with Microsoft Purview provide tools for data security, compliance and real-time management, while Microsoft Entra provides agent identity and controls to manage agent proliferation and prevent unauthorized access to confidential resources. Microsoft Defender offers AI-specific position management, threat detection and protection at runtime. Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager automates compliance with more than 100 regulatory frameworks. Detailed audit logging and automated documentation strengthen regulatory and forensics capabilities, enabling organizations in regulated industries to innovate with AI while maintaining oversight, secure collaboration, and consistent policy enforcement.
Guidance for security and governance executives and CISOs
In order for organizations to advance their AI transformation initiatives, it is critical to focus on the following priorities for creating a secure, well-managed and scalable AI framework. The guidelines below provide Microsoft’s recommendations for meeting these best practices:
| CISO guidelines | What does this mean | As Microsoft delivers |
|---|---|---|
| Adopt a single end-to-end management platform | Build a comprehensive, integrated management system spanning traditional machine learning, generative AI, and agent AI. Ensure unified oversight from development through deployment and monitoring. | Microsoft enables traceability and management at every layer across IT, developer and security teams, providing an integrated and cohesive management platform that empowers teams to play their part within the tools they use. Microsoft Foundry acts as a development control plane that links model development, evaluation, safety checks and continuous monitoring. Microsoft Agent 365 is a control plane for IT that enables discovery, security, deployment and observability for agentic AI in the enterprise. Microsoft purpose, Enterand Defender integrate to ensure consistent end-to-end management across data, identity, threat protection and compliance. |
| The ultimate responsible AI infrastructure | Implement responsible AI practices as a core part of engineering and operations with built-in transparency and fairness. | Microsoft puts in theirs Responsible AI standards into our engineering processes supported Office of Responsible AI. Automatic generation of model cards and built-in fairness mechanisms distinguish Microsoft as a strategic differentiator that combines technical controls with advanced management processes. Microsoft’s Responsible AI Transparency Report provides insight into how we develop and deploy AI models and systems accountability, and provides a model for customers to emulate our best practices. |
| Advanced security and real-time protection | Deliver robust real-time defenses against emerging AI security threats, especially for regulated industries. | Microsoft Platform Features real time jailbreak detection, encrypted communication between agents, audit logs recording unauthorized manipulation for model and agent actions and deep integration with Defender provide AI-specific threat detection, security posture management, and automated incident response capabilities. These capabilities are particularly important for regulated sectors. |
| Automatic scale matching | Automate compliance processes, enable policy enforcement throughout the AI lifecycle, and support audit readiness across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. | Microsoft Purview streamlines regulatory compliance and provides end-to-end support for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments – giving customers repeatable and auditable management processes. |
We believe we differentiate ourselves in AI management by providing a unified end-to-end platform that embeds responsible AI principles and robust security at every layer – from agents and applications to the underlying infrastructure. Through the native integration of Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Agent 365, Purview, Entra, and Defender, organizations can benefit from centralized oversight and traceability across layers of the organization with consistent protection and operationalized compliance throughout the AI lifecycle. Our end-to-end approach removes disparate and disconnected tools, enabling organizations to build trusted, transparent and secure AI solutions that can start secure and stay secure. We believe this approach uniquely differentiates Microsoft as a leader in deploying accountable, secure and auditable AI at scale.
Strengthen your security strategy with Microsoft AI governance solutions
Agentic and generative AI are reshaping business processes and creating a new frontier for security and governance. Organizations that act early and prioritize governance best practices—unified governance platforms, built-in responsible AI tools, and integrated security—will be best positioned to confidently innovate and maintain trust.
Microsoft approaches AI governance with a commitment to embed responsible practices and robust security into every layer of the AI ecosystem. Our AI governance and security solutions enable customers to leverage built-in tools for transparency, fairness and compliance across design and operations. We believe this approach enables organizations to benefit from centralized oversight, consistently enforce policies throughout the AI lifecycle, and achieve audit readiness—even in the rapidly changing landscape of generative and agentic AI.
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