Browse All Posts (1899)

John Edward outlines practical Azure architecture best practices for enterprise applications, covering the Azure Well-Architected Framework, scalability and high availability patterns, security with Zero Trust, observability, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, cost controls, networking, disaster recovery, and governance.

This week focused on making ML systems easier to run in production, from securing outbound AI calls in SQL Server 2025 to tightening governance and cost visibility across OneLake. Fabric updates added storage tiering and reporting, plus clearer architecture patterns for building an AI-ready data foundation. On the real-time side, Eventstreams matured with stronger connectors, event-time processing, and practical CDC-to-action reference flows, while new guidance covered context-aware AI layers and safer automation patterns for calling Fabric REST APIs.

This week's DevOps roundup centers on tightening the software supply chain and pulling security and AI tooling into the same governed, review-first workflows teams already use. We cover the AsyncAPI npm compromise and the concrete CI/CD misconfiguration pattern behind it, plus new GitHub guardrails in Dependabot and secret scanning that help reduce exposure. On the platform side, Azure content focused on repeatable operating models for Kubernetes and AI, with practical updates in edge programmability and storage metrics. We also look at how enterprises can measure, control, and test AI agents like production software, from PR-visible detections and agentic autofix to load testing, deterministic evaluation, and AI gateway enforcement.

This week's Security roundup connects active threat intel with the platform controls teams can use to reduce exposure. Microsoft detailed ACR Stealer intrusion chains and ShinyHunters-linked OAuth abuse against Salesforce, while a real @asyncapi npm compromise showed how CI misconfigurations and trusted publishing can turn PRs into malware delivery. On the platform side, GitHub shipped more in-PR security signals (AI detections, agentic autofix, and Copilot security review) plus safer supply-chain defaults like Dependabot cooldowns and stronger secret scanning automation. Rounding it out, Entra ID moves to passkeys by default and new guidance focuses on governing AI agents and tool access with least privilege, gateways, and auditable authorization.

This week's AI roundup centers on a clear operational shift: centralize access, authorization, and auditability as agents move from demos into real systems. Azure API Management and Foundry's AI Gateway control plane show how teams can enforce token limits, routing, and telemetry, while MCP's enterprise-managed authorization patterns tighten end-to-end tool access using Entra ID and App Service auth. On the engineering side, stable Agent Skills for Python, long-running MCP tools on Azure Functions, and richer MCP outputs push agent tooling toward repeatable, debuggable workflows. Copilot and security updates round it out with repo-level usage metrics, more configurable code review, AI-powered code scanning detections, and agentic autofix that make cost, policy, and least-privilege design part of everyday development.

This week, GitHub Copilot got easier to measure and easier to govern, with expanded usage metrics (including Copilot app activity) and new repository-level reporting that links adoption to where work ships. Security workflows tightened as AI detections land directly in pull requests, agentic autofix can open draft remediation PRs with validation reruns, and the Copilot app adds an on-demand /security-review check. On the tooling side, Visual Studio and JetBrains pushed multi-model choice, endpoint control, and safer integrations (including MCP trust and BYOK endpoints), while Copilot code review became more configurable and even usable from GitHub Mobile for quick fixes.

This week's Azure roundup focuses on practical ways to put AI agents behind enterprise guardrails, with Azure API Management (APIM) emerging as the control point for identity, spend limits, routing, and observability. Azure AI Foundry now adds an AI Gateway control plane that can create or associate an APIM AI Gateway from the Foundry admin console, giving platform teams a clearer governance surface while keeping the data path and policies in APIM. The posts also show how to enforce per-consumer entitlements, emit per-model token metrics to Azure Monitor and Application Insights without changing client code, and layer Azure Front Door plus WAF for defense in depth. The theme running through all of it is moving from policy to proof, where continuous telemetry and audit-ready evidence become part of operating agent platforms at scale.

Pamela Fox announces MCP Live, a free livestream focused on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), including updates from MCP maintainers and teams at Microsoft and GitHub, plus sessions on building MCP servers in VS Code and upcoming MCP authorization work.

This week's Weekly .NET Roundup centers on two tracks: staying current with July 2026 servicing updates (including CVE fixes, containers, and known issues) and getting early signal from .NET 11 Preview 6. Mobile teams have a clear action item with .NET MAUI moving to CoreCLR-only on Android, iOS, and Mac Catalyst, while Visual Studio continues to expand Copilot workflows with built-in Agent Skills, model selection, and new extension governance options. We also cover practical modernization and agent operations patterns, from a structured ASP.NET-to-.NET 10 course to OpenTelemetry-instrumented local agents, plus a Durable Functions approach for long-running MCP tools on Azure Functions.

Authorised Territory demonstrates how to add server-side logging to a .NET MCP server and surface those log messages in a .NET console client when the client invokes a tool.

Lee Stott invites AI engineers to a Microsoft Foundry Discord round table on using the Browser Automation Tool (BAT) to let agents drive real browser workflows via Playwright Workspaces, with a focus on setup basics, practical use cases, and the guardrails needed for responsible, auditable automation.

Allison announces general availability of repository-level GitHub Copilot usage metrics via the Copilot usage metrics REST API, enabling daily per-repository reporting for Copilot coding agent and Copilot code review pull request activity across enterprises and organizations.

Allison announces an update to the Copilot usage metrics API that adds dedicated reporting for GitHub Copilot app activity in enterprise and organization reports, including active user counts and token usage breakdowns.

Allison announces new controls for GitHub Copilot code review, including reading custom instructions from the PR head branch, expanded instruction file support, repository-level setup steps via a workflow YAML, and a default-on firewall with separate configuration from Copilot cloud agent.

Allison announces a GitHub Mobile improvement that lets you start “Fix with Copilot” directly from Copilot code review pull request comments, making it quicker to address review feedback from a phone while keeping PRs moving.

GitHub demonstrates how to onboard the GitHub Copilot for Jira integration, including installing the app from the Atlassian Marketplace, authorizing access, handling SSO, and enabling organizations so Copilot can turn a Jira work item into a draft pull request.

Jordan Selig explains how Microsoft Foundry’s new AI Gateway control plane lets platform teams create or associate an Azure API Management (APIM) gateway from the Foundry admin console, while keeping the runtime on Azure App Service. The post breaks down what Foundry now governs, what still belongs in APIM, and how to adapt an existing App Service agent sample.

Dalia Abuadas argues that in an AI-assisted workflow, writing the first patch is often no longer the expensive part—reviewing, validating, and owning the change is. She proposes using a constrained “price check” patch to replace long scope debates with evidence from a real diff and tests.

Elliot Volkman shares Microsoft Security’s Black Hat USA 2026 agenda, focused on how attackers abuse “trust paths” across software supply chains, identities, cloud services, and AI systems. The post highlights sessions on npm supply chain campaigns, Azure Automation research, GitHub-focused detection ideas, and hands-on skilling with Defender and Sentinel.

VimalVerma outlines Hypervelocity Engineering (HVE) as an operating model for building and continuously evolving Azure AI Landing Zones, with a focus on platform engineering, Infrastructure as Code, Policy as Code, and security-by-design so enterprise AI platforms can scale without losing governance.

Visual Studio Code shows how to give GitHub Copilot more context by sharing your running website through VS Code’s Integrated Browser, so Copilot can reference what you’re seeing while you work.

Francesco Bonacci joins GitHub’s Open Source Friday to talk about Cua and the project’s open-source work in the GitHub ecosystem.

Fokko at Work walks through selected new features in Visual Studio Code 1.129 related to GitHub Copilot, using short demos and calling out that availability can vary based on enterprise policies and pricing plans.

Waldek Mastykarz explains how to evaluate agent skills that call APIs without paying for test traffic or mutating production data. He outlines why direct evals against real endpoints create cost, state, and non-determinism problems, then shows a proxy-based approach using Dev Proxy to emulate APIs while keeping production URLs unchanged.

Hidde de Smet audits a local SKILL.md “skills” library spread across Claude Code, a shared .agents catalog, and GitHub Copilot’s VS Code setup, showing how silent failures (missing files, duplicates, stale references) accumulate over time and how to stocktake them with a checklist and a couple of shell one-liners.

Microsoft Security Research and Balaji Venkatesh S break down two ACR Stealer intrusion chains seen in customer environments, showing how ClickFix lures lead to WebDAV- and MSHTA-driven execution, credential theft from browsers via DPAPI, and file staging for exfiltration, with concrete Defender detections, hunting queries, and mitigations.

redsa explains how Azure Cobalt CPUs enable per-VM power monitoring and workload-aware power capping in Azure datacenters, combining hardware and software changes across the stack to protect critical VM performance while improving power efficiency and allowing higher power oversubscription.

olivialiu-micro explains how SQL Server 2025 enables governed outbound calls to external AI services while keeping control inside the database security model, including permissions, enablement switches, authentication options, and built-in auditing for REST invocation and external model objects.

Lee Stott invites AI engineers to a Microsoft Foundry Discord round table on scaling agent apps beyond demos, focusing on how Foundry Toolbox, Skills, and Tool Search reduce tool sprawl, prompt bloat, and auth plumbing by centralizing tools behind a governed MCP endpoint with runtime discovery.

Rafia Aqil explains Microsoft’s IQ Platform (Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Foundry IQ) and how it adds business and organizational context to AI systems. The post breaks down Fabric’s OneLake-based data layer, ontology-driven meaning, and Foundry IQ’s managed services for RAG, memory, ranking, and citations.

Allison announces that GitHub Projects views now support advanced search in the filter bar, enabling boolean AND/OR expressions to build more precise views. The update also adds a reviews: filter for PR items and introduces a 90-day retention policy for deployment statuses in the REST and GraphQL APIs.

Allison announces a GitHub update that lets repository admins archive pull requests so they’re removed from public view without being deleted. The post explains what happens when a PR is archived (closed and locked), how visibility changes for non-admins, and how to find archived PRs during triage.

Mabasile_MSFT announces general availability of OneLake Storage Tiers and Lifecycle Management in Microsoft Fabric, explaining how to keep frequently used data in the hot tier while automatically moving less-accessed data to cool or cold tiers to reduce long-term storage costs.

Allison announces new GitHub Enterprise Cloud REST API endpoints that let enterprise admins manage Visual Studio Subscription (VSS) assignments in bulk, including listing assignments, mapping UPNs to GitHub handles, and removing incorrect matches—useful when SCIM identities don’t align with VSS UPN formats.

Allison announces a public preview GitHub Actions runner image for Xcode 27 on GitHub-hosted macOS runners, including the new Xcode-version-based support model, the workflow labels to target the image, and current limitations around arm64-only availability.

Mabasile_MSFT announces general availability of the OneLake storage report in Microsoft Fabric, which lets workspace admins generate an item-size breakdown of storage usage in a workspace, including visible, system, and soft-deleted data, plus billing status per item.

Pablo Lopes announces a free, open-source course that guides developers through modernizing a legacy ASP.NET app to .NET 10 using the GitHub Copilot modernization agent, including assessment and planning artifacts, an execution workflow, and a final deployment to Azure App Service.

Pritha Das announces a public preview feature that adds autoscale to Azure Event Grid namespaces, letting Standard tier namespaces automatically adjust Throughput Units based on real-time utilization while you set the minimum and maximum bounds.

Microsoft Developer walks through what’s new in Data API builder (DAB) 2.0, focusing on how it sits between an app and a database to expose APIs without writing custom CRUD endpoints. The overview highlights new secrets management, broader authentication options, improved authorization controls, and integration points.

Yesenia Yser and Toby Kohlenberg explain why AI agents need to be treated as first-class security principals, with tightly scoped roles, controlled tool access, and end-to-end auditability to prevent quiet permission creep and hard-to-investigate incidents.