Microsoft Azure

Large OS Disk Encryption (LOSDE) is now generally available for Azure Confidential VM migration scenarios. Organizations can move larger, production-scale workloads into confidential computing with the OS disk fully protected, instead of being held back by disk size.During migration, the OS disk is encrypted with confidential disk encryption. This protects all critical partitions and binds the encryption keys to the VM's virtual TPM, so disk content is accessible only to that VM, not to the host or hypervisor. Keys are released only after the platform passes attestation. Because encryption happens as part of the move, teams don't have to…

General Availability: October 2026

Announcing the general

availability of the HTTP DDoS ruleset for Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF)

on Azure Front Door Premium. HTTP-layer DDoS attacks remain a leading cause of

application downtime, and static controls such as IP filters and fixed rate

limits often can't keep pace with distributed botnets. The HTTP DDoS ruleset

provides automated, adaptive layer 7 protection that learns, detects, and

defends with minimal configuration. Once assigned, it continuously baselines

normal traffic for each Azure Front Door profile and, when a surge indicates an

attack, selectively mitigates offending clients with no emergency tuning…

General Availability: October 2026

Azure MCP Server 3.0 is now generally available, expanding how AI agents and developer tools interact with Azure through the open Model Context Protocol (MCP).

This release introduces new and expanded capabilities:Infrastructure as code: Azure Terraform tools for provider documentation, Azure Verified Modules, resource export, and policy validation.

Protection and recovery: Azure Backup and Azure Resilience Management tools for backup protection, recovery plans, readiness checks, and drills.

Cost optimization: Expanded Azure Advisor capabilities and optimization tools for reviewing recommendations, comparing resource options, and…

General Availability: October 2026

The Log Analytics logging destination for Azure Container Apps is now a legacy logging option. Existing environments configured with the Log Analytics logging destination will continue to function normally. However, we recommend planning a migration to the Azure Monitor logging destination.   

This recommendation is driven by the underlying HTTP Data Collector API used by the Log Analytics logging destination. Support for the legacy HTTP Data Collector API ended on September 14, 2026 and will now only be receiving critical security updates.  

Recommended action  

Review any monitoring resources that depend on logs collected through the Log…

Effective: September 2026

Cross-Tenant Restore (CTR) helps organizations establish an independent recovery path by enabling Azure VM backups to be restored into a separate Azure tenant. It strengthens cyber resilience while using the existing backup copy, without requiring customers to maintain and manage duplicate backup data.

Learn more.

Preview: October 2026

Private offers through Microsoft Marketplace help you optimize your spending power with pricing and terms aligned to your organization’s needs, including flexible billing, custom contract lengths, and more. For eligible private offers, we are simplifying the private offer purchase experience for customers. Previously, customers needed to first “accept” the private offer and then “purchase” individual products. Now, customers simply purchase all included products with one easy step for eligible private offers. Purchase governance remains aligned with Azure role-based access controls through the billing admin role. This is currently being…

Private Preview: July 2026 · General Availability: October 2026

Higher Azure Storage account resource quotas are now generally available, supporting up to 1,000 storage accounts with standard endpoints per region, per subscription, up from the default of 250. Manage more accounts in a single subscription, reducing the need to distribute resources across multiple subscriptions. 

Request quota increases through the Azure Portal, Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell without opening a support ticket. Azure Storage Resource Provider (SRP) API read, write, and list operations automatically scale to support higher approved account quotas. 

These changes apply to account management operations through the Storage…

General Availability: October 2026

Microsoft Foundry now brings Claude models into Azure Cost Management alongside the rest of your Foundry spend, generally available. Until now, Claude charges appeared under SaaS rather than under the Foundry resource used to deploy them, and Claude deployments lacked the tags enterprises rely on for showback and chargeback, leaving finance and platform teams to reconcile costs by hand. With this release, Claude costs appear under the associated Foundry resource; Claude deployments and Foundry resources support tags that follow your organization's existing conventions; and Claude cost records carry model and usage_type tags, so you can…

General Availability: October 2026

Announcing the general availability of profile and route

level policies for Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) on Azure Front Door

Premium. WAF policies are no longer limited to individual domains: you can now

apply broad baseline protection across an entire Azure Front Door profile and

use targeted policies for the routes that need different controls.   

You can associate a WAF policy at the profile, domain, or

route scope. For example, use a profile level policy for common protections

across every domain in a profile, then apply a route level policy to sensitive

paths such as sign-in, checkout, or API routes. This reduces policy…

General Availability: October 2026

Azure Network Watcher VNet flow logs filtering is now generally available, enabling you to control which

network traffic flows are logged based on specific criteria such as IP

addresses, ports, protocols, encryption state, flow state, and traffic direction. With this capability, you

can focus logging on the traffic that matters most for monitoring,

troubleshooting, security, compliance, and network optimization. Filtering

helps reduce log volume by capturing only relevant flows, which can lower

storage costs and make analysis easier by reducing noise. 

This feature is now

accessible through the Azure portal, in addition to PowerShell, making…

General Availability: October 2026

Azure Backup now supports Item-Level Recovery (ILR) for Azure virtual machines using Premium SSD v2 and Ultra disks with both 512 byte and 4KB logical sector sizes. You can now recover individual files and folders from your Azure VMs with Premium SSDv2 and Ultra disks. 

You can generate a file-recovery executable or script through the Azure portal, CLI, or PowerShell, then run it on a compatible machine to access the recovery point, selectively browse, and copy individual files or folders without performing a full disk or virtual machine restore, in parity with the existing ILR behavior. 

Learn more.

General Availability: October 2026

ABFS Vectored Read helps compatible analytics engines reduce request overhead for selective reads in Azure Data Lake Storage. By combining nearby file ranges into fewer storage requests and executing reads asynchronously, it can reduce network round trips for workloads such as selective Parquet queries.

Compatible Spark workloads can enable the capability through configuration, without rewriting queries or migrating data.

Learn

more.

General Availability: May 2026

What and why

Starting October 30, 2026, Microsoft Entra ID will make the Choose Your Own Telephony Provider experience available. This feature enables organizations to use a supported third-party telecommunications provider for SMS and voice authentication. Organizations select a supported provider through Microsoft Security Store and manage their commercial relationship directly with the provider.

Microsoft recommends phishing-resistant authentication methods, such as passkeys, instead of SMS or voice authentication. Organizations should use a telephony provider for user populations that have a business, regulatory, or technical requirement…

Effective: October 2026