Episode 434: Reading the Spec Sheet on Microsoft's Agentic SOC

Welcome to Episode 434 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. Microsoft announced Project Perception on 2026-07-27 with a lot of “workforce of AI agents” language. In this episode, Ben and Scott discuss what Perception really is, what it needs from your tenant, what it costs, and what happens the first time an agent asks you to approve something. Six agents. Seven playbooks. Every one manually triggered. Each agent gets its own Entra Agent ID and a permission grant. There’s a lot to unpack.

Show Notes

• Save $200 at TechCon365 with code Ben200: https://www.techcon365.com/Seattle/

• What is Project Perception?

• How Nationwide stays ahead of attackers with Project Perception

• Key concepts in Project Perception

• Agent categories in Project Perception

• Microsoft Security Copilot Security Compute Units and capacity

• Work with playbooks in Project Perception

Prior podcast context

• Ep 431: Agent Governance Is the New App Governance

• Ep 419: Security and AI

• Ep 416 and Ep 412

• Ep 406: Agents of Insight

• Ep 377: Microsoft Copilot for Security

About the sponsors

Nasuni is a leading unstructured data platform for enterprises where file data is mission-critical for both people and AI. Nasuni powers the operational file layer where work happens — helping organizations manage, protect, and activate data so teams can work smarter, reduce costs, and operate securely without limits.

Intelligink — Would you like to become the irreplaceable Microsoft 365 resource for your organization? Let us know!