Microsoft named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for Unified AI Governance Platforms
As organisations increasingly adopt generative and agentic AI, it’s vital to ensure strong, unified governance. This is why Microsoft is proud to be recognised as a Leader in the 2025-2026 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Unified AI Governance Platforms (Vendor Assessment (#US53514825, December 2025). We see this recognition as a testament to our dedication to making AI innovation both safe and responsible, allowing you to progress swiftly without sacrificing trust or compliance.
The need for a unified AI governance strategy has intensified due to stricter regulations, the complexity of managing AI systems on multiple platforms, and concerns from leadership regarding potential risks that could harm brand reputation. Centralised, comprehensive governance platforms enable organisations to minimise compliance issues, reduce operational risks, and turn governance into a strategic advantage for responsible AI innovation. Nowadays, a unified AI governance approach isn’t just about meeting compliance requirements—it’s essential infrastructure for fostering trust, transparency, and sustainable business transformation.
Our strategy for AI is firmly anchored in Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles, supported by a dedicated Office of Responsible AI. Drawing insights from our internal experience in creating, securing, and governing AI systems, we translate these lessons directly into our management and security tools. This means our customers benefit from features such as transparency notes, fairness analyses, explainability tools, safety measures, compliance assessments, agent identity management, data security protocols, and protection against cyberthreats, including prompt-injection attacks. With these tools, they can develop, secure, and oversee AI that aligns with ethical standards and meets regulatory requirements. By integrating these capabilities, we empower organisations to make ethical decisions and protect their business processes throughout the AI lifecycle.
Microsoft’s AI Governance tools are designed to offer integrated oversight for observability, management, and security, ensuring cohesive governance that works with existing tools. Microsoft Foundry serves as our primary control hub for model development, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring, complete with a curated model catalogue, machine learning operations, rigorous evaluation, and built-in safety measures. Microsoft Agent 365, which became available after the IDC report was published, provides a central control system for IT, enabling teams to confidently deploy, manage, and secure their agentic AI through Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Foundry.
Robust security systems are a core part of Microsoft’s AI governance solution. Integrations with Microsoft Purview deliver real-time data security and governance tools, whereas Microsoft Entra manages agent identities and controls to curb unauthorised access to sensitive resources. Microsoft Defender adds AI-specific threat management, ensuring proactive protection and compliance. Moreover, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager automates adherence to over 100 regulatory standards, while detailed audit logs and automated documentation enhance both regulatory and forensic capabilities, allowing firms in tightly regulated industries to innovate with AI while ensuring oversight, secure collaboration, and consistent policy enforcement.
Guidance for Security and Governance Leaders and CISOs
To help organisations advance their AI transformation plans, focusing on the following priorities is essential for establishing a secure, well-governed, and scalable AI framework. Below are Microsoft’s recommended best practices:
| CISO Guidance | What It Means | How Microsoft Delivers |
|---|---|---|
| Adopt a unified, end-to-end governance platform | Implement a thorough governance system that integrates traditional machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI. Ensure cohesive oversight from development to deployment and monitoring. | Microsoft provides visibility and governance at every level of IT, development, and security teams, allowing them to contribute effectively using the tools they are familiar with. Microsoft Foundry serves as the developer control plane, linking model development, evaluation, security controls, and ongoing monitoring. Microsoft Agent 365 acts as the control centre for IT, enabling discovery, security, deployment, and oversight for agentic AI across the organisation. Microsoft Purview, Entra, and Defender create a consistent governance framework covering data, identity, threat protection, and compliance. |
| Industry-leading responsible AI infrastructure | Incorporate responsible AI practices into engineering and operations, ensuring built-in transparency and fairness. | Microsoft integrates its Responsible AI Standards into engineering processes, backed by the Office of Responsible AI. Automatically generated model cards and fairness mechanisms give Microsoft a unique edge, blending technical controls with robust governance processes. Microsoft’s Responsible AI Transparency Report offers insights into our responsible development and deployment of AI models and systems, serving as a model for our clients to follow. |
| Advanced security and real-time protection | Implement strong, real-time defences against new AI security threats, particularly for regulated industries. | Microsoft’s platform includes real-time jailbreak detection, encrypted communication between agents, and tamper-evident audit logs for model and agent activity, deeply integrated with Defender to ensure AI-specific threat detection, security posture management, and automated incident response, which is particularly vital in regulated sectors. |
| Automated compliance at scale | Streamline compliance processes, support policy enforcement across the AI lifecycle, and enhance audit readiness in hybrid and multicloud settings. | Microsoft Purview simplifies adherence to regulatory requirements and offers extensive support for hybrid and multicloud environments, thereby providing clients with repeatable and auditable governance processes. |
We believe our unique edge in the AI governance field lies in our comprehensive, end-to-end platform that embeds responsible AI principles and extensive security at every level—from agents and applications to the underlying infrastructure. With seamless integration of Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Agent 365, Purview, Entra, and Defender, companies gain centralised oversight and visibility across their organisation, ensuring consistent protection and operationalised compliance throughout the AI lifecycle. This holistic approach eliminates fragmented tools, enabling businesses to develop trustworthy, transparent, and secure AI solutions that can begin securely and remain so. We believe this unique strategy firmly positions Microsoft as a leader in implementing responsible, secure, and auditable AI at scale.
Strengthen Your Security Strategy with Microsoft AI Governance Solutions
Agentic and generative AI are revolutionising business operations, creating a new landscape for security and governance. Organisations that act promptly and emphasise governance best practices—such as unified governance platforms, built-in responsible AI tools, and integrated security—will be best equipped to innovate confidently while maintaining trust.
Microsoft commits to integrating responsible practices and solid security at every level of the AI ecosystem. Our AI governance and security solutions empower clients with built-in transparency, fairness, and compliance tools throughout both engineering and operational processes. We believe this approach helps organisations achieve centralised oversight, enforce policies uniformly across the AI lifecycle, and attain audit readiness—even in the fast-evolving realm of generative and agentic AI.
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