What is Microsoft Security Copilot?
Microsoft Security Copilot is an AI-powered tool embedded across Microsoft’s security and compliance products. It helps security teams respond faster by automating common workflows, analyzing vast security data, and surfacing high-value insights.
The tool works across environments, integrating with services like Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview. Security Copilot uses agents, embedded skills, and prebuilt promptbooks to assist with tasks such as alert triage, phishing analysis, and policy optimization. It aims to reduce noise, accelerate investigation, and support faster decision-making using natural language inputs and AI-guided responses.
Microsoft Security Copilot is available as a standalone product, purchased via Security Compute Units (SCUs) on Azure. It is also included with Microsoft 365 E5 licenses, granting an allowance of monthly SCUs as part of the package.
This is part of a series of articles about SOC as a Service.
Core Capabilities of Microsoft Security Copilot
Security Copilot includes several embedded capabilities designed to streamline threat detection, investigation, and response. These include:
- Security and IT agents: Prebuilt agents are embedded in tools like Defender, Intune, Entra, and Purview. These agents help automate tasks like phishing triage, vulnerability remediation, and conditional access policy checks.
- Promptbooks and embedded skills: Security Copilot provides ready-to-use prompts and task flows that guide analysts through repetitive security processes. This reduces manual effort and increases consistency in handling incidents.
- Data summarization and analysis: By analyzing large volumes of signals across identities, devices, apps, and cloud environments, Security Copilot extracts relevant insights and suppresses noise, making it easier to focus on high-priority issues.
These capabilities are built directly into Microsoft 365 E5 at no additional cost, allowing organizations to leverage AI-driven security enhancements without complex deployments or extra licensing.
What Can You Do with Microsoft Security Copilot?
Let’s review the primary use cases of Microsoft Security Copilot in a cybersecurity organization.
1. Investigate and Remediate Security Threats
Microsoft Security Copilot accelerates incident response by converting complex alerts into structured, actionable guidance. Security analysts in the SOC can follow step-by-step workflows for triage, investigation, containment, and remediation. This helps reduce response time and ensures consistency in how incidents are handled across teams.
For identity administrators, Copilot summarizes user activity and risk factors such as sign-in logs, role assignments, and known indicators of compromise. This makes it easier to understand the scope of identity-based threats and take informed action quickly.
2. Build KQL Queries or Analyze Suspicious Scripts
Security Copilot eliminates the need for deep scripting knowledge by converting plain language prompts into technical queries and code. Threat intelligence (TI) analysts can generate Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries to search across telemetry data and identify threats faster, without writing code manually.
Data security admins can use natural language to create precise keyword-based searches (KeyQL) for eDiscovery investigations. This allows them to iterate on queries quickly and improve the accuracy of search results.
IT administrators can construct and execute KQL queries to gather device-level details across single or multiple endpoints, speeding up diagnostics and incident investigation. Cloud security admins can go further by analyzing suspicious Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), and with Copilot’s help, generate pull requests that include both the fix and the remediation steps required for developers to resolve the issue.
3. Understand Risks and Manage Security Posture of the Organization
Security Copilot provides security teams with a unified, prioritized view of risks across the organization. Cloud security admins can assess multicloud environments and receive AI-generated remediation instructions, including ready-to-use scripts and automation suggestions. These actions can be delegated or turned into pull requests for developers, making it easier to coordinate across teams.
IT administrators can analyze the organization’s policies and configurations to detect overlaps, conflicting settings, and vulnerabilities. Copilot summarizes this information and highlights areas for improvement, streamlining the process of securing systems during policy changes or infrastructure updates.
Data security administrators gain visibility into their organization’s data exposure and risk posture through a centralized dashboard. Copilot helps identify and prioritize risks, reducing investigation time and supporting proactive mitigation efforts.
How Does Microsoft Security Copilot Work?
Microsoft Security Copilot combines a foundation language model with Microsoft’s security technologies and plugins to deliver contextual, AI-powered assistance within security workflows. It operates both as a standalone experience and through embedded interfaces in tools like Defender XDR, Sentinel, and Intune.
When a user submits a prompt, such as investigating an alert or analyzing a phishing attempt, Security Copilot begins by preprocessing the input using a method called grounding. This step refines the prompt using organizational context, increasing the relevance of the response. It may also pull additional data from plugins connected to Microsoft or third-party security products.
After grounding, the refined prompt is passed to the language model, which generates a response. This response is then post-processed, which can include querying plugins again for threat intelligence, alert details, or policy information to enrich the output.
The final result is returned to the user for review. Throughout the process, Security Copilot orchestrates multiple services, including language models, plugins, and Microsoft security tools, to produce insights relevant to the organization’s specific environment and data.
Microsoft Security Copilot Pricing
Microsoft Security Copilot is available through a usage-based pricing model built around security compute units (SCUs) in Microsoft Azure. Organizations provision SCUs to power Security Copilot workloads, with the option to scale dynamically during periods of higher demand.
The standard rate for provisioned SCUs is $4 USD per SCU per hour. These are intended for routine, predictable workloads and require a minimum of one SCU to start. For unexpected spikes in usage, organizations can consume overage SCUs at a higher rate of $6 USD per SCU per hour, up to a configurable overage limit.
SCU consumption can be estimated in advance using a capacity calculator (available via Azure), and usage can be tracked in detail through an in-product dashboard that provides granular visibility into how SCUs are being used.
Additionally, Microsoft Security Copilot agents embedded in tools like Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview are included at no extra cost for customers with Microsoft 365 E5 licenses.
Microsoft Security Copilot Limitations
While Microsoft Security Copilot offers valuable AI-driven capabilities, it also comes with several limitations that organizations should be aware of. These limitations were reported by users on the G2 platform:
- Data privacy and security risks: Copilot processes sensitive security data, which raises concerns about data privacy and protection. Strong safeguards are required to prevent unauthorized access or data leaks.
- Limited to Microsoft tools: Users who have both Microsoft and other 3rd party security vendors can only ask about the Microsoft part of their security stack.
- High operational cost: The usage-based pricing model, especially during periods of high demand, can become expensive. Compared to alternatives, Copilot may not always offer the most cost-effective solution.
- Accuracy and false positives: The tool can generate false positives or incongruent results, which may slow down workflows and require manual verification. This reduces efficiency and may frustrate analysts relying on accurate outputs.
- Performance issues over time: Users have reported slower performance when running multiple queries or using the tool for extended periods, which can impact productivity in high-demand environments.
- Limited customization and integration complexity: Setting up Security Copilot within existing environments can be challenging. The platform offers limited flexibility for custom configurations, which may restrict how organizations tailor it to specific needs.
- Reliance on prompt quality: Output quality heavily depends on the clarity and purpose of the user’s input. Poorly structured prompts can lead to irrelevant or unusable recommendations.
- Steep learning curve for some users: The AI-driven interface may be difficult to adopt, especially for team members unfamiliar with AI-based security tools or those less experienced with technical workflows.
Not all suggestions are practical: While Copilot can provide a wide range of ideas, not every suggestion is feasible or actionable in a real-world context. This can lead to confusion or wasted effort if not properly validated.
Intezer AI SOC: Ultimate Microsoft Security Copilot Alternative
While Microsoft Security Copilot enhances productivity within the Microsoft ecosystem, Intezer AI SOC offers a fundamentally different and more comprehensive approach.
Rather than functioning as an add-on assistant limited to Microsoft-native telemetry and usage-based compute units, Intezer delivers an AI-powered SOC platform designed to replace traditional MDR and augment overstretched security teams across the entire security stack.
With deep analysis, automated investigation, and cross-vendor visibility, Intezer eliminates alert noise, reduces manual triage, and drives real operational outcomes, without unpredictable consumption costs or ecosystem lock-in.
For organizations seeking a vendor-agnostic, outcome-driven AI SOC that improves efficiency, reduces workload, and delivers measurable security impact, Intezer represents a strategic alternative to Microsoft Security Copilot.