Microsoft Agent 365 Governance Assessment: 3-Week Readiness

AI agents are no longer experimental — but deploying them securely at enterprise scale is a different challenge entirely. Organizations that have completed an agent inventory know what they're dealing with. The harder question is: how do you harden, govern, and validate agents in your actual tenant without disrupting live operations?

MAQ Software's 6-Week Agent 365 Governance PoC moves you from assessment findings to a working, validated governance baseline — deploying and testing real controls across Microsoft Agent 365, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud in your environment.

Key questions

• Do you have a validated security baseline for your agents — or just a plan on paper?
• Are your agent identities properly provisioned in Entra with scoped, auditable access policies?
• Can your team detect and respond to risky agent behavior in real time using Defender for AI?
• Are data boundaries enforced at the agent level, or is Purview DLP still a gap in your AI workloads?
• Do you have a governance model your SecOps, compliance, and business teams can actually operate day-to-day?

Our approach

1. Weeks 1–2: Baseline & Environment Setup — Onboard your tenant into Microsoft Agent 365 and establish the governance control plane. Provision agent identities in Microsoft Entra with scoped access policies and lifecycle management. Configure audit logging and activity monitoring across all agent interactions.
2. Weeks 3–4: Security & Governance Hardening — Deploy Microsoft Purview DLP policies scoped to AI workloads to enforce data boundaries at the agent level. Enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Defender for AI for real-time runtime threat detection and risky behavior alerting. Implement Zero Trust access controls for agent-to-user, agent-to-data, and agent-to-agent interactions.
3. Weeks 5–6: Validation, Optimization & Handover — Run end-to-end validation of deployed controls against real agent scenarios in your environment. Conduct sessions with SecOps and compliance teams to test governance model operability. Deliver a documented baseline and guidance for expanding agent governance across the organization.

Deliverables

• Governance Baseline Configuration — Agent 365, Entra, Purview, and Defender controls configured in your tenant
• Agent Identity Documentation — Provisioned agent identities with access policies and ownership records
• Security Configuration Notes — Documented Purview DLP and Defender settings for your SecOps team
• Validation Summary — Summary of controls tested and outcomes observed during the engagement
• Recommended Next Steps — Practical guidance on expanding governance as agent adoption grows

Business impact

• Move from roadmap to reality — deployed, tested governance controls in your tenant by week 6
• Give SecOps and compliance teams documented configurations they can operate from day one
• Enforce data boundaries and detect runtime threats before agents reach full production scale
• Reduce audit and regulatory exposure with traceable, documented agent identity and access controls
• Build internal confidence across business and technical stakeholders to scale agentic AI responsibly

Who benefits

Users: Security Operations Engineers, Identity & Access Management Architects, Cloud / Solution Architects, BI & Data Platform Leads

Decision makers: CISOs, Chief AI Officers, VP of IT / IT Directors, Compliance & Risk Officers

Prerequisites

• Completed MAQ Software Agent 365 Governance Assessment or equivalent discovery output
• Write access to Microsoft 365 tenant for control deployment
• Security and compliance team availability for configuration reviews and validation sessions in Weeks 4 and 6
• Approved change-control process for tenant hardening activities

Why MAQ Software

• Structured, repeatable methodology — our PoC framework is purpose-built for Agent 365, not adapted from a generic security deployment
• Business + technical coverage — we bridge the gap between SecOps requirements and business adoption goals, ensuring governance enables rather than blocks innovation
• Clear path forward — this PoC directly feeds into a full-scale agent governance implementation, so your momentum doesn't stop at week 6

Contact us: CustomerSuccess@MAQSoftware.com to schedule your Agent 365 Governance PoC and take the next step toward a validated, enterprise-ready agent operations foundation.