Microsoft at Black Hat USA 2026: Defending trust in the age of AI and supply chain attacks

In this article Weston on the future of defense Our latest intelligence (and response) on npm supply chain attacks Follow the research in the Black Hat Briefings Go deeper in Microsoft sessions Visit booth #2144 for research, community, and hands-on defense Plan your week with Microsoft Security Skill up before and after Black Hat See you at hacker summer camp Microsoft Security booth #2144 experiences and schedule Across the threat landscape, in this moment, one pattern sits at the center of the story: threat actors are following trust. They are not only looking for vulnerable systems, but rather targeting the software, services, identities, tools, developer workflows, and AI systems that organizations already depend on. A package can become a distribution path. A build pipeline can become an access path. A trusted tool can become or expand an attack surface. An AI agent with the wrong access can become a new way to reach code, data, or infrastructure. While the surfaces may change, the goal for the majority of threat actors remains the same: find what is trusted, abuse it, and scale the impact. At Black Hat USA 2026 , Microsoft Security will walk through how we are seeing this shift unfold, how security teams can look for it earlier, and how threat intelligence, expert-led response, and security operations need to work together when campaigns move across software, identity, cloud, data, and AI systems. On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, the day begins with David Weston’s keynote, The End of Rare: Defending When Offense Is Cheap , which looks at what defense requires when offensive capability becomes easier to access, automate, and scale. Later that afternoon, Aarti Borkar and Tanmay Ganacharya will resume the main stage for Poisoned at the Source: Inside the Hunt for Supply Chain Attacks , which offers a closer look at how Microsoft Threat Intelligence is hunting attacks across software ecosystems, developer workflows, and trusted services. This includes details into the ongoing attacks on npm (Node package manager). Together, these sessions frame the challenge security teams are facing now: when offensive capability becomes easier to scale, security teams need to understand the trust paths threat actors can abuse before those paths become open doors for attacks. At our booth, we’ll also showcase Microsoft Defender Experts Threat Intelligence , a new expert-led service delivering continuous, curated intelligence tailored to your organization, and Microsoft Defender Experts MDR, now extended with third-party and multicloud coverage. From August 4 to 6, 2026, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, you’ll find Microsoft Security on the Business Hall floor at booth #2144 , and on Wednesday evening, join us at the Microsoft Security reception at Swingers at Mandalay Bay. Register for the Microsoft Security reception Weston on the future of defense At 9:15 AM PT on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, David Weston, CVP of Agentic Security, will examine what changes for secu