General availability of container security capabilities in Azure Government cloud

April 2026

General availability of container security capabilities in Azure Government cloud
April 1, 2026

The service helps U.S. federal and government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD) and civilian agencies, secure Kubernetes workloads by providing cloud security posture management, vulnerability assessment, and runtime threat protection for containerized environments. The Defender for Containers plan in Azure Government cloud now aligns with the commercial cloud offering in feature coverage, including agentless Kubernetes discovery, comprehensive inventory, attack path analysis, enhanced risk hunting, vulnerability assessment, compliance and runtime protection capabilities. For more information about Microsoft Defender for Containers, see Overview of Microsoft Defender for Containers. For more information about feature and cloud availability, see Containers support matrix in Defender for Cloud.

Update to Defender for SQL servers on machines plan for Fairfax customers
April 1, 2026

The Defender for SQL Server on machines plan in Microsoft Defender for Cloud protects SQL Server instances hosted on Azure, AWS, GCP, and on-premises machines.

To simplify onboarding and improve protection coverage, we're releasing an enhanced agent solution for Fairfax customers at the end of April. The new solution uses the existing SQL infrastructure, so you no longer need to deploy the Azure Monitor Agent (AMA).

Required customer actions:

• Update Defender for SQL Servers on Machines plan configuration: If you enabled the Defender for SQL Server on machines plan before April 2026, follow these instructions to update your configuration.
• Verify SQL Server instances protection status: With an estimated starting date of May 2026, you must verify the protection status of your SQL Server instances across your environments. Learn how to troubleshoot deployment issues for Defender for SQL on machines configuration.