OVERVIEW
Observe, control, secure, and govern AI agents across your organization
- Foundry Control Plane is built for agentic systems. Trace agent runs end to end, including inputs, reasoning steps, tool calls, outputs, latency, and cost. Run preproduction evaluations and continuous evaluations on production traffic to measure task adherence, tool call accuracy, safety, and quality. Set thresholds, trigger alerts, and move from ad hoc testing to continuous oversight as your agent fleet scales.
- Enforce runtime controls at every stage of agent execution. Configure intervention points across user input, tool calls, tool responses, and outputs to detect and block PII, indirect prompt injection, task misalignment, prohibited actions, and content risks. Apply and update controls centrally so every agent reflects your organization’s standards.
- Treat agents as first-class identities in your organization. Automatically assign Entra Agent ID so each deployed agent has a verified identity and governed access. Surface jailbreak attempts and threat signals in Microsoft Defender for investigation and response. Extend Microsoft Purview data security and compliance policies to AI interactions, so agents operate with the same protections as users and devices.
- Run your AI operations from a single control surface. See active alerts across security, policy, cost, and performance in one prioritized view. Track agent runs, success rates, and spend in real time. Monitor compliance status, behaviors prevented, and usage trends week over week. View and manage agents, models, and tools across projects so you know what needs attention and where to act next.
FEATURES
Built to run agents in production
Operate AI agents with continuous evaluation, end-to-end tracing, runtime controls, and integrated security. Use a single control plane to monitor, enforce, and troubleshoot at scale.
Continuous evaluation on production traffic
Run continuous evaluations on production traffic to measure quality, safety, and task completion. Set thresholds and surface regressions automatically.
Agent-specific evaluators for real-world risk
Measure task adherence, tool call accuracy, intent resolution, groundedness, and sensitive data exposure. Detect the failure modes traditional language model evaluations miss in agentic systems.
End-to-end tracing with OpenTelemetry
Trace every agent run from inference through tool calls using OpenTelemetry standards. Integrate with Azure Monitor and Application Insights to diagnose drift, failures, and performance bottlenecks.
Tool-level runtime guardrails
Apply guardrails, not only for prompts and outputs, but also for tool calls and tool responses. Define risks, intervention points, and response actions where agents actually take action.
Protection against direct and indirect prompt attacks
Mitigate direct and indirect prompt injection attacks before agents act. Use advanced detection and spotlighting to uncover cross prompt manipulation and block malicious instructions in real time.
Task adherence to prevent agent drift
Keep agents aligned to intended tasks with runtime task adherence controls. Detect off-task behavior and enforce intent boundaries across inputs, tool calls, and outputs.
AI Red Teaming Agent
Simulate adversarial attacks and automatically scan agents for vulnerabilities before deployment. Identify systemic weaknesses with automated clustering and readiness reports.
Microsoft Entra Agent ID
Assign every agent a durable identity at build time. Apply policy-based access controls, conditional permissions, and lifecycle governance with Microsoft Entra for centralized oversight.
Proactive alerts across your agent fleet
Surface evaluation, policy, and security alerts with context and deep links into traces and remediation workflows. Move from reactive monitoring to proactive agent operations.
Pricing
Usage-based pricing for agent operations
Foundry Control Plane pricing is based on observability, guardrails, and Microsoft Security service usage.
RELATED PRODUCTS
Connect Foundry Control Plane to secure agents end to end
Build, operate, and secure agents with Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft Security. Combine observability, runtime controls, identity, threat protection, and data governance.
CUSTOMER STORIES
See how customers are innovating with Foundry Control Plane
Resources
Learn how to deploy and operate Foundry Control Plane
Access documentation, analyst insights, and leadership sessions to understand how to implement governance, security, and observability for your AI agents.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Microsoft Foundry Control Plane is the governance and operations layer for AI applications and agents. Built for developers, it provides observability, runtime controls, security integration, and fleet management across agents built in Foundry as well as other first-party and third-party systems. It helps teams operate AI safely and at enterprise scale.
- Microsoft Foundry is the platform for building AI apps and agents. Foundry Control Plane is the governance and operations layer that spans the full lifecycle, from build to production. It helps developers apply controls, run evaluations, monitor behavior, integrate with security, and manage fleets as systems scale.
- Foundry Control Plane and Agent 365 serve different roles within the organization.
Foundry Control Plane is designed for developers and AI engineers. It provides deep observability, runtime controls, evaluation, and fleet operations across AI applications and agents throughout their lifecycle, from build to production.
Agent 365 is designed for IT and security administrators. It extends enterprise management infrastructure to agents, providing registry, access control, identity governance, and organization-wide policy enforcement across all agents in the tenant. Both leverage the same foundational Microsoft security capabilities, including Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Purview. - Foundry Control Plane supports agents built in Microsoft Foundry as well as first-party and third-party agents. Agents running outside Foundry can be registered through the AI gateway, which proxies traffic using Azure API Management to enable secure routing, policy enforcement, and telemetry collection.
External agents can also send OpenTelemetry-compliant traces to Foundry, allowing unified visibility across heterogeneous environments. Together, the AI gateway and standardized telemetry make it possible to observe and govern agents running across clouds and platforms from a single control surface.
Next steps
Choose the Azure account that’s right for you
Pay as you go or try Azure free for up to 30 days.
AI development tools
Design and manage AI applications
Create, customize, and scale AI apps and agents efficiently.
Products
Find the right AI products for your needs
Create the next generation of applications using artificial intelligence capabilities for any developer and any scenario.
Get the Azure mobile app 
