Azure Updates: Integrated HSM; GPT-5.5; API Management; Discovery

Microsoft CTO Mark Russinovich looked into ways to enforce trust and transparency with Azure Integrated HSM. The offering is a Microsoft-built hardware security module integrated into new Azure servers to extend existing key management services. Integrated HSM is engineered to meet FIPS 140‑3 Level 3 standards—an engineering standard for hardware security modules widely used by governments and regulated industries. 

In conjunction with the Open Compute Project EMEA Summit, Microsoft announced that it is releasing Azure Integrated HSM firmware, software, and driver in open source for new use cases. The offering is intended to complement Managed HSM and Key Vault. 

Senior director product development Naomi Moneypenny announced the general availability of OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 in Microsoft Foundry. GPT-5.5. is the latest development in the GPT model series with support for multi-step reasoning, agentic capabilities, and improved agent execution. Foundry offers ways to make frontier models like GPT-5.5 usable at scale, applying security and management policy at the platform level. With the announcement, customers will be able to carry out autonomous execution, improve complex reasoning, and boost token efficiency. 

Naga Surendran, senior director for product marketing for Azure at Microsoft shared that the company was named a Leader in the IDC Marketscape for Worldwide API Management. Microsoft placed alongside Salesforce, Boomi, Google, IBM, Kong, Gravitee, and Axway. Currently, Azure API Management has 38,000 customers, nearly three million APIs, and over three trillion API requests each month. “Azure API Management provides a single, Azure-native platform to govern everything from traditional APIs to AI models, tools, and agents, built on a foundation proven at enterprise scale. This allows organizations to move faster with AI without losing control, visibility, or consistency as they scale,” Surendran wrote.