While cyber threats affect every organization and every individual, governments face unique challenges. The recent Executive Order on Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Infrastructure represents a key example of the growing pressure on government agencies to increase their efforts around protecting highly sensitive data and systems.
To help our customers address their security challenges, we are announcing the preview of Azure Security Center for Azure Government. Security Center delivers unified security management for hybrid cloud workloads, with continuous monitoring as well as security assessments and recommendations. Coupled with advanced threat protection to identify and mitigate risk and reduce exposure, this enables government cloud security teams to better protect their data, networks, and IT infrastructure from cyberattacks.
With Security Center, government customers can more easily:
- Understand security state across on-premises and cloud workloads Government agencies often have a complex IT infrastructure, and now with Security Center you can get a unified view of security across your on-premises and cloud workloads. In addition, you can automatically discover and onboard new Azure resources and apply security policies across your hybrid cloud workloads to ensure compliance with security standards. Especially important for agencies that operate across many locations, Security Center helps you collect, search, and analyze security data from a variety of sources.
- Find vulnerabilities and remediate quickly Security Center allows you to continuously monitor the security of machines, networks, and Azure services using hundreds of built-in security assessments, and actionable security recommendations help you remediate issues before they can be exploited.
- Limit your exposure to threats With Security Center, you can reduce exposure to attacks by enabling just-in-time, controlled access to management ports on Azure VMs to drastically reduce surface area exposed to brute force and other network intrusions.
- Detect and respond swiftly to attacks Security Center employs advanced analytics and the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph to help you get an edge over evolving cyberattacks. Security Center provides built-in behavioral analytics and machine learning to identify attacks and zero-day exploits, and monitors networks, machines, and cloud services for incoming attacks and post-breach activity.
Types of services provided
Email security is a term for describing different procedures and techniques for protecting email accounts, content, and communication against unauthorized access, loss or compromise. Email is often used to spread malware, spam and phishing attacks. Attackers use deceptive messages to entice recipients to part with sensitive information, open attachments or click on hyperlinks that install malware on the victim’s device. Email is also a common entry point for attackers looking to gain a foothold in an enterprise network and obtain valuable company data.
Email encryption involves encrypting, or disguising, the content of email messages to protect potentially sensitive information from being read by anyone other than intended recipients. Email encryption often includes authentication.
- Defender for Endpoint
Defender for Endpoint uses the following combination of technology built into Windows 10 and Microsoft’s robust cloud service:
- Endpoint behavioral sensors: Embedded in Windows 10, these sensors collect and process behavioral signals from the operating system and send this sensor data to your private, isolated, cloud instance of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.
- Cloud security analytics: Leveraging big-data, device learning, and unique Microsoft optics across the Windows ecosystem, enterprise cloud products (such as Office 365), and online assets, behavioral signals are translated into insights, detections, and recommended responses to advanced threats.
- Threat intelligence: Generated by Microsoft hunters, security teams, and augmented by threat intelligence provided by partners, threat intelligence enables Defender for Endpoint to identify attacker tools, techniques, and procedures, and generate alerts when they are observed in collected sensor data.
- Azure Security Center
Azure Security Center by Microsoft is a solution that provides unified security management across hybrid cloud workloads. It offers threat protection for data centers within both cloud workloads and on-premises. The platform also works with hybrid clouds that are not part of the Azure ecosystem.
The Azure Security Center is designed to resolve a pressing problem when your organization migrates to the cloud. The cloud customer has to take more responsibilities when upgrading to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) as compared to cloud solutions like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where the cloud service providers take care of most tasks related to securing the network and the services.
- Defender For Indentity
Microsoft Defender for Identity (formerly Azure Advanced Threat Protection, also known as Azure ATP) is a cloud-based security solution that leverages your on-premises Active Directory signals to identify, detect, and investigate advanced threats, compromised identities, and malicious insider actions directed at your organization.
Defender for Identity enables SecOp analysts and security professionals struggling to detect advanced attacks in hybrid environments to:
- Monitor users, entity behavior, and activities with learning-based analytics
- Protect user identities and credentials stored in Active Directory
- Identify and investigate suspicious user activities and advanced attacks throughout the kill chain
- Provide clear incident information on a simple timeline for fast triage
5. Microsoft Cloud App Security
Are you protecting your business users with firewalls? The same firewall that you’ve been using for a few years? Do you feel confident that it’s protecting you against today’s risks?
If not, you may need to augment your approach with a solution for today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud services world — a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB). Microsoft has one such cloud-based solution, Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS).
- Security Log Monitoring
Security event logging and monitoring are two parts of a singular process that is integral to the maintenance of a secure infrastructure.
Every activity on your environment, from emails to logins to firewall updates, is considered a security event. All of these events are, (or should be,) logged in order to keep tabs on everything that’s happening in your technology landscape.
When it comes to monitoring those logs, organizations will examine the electronic audit log files of confidential information for signs of unauthorized activities.
If unauthorized activities (or attempts thereof) are found, the data will be moved to a central database for additional investigations and necessary action.
In a time where digital threats are widespread and ever-changing, the data gleaned from these log files is vital in keeping the infrastructure agile and responsive.
