At Tridius, we get that question from potential clients all of the time. And the answer is a definite yes. However, the term “security” can be subjective. The Azure team provides valuable insights into their approach to cloud security:
Strengthen the security of your cloud workloads with built-in services:
Protect data, apps, and infrastructure quickly with built-in security services in Azure that include unparalleled security intelligence to help identify rapidly evolving threats early—so you can respond quickly. Implement a layered, defense in-depth strategy across identity, data, hosts, and networks. Unify security management and enable advanced threat protection across hybrid cloud environments.
We will discuss the top five “built-in security services” in the Microsoft Azure Cloud, and how end-users can benefit from implementing them. We will also cover real-world security best practices, implementation, and managed security services.
The cloud is essentially a pay-per-use pool of compute, storage, network, and application resources. So, when we talk about security benefits, we are focusing on protecting and securing digital resources in the following context:
The Microsoft Cloud infrastructure protects compute and storage assets at their most fundamental levels of availability. For example, when a user creates an Azure Virtual Machine with Azure Storage, those assets are automatically replicated.
The Azure infrastructure is designed for its most basic compute and storage elements to be highly available and redundant. This built-in level of reliability and availability of compute and storage infrastructure can be extremely expensive, complex, and challenging to implement in an on-prem IT environment.
The strategic benefit of redundancy and automatic data protection to the end-user is huge. However, the challenge for end-users is effectively managing the usage of, and access to, these valuable IT resources in the cloud.
Applications like Microsoft 365, Exchange, OneDrive for Business, Teams, SharePoint, and others are also automatically protected. These products can be managed as individual SaaS apps, or as part of a larger bundle of software and services in the Azure cloud.
There are tremendous benefits to the users of these applications. And as we point out in a recent post, there are many more innovative application releases, new products, and data protection options coming to the Microsoft cloud in 2022.
The caveat is that users always need to be aware that they are responsible for their user data, proper backup procedures, and access to their business-critical applications and the information that resides in them.
User access is divided logically into three categories:
Managing access to resources is a critical aspect of any security ecosystem, and the cloud is no different. The cloud provides the end-user with all the infrastructure necessary to implement robust access controls as a service, which is a great benefit to the end-user.
It is important to note that although the infrastructure is in place, significant expertise is still required to implement and manage robust access management and control in the Microsoft cloud.
According to Reuters, Microsoft employs over 3400 cybersecurity professionals and spends over a billion dollars a year on network security. There is a significant level of advanced network expertise, security, and protection for resources deployed in the Microsoft Cloud. This level of security is virtually impossible to replicate outside of the cloud.
End-users can benefit from the security provided by the Microsoft cloud. But they are ultimately responsible for designing, building, and maintaining their internal and external network infrastructure for private usage.
Last but not least, the Microsoft cloud offers threat protection at scale. Special precautions are in place to prevent denial of service (DDoS) attacks, volumetric attacks, HTTP and SQL protocol attacks, among others.
Some inherent protection against user-level social attacks like Phishing and Ransomware is built into applications like Exchange and Office 365. Microsoft Defender is also an excellent pay-for-use application for threat management.
So, what’s the bottom line with security management in the Microsoft cloud? There is no doubt that the cloud offers inherent infrastructure and resource security capabilities that are simply not available to traditional IT users. Microsoft continues to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure and human resources to provide an unrivaled technology environment for secure computing.
The Microsoft cloud offers tremendous promise to be sure. But significant expertise is still required to make all of the moving parts work like a well-oiled machine for the end-user.
That’s where our Tridius team comes in. We have the experience and expertise that it takes to instantiate the promise of the cloud to end-users of all sizes and scopes. Our goal is to optimize the Microsoft Cloud to provide a secure, cost-effective, efficient, seamless digital experience for you and your users. And we are really good at it.
Are you ready to engage with our team of IT professionals to talk about affordable, optimized IT strategy and management? Get in touch with our team today online or give us a call at 855.674.0982. You can learn more about how we’ve helped other businesses like yours through our case studies page.
Tridius Technologies (a Terralogic Company) is an IT consulting firm that blends strategic planning with technology innovation, in areas like Cloud Infrastructure, Application Development,
Managed Services and Dynamics 365. Our mission is to inspire, innovate and improve.
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