Take an insightful course to understand Azure Security

Source- http://www.appliedis.com/news-and-events/events/understanding-security-and-compliance-in-azure-azure-government-ais-microsoft

To begin, let’s discuss what Azure actually is; as stated by Microsoft, Azure is:  

“The cloud computing platform of Microsoft. It is a growing collection of integrated services, which includes analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage, and web. It facilitates users to move faster, achieve more, and save money.”

To go back even further to the basics, cloud computing is simply “the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.”

Thus, Azure is simply Microsoft’s brand on cloud server hosting.

Is it really that simple?

No, not really. Cloud computing can be highly complicated when you really zoom in the intricacies of how it works. And Microsoft really adds to this complication by offering as many features to their platform as possible. This comes as no surprise, especially since cloud computing has come an infinitely long way since only five years ago.

What is Azure used for?

Azure is used for a massive array of specific things, but in a broad sense, Azure is used for hosting websites, building and deploying applications, storing and managing vast amounts of data, creating virtual machines, and utilizing mobile app services. If you’re looking to find a seemingly infinite list of pages jammed with technical jargon regarding all of these services, just take a look here to get confused.

Is Azure Security… Secure?

This really is the big question on everyone’s mind. Alas, who could forget the huge debacle that tore this issue open when personal photos were leaked from the cloud of Jennifer Lawrence’s phone? Of course, security issues were already in question long before that, but the general public then became aware that something was not quite right about cloud storage after this. The platform involved in this public scandal was not Microsoft’s platform, nevertheless, it still tainted this hosting choice.

Because of this and many other more legitimate concerns, Microsoft has taken large steps to invest themselves fully to have absolute transparency on this issue. In doing this, Microsoft has released countless blogs, videos, and entire web pages dedicated to addressing how safe Microsoft Azure really is.

In Microsoft’s very own “trust center”, they describe the key points that legitimize their claims to be absolutely secure.

To list just a few thing Microsoft prides themselves on they offer the following:

1.       Design and operational security- This is the foundation on which Azure is built. With teams operating around the world every day to fight and mitigate digital attacks for Microsoft, vulnerabilities are responded to immediately.
2.       Identity and access security- User identities are safeguarded by Microsoft with multi-factor log in analysis.

3.       Encryption and key management- Utilizing communication encryption like AES-256 and operational processes, Microsoft keeps data secure from attacks.

4.       Network security Threat management- Unauthorized traffic is blocked in data centers through infrastructure like firewalls, partitioned LAN’s, and physical separation of back-end servers.

5.       Threat Management- Microsoft uses anti-malware technology to protect against online threats that detect and mitigate against DDoS attacks.

6.       Monitoring, logging, and reporting- The centralized monitoring and analysis technology Microsoft uses allows users to manage large amounts of information, thus providing visibility and timely alerts.

7.       Security partner tools- Microsoft offers a large variety of security products built by their partners specialized for use in Azure.

8.       Penetration testing- There are penetration testing, that Microsoft conducts, to improve security controls and processes of Azure. It allows you to perform an authorized penetration testing on your applications that are hosted in Azure. This is always done after getting advance approval from Azure Customer Support.

As you can see, Microsoft Azure Security is capable of a quite a laundry list of things, in order to enable total security for the user. Additionally, Microsoft Virtual Academy offers an introductory course on Azure security for IT professionals so that you can update your knowledge of what Azure security can offer.