2018 Microsoft Azure Updates Focus on Cloud Security

Happy New Year, everyone! 2017 was a great year at Agile IT with our partners and customers.

We committed to the cloud when we started the business over a decade ago. Many organizations at the time dismissed it, thinking “maybe later.”

In 2018, it’s clear the cloud is here. Now it’s not just about migrating to the cloud, but also leveraging its capabilities to transform your business.

Cloud services are shifting from single features to management, security and enterprise-focused services.

As we sprint into 2018, enterprise cloud is going to make a difference for everyone. Here are the newest Microsoft Azure cloud security features for enterprises and how they can work for your business.

2018 Microsoft Azure Cloud Security Updates

Azure Policy 

This feature allows you to easily govern your Azure resources by adding and building policies and monitoring compliance — all from within Azure.

For example, you can define policies for a given subscription or resource group, and enforce and audit compliance from virtual machine types to update rules. This allows you to create development and testing subscriptions for a specific subset of available VMs to prevent cost overruns.

You can also create policies for business and customer-facing applications, etc.

Compliance Manager 

This new capability within the Service Trust Portal (STP) allows you to manage compliance processes from end-to-end for your cloud solutions — all from a single dashboard. The tool includes compliance-related documents, assignments and testing for Office 365 and Azure.

If you want more details on Microsoft’s new Compliance Manager, check out our blog post.

Log Analytics 

So this one isn’t new, but there are new services and pricing options. Log Analytics pulls log information from Azure servers and other sources such as on-premises, Amazon Web Services, even Linux.

While you may think you have a solution for gathering system and log information, the visual insights in Log Analytics (which you can further customize in Power BI) are fantastic. And creating multiple views of your environment ensures a more complete and well-rounded understanding to make better business decisions.

Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) 

Immediately identify suspicious activity like targeted attacks based on identities with this real-time threat assessment tool. This is a stand-alone service but is often purchased via Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security. ATA requires a virtual machine and only covers on-premises Active Directory — it’s a subscription-based model, and users must exist in Azure AD.

This is only a small taste of the exciting security-related services we’re deploying and managing for our customers. The new features take business beyond migration to increase security, improve productivity and lower business costs.

Want to get more from your cloud environment in 2018? Let us know how we can assist in your journey through the enterprise cloud. Call or message Agile IT today.