Microsoft Defender for Cloud--A Holistic View

Gartner forecasts spending on cloud security to grow 24% in 2024, making it the highest growth of all segments in the global security and risk management market.? Additionally, Gartner predicts that by 2027, more than 70% of enterprises will use industry?cloud?platforms to accelerate their business initiatives, up from less than 15% in 2023. With this increased use of cloud, organizations must invest more in technology to protect their data, applications, and infrastructure services.?

Findings from the 2023?Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey show for the first time that the proportion of IT workloads hosted in on-premises data centers now represents slightly less than half of the total enterprise footprint compared to survey results from 2022 when that number was 58%.?

The net is that more and more corporate workloads are moving to the cloud and cloud security is a top concern for IT executives.

So how do you get in front of that?

One of the ways is to select a comprehensive security management and threat protection service that will help your organization secure on premises workloads as they move to the cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security management and threat protection service that helps organizations secure their on-premises workloads as they move to the cloud.

Defender for Cloud is a crucial first step in securing on-premises workload migration to the cloud and it’s recommended that it be enabled on any workload that is migrated or created in Azure.

It also helps organizations maintain a strong security posture throughout the transition process, as the recommendations that Defender for Cloud provide ensures that deployments are made safely the first time.?

Defender for the Cloud is a collection of tools closely woven together to be a comprehensive platform and falls into the category of cloud-native application protection platform or (CNAPP) that It’s designed to protect cloud-based applications from various cyber threats and vulnerabilities. Defender for Cloud combines the capabilities of:

• A development security operations (DevSecOps) solution that unifies security management at the code level across multicloud and multiple-pipeline environments
• A cloud security posture management (CSPM) solution that surfaces actions that you can take to prevent breaches
• A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) with specific protections for servers, containers, storage, databases, and other workloads

So what are some of the benefits of Using Defender for Cloud in On-Premises Workload Migration.? There are 4 that I’d like to share:

Improved Security Posture:?Defender for Cloud provides the necessary tools and insights needed to maintain a strong security posture throughout the migration process. By identifying and addressing potential vulnerabilities and threats, organizations can ensure that their workloads remain secure as they transition to the cloud.

Simplified Compliance:?Defender for Cloud helps organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements by providing comprehensive reporting capabilities and enforcing security policies across cloud and on-premises workloads. This simplifies the process of demonstrating compliance and reduces the risk of non-compliance penalties.

Cost Savings:?By leveraging Defender for Cloud’s advanced threat protection capabilities, risk of costly data breaches and cyber-attacks can be minimised. In addition, the integration of security best practices into DevOps processes can help save time and resources, ultimately reducing the overall cost of migration.

Greater Visibility and Control:?Defender for Cloud offers greater visibility on cloud and on-premises workloads, providing necessary insights to make informed decisions about security. This enables organizations to maintain control over their workloads and ensure that they are protected from potential threats

If your organization is migrating to Cloud, Microsoft Azure offers a helping hand in the form of assessments to get you ready.? Microsoft Assessments help customers work through a scenario of questions and recommendations that result in a curated guidance report that is actionable and informative.

Assessments fall into 6 categories which are meant to help you define, prepare, plan, adopt, govern and manage your Azure footprint.

Two of the more popular assessments are Cloud Adoption Strategy Evaluator which assesses your strategy posture across distinct areas of the strategy methodology — identifying motivations, documenting expected business outcomes, evaluating financial considerations, and technical considerations in creating a business case and for with workloads already in Azure, the Azure Well-Architected Review

This assessment allows your organization to examine the reliability, security, cost optimization, operational excellence, and performance efficiency of your workload's design.

While Defender for Cloud does a great job helping teams migrate securely to Azure, it’s also built for handle up next generation technologies like AI

In May of this year Microsoft introduced additional features in Microsoft Defender for Cloud that allow security teams to identify their entire AI infrastructure—such as plugins, SDKs, and other AI technologies—with AI security posture management capabilities across platforms like Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Machine Learning, and Amazon Bedrock. You can continuously identify risks, map attack paths, and use built-in security best practices to prevent direct and indirect attacks on AI applications, from development to runtime.

Integrated with Microsoft Azure AI services, including Microsoft Azure AI Content Safety and Azure OpenAI, Defender for Cloud will continuously monitor AI applications for anomalous activity, correlate findings, and enrich security alerts with supporting evidence.

Defender for Cloud is the first cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) to?deliver threat protection?for AI workloads at runtime, providing security operations center (SOC) analysts with new detections that alert to malicious activity and active threats, such as jailbreak attacks, credential theft, and sensitive data leakage. Additionally, SOC analysts will be able facilitate incident response with native integration of these signals into Microsoft Defender XDR.

?Learn More: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/assessments/?WT.mc_id=msignitethetour2019_jeffsblog_-blog-learn

References:

https://uptimeinstitute.com/resources/research-and-reports/uptime-institute-global-data-center-survey-results-2023

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-06-05-the-expanding-enterprise-investment-in-cloud-security

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