Most enterprise IT environments now revolve around cloud solutions like Microsoft Azure.
Azure Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) offers a wide range of tools and services to identify and remediate potential security risks, and safeguards assets. It empowers organizations to enforce stringent security policies, improve compliance, and strengthen their overall cloud security posture.
Many businesses use Azure CSPM to manage their infrastructure but over 70% of enterprises experience a cloud-related breach regardless. This blog will take a look at some of Azure CSPM’s concerns, benefits, and best practices.
What is Azure CSPM?
Microsoft’s Azure cloud service supports Windows and Linux operating systems. Applications housed in Microsoft-managed data centers are created, tested, deployed, and managed using it. It uses various programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases, and devices and provides SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services.
Azure provides various cloud security choices that may be customized to meet a company’s needs, implementation, and service model. These include of monitoring, access control, data encryption for data in transit, and data encryption for data at rest.
Concerns of Azure CSPM
Here are some of the Azure CSPM challenges you might face:
Misconfigurations
Misconfigurations of cloud infrastructure are distinct from those of on-premise systems. Azure misconfiguration can take many different shapes. However, most of the time, these errors do not indeed prevent your cloud environment from operating. The public cloud is rife with misconfiguration problems. Therefore, it’s crucial to go through your data with a fine-tooth comb and put best practice standards to mitigate these misconfigurations at scale.
- Incorrectly configured SQL or blob encryption
- Failure to use MFA widely
- Remaining security groups
- Preserving unrestricted outbound access
- A storage space that’s online and accessible
- Privileged users do not use multiple-factor authentication
Setting up storage
Storage configuration should be set up correctly when creating an Azure cloud environment. It is pretty simple to assume the wrong thing or quickly glance over a situation that appears fine on the surface. Many default settings create security gaps. For instance, Azure’s default option grants access to storage from anywhere, a severe security vulnerability if left in place. It’s critical to comprehend the vocabulary of the platform you’re using and accept best practices in order to prevent misconfigurations. Still, CSPM can also assist you in recognizing and averting these frequent mistakes.
Credential and Key Management
Credentials in Microsoft Azure are more than just administrator passwords. When configuring a cloud environment, you’ll deal with various credentials, such as API and encryption keys. Common credential setting mistakes include failing to employ server-side encryption for secret keys or failing to rotate keys as recommended (every 90 days).
Many cloud providers provide credential management systems; however, an organization must use these systems to avoid vulnerabilities in this area and monitor employee compliance with security best practices for key management, passwords, and other fundamentals.
Azure CSPM Best Practices
Cloud computing technology and related security measures have advanced significantly in the past ten years. While CSPM traditionally focused on compliance, modern solutions delve deeper into cloud infrastructure to give enterprises not just benchmarks but also a comprehensive picture. These tools try to be proactive by spotting weaknesses and suggesting ways to fix them. Some solutions have, however, advanced further than others.
The following three main factors should be taken into account when choosing an Azure Cloud Security Posture Management tool:
- Make use of automation’s power: In Azure, managing CSPM manually is hard, especially for large enterprises. Cloud environments are strong because of their dynamic nature, but that power also necessitates dynamic tools. The only secure method to manage the agility and limitless scalability of cloud infrastructure is through automation; therefore, look for a CSPM solution that can give your business additional resources and proactive risk identification and mitigation.
- Look for Global Visibility: To have a secure cloud environment, gaining that transparency is essential. A comprehensive perspective of your “cloud sprawl” is quite beneficial. In addition to enabling visibility, CSPMs will identify any weaknesses that attackers may discover and show you how your assets interact, indicating pathways and dependencies.
- Search for Context Rather Than Clutter: Many of the standard cloud security systems’ noise detracts from the crucial things, such alarms that must be handled immediately. The right CSPM may provide you with a dozen alerts, but each one will be weighted appropriately and have a clear path for remediation so that you can act without getting overwhelmed.
Benefits of Azure CSPM
Aside from assisting enterprises in finding vulnerabilities, Azure CSPM provides a number of benefits to companies shifting to or growing their Azure cloud or multi-cloud initiatives, such as:
- Risk assessment: Using Azure CSPM, your company may evaluate your networks’ security before problems arise and obtain visibility into potential problem areas, such as policies granting users excessive access.
- Continuous Monitoring: The CSPM toolset offers continuous monitoring of the cloud environment rather than a one-time setup analysis, helping to identify policy violations and other concerns in real-time.
- Help with compliance: Setting up cloud monitoring is necessary to ensure compliance with several laws, including HIPAA standards. Additionally, CSPM can assist your business in staying on top of internal governance standards like ISO 27001.
SentinelOne as Azure CSPM Tool
SentinelOne is an advanced AI-powered cybersecurity platform that is well-versed in offensive defense. It provides enterprises of all sizes and industry verticals with blazing-fast threat detection and response capabilities. SentinelOne is adept at uncovering hidden cloud security threats, exploits, and minimizes attack surfaces. It also offers state-of-the-art Azure CSPM. Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP), a unique Offensive Security Engine, and Binary Vault.
Key Features:
Continuous visibility into cloud security posture and highlights security gaps performs agentless vulnerability scanning and IaC deployment/configuration against known benchmarks Streamlines multi-cloud compliance and supports various standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA, CIS Benchmark, etc Reports hard-coded secrets and performs real-time secret scanning Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM) secure serverless apps, VMs, containers, and other services, detects cloud credentials leakage in real-time for IAM keys, Cloud SQL, Service accounts, and any public repositories. Singularity Data Lake pulls data from any sources and Purple AI accelerates SecOps with industry-leading security analytics Personalized 24X7 threat hunting services for maximum visibility with Watchtower.
Conclusion
In an era where cloud security is absolutely critical to the well-being of an organization and its clients, Azure CSPM is powerful and non-negotiable. By leveraging SentinelOne and its advanced features, you can fortify your cyber defenses and take advantage of Azure CSPM’s security center, integrations, and mitigate risks. Start out by implementing the best Azure CSPM practices and use SentinelOne to future-proof your cloud security today.