Getting Cloud Security Right with Azure

Over the last two years, corporate infrastructure has changed dramatically, accelerated by a shift to remote work, growth of the cloud, and the continued digitization of business processes. But with these advances come increased risk. Threat actors continue to inundate organizations with sophisticated ransomware, exploit a growing number of vulnerabilities, attack the digital supply chain, and more.

Security breaches are on the rise

Consider these facts.

• According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) 2022, ransomware has increased 13% in the last year, which is more than the last five years combined.
• Check Point reports that global attacks increased by 28% in Q3 of 2022, compared to the same period last year, with average weekly attacks now eclipsing 1,300 incidents.
• And a recent study by the Ponemon Institute (in conjunction with IBM) shows that 83% of organizations have experienced a data breach with 45% of those breaches being cloud-based. 

As threats (and statistics) continue to rise, the security landscape is getting more complex. The attack surface is expanding, identity systems are under constant attack (driven by credential misuse), and partner exploitation is fierce. All of this is happening while organizations struggle through vendor consolidation and face understaffed and under-trained security teams—with new research showing that security labor shortages have increased by 26% over last year.

Protection in the cloud

For organizations with critical services and applications, the pressure and stakes around maintaining infrastructure and staffing NetOps and SecOps teams is immense. These organizations can benefit from moving to the cloud, but giving up control is hard.
 
However, the operational benefits of migrating to the cloud, combined with the advanced security capabilities cloud providers spend billions of dollars developing, make it hard to ignore the value. That’s why more than 63% of organizations are currently heavy cloud users, with 92% having some sort of multi-cloud strategy, according to Flexera’s 2022 State of the Cloud Report.
 
At Redapt, we help customers find the right end-to-end technologies to meet their particular challenges and accelerate growth. We’ve helped thousands of organizations migrate to the cloud and with that migration comes security.

Microsoft Azure Security

How do we help organizations enhance their Azure security? Let’s dive into our approach.
 
Security needs vary by organizations, but in general, most need to securely support hybrid work, increase diversity of endpoints accessing the network, implement threat detection and response solutions across multiple platforms, navigate the complexities of rolling out new security controls, mitigate the risk of bad actors exploiting vulnerabilities, and optimize the network to prevent lateral movement.
 
That’s a lot to handle, and Microsoft Azure continues to evolve and add best-in-class security tools that integrate with its cloud instances to help address these challenges. For example, organizations leveraging Azure can layer on Azure Active Directory to help with Zero Trust and network access, Microsoft Defender to protect endpoints, Azure Network Security to protect applications and cloud workloads, and more.  
 
Beyond simply leveraging these tools, organizations often look to conduct penetration testing on infrastructure and applications, and regular vulnerability assessments to identify potential weaknesses (and yes, we offer all that too).

Redapt’s Azure security assessment

To help ensure organizations are securely deploying and configuring applications and services to the cloud (and to support ongoing detection and remediation of vulnerabilities), Redapt offers The Azure Security Assessment Package.
 
Within a matter of weeks, this assessment helps organizations understand their current security state. We ensure you’re leveraging the full capabilities of Microsoft Azure’s security portfolio, architecture best practices, and operational model. This includes:

• Gathering information about your business objectives.
• Collecting key information about your software, servers, and desktop assets and analyzing that information for vulnerabilities.
• Reviewing your Azure and 365 scores, addressing risk areas, and providing recommendations to increase your secure score.
• Presenting results, recommendations, and next steps to proceed through the deployment or secure optimization process.

Whether you’re making an initial move to Azure or looking to review your security posture, Redapt can help. But if you’re content in rolling solo, remember to verify the security infrastructure layout you currently have on premises to see how adaptable and effective that layout will be in the cloud. We recommend creating segmentation within the new environment to deploy and test in Azure gradually.
 
Keep in mind, security is about consistency. Be sure your team understands what tools Azure or third parties offer, and work to keep them updated. We recommend regular vulnerability and penetration testing and that you limit access to your applications and available data. And finally, don’t forget about the compliance and security policies built into Azure. They allow you to conduct a self-assessment of how applications and workloads will be deployed in the environment—an often-overlooked feature.  
 
Want to learn more about Redapt’s cloud security services? Schedule some time to speak with one of our experts today.