How Secure is Microsoft Azure Cloud?

Known for its reliability and robust security, Microsoft Azure Cloud is one of the leading public cloud service providers. But how secure is Azure Cloud?

In this post-pandemic world of remote working, cloud security's importance has skyrocketed, and there is good reason why.

Source: Accenture Ninth Annual Cost of Cybercrime Study

Cloud hosting is where the world is headed. No one can deny the importance of scalability and flexibility offered by cloud providers. However, security is equally important, and that is what makes or breaks a cloud service's adoption. With that in mind, discusses how secure is Azure Cloud at a high level.

3,500+ Global Cybersecurity Experts for Secure Monitoring

Microsoft has a team of over 3,500 cybersecurity experts globally for secure monitoring and testing of assets and data stored in the Azure Cloud. Among these are around 200 professionals hired to run red and blue team exercises to find potential vulnerabilities in the infrastructure of Azure. This ensures continuous detection and monitoring.

Broad Coverage of 90+ Compliances, Laws and Regulations

With Azure, you can benefit from over 90 compliances for 50 regions (including the EU and China) and 35 key industries (like healthcare and finance). These include FedRAMP, GDPR, HIPAA, HITRUST, and many more.

Rigorous audits are conducted by third parties to ensure adequate coverage of these compliances. Overall, Azure Cloud meets the below-mentioned security standards for all in-scope services:

Content Protection and Security (CPS) standard by Content Delivery and Security Association (CDSA)
Security Trust and Assurance Registry (STAR) Certification of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) to ensure cloud security best practices
EU Model Clauses to ensure compliance with GDPR for data transfer between EU and non-EU countries
ISO/IEC 27018 assures the protection of personal data in the cloud
ISO/IEC 27701 privacy standards
ISO/IEC 27001
Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS)
SOC 1 and SOC 2

Global Infrastructure Security – Monitored 24x7x365

Microsoft has over 100 data centers (and growing) located in various regions globally in 140 countries. The high-availability geographically-distributed infrastructure of Azure Cloud is continuously monitored 24x7x365 with multiple layers of security in place.

The data centers' physical security complies with industry standards like ISO/IEC 27001. Regular penetration testing is conducted to improve the Azure Cloud's security controls in place.

Protection Against DDoS Attacks

Azure's basic tier protects you through continuous monitoring and almost real-team detection of DDoS attacks to ensure perimeter security. The built-in basic protection uses intelligent traffic profiling to automatically defends you against these cyber-attacks.

Learn More: What is DDoS?

You could also take the protection a notch up by opting for the Azure DDoS Protection Standard tier. It encapsulates additional defense mitigations while providing you access to DDoS experts when an attack is ongoing. Learn all the Azure offers you in this DDoS Protection Overview documentation.

Centralized Identity Management – Azure Active Directory

There are strict controls in place to ensure that no Microsoft personnel has access to any Azure Cloud customer data.

Ensure that only your authorized team has access to your data and applications through identity and access management (IAM). Azure Active Directory (AD) is an IAM solution offered by Microsoft for single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.

Security Center for Intelligent Threat Protection

Centralized security management is made easy through Security Center providing unified feasibility control for all Azure services. Take advantage of real-time monitoring for intelligent threat protection with dashboards presenting actionable recommendations.

Hence, you can safeguard your continuously changing workloads in the cloud and meet all your security standards.

Learn More: What is Azure Security Center?

Data Protection Azure Cloud Security Features

There are various data security functionalities built-in as well as offerings available as additional services in Azure Cloud. Benefit from these to completely protect your data from any possible leakage, loss or damage:

Data Segregation

To ensure separation between customers in the multi-tenant environment, Azure uses logical isolation to create data segregation. Plus, the data processing is also conducted in an isolated environment. Azure services like Azure AD are used for that purpose.

Data Encryption

Azure provides data protection through encryption at rest aligned with 256-bit AES standard and encryption in transit through TLS 1.2. You can even have double encryption by securely managing your keys using Azure Key Vault to encrypt your keys.

Data Redundancy

Azure storage offers high availability and disaster recovery of your data by allowing you to create backup redundant storage that can be maintained locally or in different zones or regions. Read about the storage redundancy option to learn more about what Azure offers in this domain.

Data Destruction

Azure Cloud strictly adheres to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88 guidelines for media sanitization. Adequate processes are hence used to overwrite the storage resources prior to reuse.

Shared Responsibility Model for Security

It is critical to note that Azure, like all other cloud providers, follows Shared Security Model while providing security. Here the responsibility of security is not the sole responsibility of the cloud provider. Security's responsibility in part lies on the cloud customers as well. The level of responsibility depends on the cloud services your organization uses:

Source: Shared Responsibility in Azure Cloud

In all the models, however, Azure Cloud will be fully responsible for the physical security of your virtual machines. Even with this shared responsibility, Microsoft does have a vast offering of various tools to help you safeguard your cloud data and application.

VIDIZMO | Ready-Made Video Streaming Platform in Azure Environment

Have a lot of videos stored in your Azure Blob storage or Azure Media Services Storage? Don't go through the unnecessarily time-consuming process of stitching together all the complex workflows to build your Azure video streaming infrastructure.

Why not opt for an easy-to-use ready-made enterprise video platform that does it all for you, from live and on-demand video streaming to end-to-end video management in the secure and compliant Azure Cloud environment.

Read More | Benefits of a Cloud Video Platform

Here is a platform that not only allows you to securely stream videos from Azure Blob storage but also helps you create a YouTube-like video portal where you will be able to organize these videos.

The platform utilizes all the various workflows of Azure Media Services to enable intelligent video processing for smart in-video search and actionable video insights.

Automatic video transcoding, CDN support and modern video streaming protocols like HLS and MPEG-DASH will allow you to stream your video anywhere on any device and browser under varying bandwidth conditions.

Automatic transcription and its translation will make your videos accessible to the global audience. This is just some of what VIDIZMO offers.