Security. The word itself is starting to feel ominous. Deep fake scams, artificial-intelligence driven phishing campaigns, sophisticated ransomware, cybercrime as a service – the threats are increasingly pervasive and problematic. Defending your organisation is challenging and demands that protections sit on multiple fronts and across multiple layers. People, processes, policies, and platforms must be secured in line with best practice methodologies and training to ensure the organisation is not just protected from the threats, but in line with regulatory expectations.
Think this is dramatic? The statistics from a number of reports in 2024 paint a picture of stealthy attacks, maximum impact and intelligent tactics.
- 2 minutes and 7 seconds – the fastest amount of time it has taken to move from an initially compromised host into another in a business, according to Crowdstrike. The average is 62 minutes, 22 minutes faster than in 2022.
- 75% of attacks used to gain access were free from malware.
- Cloud intrusions are up by 75%.
- The Cyber Security Breaches Survey by the UK Government found that 70% of medium businesses and 74% of large businesses have experienced an attack in the past year.
- The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report found that 81% of those surveyed feel more or as exposed to cybercrime in 2024 than they did in 2023.
Securing the cloud is a priority
The cloud is an agile, beautiful solution that offers companies exceptional scale, agility and potential. However, as companies migrate to the cloud, security becomes even more of a priority. Microsoft Azure, backed by solid R&D from Microsoft and robust security support, comes with a comprehensive suite of tools and services designed to help companies embed security throughout their ecosystem.
If your organisation wants to gain access to the full potential of Microsoft Azure, then these best practice steps are key to ensuring your business secures your cloud environment effectively.
01: Identity and Access Management (IAM)
When it comes to safeguarding your data, your business needs to know Who’s Who and why they’re accessing That. Azure provides myriad controls designed to help you improve access control and identity management. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to verify their identity using a variety of different methods, for example, and best practice is to enable MFA for all users, especially those with privileged access. This reduces the risk of unauthorised use of systems and will flag unusual use to security teams.
Also providing identity and access management tools, Azure Access Directory provides single sign-on (SSO) and identity protection and allows for improved management of user identities, enforcing password policies, and controlling access to resources. Wedding role-based access (RBA) through Azure AD to MFA means you can double-down on ensuring only the right users have the right permissions.
02: Data security and encryption
Azure provides you with a variety of data encryption options that include Azure Storage Service Encryption for data at rest and TLS/SSL for data in transit. To further bolster this layer of security for your data, Azure Key Vault safeguards cryptographic keys and secrets used by cloud applications and services so you can use this to manage and control access to encryption keys. Finally, within the data security realm, for Azure SQL Database enable Transparent Data Encryption to automatically encrypt the database, backups and transaction log files, deepening the protection of your data at rest.
These are just two of the best practices your organisation can use to ensure your Azure environments are secured and that you’re using the security capabilities of Azure to their best advantage. In part 02 of this series, we look at the additional layers of security Azure brings to the business and how they can radically reimagine how you approach the security of your cloud environments.