With security always a concern in government, your IT department may worry about how secure your current cloud provider is. Many cloud systems are secure, though you see too many examples where anything can and does happen. With our U.S. government being a strong target for hackers lately, you need something taking security more seriously for your deployments.
This last fall, Microsoft Azure Government upped the security for their cloud resources. Much of what they added is quite sophisticated and thorough, arguably giving you the best cloud security in the world.
At the center of these new security features is a new security center enabling something resembling IT management. It’s done by collecting data in a specific way for more thorough protection than on-premises monitoring.
Another addition is an operations management suite as a cloud version of the above security center.
What Does the Security Center Offer?
It’s no surprise Microsoft would go the extra mile to provide security for one of their products. This is why Azure Government has become so trusted in recent years with many government organizations.
When Azure added their security center in recent months, the intention was to help government agencies better prevent, detect, and respond to any threats. At the center of it all is processing security-related data. Some of this includes information configuration, and monitoring event logs as just two.
All this works through separate categories related to data. Part of it involves data collection in your virtual machines as well, which uses monitoring agents.
Analyzing Data From Various Sources
You already know the data coming into your government agency is exponential and overwhelming. When you have to monitor the security behind this data from numerous endpoints, it leads to potential errors and security breaches.
Microsoft’s security center looks into your data from various collective sources so you have complete visibility into what’s going on. It looks at the configuration you’ve used with Azure services and communicates with the provider. The software also monitors your network traffic metadata carefully, as well as giving you security alerts using partnering security solutions.
For your virtual machines, you’ll have complete information on security events, including event and audit logs.
Protecting Your Data
Microsoft works hard to protect all your data you rely on. The new security center uses data segregation, and tags your data per organization.
Despite Microsoft tapping into your data to help protect you, they make it clear that they don’t use it for advertising or commercial purposes. Ultimately, you retain rights to all your data.
With threat intelligence at play, they bring more threat prevention and detection. Even so, they still maintain a level of data privacy.
Easily Accessing Data
Azure makes it easy to find your data so you can keep it monitored. They start with providing storage accounts for each region where you have your virtual machines.
Microsoft has a central storage for all your other data (including from VM’s) for timely security alerts, recommendations, and security health statuses.
Machine Learning
Another highlight on Azure’s superior security center is bringing machine learning into the mix. Combined with their thorough analytics, you have a smart system to detect security threats and instantly find the best solution.
You’re seeing machine learning become ubiquitous so adding it to government organizations is a true boon. It’s going to reduce detection and response times exponentially in a time when anything can happen.
Azure takes global threats seriously by using intelligence from Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), plus the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). All security incidents become prioritized so the most serious threats become dealt with first.
Keep reading us at cFocus Software Incorporated to learn more about recent and new developments with Azure Government.
More Information
About cFocus Software
Established in 2006, cFocus Software automates FedRAMP compliance and develops government chatbots for the Azure Government Cloud, Office 365, and SharePoint.
We are the exclusive vendors of ATO (Authority To Operate) as a Service™.
cFocus Software is Microsoft Gold certified, ISO 9001:2008 certified, and a certified participant in the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program.
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