In an era where data security and efficient management of cloud resources have become essential priorities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud emerges as a strategic tool for modern businesses. This solution, integrated into the Azure environment, offers advanced protection, facilitating enterprise-wide security and compliance management. In this article, will be explored the main innovations that characterized Defender for Cloud in the summer 2023, outlining how these innovations can represent added value for companies.

The benefits of adopting Defender for Cloud

Adopting Defender for Cloud in a business context is not just a strategic choice, but a growing need. This solution allows you to centralize and simplify security management, offering a holistic view that facilitates continuous monitoring and rapid response to security threats. Furthermore, helps optimize the security posture of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, while ensuring advanced protection and compliance with different regulatory compliances.

Summer news 2023

Ability to include Defender for Cloud in business cases made with Azure Migrate

For companies intending to move their resources to cloud platforms such as Azure, migration planning is key. With the integration of Defender for Cloud in Azure Migrate, it is now possible to guarantee advanced protection right from the initial migration phase. This integration ensures that security strategies are well integrated into the migration plan, providing a more secure and seamless transition to the cloud.

Defender for Cloud, increasingly agentless

Many Defender for Cloud features are now available without the need to install an agent:

• Container protection in Defender CSPM: discovery agentless. The transition from agent-driven discovery to agentless discovery, for protecting containers in Defender CSPM, represents a notable qualitative leap towards more streamlined and effective security management. This new feature eliminates the need to install agents on each container, thus simplifying the discovery process and reducing resource usage.
• Defender for Containers: agentless discovery per Kubernetes. Defender for Containers has launched agentless discovery for Kubernetes, representing a notable step forward in container security. This feature provides a detailed view and comprehensive inventory capability of Kubernetes environments, ensuring an unparalleled level of security and compliance.
• Defender for Servers P2 & Defender CSPM: agentless secret scanning for Virtual Machines. The functionality of scanning secrets without the use of agents, inside in Defender for Server P2 and Defender CSPM, allows you to discover unsupervised and vulnerable secrets stored on virtual machines. This tool is essential to prevent lateral movement actions in the network and reduce the related risks.

Data Aware Security Posture

Adopting a conscious security posture for data is essential and now Microsoft Defender for Cloud is able to satisfy this need too. This feature allows companies to minimize data risks, providing tools that automatically identify sensitive information and assess related threats, improving response to data breaches. In particular, sensitive data identification for PaaS databases is currently being previewed. This allows users to catalog critical data and recognize types of information within their databases, proving fundamental for the effective management and protection of sensitive data.

GCP support in Defender CSPM

Introducing support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in Defender CSPM, currently in preview, marks a significant step towards more integrated and versatile security management, extending Defender CSPM capabilities to a wide range of services in Google's public cloud.

Malware scanning in Defender for Storage

Defender for Storage introduces malware scanning functionality, overcoming traditional malware protection challenges and providing an ideal solution for highly regulated industries. This function, available as an add-on, represents a significant enhancement of Microsoft Defender for Storage security solutions. With malware scanning you get the following benefits.

• Protection, in near real time, without agent: ability to intercept advanced malware such as polymorphic and metamorphic ones.
• Cost Optimization: thanks to flexible pricing, you can control costs based on the amount of data examined and with resource-level granularity.
• Enablement at scale: without the need for maintenance, supports automated responses at scale and offers several options for activation via tools and platforms such as Azure policy, Bicep, ARM, Terraform, REST API and the Azure portal.
• Application versatility: based on feedback from beta users over the last two years, Malware scanning has proven useful in a variety of scenarios, as web applications, content protection, compliance, integrations with third parties, collaborative platforms, data streams and datasets for machine learning (ML).

Express Configuration for Vulnerability Assessments in Defender for SQL

The configuration option 'express’ for vulnerability assessments in Defender for SQL, now available for everyone, facilitates the recognition and management of vulnerabilities, ensuring a timely response and more effective protection.

GitHub Advanced Security per Azure DevOps

It is now possible to view GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps alerts (GHAzDO) related to CodeQL, secrets and dependencies, directly in Defender for Cloud. The results will appear in the DevOps section and Recommendations. To see these results, you need to integrate your GHAzDO-enabled repositories into Defender for Cloud.

New auto-provisioning process for SQL Server plan(preview)

The Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA) will be deprecated in August 2024. Defender for Cloud has updated its strategy by replacing MMA with the release of an Azure Monitor agent auto-provisioning process targeted at SQL Server.

Revisiting the business model and pricing structure

Microsoft has revised the business model and pricing structure of Defender for Cloud plans. These changes, aimed at offering greater clarity in expenses and making the cost structure more intuitive, were made in response to customer feedback to improve the overall user experience.

Conclusion

Summer 2023 marked a period of significant innovation for Microsoft Defender for Cloud. These new things, oriented towards more integrated and simplified security management, they promise to bring tangible benefits to companies, facilitating data protection and compliance in increasingly complex cloud environments.