Microsoft adds new security enhancements to its cloud offerings

The new product is based on technology from Adallom, a cloud access security broker Microsoft acquired in September.

Customer Lockbox for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business will begin rolling out in early Q2.

Microsoft Corporation adds new security features to Azure cloud computing platform.

“Keeping our network safe, while protecting our data and our customers’ data, is paramount”, Arsenault said. Microsoft will expand Customer Lockbox to include SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, so IT administrators will have new approval rights and greater control over who can access the data being stored in Office 365. After years of examining crash dumps that customers sent to Microsoft from more than one billion PCs worldwide, the company is able to analyze these events to detect when a crash is the result of a failed exploitation attempt or brittle malware. It’s used to get “real-time insights”, to correlate threat intelligence data and use “predictive intelligence” information to help ward off threats.

Also, “cloud app discovery” enables IT to analyse which cloud services their users are connecting to, and “app permissions” provides the ability to approve or revoke permissions for third party services that a company’s users are authorised to connect to Office 365.

More security management and reporting options are coming to Azure Security Center, plus a revamped Security and Audit dashboard in Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

In addition, Microsoft has integrated advanced threat detection capabilities into the Azure Security Center.

The Windows maker introduced a second tool called Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, which aids firms in identifying compromised credentials based on data the software giant has collected on its 14 billion logons. Based on these suspicious activities, a user risk severity is calculated and risk-based policies can be configured allowing the service to automatically protect the identities of your organization from future threats. There are also new threat visualizations available in Microsoft’s Operations Management Suite. Azure Security Center analyses the data and alerts the customer automatically if any of the virtual machines appear to have been compromised.

As customers evolve their security strategies from a simple “protect and recover” model, to a more holistic protect, detect, respond posture, intelligence becomes central. In December, Microsoft announced general availability of Customer Lockbox for Exchange Online, which steps up the number of levels of approval within Microsoft required to troubleshoot a customer issue involving a mailbox or document contents.

By using the Power BI dashboard to reveal trends and attack patterns, users can view security alerts by resource or source IP address and unaddressed security risks by resource or age. These next-generation firewalls will be “virtual appliances” from vendors such as Cisco, Check Point and Fortinet, according to an Azure blog post. The new features include authentication events, an improved dashboard, system updates and malware incidents.

Expanded Azure Security Centre partner offerings.

“No single company can solve the security challenges that our customers face today, which is why the security ecosystem, and all of our security partners, are key to our approach”, Arsenault said.

Customers will also be able to easily provision firewall products from Microsoft partners through the Azure Security Center.