Cloud computing has become the backbone for modern businesses due to its scalability, flexibility and cost-efficiency.
As organizations choose cloud service providers to power their technological transformations, they must also properly secure their cloud environments to protect sensitive data, maintain privacy and comply with stringent regulatory requirements.
Adversaries continue to set their sights on the expansive surface of cloud environments, as evidenced by the 75% increase in cloud intrusions in 2023 recorded in the CrowdStrike 2024 Global Threat Report.
This growth in adversary activity highlights the need for organizations to understand how to protect their cloud environment and workloads.
It's the responsibility of organizations using Azure to ensure their cloud environments are properly configured and protected.
This blog outlines best practices for securing Azure resources to ensure that your cloud infrastructure is fortified against emerging and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
Particularly in Microsoft environments, the complexity of the identity security framework and inability to consistently apply conditional access policies across the customer estate introduce additional risk.
Use conditional access: Implement conditional access policies and designate trusted locations.
These may include accessing sensitive resources or making critical changes to a system or network.
Public code repositories, version control systems or other repositories used by developers can have a high risk of exposing live access keys, which authenticate a trusted user into a cloud service.
Exposed access keys allow adversaries to pose as legitimate users and bypass authentication mechanisms into cloud services.
One of the most common cloud misconfigurations we see is unrestricted outbound access.
Also described as free network egress, unrestricted outbound access is a misconfiguration in which Azure cloud resources like containers, hosts and functions are allowed to communicate externally to any server on the internet with limited controls or oversight.
It is common for organizations to have IT assets and processes running in Azure tenants that the security teams do not know about.
Establish robust asset management: Adopt a comprehensive cloud asset management solution that can identify, track and manage all IT assets to prevent unauthorized access and use, enhancing overall security posture.
CrowdStrike Falcon® Cloud Security empowers customers to meticulously assess their security posture and compliance across Azure and other cloud platforms, applications and workloads.
These capabilities allow organizations to maintain an integrated, comprehensive overview of all cloud services and their compliance status, pinpointing instances of excessive permissions while proactively detecting and automating the remediation of indicators of attack and cloud misconfigurations.
This strategic approach not only enhances the security framework but enables developers and security teams to deploy applications in the cloud with increased confidence, speed and efficiency, underscoring CrowdStrike's commitment to bolstering cloud security and facilitating a safer, more secure digital transformation for businesses leveraging cloud infrastructure.
Evaluate your cloud security posture with a free Cloud Security Risk Review.
During the review, you will engage in a one-on-one session with a cloud security expert, evaluate your current cloud environment and identify misconfigurations, vulnerabilities and potential cloud threats.
This Cyber News was published on www.crowdstrike.com. Publication date: Mon, 18 Mar 2024 20:43:05 +0000