Guidance for governing the identities of AI agents and non-human identities (NHIs) — Microsoft 365 Copilot Studio agents, Microsoft Foundry agents, custom AI agents, and traditional service principals/managed identities — through their full lifecycle. Covers ownership and tagging, scoped permissions and consent…
Guidance for designing secure APIs on Azure - authentication, authorization, gateway controls, input validation, rate limiting, secret management, and runtime threat detection - aligned to OWASP API Security Top 10 and Azure API Management. WHEN: API security design, secure API, OWASP API Top 10, API authentication…
Guidance for Azure AI Content Safety — programmatic content moderation for text, images, multimodal, and generative AI guardrails. Covers Content Safety categories (hate, violence, sexual, self-harm) with severity levels, Prompt Shields for jailbreak and indirect prompt injection detection, groundedness detection…
Guidance for securing Azure App Service web apps and APIs — managed identity, Easy Auth with Microsoft Entra ID, network isolation via private endpoints + VNet integration, HTTPS / TLS hardening, Key Vault references for secrets, and front-end WAF (Front Door / App Gateway). WHEN: App Service security, secure web app…
Guidance for Azure Arc — projecting on-premises, multicloud (AWS/GCP), and edge servers, Kubernetes, and data services into Azure Resource Manager for unified governance, security, and management. Covers Arc-enabled servers onboarding, extending Defender for Cloud and Azure Policy to non-Azure machines, and…
Guidance for secure remote VM management in Azure using Azure Bastion combined with Defender for Cloud just-in-time (JIT) VM access. Covers Bastion SKU selection (Developer / Basic / Standard / Premium), IP-based and shareable-link connections, native client (RDP/SSH from local machine via az CLI), session recording…
Guidance for Azure Confidential Computing — protecting data in use through hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). Covers Confidential VMs (AMD SEV-SNP, Intel TDX), Confidential containers on AKS (Kata + AMD SEV-SNP), confidential GPU VMs (NVIDIA H100 with TDX), Azure Key Vault Managed HSM and Premium…
Guidance for Azure DDoS Protection — Network Protection (per-VNet) and IP Protection (per public IP) tiers built on the same always-on Microsoft platform. Covers tier selection vs free Basic infrastructure protection, scope (VNet vs single IP), traffic profiling and mitigation policy auto-tuning, attack analytics and…
Guidance for Azure Key Vault — securely storing and managing secrets, keys, and certificates with RBAC, network isolation, managed identity access, soft delete / purge protection, and rotation. Covers when to use standard Key Vault vs Managed HSM (FIPS 140-3 Level 3), one-vault-per-app blast radius principle, and Key…
Guidance for the security-side use of Azure Monitor and Log Analytics — designing the workspace strategy that feeds Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for Cloud, choosing analytics vs basic vs auxiliary log tiers, retention and archive, table-level transformations to drop noise pre-ingestion, Data Collection Rules (DCRs)…
Guidance for designing secure Azure network architecture — hub-spoke topology (or Virtual WAN), segmentation with NSGs/ASGs, private endpoints / Private Link for PaaS, egress through Azure Firewall, DDoS protection, WAF on Front Door/App Gateway, and centralised private DNS. Aligned to the Zero Trust network pillar.…
Guidance for Azure Policy — enforcing and auditing governance and security guardrails at scale across Azure with definitions, initiatives, assignments, and remediation tasks. Covers effects (Audit, Deny, Append, Modify, DeployIfNotExists, AuditIfNotExists), management group inheritance, audit-first rollout…
Guidance for estimating and reasoning about the cost of Azure security services — using the Azure Pricing Calculator, understanding key cost drivers (Sentinel ingestion, Defender plans, Key Vault operations), and cost-optimization levers. WHEN: Azure security pricing, estimate cost, Sentinel cost, Defender for Cloud…
Guidance for selecting the right Azure RBAC role with least privilege - mapping required actions to built-in roles, deciding when a custom role is needed, scoping assignments correctly, and choosing between control-plane and data-plane roles. Covers scope levels (management group → resource), groups vs direct…
Guidance for the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (MCSB) — Microsoft's canonical set of cloud security best-practice controls mapped to industry frameworks and monitored in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Covers control domains, applying the benchmark, and compliance tracking. WHEN: Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark…
Guidance for Azure Site Recovery (ASR) — disaster-recovery-as-a-service that replicates Azure VMs and on-premises machines to a secondary region for orchestrated failover. Covers RPO / RTO design, replication setup, recovery plans with start-up ordering and scripts, test failover discipline, and the separation between…
Guidance for designing BitLocker drive encryption for Windows endpoints managed via Microsoft Intune — encryption policy, silent enablement, recovery key escrow to Entra ID, TPM, pre-boot authentication trade-offs, and BitLocker To Go for removable media. Covers compliance integration with Conditional Access and…
Guidance for cloud and SaaS security posture management - combining Defender for Cloud CSPM (IaaS/PaaS) and Defender for Cloud Apps SSPM (SaaS) to assess and harden posture across cloud and SaaS apps. Covers Secure Score, MCSB, attack-path analysis, SSPM recommendations, and governance. WHEN: cloud security posture…
Guidance for Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager — continuous compliance posture across Microsoft and non-Microsoft assets, mapped to 360+ regulatory templates (ISO 27001/27018/27701, SOC 2, NIST 800-53/171/CSF, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, FedRAMP, IRAP, Essential Eight, DORA, EU AI Act, etc.). Covers compliance score…
Guidance for responding to and recovering from a significant identity/tenant compromise - regaining administrative control, evicting the adversary in a single coordinated action, and hardening to prevent reentry. Covers trusted foundation (PAW), containment, eviction, identity recovery (krbtgt, federation), and…
Guidance for Microsoft Entra Conditional Access (CA) and multifactor authentication — the Zero Trust policy engine that enforces grant/block decisions based on user, device, location, app, and risk signals. Covers a baseline 6-policy set, authentication strengths for phishing-resistant MFA, report-only rollout…