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Microsoft’s Azure Cloud And Office 365 Security Shows Great Enhancement

By Stephen Jordan
Published on: 09:19 PST, Feb 29, 2016

Microsoft is doing big things with its cyber security, having recently announced several new products and upgrades that are allegedly going to make companies much more secure and safe online. These new products include Microsoft Cloud App Security, Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, updates to the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) and more.

“Keeping our network safe, while protecting our data and our customers’ data, is paramount,” Bret Arsenault, Microsoft’s chief information security officer, wrote in a Microsoft blog post. “As Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft, I am constantly looking for ways to improve our security posture, through new technologies that accelerate our ability to protect, detect and respond to cyber incidents.”

The Microsoft Cloud App Security, coming this April, gives users more control and more security for data that is hosted in app clouds, VentureBeat reports. This includes SalesForce, ServiceNow, Office 365, Box as well as Ariba. Microsoft acquired a cloud access security broker called Adallom back in September 2015, and Ariba is using technology based on this security broker.

Office 365 is going to have some new upgrades for its security that are going to be combined with Microsoft Cloud App Security. Users will be alerted of suspicious activity in the service, and IT departments will be made fully aware of the cloud services Office 365 users are connecting to. And if you’d like the option of approving or disapproving third-party services (those that can connect to Office 365), you’ll have that choice as well.

“After years of examining crash dumps that our customers opted to send to Microsoft from more than a billion PCs worldwide, Microsoft has developed the capability to analyze this data to effectively detect compromised systems because crashes are often the result of failed exploitation attempts and brittle malware,” Arsenault wrote.

Customer Lockbox is also a new feature that will make the customer approval process much better, specifically with SharePoint Online and OneDrive. And those times when Microsoft engineers require access to Office 365 accounts and data in order to help troubleshoot are going to made much easier, by receiving more transparency with Lockbox. Although if you use Exchange Online, Customer Lockbox is available right now.

Microsoft also provided some upgrades to the Azure Security Center. You’ll be able to better filter and prioritize your security alerts with the new Power BI Dashboard. With this, you can discover cyber-attack trends and patterns, making you much more savvy when it comes to predicting possible security threats. The Microsoft Operations Management Suite also got a new dashboard, and with it users will get info on malware detections, network activity, as well as system updates extending to other customer data centers.

Azure Active Directory Identity Protection is something Microsoft will be talking more about in March. It is expected to do wonders for threat detection by using Microsoft’s data on leaked credentials, authentications from locations that are unfamiliar, and brute force attacks. Microsoft’s Operations Management Suite can detect when malicious IP addresses are trying to communicate with systems.

Microsoft users will also be able to easily manage firewall products from Microsoft partners with the help of the Azure Security Center. Check Point vSEC is a feature that is currently available and options from Cisco Systems, Fortinet and Imperva are going to be available soon.

“At next week’s RSA Conference 2016 we’ll share more about our approach and our commitment to provide the platform, intelligence and partners that will help protect our customers now and into the future,” Arsenault wrote.

The RSA Conference is taking place in San Francisco, from February 29 through March 4.

[Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images]

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