Security & Governance – Cloud Marathoner's Journey

Zero to Hero: Secure IaC with Bicep

Hello dear friends,

I would like to welcome everyone who is landed on this page to check out the Azure Spring Clean 2023 event and Learn new cloud skills!

Before kicking off the topic, I would like to start with a “THANK YOU” message for the organizers of the event; especially for Joe, Thomas, and everyone who is involved in making this event a successful experience for everyone!

Note:

Introduction

In the spirit of Azure Spring Clean, we will explore how to organize Azure Security Services using the infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach with Azure Bicep.

We will look into how you could declaratively define and deploy your Azure security resources including Azure Policies to tackle real-world business problems. So, get yourself ready for simple yet powerful demos that will turn you into a hero.

And don’t worry, if you are new to Azure Bicep as we will have a super express introduction to this new IaC language to get you started with fundamentals.

By the way, if you are super new to Azure Bicep then please check the following YT recording – “What is new in Azure Bicep language?”

What is Azure Bicep

Azure Bicep is a new declarative Domain Specific Language (DSL) for provisioning Azure resources. The purpose of Azure Bicep is to simplify the resource creation and management experience with a cleaner syntax and more code reuse.

Declaring resources as IaC

There are many benefits in declaring and managing cloud infrastructure resources as a code. It provides benefits, such as increased compliance, visibility, controlled deployments and versioning of changes that get deployed into your cloud environments.

The following screenshot demonstrates how Azure Bicep declares cloud resources on the left side of the panel:

Organizing cloud resources

No matter how small or big is your project, taking time to think through the approach of how to organize your digital assets is an important task. In Microsoft Azure, you would need to consider a couple of points while trying to make this decision. Namely, you would need to consider the following factors:

Resource Governance approach
Management scopes
IaC management options
Modules, ACR, Template Specs, etc.

Azure Policies for governance

The Azure Policies are assigned with a unique mission to guard the compliance aspect of your cloud resources and workloads. It evaluates resources at specific times (by default happens every 24 hours) during the resource lifecycle changes and the policy assignment lifecycle updates.

Thus, whenever you get a resource created, updated, or deleted within a scope of the monitored compliance, or if you update/create an Azure policy then the compliance evaluation cycle will determine the compliance of these changes by auditing, blocking, or allowing the action to be performed.

Securing storage account options

Note: this section of the post is in progress…
It will be presented with the screenshots and GitHub repo for you.
Stay tuned, and check in a few days 😉

video & Demo – a sweet combo

In the video below, I briefly cover the posted information in this blog post which also includes the instructions on how to run the demo and get the scripts to deploy Azure Policies for your Tag Governance scenario.

Without any overdue, here is the video that should be available to you:

The following image is a screenshot from the slide that demonstrates the Bicep code that declares the policy definition and initiative, with the final view of deployment on the Azure portal.

Please, feel free to check out the GitHub repo – Learn Azure Bicep.

Summary

Thank you so much for reading this post and learning about Azure security and compliance and how IaC language Azure Bicep can help you in this journey. This is a bit different perspective to strengthen your resource/workload compliance on Azure using IaC approach.

Please, keep up the good work by securing your organizational and customer cloud environments!

#AzureSpringClean 2023 event speaker submission is accepted 🎉

Hello Cloud Marathoners!

I am really excited and happy to see my session is accepted ✅ for this year’s #AzureSpringClean2023 event 🎉

What is Azure Spring Clean?

The Azure Spring Clean 2023 is an event that promotes well-managed Azure tenants. In order to achieve this goal, organizers encourage the cloud community professionals to create articles that highlight best-practices, and lessons learned, and help with some of the more difficult topics of Azure Management.

Session details

Join me this March, to learn and explore 🔍 how to organize Azure Security Services using the IaC approach with Azure Bicep.

We will look into how you could declaratively define and deploy your Azure security resources including Azure Policies to tackle real-world business problems. Thus, get yourself ready for simple yet powerful demos that will turn you into a hero.

In Summary

I would highly encourage everyone to join this event and learn best practices on Azure this spring!

📌 Check out the post details on LinkedIn platform 👍

End of year celebration with a pass on Microsoft SOC exam

Hello, my friends!

I am sincerely wishing you all a Happy New Year!

As I always say this motto: The #cloudjourney and learning never stops 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️

What is the Microsoft SOC exam?

I am happy to share that I was able to pass an Azure security certificate before the end of 2022!!!

As you might know, this certification belongs to an important Microsoft Security operations space. I am very glad to finish this year with this achievement.

Thank you my dear #cloudfamily, #cloudmarathoner, and my co-workers at T-Rex Solutions, LLC for a strong and relentless learning culture and continued support!

***Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate***

What skills did I learn?

Studying for this certification helped me gain the skills and knowledge required to reduce my organization’s risk by rapidly remediating active attacks on the environment, advising on improvements to threat protection practices, and referring violations of organizational policies to appropriate people and teams.

As an important part of the exam preparation, I did labs that investigate, respond to, and hunt for threats using Microsoft products, such as Azure Defender, Azure Sentinel, Microsoft 365 Defender, and other related security products.

Summary

Please, let me know if you are targeting this certification.
I would be more than glad to provide additional guidance for your preparations!

Thank you everyone for your greetings and wishes on social media.
I do really appreciate your continued support!!!

Interview with the DynamicsSmartz

Hello Cloud Marathoner friends,

I had a great interaction with Kerry, Head of Marketing at DynamicsSmartz few weeks ago. I was offered to share my technical insights into some of the Microsoft technologies and interesting trends in the Cloud and Security areas. As a Microsoft MVP in Azure, I was really excited to share my take on Cloud Security and Governance topics using this Platfrom.

what is Microsoft Dynamics Influencer Insights?

This program provides a look at what Industry Experts and Influencers have to say about the partner benefits of pursuing Digital Transformation. It is also important to note that Microsoft MVPs are usually providing the technical insights freely for the community benefit.

Insights on Cloud Security and Governance

There are multiple questions on Microsoft tech trends and opportunities that have been addressed in my interview. In addition, I also shared my success mantra that you could check it here.

Microsoft Dynamics Influencer insights with Elkhan Yusubov — **Cloud Manager and Author, Elkhan Yusubov’s take on Cloud Security and Governance**

Updated Publication

Today, on August 30th, I have been informed by DynamicsSmartz that my interview has been featured on “The Microsoft Partner Daily” publication. Thank you Kerry for notifying me and great job that you are doing.

Conclusion

Please, let me know your take on my shared tech insights, and what would be the question you want to ask. As usual, please connect with me on @LinkedIn or @Twitter.

What you need to know about Azure AD security defaults?

Hello Cloud Marathoners,

The following post is going to be covered in the Azure Spring Clean 2022 event’s website too. Thus, you might be wondering what the Azure Spring Clean is?

Azure Spring Clean 2022 Overview

The Azure Spring Clean is a community-driven event focused on Azure management topics and gradually publishes content from March 14-18, 2022.

I would like sincerely Thank – Joe Carlyle and Thomas Thornton for putting time and effort in organizing this event. From a #cloudmarathoner ’s perspective it’s been enjoyable to contribute and be a part of this event. This topic specifically outlines how to understand the pros and cons of your initial Azure AD settings that will be aligned with your project’s expectations.

WHY azure ad security defaults are important?

Indeed, this is a very legit question and I would like to address it with the following quote from Alex Weinert:

…our telemetry tells us that more than 99.9% of organization account compromise could be stopped by simply using MFA, and that disabling legacy authentication correlates to a 67% reduction in compromise risk (and completely stops password spray attacks, 100% of which come in via legacy authentication)…
Alex Weinert – Director of Identity Security at Microsoft

The main purpose behind these default settings is to make sure that all organizations using Azure AD have a basic level of security, and it is enabled at no extra cost according to Microsoft.

New Azure AD Bug Lets Hackers Brute-Force Passwords Without Getting Caught

Azure AD security defaults are something you need to enable at the tenant level. Once you do this, the rules will apply to all users in your tenant without any exceptions.

If you are looking for enforce rules more selectively ( or exclude some users ) then security defaults won’t be a fit solution for you. For this scenario, you would need to look at getting some P1 or P2 licenses and use the conditional access instead.

How can I set up my Azure AD Security Defaults?

The Microsoft Azure AD team did a fantastic job by simplifying this option. You need to navigate int0 Azure AD -> Properties -> and click on link Manage Security defaults.

You will end-up with the following window on the right panel of Azure portal:

***Enabling Security Defaults in Azure AD***

What is baked inside the security defaults in azure ad?

There are a number of things baked into the “Security Defaults” by Azure AD team. You could read about an official and detailed description here – Security defaults in Azure AD.

One of the BIG incentives for the security defaults is that it brings Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to your users for #free. Of course, there are some limitations around this which I will cover later on, but this option does allow you to get an MFA with no additional cost.

Previously, you would have to have either Azure AD P1 licenses, or pay per use for MFA functionality. Thus, this is a big game changer benefit that you are getting for free in your tenant and will bring a significant extra level of security. And this defaults includes both Azure and Office 365 services.

Along with MFA, security defaults are enforcing several policies that make your tenant more secure:

Requiring all users to sign up for MFA (for free)
Requiring those in Azure administrator roles to perform MFA
Blocking legacy authentication protocols – this includes clients that don’t use modern authentication and so don’t support MFA, and older mail protocols like IMAP, SMTP and POP3
Requiring MFA authentication when undertaking privileged actions using the Azure portal, PowerShell or CLI

Will Security Defaults replace my Azure AD licenses ?

In short, the answer is No. Your Azure AD licenses provide more security protection services than what you get from “Security Defaults”.

Think of a “Security Defaults” as a security design approach for users on a free Azure AD tier. Because, if you are already using P1 or P2 licenses you would want to look at using conditional access to perform this (and more) rather than security defaults.

What you need to know before deploying the Security Defaults?

Based on Microsoft security guidelines, every organization should have at least two emergency access accounts configured. These accounts are intended for use when your regular administrator account’s can not be used. A typical example is: when person with the most recent Global Admin access has left your company.

What are the emergency access accounts ?
Well, following three criteria defines it pretty well:

Aren’t used on a daily basis
Are protected with a long complex password
Has an assigned Global Administrator rights in Azure AD

Break the Glass Admin no longer compliant? - Microsoft Partner Community

These emergency access accounts and credentials are very sensitive and should be stored in a secure location like a fireproof safe. And only authorized people in your organization should have access to these accounts.

You are also encouraged to disable password expiration to for these accounts using Azure AD PowerShell.

Check out this Microsoft article – Manage emergency access accounts in Azure AD, as it provides more detailed information about emergency access accounts.

What to do when switching from Security Defaults to azure ad Conditional Access Policies?

In order to provide more productivity and better security to your users, you could replicate the policies created by Azure AD Security Defaults. First, your customer’s tenant must be licensed with Azure AD Premium P2. However, the majority of policies can also be accomplished using the Azure AD Premium P1 license.

Check out the following Microsoft documented guides on how you can use Conditional Access to configure equivalent policies to the once that get set by the security defaults:

All these policies could be implemented with Premium P1 license, except the last one. The last policy requires Azure AD Identity Protection feature of the Azure AD and could be provided via Premium P2 license.

Summary

Thank you so much for reading this post and learning about the Azure AD Security defaults. I tried my best to provide my perspective on this important topic while using availiable Microsoft docs and resources.

Please, keep up the good work by securing your and customer’s cloud environments!

Azure Bicep presentation for Omaha Azure User Group

Hello friends,

I am very excited to see you all in the next Omaha Azure User Group meetup. This time we will speak about the latest advancements and use cases you could apply in your Azure resource authoring toolkit.

This meeting will take place on November 17th, starting at 6 PM CST. Details of the event are posted here: https://lnkd.in/gzh_sF8e and on my LinkedIn post.

Please, make your registration at the meetup website here.

Support & Subscribe to #cloudmarathoner LinkedIn tag 👏👀
Stay tuned for more Azure, Automation & Security related posts.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ 🎯 ᴀɴᴅ become ᴀ #cloudmarathoner ⛅🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓 👍

Festive Tech Calendar 2021 event

Hi Cloud Marathoners,

As you may know, it is that time of a year when great content will be coming to the town! You could enjoy and learn throughout the month of December, as people behind the #festivetechcalendar will be bringing you lots of new content from different communities and people around the globe.

https://festivetechcalendar.com/

This year, I have submitted two sessions and have been nicely surprised yesterday. Both sessions have been accepted and I am looking forward to deliver following sessions for the community:

Session # 1: What you need to know about Azure AD security defaults?

Accepted session – “**What you need to know about Azure AD security defaults?**“

In this session above, we will discuss about how to get started with Azure security on right foot and its challenges. We will focus on importance of a strong Identity and Access in any cloud solution that we are creating for our customers. One simple way to get started is review and adjustment of security default options in Azure AD. We will also look into the set of practices to get you started with Azure AD setup and learn about the benefits of Azure Security Benchmark.

Session # 2: All you need to know about Azure Bicep configurations

Accepted session -“All you need to know about Azure Bicep configurations”

In the second session, we will talk about Azure Bicep – a new language that aims to ease Azure resource authoring and management. This new language comes with a powerful VS Code extension and config file options.
In this session, we will unveil dozens of powerful features in our config file to suit your style of coding on VS Code and cheer up our productivity skills. We will apply our fresh skills by creating several Bicep demos in the process.

Conclusion

I sincerely hope that these sessions will spark your interest and I am looking forward to see you all during this event. But most importantly, I hope you could have lots of fun during this festive month.

Stay tuned for more Azure AD, Automation & Security related posts.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ 🎯 ᴀɴᴅ become ᴀ #cloudmarathoner ⛅🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓 👍

How to create a free, Azure Active Directory developer tenant? 🤔

Hi Cloud Marathoners!

It is a pretty common situation when as a Developer you are not granted access to work with company Azure AD. And there are many reasons why corporate security / IT would be hesitant to provide that access.

However, this situation should not discourage you from experimenting and prototyping solutions that you have.

Let’s consider following two easy options to create a free Azure Active Directory with Premium (P1 or P2) trial licenses. This will enable you to install/create an app that requires Azure AD license, and start testing and validating your workloads right away:

Azure Active Directory voor Developers - ppt download

Option # 1: Microsoft 365 Developer Program

Join a free Microsoft 365 Developer Program and get a free sandbox, tools, and other resources you need to build solutions for the Microsoft 365 platform. Resources like an Azure AD with Premium licenses, pre-configured users, groups, mailboxes and etc.

Option # 2: Create an Azure trial account

Create a new free Azure AD account with a tenant and activate your Premium licenses in your new tenant. This is a classic option for anyone who is trying to learn Azure for the first time.

The Azure trial account will give you one month to play with Azure and Azure AD services, where you will get certain credits to spend on Azure resources. You will get an option to convert this trial subscription into a paid one at the end of the trial period.

How to Join Microsoft 365 Developer Program

My recommendation would be to sign up for the free Microsoft 365 developer program that gets renewed automatically, if you are using that account. Check out the following instructions on how to set-up one:

1. Click on the Join Now button on the screen

2. Sign in with a exisiting or new Microsoft Account you already have

3. On the signup page, fill the form and accept the terms and conditions of the program, and click next

4. Continue with a subscription set-up. You should specify the region where you want to create your new tenant, create a username, domain and enter a password. This step will create a new tenant and an administrator account of the tenant.

5. Enter the security information which is required to protect the sensitive administrator account. Complete this step by setting up MFA authentication for your admin account.

6. Link your developer account with your GitHub account for an easy renewal. You should see the following GitHub account link blue banner, once the linking operation succeeds.

Congratulations!
You have created a new Azure AD tenant with 25 E5 user licenses. This also includes Azure AD Premium licenses.

As an additional perk, you can also add sample data packs with users, Mail & Events and SharePoint, as sample data for your development environment.

Good Luck on your next M365 project!

Stay tuned for more Azure AD, Automation & Security related posts.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ 🎯 ᴀɴᴅ become ᴀ #cloudmarathoner ⛅🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓 👍

Azure introduced new Fusion Detection for Ransomware!

Hi Cloud Marathoners,

This week a new service – Fusion Detection for Ransomware has been announced. These Fusion detections correlate alerts that are potentially associated with ransomware activities that are observed at defense evasion and execution stages during a specific timeframe.

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware attack is a type of attack that involves using specific types of malicious software or malware to make a network or system inaccessible for the purpose of extortion – ‘ransom’.

There is no doubt that ransomware attacks have taken a massive turn in being the top priority as a threat to many organizations. A recent report released by PurpleSec revealed that the estimated cost of ransomware attacks was $20 billion in 2020 and with downtime increasing by over 200% and the cost being 23x higher than 2019.

Preventing such attacks in the first place would be the ideal solution but with the new trend of ‘ransomware as a service’ and human operated ransomware, the scope and the sophistication of attacks are increasing – attackers are using slow and stealth techniques to compromise network, which makes it harder to detect them in the first place.

AI in action with Azure Sentinel for help!

Good new is that #azuresentinel 🔥 is constantly getting more efficient by introducing #AI in action – Sentinel #fusion!

In order to help your analyst quickly understand the possible attack, Fusion provides you with a complete picture for the suspicious activities happened on the same device/host by correlating signals from Microsoft products as well as signals in network and cloud. Supported data connectors include:

”With Fusion detection for ransomware that captures malicious activities at the defense evasion and execution stages of an attack, it gives security analysts an opportunity to quickly understand the suspicious activities happened around the same timeframe on the common entities, connect the dots and take immediate actions to disrupt the attack.”

Microsoft is commited to release new multistage attack scenarios detected by Fusion in Azure Sentinel. You could keep an eye on there Azure Sentinel Fusion page and get latest updates there 🙂

Stay tuned for more Azure automation & Security related posts.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ 🎯 ᴀɴᴅ become ᴀ #cloudmarathoner ⛅🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓 👍

#microsoftsecurity
#security
#infosec
#cybersecurity

Essential Azure cloud transformation handbook – for everyone

Hi Cloud Marathoners,

There might be some technical knowledge gaps when we start to learn a new cloud service or its features. One way to minimize it – is to study for a certification exam or read a book that has a more holistic approach into the technology.

Well, while not all of you might agree with this approach of reading the book, certain books can open a completely new perspective into your vision. Of course, there is a risk that over-time, the cloud services described in the book might be phased out, merged or re-named (like, Azure Data Warehouse service got evolution into Azure Synapse Analytics) into some other services.

In addition, hands-on learning is the recommended approach to master your knowledge and get technical depth into the subject matter area.

Anyway, no matter what approach works best for you, the “Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide 4th Edition” is an essential handbook to cloud transformation with Azure that you don’t want to miss out on.

As it is a common case in technology, there are many different scenarios for running your workloads on Azure to meet your company’s business needs. This book puts renewed emphasis on the importance of using design principles and how crucial planning is – when moving resources to Azure.

The authors of the book use the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework, and recommend to adopting best practices to improve the quality of your workloads in the cloud.

That said, let’s have a look into the chapters:

✔️ Introduction to Azure
✔️ Automation and governance in Azure
✔️ Modernizing with hybrid cloud and multicloud
✔️ Cloud migration: Planning, implementation, and best practices
✔️ Enabling secure, remote work with Microsoft Azure AD and WVD
✔️ Security fundamentals to help protect against cybercrime
✔️ Offers, support, resources, and tips to optimize cost in Azure

I hope those listing sparkled your interest to read the book.
Well, without any overdue check the download link and put it on your device.

Hopefully, you could get solid Azure cloud understanding from this book and lighten-up your cloud transformation journey.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ 🎯 ᴀɴᴅ become ᴀ #cloudmarathoner ⛅🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓 👍

#microsoftazure
#cloudskills
#multicloud
#cloudtransformation
#bestpractices
#wellarchitected #framework
#continuouslearning