Regulatory requirements are increasingly stringent across every industry. Security must be built into your application stack from the ground up, beginning with computing, storage, and networking and ending with identity and access management and application-specific restrictions. You also need to be able to see the current state of security in your environment. In this article, we’ll discuss how Azure’s Security Center can help you achieve regulatory compliance goals with its built-in controls. 

What is Azure Security Center?

Azure Security Center supports workload security with a wide variety of customizable tools and services that may be used to fulfill different security requirements and improve cloud security overall. When necessary, you can also supplement this security with the help of partner solutions.

Security Center is Azure’s integrated security management solution, and it allows you to proactively protect your business from a wide variety of assaults by adjusting your security policies to the evolving threat landscape. 

How Does the Azure Security Center Work? 

As soon as an Azure service is created, it is automatically added to the Security Center and is monitored for potential threats. Your Azure subscription and its associated resources can be tracked using either predefined or custom-made monitoring settings. 

Your Azure environments are constantly being evaluated by the Security Center, and based on that data, you’ll receive recommendations you may implement to plug any security holes you find.

In addition to comprehensive threat defense, Azure Security Center provides end-to-end visibility into attack vectors through the use of cyber kill chain analysis. 

Azure servers can also be protected by using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Superior threat intelligence is provided to safeguard your workloads, and cutting-edge breach-detection sensors keep up with the ever-changing nature of cyber threats thanks to the power of big data and analytics. 

In addition, the single-pane visibility and automated onboarding for Windows servers ease the workload of cloud security teams. 

For additional layers of protection, Azure Security Center can work in tandem with other Azure offerings such as Azure Policy, Azure Monitor Logs, and Azure Cloud App Security.

How Does Azure Security Center Help You Stay Compliant?

Azure has earned 90 different security compliance certifications, more than any other cloud provider. 

The Compliance Manager software allows you to coordinate all of your business’s compliance efforts in one convenient spot. You can rely on this tool to help you meet your complicated compliance requirements. 

Continuous risk assessments are one such method, as the results will shed light on the current state of compliance within your organization and provide areas for improvement. Here are a few of the ways Azure Security Center can help you maintain compliance: 

• Azure Security Center allows users simple access to certification paperwork and regulatory performance reviews. 
• ASC performs continual assessments to simplify regulatory compliance.
• Azure Security Center’s compliance management tool includes Azure Security Benchmark integration with Secure Score, a new section for downloading audit certification results, and Workflow automation.
• Azure Security Benchmark is now a default standard on the regulatory compliance dashboard and is free to all Azure Security Center customers. 
• Benchmark covers the full set of cloud security requirements from each standard it maps to. Secure Score is built on Azure Security Benchmark and measures Security Benchmark control. 
• Secure Score gives prioritized advice to determine your organization’s biggest risk factors.

Azure Security Center now has access to Azure compliance certification artifacts to ensure shared responsibility. Microsoft provides Azure certifications for ISO, PCI, SOC, and others. 

Built-in Security Controls Offered in Azure Security Center

Quickly secure your workloads across identity, data, networking, and applications using Azure’s built-in controls and services. Microsoft Defender for the Cloud, for example, provides round-the-clock security and in-depth intelligence.  

Azure allows you to simply connect third-party solutions and extend security to hybrid cloud environments.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

The WAF solution can be used from the cloud and offers robust security for websites. 

To prevent application layer threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and cookie poisoning, a web application firewall (WAF) is installed. 

Apps are the primary target of cyber-attacks because they provide easy access to sensitive information.

Azure Firewall

If you’re running your cloud workloads in Microsoft Azure, you should take advantage of Azure Firewall, a cloud-native and intelligent network firewall security service that offers the best-of-breed threat protection. It is a versatile, firewall-as-a-service that has high availability and unlimited scalability thanks to the cloud.

Azure Firewall Manager

A security management service, Azure Firewall Manager allows for centralized control of cloud-based firewall policies and routes and can handle security for two network topologies.

Streamline Compliance with End-to-End Microsoft Solutions

Your confidential information must be protected. When working with Microsoft technologies like Azure, you can quickly secure your workloads across identity, data, networking, and applications using Azure’s in-built controls and services. Azure helps protect your data with built-in controls and identity, and enforces management and permissions to help safeguard your system’s infrastructure. 

With the Azure Security Center, you can see everything from one place, stay in control of your valuable data, and stop attacks before they happen. While you can pursue numerous Microsoft certifications to help you master the use of the company’s technologies, you need a reliable and experienced partner to guide you through end-to-end implementation. Argano’s award-winning team offers extensive Microsoft expertise to ensure your Microsoft solution is optimized for your business. Get in touch to learn how Argano can help you transform your business operations.