Security seems to be the topic of conversation with Microsoft this month,
as many of its announcements seem to be around adding to their security
offerings. That makes me feel better.
As it only continues to enhance security on potential embarrassing photos,
we may not want getting leaked online, getting out into the world.
Like that one.
The Azure community has also been busy this month,
as they put together another free 24-hour virtual event for Microsoft cloud
learning.
This is Azure Level Up a show meant to ignite your passion for leveling up your
knowledge of the cloud.
Microsoft release of the Azure Firewall Manager service was far and above my
favorite announcement over this last month.
So let's dive into why this is great news.
The Azure Firewall offering has always been a great cloud security tool,
providing effective security controls for your internal and external traffic.
Previously,
one of the major downsides of Azure Firewalls was the lack of automation
features outside of deployments.
And that each firewall you create would need to be managed individually.
Azure Firewall Manager changes all that by allowing you to master the power of
fire!
Ooh, that's hot.
Azure Firewall Manager allows you to use policy-based management of your
firewalls,
making it so that you can ensure consistency and keeping with compliance,
regardless of where you deploy those firewalls.
This has been a much-needed feature to help simplify the day to day
administration of Azure firewalls.
It has been a limitation that has had companies still relying on third-party
firewall virtual appliances to fill in the gaps for the cloud network security.
Possibly,
my favorite part of this announcement is that if you're using a security hub
architecture,
you can rely on firewall manager to create the routes you need for your traffic
to connect back to your hub.
Removing the need to create messy easy to find routes that can just be a
downright pain. If you're unfamiliar with general networking concepts.
Personally,
I've been working with networks for years and I still have trouble with traffic
shaping and hedging.
Well what's that? There's no such thing as traffic hedging, but.
But that's the thing where you do the IP in the...
An additional feature of the service is the ability to integrate with third
party partners, such as ZScaler, iBoss, and CheckPoint.
Being able to use technologies like this is important as while the Azure
Firewall handles basic security, very effectively.
It's most effective with Azure service traffic,
things like user-aware filtering and Softwares as a Service access still require
more advanced solutions.
So you'll need to work with one of Microsoft supported providers,
if you need that sort of integration. Now with all the security goodness,
there are some caveats and Microsoft is still working out some of the bumps.
Currently the services designed to only work with two different architecture
types: Secured Virtual Hubs, which I mentioned before and Hub Virtual Networks.
Without these models in place,
unfortunately this tool won't be usable for you as it relies on the ability to
define routes through hubs, to your firewalls.
Also things like being unable to split traffic and only being able to have one
secured hub per region may still make this offering not entirely viable for some
more complex environments.
But Microsoft is working hard to create these features.
It has mitigation recommendations on its Firewall Manager overview page for
these and other known issues.
Big data, security, blockchain, Kubernetes, identity analytics, serverless,
cloud compliance governance.
Sorry for those of you who don't speak buzzword-ese.
What I meant to say was another important event that happened this month,
was the second Azure Virtual Community Day. On Tuesday this past week,
Azure community experts provided 24 hours of Azure learning goodness in six
different languages,
guest speakers from all over the globe contributed sessions over four separate
tracks. Also you can engage with industry leaders and get your learn on.
While alas, the community day has passed. By the time this video airs,
you can view any sessions that may interest you on their YouTube page at the
link here or in the description.
Microsoft has made a lot of announcements regarding security this month.
And as much as we would love to cover each one in detail,
we don't want to burn you out.
But for now I'd say we've accumulated enough skill points to get our next level
and earn the Mastery of Fire achievement - congratulations!
That wraps up this month Azure Level Up. So as we say here at A Cloud Guru,
when I'm trying to defeat the almighty fire King, seek and you shall cloud.
I'll see you next time gurus.
It's gotta be something in here about,
I know I've heard that term hedging hedging network.