Microsoft secures multicloud with Secure Score

The always complex security landscape has become increasingly more so since Covid-19 kicked hybrid/remote work into high gear almost two years ago. These days, businesses are operating on a wide range of different devices, operating systems, and clouds. These complex environments can be cumbersome for IT professionals to manage security and employee access across so many different platforms. Cybercriminals crave this level of complexity because they know it’s harder for IT to protect the gaps across platforms. With 92% of organisations embracing a multi-cloud strategy, the time to act is now.

According to the Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 78% of respondents are using a hybrid cloud model, meaning they rely on apps and infrastructure from multiple cloud providers. Another recent survey sponsored by Microsoft shows that 83% of business leaders see managing multicloud complexity as their biggest pain point in 2022.

This week, Microsoft shared some news to help simplify security for businesses and help eliminate gaps between platforms:

• Microsoft Defender for Cloud’s native capabilities for workload and security posture management will be extended to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – This adds to existing Azure and AWS capabilities, seamlessly integrating IT cloud security tools now into the world’s three biggest clouds without any dependencies on Google 1st party tools. The support for GCP comes with a simplified onboarding experience, more than 80 out-of-the-box recommendations to harden customer environments, and more.
  • Other New Features Include:
    • New, Multicloud Secure Score gives organisations a central view of their posture across clouds, as well as for each cloud individually for a central view of their security posture.
    • Automatic provisioning ensures that as soon as new resources are added to the environment, threat protection is provisioned to them right away.
• CloudKnox Permissions Management enters public preview – The integration of this acquisition from July 2021 gives organisations the increased visibility and control of permissions management as they augment their Zero-trust postures across all the platforms they use.

This secure score will show on a user’s Microsoft Defender overview dashboard:

Microsoft Defender for Cloud can connect to Azure, AWS and GCP environments. For more information, visit: https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2022/02/23/microsoft-security-delivers-new-multicloud-capabilities/