Category: Security & Governance

What is MCAS and why would you need it?

Hello cloud marathoners,

The MCAS (Microsoft Cloud App Security) 🛡️🔐 – helps to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services. This is a cloud access security broker (CASB) that provides multifunction visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics.

Here is a high level architecture diagram from Microsoft docs.

What are the main benefits of this cloud service?

Here are the main three benefits ot brings alone:
✔️ Discovery & Manage your apps
✔️ Govern access to apps and resources
✔️ Check compliance on your cloud apps

Check out this detailed level architecture of #appsecurity in Microsoft Azure ™ 👍

MCAS – Microsoft Cloud App Security.


What are the main use cases for your business?

✔️ Shadow IT Discovery & Control
✔️ Secure Access
✔️ Security Poster Management
✔️ Threat Protection
✔️ Information Protection
✔️ User & Entity Behavioral Analytics

Another beauty of above architecture lies in a fact that you could easily integrate this model with third party SaaS apps, all listed on a diagram.

Thank you Matt Soseman for bringing this diagram  #SharingIsCaring❤️️

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

#microsoftazure
#MCAS#securitymanagement
#OAuth#secureaccess #appsec
#threatprotection
#securityengineering
#bestpractices
#continuouslearning

What are the Microsoft Azure’s Multi-Cloud and Cross-Platform Capabilities?

Hello cloud marathoners,

There are many security and multi-cloud capability services under Microsoft Azure umbrella of services. In this post, I will reference the Microsoft documentation to clarify those capabilities on high-level.
I hope this post will clarify intent and purpose of these capabilities for you.

Important: Please zoom into a infographic – as it is of a high quality and can be very informative in understanding the article.

Microsoft’s cross-platform or cloud security starts with endpoints and cloud visibility and controls: namely Endpoint management and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) that provides insight across your multi-cloud and on-premises datacenter estate as well as Cloud Workload Protection capabilities

Next are the SIEM and XDR Strategy – where Microsoft provides integrated capabilities for the Security Operations / SOC to get the broad and deep visibility needed to rapidly detect, hunt for, and respond/recover to threats across clouds and platforms.

The following capability on the infographic is – Infrastructure Extended Detection and Response (XDR). These capabilities are provided through set of services, namely Azure Defender, Azure Arc, Microsoft 365 Defender with number of features combined under the suit of services.

Next set of capabilities are Identity Enablement and Security – where Azure Active Directory provides comprehensive solutions, including Zero Trust access control that explicitly verifies trustworthiness of devices (via XDR) and users via native UEBA, Threat Intelligence and analytics.

And finally, Information Protection capabilities – utilize the Microsoft Information Protection and Azure Purview services that provide a full lifecycle approach to discovering, classifying, protecting, and monitoring structured and unstructured data as your organization generates and leverages more data. These capabilities provide insights to drive mission completion and competitive advantage.

What would be your approach?
Please, share in the comments section 👍
#SharingIsCaring❤️️

Important: Please zoom into the infographic – as it is of a high quality and can be very informative in understanding this article.

#microsoftazure
#multicloud
#crossplatform
#endpointmanagement
#SOC
#securityengineering
#identityaccessmanagement

Protecting against compromised user devices with Zero Trust Access Control?

Hello Cloud Marathoners,

I have been asked to expand upon set of available Microsoft Azure services that could help with compromised user devices. One way to deal with such scenarios is to temporarily suspend user access until endpoint is cleaned.

Taking into account that your user’s device is compromized, you can automate response either to restric or restore the access to the endpoint.

Option#1 – Retrict Access

To help with this scenarious you could use the Azure AD’s Conditional Access features. The Conditional Access knows about the device risks because Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) notified Intune, who then updated the compliance status of the device in Azure AD.

During this period, the user is restricted from accessing corporate resources. These applies to all new resource requests and will block any current access to resources that support continuous access evaluation (CAE).

Your user will still be able to do general internet productivity and research (like Wikipedia, external web resources and anything else that doesn’t require corporate authentication), but won’t have access to corporate resources.

Option#2 – Restore Access

The second option (illustrated on infographic) mitigates the “Access restored” scenariou. This correspondce to sceanriou wher threat has been remediated and cleaned up, MDE triggers Intune to update Azure AD and Conditional Access restores the user’s access to corporate resources.

Described two scenarious above, mitigate the risk to the organization by ensuring attackers who may be in control of these devices cannot access corporate resources, while minimizing the impact on user productivity to minimize disruption of business processes.

What is next?

Check this interesting references on Microsoft docs and learn about Continue Access Evaluation (CAE) – and other Common Conditional Access policies.

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

How to become a Microsoft Security🛡️ Ninja ⚔ ???

Hello friends,

Recently, I have been asked about good refences to master security echo-system on Microsoft technologies, especially in Cloud security products and services. Thus, I dived into references and compiled following resources for everyone to enjoy 👍👌

Learn about basic to advanced scenarios on network security, MCAS, Defender, Office365 and other security🛡️🔐 services on Microsoft Azure – from following collection of blog posts: 

✔️ Microsoft Cloud App Security Ninja Training  https://aka.ms/MCASNinja

✔️ Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Ninja Training  https://aka.ms/MDENinja

✔️ Azure Network Security Ninja Training https://lnkd.in/g9qeMrT

✔️ Azure Security Center Ninja Training  https://aka.ms/ASCNinja

✔️ Azure Sentinel Ninja Training https://lnkd.in/gpZb7kS

✔️ Microsoft 365 Defender Ninja Training  https://aka.ms/M365Ninja

✔️ Microsoft Defender for Identity Ninja Training https://aka.ms/DFINinja

✔️ Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Ninja Training https://aka.ms/MDONinja

In addition, you could easily join to the Microsoft Security Community, and get latest announcement from here: https://lnkd.in/gXdv7Sq

Stay tuned …. for upcoming announcements on Microsoft Azure, as all of them will be shared back here 😘

#microsoftazure #continuouslearning #cybersecurity #networksecurity #informationsecurity #cloudsecurity

Why “Start small and Expand” approach is good for your company business?

As cloud☁️ journey matures, each company 🏨 knows that service
requirements and needs will be changing. As cloud providers add new features and products, the new market opportunities and possibilities will rise.

There are several reasons why you would want to pursue the cloud landing zones. Using the start small and expand landing zone, you could get started with cloud adoption at a low-risk pace, and build up the security, governance, and regulatory policies over time.

As a benefit, with “start small and expand” you can use Azure Resource Manager templates and Azure Policy to create a CI/CD pipelines for subscriptions with Azure Blueprints.

As an ongoing improvement effort, you could expand and improve the landing zone with the Cloud Adoption Framework enterprise-scale design guidelines from Microsoft Azure ™

Get started by learning “What is an Azure landing zone?” 👉 https://lnkd.in/eD7xtWV #SharingIsCaring❤️

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴡ 🎯 the #cloudmarathoner ⛅🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ on LinkedIn ᴀɴᴅ 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓 👍

What is an Azure administrative unit and its benefits? 🤔

The Administrative Units (AU) are Azure AD resources which can contain only users and groups.

AUs could manage permissions 🛡️🔐 in a role to any segment of your organization. For example, you could use AUs to delegate the User Administrator role to regional support specialists, so they can manage users only in the region that they support.

The AUs are especially helpful when an organization whose IT department is scattered across globe and wants to categorize and define relevant geographical boundaries.

Currently, supported scenarious from Azure AD portal are:

  • Create administrative units
  • Add users and groups members of administrative units
  • Assign IT staff to administrative unit-scoped administrator roles.

In addition, assigned users can easily manage their AU users from mystaff Microsoft website 👉 https://mystaff.microsoft.com/

Check out the following Microsoft docs post for more details and use ases👉 https://lnkd.in/dXMMncJ #SharingIsCaring❤️

Now, if you end up loving this story and want to lean about managing your sers with “My Staff” – then check out this handy post on Micrsoft docs page:

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

What is Microsoft Cloud App Security and what it does?

Well, it is a Cloud☁️ Access Security Broker (CASB) 🛡️ 🔐 that supports various deployment 🚀 modes; like log collection, API connectors, and reverse proxy.


You can get a rich visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your Microsoft Azure ™ and third-party cloud services.

Cloud App Security integrates visibility with your cloud by providing:
✔️ Cloud Discovery
✔️ Sanctioning and unsanctioning an app
✔️ App connectors
✔️ Conditional Access App Control protection
✔️ Policy Control
✔️ Types of apps to migrate

Check out how to get started with Microsoft Cloud App Security 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZg2Pby#SharingIsCaring❤️

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

Starting points in DevSecOps journey

Hello friends,

During my journey to become a Microsoft Azure Security professional, I have compiled set of useful resources in addition to the exam materials. These resources do complement cloud and application security with open-source tooling, and a book that is much needed for success.

I am excited to share this with my network and DevSecOps enthusiasts 🙂

  1. WhiteSource Bolt – is a #free developer tool for finding and fixing open source vulnerabilities.
  2. Find Security Bugs – it is a SpotBugs plugin for security audits of Java web applications – https://find-sec-bugs.github.io/
  3. OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) – one of the most popular free web security tool, actively maintained by a dedicated international team of volunteers – https://owasp.org/www-project-zap/
  4. Sqlmap – is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting SQL injection flaws and taking over of database servers – http://sqlmap.org/
  5. OpenVAS – Open Vulnerability Assessment Scanner is a full-featured vulnerability scanner. Its capabilities include unauthenticated testing, authenticated testing, various high level and low level Internet and industrial protocols, performance tuning for large-scale scans and a powerful internal programming language to implement any type of vulnerability test. – https://openvas.org/
  6. Recon-ng – is a full-featured Web Reconnaissance framework written in Python. Complete with independent modules, database interaction, built in convenience functions, interactive help, and command completion, Recon-ng provides a powerful environment in which open source web-based reconnaissance can be conducted quickly and thoroughly – https://tools.kali.org/information-gathering/recon-ng
  7. OWASP Glue – is a framework for running a series of tools. Generally, it is intended as a backbone for automating a security analysis pipeline of tools – https://github.com/OWASP/glue
  8. Awesome DevSecOps book. Inspired by the awesome-* trend on GitHub. This is a collection of documents, presentations, videos, training materials, tools, services and general leadership that support the DevSecOps mission. These are the essential building blocks and tidbits that can help you to arrange for a DevSecOps experiment or to help you build out your own DevSecOps program.
  9. #lambhack is A vulnerable serverless lambda application. This is certainly a bad idea to base any coding patterns of what you see here. It allows you to take advantage of our tried and true application security problems, namely arbitrary code execution, XSS, injection attacks and more.
  10. Black Duck is a commercial alternative to WhiteSource Bolt. It helps to manage the risks that come with the use of open source. Black Duck software composition analysis solutions and open source audits give you the insight you need to track the open source in your code, mitigate security and license compliance risks, and automatically enforce open source policies using your existing DevOps tools and processes.
  11. OWASP Honeypot-Project. Goal of the OWASP Honeypot Project is to identify emerging attacks against web applications and report them to the community, in order to facilitate protection against such targeted attacks. Based around the earlier OWASP/WASC Distributed Web Honeypots Project.
  12. Open Source Honeypots That Detect Threats For Free. You could read details on this interesting post.

Note: in noway this presents a complete guide. However, I hope it will guide your project into a more successful DevSecOps state.

I do encourageto comment and share your tips and resources here. This will ultimately help every community member to become a better security professional. Thanks!

Study Guide for Azure Security Technologies (AZ-500)

Hello friends,

Updates: This exam had a number of changes from the mid 2020 till now. I have updated exam objectives and some of the listed references to be up-t0-date..

I am back with a new study guide AZ-500: Azure Security Technologies Associate.

This is a very important exam for anyone who puts security at the core of a solution – deployed into Azure Cloud environment. In this respect, it is invaluable for any professional whose responsibilities include: maintaining the security posture, identifying, and remediating vulnerabilities by using a variety of security tools, implementing threat protection, and responding to security incident escalations.

By the way, you could also check out the following study guides, if interested 👌👍

By learning this topic, you as a candidate will gain strong skills in scripting and automation; a deep understanding of networking, virtualization, and cloud N-tier architecture. Your strong familiarity with cloud capabilities and products and services for Azure is very critical to succeed.

Getting AZ-500 Microsoft Azure Security Technologies Associate

In this section, you will get to know the official exam objectives, free Microsoft Learn materials and additional materials that I have used. On a high level, the skills that are measured in this exam are:

Actually, you could find this information on the official Microsoft exam website.

Useful resources that helped me along the way:

Here are the references which will serve you a way for successful digestion of the security materials. I would like to thank Pete Zerger – a Microsoft MVP & Cybersecurity Strategist for his informative content & professional support. He has really valuable posts and training courses on the LinkedIn platform.

There were many breaks in my study where I paused to search for Azure Security documentation on Microsoft Docs. However, discovering the GitHub repo from AzureMentor highly helped me to save some time, while getting familiar with exam objectives.

Thus, the @AzureMentor GitHub pages on Azure-AZ-500-Study-Guide have direct links into each high level objective as well as outlined items within it.

I would like to thank my family and kids for providing me with the opportunity to complete my journey. Big thanks to close friends and #linkedinfaily for continued support.

That’s all friends! Hope this sharing will encourage you to start your own cloud journey.

And as always, feel free to get connected and leave your comment(s). The whole LinkedIn family will benefit from your suggestions and feedback.