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Understand Microsoft security

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Microsoft’s approach to securing data relies on the understanding of the shared responsibility in the cloud model.

Microsoft
Microsoft Cloud services are built on a foundation of trust and security. Microsoft provides the best in breed security controls, monitoring, and protections to ensure that when you come to the cloud it's trustworthy.


The security of your Microsoft cloud service is an operational partnership between Microsoft and you.

You
You own your data and all user identities. You're responsible for protecting them, the security of your on-premises resources, and the security of cloud components you control (varies by service).
Responsibility On-premises IaaS PaaS SaaS
Customer data ■ ■ ■ ■
Configurations and settings ■ ■ ■ ■
Identities and users ■ ■ ■ ■
Client devices ■ ■ ■ ◩
Applications ■ ■ ◩ ◩
Network controls ■ ■ ◩ ☐
Operating system ■ ■ ☐ ☐
Physical hosts ■ ☐ ☐ ☐
Physical network ■ ☐ ☐ ☐
Physical datacenter ■ ☐ ☐ ☐

■ Customer       ◩ Shared       ☐ Microsoft

Microsoft commitment to secure solutions

Microsoft Cloud services are built on a foundation of trust and security. Microsoft provides the best-in-breed security controls, monitoring, and protections to ensure that when you come to the cloud, it’s trustworthy. Microsoft uses the best development and operation practices outlined in Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and Microsoft Operational Security Assurance (OSA). Microsoft developers must validate that source code, documentation, configurations, and dependencies don’t cause unintended side effects. For more information, go to Security development and operations overview.

The data security section in Microsoft Products and Services Data Protection Addendum (DPA) describes the security practices and policies adopted by Microsoft online services.

Shared responsibility and customer responsibilities

To ensure that your privacy controls secure your data, we recommend that you follow a set of best practices when deploying into Azure:

Protecting your data also requires that all aspects of your security and compliance program include your cloud infrastructure and data. The following guidance can help you to secure your deployment.

Microsoft Purview for data governance and inventory discovery

You can ensure that your data stored in the cloud, hybrid, and on-premises is classified and cataloged and reflects one of the most essential elements of a security model. Microsoft Purview can help you assess and inventory your network.

Microsoft Purview can connect to and classify the following services:

Microsoft Defender for Cloud to protect your deployment

Defender for Cloud provides Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) for all of your Azure, on-premises, and multicloud (Amazon AWS and Google GCP) resources. Defender for Cloud fills three vital needs as you manage the security of your resources and workloads in the cloud and on-premises:

  • Defender for Cloud secure score: Continually assesses your security posture so you can track new security opportunities and precisely report on the progress of your security efforts.
  • Defender for Cloud recommendations: Secures your workloads with step-by-step actions that protect your workloads from known security risks.
  • Defender for Cloud alerts: Defends your workloads in real-time so you can react immediately and prevent security events from developing.

Defender for Cloud can protect the following elements:

Microsoft Sentinel cloud-based security operations

Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across your enterprise and bring together signals that include Microsoft Purview, Defender for Cloud, and data logs across your environment.

You can integrate the following services into Microsoft Sentinel for a full view of your security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solution.

For more information on how to deploy, manage, and use Microsoft Sentinel, see Best practices for Microsoft Sentinel.

Configuring your auditable logs in Office 365 gives you a richer view of your data. Microsoft provides an extensive set of logging and audit capabilities that are included in Office 365 Security and Compliance Center and Microsoft Defender for Cloud. You can activate logging and monitoring for each service capability:

See also