Azure Data Security Essentials for Businesses

As a business, protecting your data is crucial, and Microsoft Azure offers robust security features to help you achieve this goal. Azure Data Security Essentials for Businesses is a comprehensive solution that provides multiple layers of security.

Data encryption is a fundamental aspect of Azure Data Security, with features like Azure Disk Encryption and Azure Storage Service Encryption that protect your data at rest and in transit.

Azure Active Directory (AAD) provides secure authentication and authorization for users, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to your data.

Regular security audits and monitoring are essential to detect potential security threats, and Azure offers features like Azure Security Center and Azure Monitor to help you stay on top of your security posture.

Data encryption is a crucial aspect of Azure data security. With the Always Encrypted feature in Azure SQL, you can encrypt data within client applications prior to storing it in Azure SQL Database. This ensures that sensitive information remains secure.

You can enable delegation of on-premises database administration to third parties without giving them access to the encrypted data. This separation of duties is a key benefit of Always Encrypted.

Storage Security is a top priority for any Azure user. Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) can automatically encrypt data before it's stored and automatically decrypt it when retrieved, using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption.

To further secure your storage, you can restrict access to databases and storage blobs using firewalls and access controls. This limits what level of access users, devices, and services have to your data.

You can also leverage auditing, which enables you to gain visibility into all database changes. Additionally, configuring threat detection for Azure SQL and setting log alerts in Azure Monitor can help you identify and remediate security issues quickly.

To encrypt data at rest, you can use server-side encryption via Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) or client-side encryption via Always Encrypted in Azure SQL Database. Alternatively, you can use client-side encryption with Key Vault to encrypt data before uploading it to Azure Storage.

Here are some ways to implement client-side encryption of Azure blobs:

Disk encryption is a crucial aspect of storage security in Azure.

All Managed Disks, Snapshots, and Images are encrypted using Storage Service Encryption.

Storage Service Encryption uses a service-managed key for encryption.

Azure also offers options to protect temp disks, caches, and manage keys in Azure Key Vault.

Azure Storage Service Encryption (SSE) automatically encrypts data before it's stored and decrypts it when you retrieve it, all without needing to lift a finger.

SSE uses 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, one of the strongest block ciphers available.

Azure Storage transactions take place over HTTPS, and you can enforce the use of HTTPS when calling the REST APIs to access objects in storage accounts by enabling secure transfer.

Shared Access Signatures (SAS) can be used to delegate access to Azure Storage objects, and you can specify that only the HTTPS protocol can be used when using SAS tokens.

Client-side encryption encrypts data before it's sent to your Azure Storage instance, so it's encrypted as it travels across the network.

Azure Files shares support encryption through SMB 3.0, available in Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.

Cell-Level or Column-Level encryption is a powerful tool for securing sensitive data in Azure SQL Database. You can apply symmetric encryption to a column of data using Transact-SQL.

This approach is called cell-level encryption or column-level encryption (CLE), giving you more granular encryption capability than TDE, which encrypts data in pages. Doing so allows you to use different encryption keys for specific columns or cells of data.

CLE has built-in functions that you can use to encrypt data by using either symmetric or asymmetric keys, the public key of a certificate, or a passphrase using 3DES.

This level of control is especially useful when dealing with sensitive data that requires different levels of protection.

Network security is a top priority for any Azure deployment. By following the best practices outlined by Azure, you can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and cyber attacks.

Encrypting data in transit is a must, and Azure recommends leveraging modern encryption protocols for all network traffic. This means using SMB 3.0 in VMs running Windows Server 2012 or later to encrypt data transfers over Azure Virtual Networks.

Implementing zero trust is another key principle of Azure network security. This means that by default, network policies should deny access unless there is an explicit allow rule.

Limiting open ports and Internet-facing endpoints is also crucial. Unless there is a well-defined business reason for a port to be open or workload to be Internet-facing, it's best to keep them closed.

Monitoring device access is essential for proactive threat detection. You can use a SIEM or Azure Monitor to keep tabs on access to your workloads and devices.

Here are the Azure network security best practices in a nutshell:

Key Vault is the Microsoft-recommended solution for managing and controlling access to encryption keys used by cloud services. This relieves organizations of the need to configure, patch, and maintain hardware security modules (HSMs) and key management software.

Key Vault maintains control, and Microsoft never sees your keys, ensuring that you have complete control over your encryption keys. Applications don't have direct access to keys, either.

You can import or generate keys in HSMs with Key Vault, giving you flexibility in your key management strategy. This can be a game-changer for organizations with complex key management needs.

Key Vault also allows you to assign permissions to access keys to services or users through Microsoft Entra accounts. This ensures that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive encryption keys.

Advanced encryption and centralized key management solutions from Thales give you protection and control of data stored on your premises, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud providers. This includes avoiding cloud vendor encryption lock-in and ensuring data mobility across multiple cloud vendors.

Thales technology enables you to take secure advantage of Azure Key Vault with a centralized key management solution that spans multiple clouds. This includes identifying attacks faster with data access logging to industry leading SIEM applications.

You can also reduce or eliminate risks arising from compromised credentials with advanced encryption including privileged user access controls. This is particularly important for organizations handling sensitive data.

Here are some benefits of using Thales' advanced encryption and centralized key management solutions:

For organizations that cannot bring their own encryption, managing keys externally using the CipherTrust Cloud Key Manager can be a viable option. This leverages cloud provider Bring Your Own Key API’s to reduce both key management complexity and operational costs.

Compliance and Governance is a top priority when it comes to Azure data security. To maintain compliance, define your compliance objectives, including the data and workloads in scope and relevant standards and regulations like PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

Use the Azure Security Center's regulatory compliance dashboard and Azure Security Benchmark to identify areas for improvement and simplify compliance in the cloud. These tools provide recommendations to help you move closer to full compliance.

To get started, identify the compliance standards relevant to your organization, such as PCI-DSS, and use tools like CipherTrust Tokenization to secure and anonymize sensitive assets. This can help simplify compliance and reduce the risk of data breaches.

Compliance is a top priority in the Azure cloud, and it's essential to define your compliance objectives clearly. You need to determine what data and workloads are in scope from a compliance perspective, and what standards and regulations, such as PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and HIPAA, are relevant to your organization.

To simplify compliance in the cloud, use the Azure Security Center's regulatory compliance dashboard and Azure Security Benchmark. These tools can help you identify how close you are to achieving compliance and provide recommendations to move closer to full compliance.

CipherTrust Tokenization is a great solution for securing and anonymizing sensitive assets for simplified PCI-DSS compliance. It's also easy to add policy-based dynamic data masking to applications using CipherTrust Tokenization, which is available in the Azure Marketplace.

To ensure you're optimized for security, consider the various Azure services and their specific security best practices. However, there is no one-size-fits-all security "recipe" for Azure, so you need to break down the different aspects of Azure to more specific categories and discover actionable best practices.

Microsoft Azure offers advanced data protection, but you still need to follow security, privacy, and compliance rules, as well as best practices, for protecting data. This includes following rapid data mobility across all clouds you use.

Here are some key resources for GDPR compliance in Azure:

Microsoft doesn't claim data ownership over the customer information entered into Azure, and customers are responsible for their own data. This means you need to take full responsibility for your data and ensure it's protected in accordance with relevant regulations.

Microsoft has clearly defined response policies and processes in place to protect your data, which is a reassuring aspect of their commitment to customer data privacy.

Microsoft scrutinizes all government demands to ensure they are legally valid and appropriate before disclosing any customer data.

Their standard contractual language for data processing is outlined in the Microsoft Online Services Terms, which you can read to understand their data protection policies.

Microsoft will direct the requesting party to seek the data directly from the customer if they receive a demand for a customer's data.

If Microsoft is compelled to disclose or give access to any customer's data, they will promptly notify the customer and provide a copy of the demand unless legally prohibited from doing so.

You can read the Online Services Data Protection Addendum (DPA), which is an addendum to the Microsoft Online Services Terms, to understand Microsoft's data protection policies in more detail.

Microsoft believes that all government requests for your data should be directed to you, and they will not disclose data to a government except as you direct or where required by law.