Enhancing Your Cyber Security with Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions
Microsoft
Frazer Lloyd-Davies
Every day, Microsoft detects over 600 million attempts to breach its systems, targeting both its own services and those of its customers. For businesses that rely on Azure, Microsoft 365 or other Microsoft cloud services, that might sound alarming. But in reality, it’s one of the biggest reasons those services are so well protected.
With so many threats coming its way, Microsoft has an enormous amount of data to analyse. Every attempted attack, whether successful or not, provides valuable insights into new patterns and vulnerabilities. This continuous cycle of detection, analysis and response strengthens Microsoft’s entire cloud environment, and that protection extends to all its users.
For businesses moving away from on-site servers to the cloud, this kind of security is vital. While it’s understandable to feel uneasy about giving up some of the physical control you once had, Microsoft’s cloud solutions offer layers of security that go far beyond what most businesses can achieve alone.
So, what exactly is Microsoft doing to keep its cloud secure?
Identity and Access Management with Microsoft Entra ID
Managing user identities effectively is a crucial part of cloud security, especially as traditional network boundaries no longer provide the protection they once did. With employees working remotely and accessing company systems from multiple devices and locations, businesses need smarter ways to confirm whether a login attempt is genuine or a potential threat.
Microsoft Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), is a cloud-based identity and access management service that connects users to both internal resources, like apps on your corporate intranet, as well as external services such as Microsoft 365, the Azure portal and thousands of other SaaS applications.
Conditional Access
Conditional Access is Microsoft’s Zero Trust policy engine, managed through the Microsoft Entra admin centre. Using machine learning, it evaluates multiple signals to determine whether a sign-in attempt should be allowed, restricted or blocked. These signals include the user’s identity, device, location and the application they’re trying to access. Your business can also define its own policies based on your own preferences.
For example, if a user attempts to log in from an unfamiliar device or an unexpected location, the system can automatically prompt for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or block the attempt altogether.
Threat Detection and Response with Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Cloud environments are often decentralised, with resources spread across multiple services, regions and even providers. This can make it difficult for businesses to maintain full visibility of their infrastructure, especially when new resources are deployed without being properly classified or tagged. Without this oversight, vulnerabilities can go unnoticed, leaving critical systems exposed.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) designed to help businesses detect and respond to security threats across Azure and other cloud platforms. It uses advanced machine learning and AI-driven algorithms to analyse patterns in user behaviour and activity. If Defender for Cloud notices anything suspicious, it can take immediate action by quarantining affected resources and alerting IT teams to investigate further.
Secure Score
Secure Score is a feature within Microsoft Defender for Cloud that helps businesses strengthen their security posture. It continuously scans your entire cloud environment for vulnerabilities and assigns a numerical score based on how well it aligns with Microsoft’s recommended security best practices. The higher the score, the lower the identified risk level is.
Secure Score also offers tailored recommendations to implement, with the most urgent or impactful ones first. As you apply these changes, your score updates in real time to show your progress.
Some cyber insurers are now using Secure Score to help assess risk levels when determining cover for their policies. It’s expected that more insurers and regulatory bodies may follow suit, making Secure Score an increasingly valuable tool for businesses looking to demonstrate their commitment to security.
Data Protection and Encryption with Microsoft Purview
Keeping sensitive information secure has become more challenging as corporate data is no longer kept solely on internal servers. Instead, it’s stored across cloud platforms, shared through tools like Microsoft Teams and accessed daily from a combination of managed and unmanaged devices. This constant movement increases the risk of data being exposed to unauthorised users.
Microsoft Purview Information Protection is a data security solution within Microsoft Purview that’s designed to help businesses discover, classify, protect and govern sensitive information across their cloud environment. It works by identifying data wherever it resides and applying various security controls to keep it protected.
Sensitivity Labels
Sensitivity labels from Microsoft Purview Information Protection let you classify and protect your organisation’s data without hindering user productivity. These labels are supported for Microsoft 365 applications and can be applied automatically using machine learning models or manually by users, giving your business control over how your content is handled.
Labels include classifications such as Public, General, Confidential and Highly Confidential, which determine the level of protection and restrictions applied to the data. Encryption, access restrictions, usage limitations and internal or external sharing boundaries are all examples of commonly used controls. Once applied, these restrictions are embedded in the file’s metadata and travel with the data itself, no matter where it’s saved or stored.
Compliance and Risk Management with Microsoft Purview
For all businesses, especially those in regulated industries like healthcare, finance or legal services, staying compliant is just as important as staying secure. Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, available to organisations with Microsoft 365 licenses, helps users automatically assess, manage and improve compliance across their cloud environment.
Compliance Manager works by mapping your cloud security settings against key regulations, standards and data protection laws such as GDPR and ISO 27001. It provides over 300 pre-built assessments that outline specific actions businesses need to take to meet these requirements. Each task comes with detailed guidance, helping businesses understand what actions are required and why they’re important.
Compliance Manager awards you points for completing improvement actions and combines those points into an overall compliance score. It also makes it easier to track progress by allowing businesses to assign tasks, set deadlines and store documentation for audits – all from one platform.
Acronyms’ Cyber Security Solutions
Microsoft’s cloud services offer powerful security features designed to protect its infrastructure, networks and applications. However, this doesn’t automatically extend to everything your business does within those services. While Microsoft secures the underlying infrastructure, it’s still your responsibility to ensure that information, data, devices, accounts and identities are secure.
Unfortunately, the concept of shared responsibility is often misunderstood. Many businesses assume the data stored in the cloud is fully protected by default, leaving them unknowingly vulnerable to attacks.
At Acronyms, we understand that managing this responsibility can be challenging – especially without dedicated IT expertise. That’s why we take on that responsibility for you. We’ve been working with Microsoft products for over 20 years, so our team knows exactly how to complement Microsoft’s built-in protections with advanced security measures tailored to your business.
By partnering with us, you’ll have peace of mind knowing your cloud environment is being actively managed and protected by experienced professionals.
Book a free, no-obligation consultation with one of our experts today to see how we can support your business.