At Microsoft Ignite 2022, the company has been talking big about hybrid work solutions. However, Microsoft has also been eager to discuss security and tools it is introducing to keep organisations protected as workplace environments shift to hybrid. Among the new security announcements at Ignite, the company debuted Microsoft Defender for DevOps, Cloud Security Posture Management, and Microsoft Entra Identity Governance.
All these features are rolling out to Microsoft 365 E5 customers. Starting with Microsoft Defender for DevOps, a new security suite tool for security teams to manage their DevOps security:
“you can minimize vulnerabilities and cloud misconfigurations and effectively prioritize and drive remediation in code across multi-pipeline environments.”
Elsewhere, Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is a new service that allows security admins to avoid critical risks more efficiently through cloud security tools. For example, there are agentless scanning features that deliver real-time assessment of multicloud and hybrid work environments.
“Defender CSPM connects the dots for security teams, integrating insights from Defender for DevOps, Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM), and your workload protection solutions. Instead of sifting through long lists of vulnerable resources, customers can use the attack path analysis, built on the cloud security graph, to reduce recommendation noise by up to 99% so you can identify the most critical risk on the most important cloud resources along potential attack paths.”
Microsoft Entra Identity Governance
Also at Ignite, Microsoft Entra Identity Governance arrived in public preview. This is an extension of Microsoft Entra, which made its debut earlier this year. It provides tools to ensure access control to resources.
Microsoft Entra bundles all the company’s identity and access products. That means customers get Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), Azure Active Directory, and Decentralized Identity.
Underpinning the whole experience is Azure Active Directory (AD), which is Microsoft’s cloud identity and authentication service. Furthermore, Entra also supports Azure AD External Identities for B2B and B2C access management.
Among the new abilities with the public preview of Entra Identity Governance is Lifecycle Workflows. This feature automates repetitive tasks to help strengthen compliance.
Tip of the day: To prevent attackers from capturing your password, Secure Sign-in asks the user to perform a physical action that activates the sign-in screen. In some cases, this is a dedicated “Windows Security” button, but the most common case in Windows is the Ctrl+Alt Del hotkey. In our tutorial, we show you how to activate this feature.
