How Microsoft Azure Helps Businesses to Stay Secure

Published 29/05/24 under:

As days go by, cloud computing becomes more and more effective at helping businesses overcome many of their everyday problems. With an increase in cloud adoption, it’s crucial that businesses are aware of and mitigate against potential risks, protecting their corporate data and applications by investing in a robust solution that offers unbeatable security capabilities.  

As a market leader in the cloud space, Microsoft Azure prides itself on offering unrivalled cloud storage, cyber security and threat management as standard, shielding businesses, their users – and their customers – and data from cyber threats. As such, many view Azure’s enterprise-level cloud security as one of the key reasons for adoption, as companies seek out an easy-to-deploy, all-in-one platform that makes cloud management simple and secure.  

The importance of cloud security  

According to Forbes, 2023 saw a rise in cyber attacks, with data breaches increasing by 71% between 2021 and 2023. With attacks continuing to get increasingly sophisticated, it’s vital to a business’ survival that they’re defending their data and addressing system vulnerabilities.  

Sophisticated attackers are taking advantage of the fact that many businesses are only just – or still are – at the beginning of their cloud journeys, which without security protocols and support in place, puts businesses at serious risk of attack. Attackers are taking advantage of misconfigurations and a lack of experience surrounding the cloud to target vulnerable data, with 80% of data breaches in 2023 involving data in the cloud.  

Unfortunately, this isn’t a mistake a business can afford to make, with cyber-attacks carrying hefty financial and reputational costs that could send a company into a downward spiral. Now more than ever, businesses need to be prioritising the optimisation of their cloud security. 

2023 saw a rise in cyber attacks, with data breaches increasing by 71% between 2021 and 2023. 

Exploring Azure’s security functionality 

As cybersecurity threats evolve and become more sophisticated, leveraging Azure’s robust security capabilities can significantly enhance a business’ defence mechanisms, ensuring their data, applications, and infrastructure are well-protected.  

Identity and access management 

Through Azure Entra ID (Formerly Azure Active Directory), businesses can enable single sign-on (SSO) as a means of accessing apps, with conditional access policies and robust identity protection capabilities on offer to limit access to specific groups. 

Advanced threat protection 

Azure Defender for Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are two useful ways business can ensure cyber protection.  

Defender for Identity allows businesses to identity risky behaviours and vulnerabilities in the setup of identities, as well as providing detailed overviews and timelines that can be used to investigate and remediate threats. 

Defender for Cloud (previously Azure Security Center), provides unified security management and advanced threat protection across hybrid cloud workloads, helping to improve and maintain the posture of Azure resources through continuous assessments and actionable recommendations. 

Simplified compliance  

As standard, Azure complies with common global standards, ensuring that the pathway to compliance is easy for small-to-medium sized businesses, with the likes of GDPR, HIPAA and ISO covered. In total, Azure offers over 100 certifications and meets the compliance needs of many regulated industries such as healthcare, finance, and telecoms. 

Access the insights you need in your very own regulatory compliance dashboard, which offers recommendations for improving compliance within your organisation. 

Ongoing security updates 

Delivered as standard, Microsoft Azure helps businesses stay ahead of the curve with the best always-on protection included as standard with all subscriptions. Rest at ease knowing that Microsoft’s own team of cyber security experts are on top of their game when it comes to threat detection, tackling emerging threats and trends head-on and putting solutions in place to deter them, before they ever reach your organisation. 

Access enhanced cloud security 

Take advantage of the security benefits that Azure has to offer and put your mind at ease by contacting our security experts today.