Category: Cloud 101

What is MCAS and why would you need it?

Hello cloud marathoners,

The MCAS (Microsoft Cloud App Security) πŸ›‘οΈπŸ” – helps to identify and combat cyberthreats across all your cloud services. This is a cloud access security broker (CASB) that provides multifunction visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics.

Here is a high level architecture diagram from Microsoft docs.

What are the main benefits of this cloud service?

Here are the main three benefits ot brings alone:
βœ”οΈ Discovery & Manage your apps
βœ”οΈ Govern access to apps and resources
βœ”οΈ Check compliance on your cloud apps

Check out this detailed level architecture ofΒ #appsecurityΒ inΒ Microsoft Azure β„’Β πŸ‘

MCAS – Microsoft Cloud App Security.


What are the main use cases for your business?

βœ”οΈ Shadow IT Discovery & Control
βœ”οΈ Secure Access
βœ”οΈ Security Poster Management
βœ”οΈ Threat Protection
βœ”οΈ Information Protection
βœ”οΈ User & Entity Behavioral Analytics

Another beauty of above architecture lies in a fact that you could easily integrate this model with third party SaaS apps, all listed on a diagram.

Thank you Matt Soseman for bringing this diagram  #SharingIsCaring❀️️

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€Β #cloudmarathonerΒ β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#microsoftazure
#MCAS#securitymanagement
#OAuth#secureaccess #appsec
#threatprotection
#securityengineering
#bestpractices
#continuouslearning

New four services added to “Azure free services” catalog

Hi Cloud Marathoner friends!

Who would resist to learn Azure cloud and utilize free services that have been annnces this month?

Yes, you have read this correct, there are 4 more servics added to exisiting 25+ always free and 12 months set of free products, up to the monthly limits. 

Those services are listed on the infographic:

βœ”οΈ Azure Key Vault
βœ”οΈ Azure Database for PostreSQL
βœ”οΈ Azure Media Services
βœ”οΈ Azure Database for MySQL

Have you used these new services in your labs or projects yet?
If not, that is okay. Here is the brief description what you can do with these services listed above:

Azure Key Vault – helps teams to securely store and manage sensitive information such as keys, passwords, certificates, etc., in a centralized storage which are safeguarded by industry-standard algorithms, key lengths, and even hardware security modules.

Azure Database for PostreSQL – with Azure you can run your  PostgreSQL Server workloads in a hosted virtual machine infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or as a hosted platform as a service (PaaS). The PaaS option has multiple deployment choices, each with multiple service tiers that you can use with Azure Database for PostreSQL.

Azure Database for MySQL – take the model tha we described above and apply it to MySQL. That how simple it is..

Azure Media Services – lets you deliver any media, on virtually any device, to anywhere in the world using the cloud. The collection of services provide encoding, live or on-demand streaming, content protection and indexing for video and audio content.

Which products are free for 12 months?

These products are free for 12 months, up to the monthly limits. Availability is based on resource and region.

Check out the details about each of these services on Microsoft Azure’s website.

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€Β #cloudmarathonerΒ β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#microsoftazureΒ 
#freeΒ #cloudservicesΒ 
#cloudskillsΒ 
#continuouslearning

What are the Microsoft Azure’s Multi-Cloud and Cross-Platform Capabilities?

Hello cloud marathoners,

There are many security and multi-cloud capability services under Microsoft Azure umbrella of services. In this post, I will reference the Microsoft documentation to clarify those capabilities on high-level.
I hope this post will clarify intent and purpose of these capabilities for you.

Important: Please zoom into a infographic – as it is of a high quality and can be very informative in understanding the article.

Microsoft’s cross-platform or cloud security starts with endpoints and cloud visibility and controls: namely Endpoint management and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) that provides insight across your multi-cloud and on-premises datacenter estate as well as Cloud Workload Protection capabilities

Next are the SIEM and XDR Strategy – where Microsoft provides integrated capabilities for the Security Operations / SOC to get the broad and deep visibility needed to rapidly detect, hunt for, and respond/recover to threats across clouds and platforms.

The following capability on the infographic is – Infrastructure Extended Detection and Response (XDR). These capabilities are provided through set of services, namely Azure Defender, Azure Arc, Microsoft 365 Defender with number of features combined under the suit of services.

Next set of capabilities are Identity Enablement and Security – where Azure Active Directory provides comprehensive solutions, including Zero Trust access control that explicitly verifies trustworthiness of devices (via XDR) and users via native UEBA, Threat Intelligence and analytics.

And finally, Information Protection capabilities – utilize the Microsoft Information Protection and Azure Purview services that provide a full lifecycle approach to discovering, classifying, protecting, and monitoring structured and unstructured data as your organization generates and leverages more data. These capabilities provide insights to drive mission completion and competitive advantage.

What would be your approach?
Please, share in the comments section πŸ‘
#SharingIsCaring❀️️

Important: Please zoom into the infographic – as it is of a high quality and can be very informative in understanding this article.

#microsoftazure
#multicloud
#crossplatform
#endpointmanagement
#SOC
#securityengineering
#identityaccessmanagement

Are you ready to start your Bicep transformation journey in Azure?

Hello friends,

I am getting ready bits and pieces of the presentation and demo code for the #GlobalAzure 2021 event.

This is going to be my second year in a row, presenting at this global event, and I am pumped to contribute with two new sessions this year.

Feel free to check out the details of each session and links here .

Session banner for upcoming presentation on Global Azure 2021

WHY bother to transfrom your exising Azure ARM templates into Bicep?

  • Easy to understand and maintain code for your Azure infrastructure
  • Day zero support for all resource types & API versions
  • Nice transparent abstractionΒ for the underlying platform
  • Awesome Tooling – VS Code extension for Bicep
  • Deep integration with other Azure Services
  • Preflight validation – both Bicep/ARM does preflight validation on entire template
  • Provides high level of confidence that your code is ‘syntactically valid’ before deploying
  • Support – starting from v.03, Bicep is 100% supported by Microsoft Support Plans

This time, I am looking forward to share level 200 talk and demos, where we will ALL deep dive into challenges of transforming exisiting ARM templates into Azure Bicep.

We will inspect the ARM JSON decompiler, which comes with Azure Bicep and how to make it work your way.

Stay tunes, i hope to see you all during the event!

Transfrom your Azure ARM into Bicep during the Global Azure 2021

Global Azure 2021 event in mid-April.

Hello eveyone,
I am very happy to share exciting news with all of you.

Few days ago, i have receieved an email confirming acceptance of my both Azure sessions for the Global Azure 2021 event. I am truely trilled to present on April 16th and 17th following two sesions for eveyone live:

I am looking forward for your participiation, and tune in to learn about latest developments in Microsoft Azure.

In my first session i will share the following new session with you.

Abstract of the presentation as is:

Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) is important strategy to manage your digital estate in any cloud environment. Simplifying management of your infrastructure while re-using code is even better. In Microsoft Azure, we have ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates that could declaratively define your cloud project infrastructure.

However, it is not easy to author ARM JSON templates and maintain them when your project grows and requires changes. In this demo heavy session, we will introduce the Azure Bicep language and demonstrate how it simplifies authoring ARM templates for your Azure infrastructure. We will author a manageable, readable, and modularized Azure infrastructure code, while using familiar tools.

TheCloudMarathoner πŸ™‚

Please let me know, what topics are you interested in?

How to start Cloud Journey in your organization?

Hi Cloud Marathoners!

It is usually hard to start a new initiative within a company due to a myriad of reasons. πŸ€”
Thus, this post will focus on how to follow some descriptive steps in starting a new Cloud Journey whereever you are in your life πŸ™‚

Let’s check a simple approach πŸ’‘ below that could guide us on cloud ☁️ (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud) adoption journey πŸ—Ί

Choosing the right cloud solution provider for your customers?

1️⃣ Step: Check on Team Alignment with cloud fundamentals
βœ”οΈ Every team member should have a basic understand of how specific cloud works
βœ”οΈ Portfolio of candidate workloads should be available to all team members to be used during strategic, release planning and completion of technical tasks 
βœ”οΈ The technical strategy should include clarity on which levels of the hosting hierarchy will be used and what those terms mean in our business
βœ”οΈ A naming and tagging standard should be established, maintained, and enforced to guide implementation and resource organization
βœ”οΈ The hosting hierarchy should be reflected in a resource organization design (account or subscription design)
βœ”οΈ Align cloud capabilities, teams, and RACI structure to the fundamental concepts above

As an addition, what would you add into first checklist ? πŸ€”

Please, share your thoughts in comments section πŸ‘Β #SharingIsCaring❀️️

Looking πŸ‘€ for more?
Follow the #cloudmarathoner tag on LinkedIn and via blog postsΒ πŸ’‘

Fᴏʟʟᴏᴑ ᴍᴇ 🎯 α΄€Ι΄α΄… become α΄€ #cloudmarathoner β›…πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸƒβ€β™€οΈ – 𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 π‚πŽπππ„π‚π“ πŸ‘

#cloudjourney
#cloudskills
#firststeps
#cloudadoption
#continuouslearning