Security Best Practices for Microsoft Azure Applications

Responsibility for security of applications on Azure is shared by Microsoft and the customer. Microsoft is responsible for the platform and seeks to provide a cloud service that can meet customer's security requirements. Microsoft Azure Trust Center has details of what Microsoft does to secure Azure. Customers are responsible for securing their applications, data, virtual machines, access credentials, and compliance with regulatory requirements. This blog post and related posts will focus on security best practices that customers can follow to secure their Azure applications. This is based on my learnings from securing Microsoft's line-of-business applications.

The blog posts will outline threats to data and applications hosted on Azure and countermeasures appropriate to address each threat. This is work in progress and posts will be added and updated over time. For a good overview of Azure components, refer Introducing Azure.

Securing the Microsoft Azure subscription

Securing Cloud Services

Securing Azure Storage (to be added)

Securing Azure SQL Database (to be added)