Azure Sentinel – on the fast track

Posted on October 24, 2019 by Arnaud

Azure Sentinel is Microsoft cloud-native SIEM and SOAR. Say goodbye to 6 months SIEM solution setup and architecture – get started with visibility on you environement just now, and use the rich ecosystem of connectors to extend intelligence to your complete security suite.

On-demand session

Here is the link to attend the full session, on-demand: https://info.microsoft.com/AP-AzureSec-WBNR-FY20-10Oct-24-AzureSentinel-SRDEM10204_LP02OnDemandRegistration-ForminBody.html

Slides

Demos

Onboarding Sentinel and dahsboards exploration

Security Investigations with Azure Sentinel

Additionnal resources:

Sentinel Onboarding: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sentinel/quickstart-onboard
Azure Sentinel Landing Page: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-sg/services/azure-sentinel/
Connectors list: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sentinel/connect-data-sources
Community GitHub: https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Sentinel
Insecure protocol dashboards: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jonsh/azure-sentinel-insecure-protocols-dashboard-setup/
MITRE ATT&CK Detection rules: https://github.com/BlueTeamLabs/sentinel-attack/tree/master/detections
Converting Sigma detection rules to KQL: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Sentinel/Importing-Sigma-Rules-to-Azure-Sentinel/ba-p/657097
Hunting framework: https://github.com/wortell/AZSentinel and https://github.com/BlueTeamLabs/sentinel-attack
Demo of F5 Big IP Integration with Azure Sentinel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uLoEW_l6EQ

As usual, happy to hear your feedbacks!

Arnaud

Azure DDoS Protection Standard

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Arnaud

Azure DDoS Protection Standard is a service that enables AI-based protection of your cloud applications. Below is the list of resources of our webinar aired on 19th September 2019.

As a quick reminder, below is the set of network protections in front of your Azure instances. DDoS protection exists in a free tier which is present by default on all resources you publish using a public IP address. In this session we discuss about the addition of the “Standard” edition of the Azure DDos protection.

On demand session

https://info.microsoft.com/AP-AzureINFRA-WBNR-FY20-09Sep-19-AzureDDoSProtectionStandard-SRDEM4832_LP01Registration-ForminBody.html \

Slides

Demo

Additionnal links:

Overview: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ddos-protection-overview
BreakingPoint.cloud: https://www.ixiacom.com/products/breakingpoint-cloud

As usual, feel free to send your feedbacks and suggestions!

Arnaud

Introduction to Terraform on Azure

Posted on August 29, 2019 by Arnaud

As much as we love ARM templates and Json syntax for deploying resources on Azure, Terraform is another great way to accelerate and standardize your deployments. In this post, are the materials we use for the online webinar, available on demand here: https://info.microsoft.com/AP-AzureINFRA-WBNR-FY20-08Aug-29-AzureAdoption-SRDEM4141_LP02OnDemandRegistration-ForminBody.html

Slides:

Reference Links:

Terraform Documentation: https://www.terraform.io
Terraform AzureRM provider: https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/azurerm/
Terraform modules registry: https://registry.terraform.io
Azure Terraform Hub: http://aka.ms/tfhub
Great serie of step-by-step guidance for Terraform on Azure: https://azurecitadel.com/automation/terraform/

Tips to get started with Visual Studio Code:

Install the Terraform extension, you may notice that the 0.12 type of syntax is not recognized by default as its still under development. You can enable preview version running Terraform: Enable/Disable Language Server in the palette.

Azure Cloud Adoption Framework in Terraform samples:

If you want to kick-start your Azure deployment based on Cloud Adoption Framework Landing Zones, here are some Terraform examples of it (more webinars on this coming soon): http://aka.ms/tf-landingzones

Have fun with this!

Demos

Demo 1: Getting started with your environment

Demo 2: First deployment

Demo 3: States and outputs

Demo 4: Modules

As usual, feel free to send your feedbacks.

Arnaud

Cloud Adoption Framework, Scaffolding and Azure Virtual Datacenter

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Arnaud

Since we started to help customers of all sizes to deploy cloud technologies, we have developed many frameworks which all evolved in parallel over time. You may have heard about: Cloud Adoption Framework, Cloud Operations Model, Entreprise Cloud Strategy, Entreprise Scaffolding and maybe a couple more.

The CAF is dead, long live the CAF!

A couple of weeks ago, we published a new version of CAF – Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure, which consolidates all of our engineering and field best practices, as well as patterns that we’ve seen from big entreprises going to the cloud.

CAF has now five main sections which guide you throughout the whole circle:

This model is very realistic and field inspired, including some discussions around adoption with one or more cloud providers.

Governance

One of the most intimidating aspects of cloud adoption is the governance: how to manage new risks that are involved with cloud deployments and how to accompany that with entreprise processes and policies (and how does it remain current).

It is of course an iterative process that will evolve as you add new services into your environment: from dev/test to prod, and from legacy 3-tiers application to a brand new cloud-native application.

We distinguish 5 disciplines in governance:

Cost management
Security baseline
Resource consistency
Identity baseline
Deployment Acceleration

But the difficulty is the first step: how do I get a minimal viable product (MVP) for my first cloud deployment?

Actions: In order to avoid you the blank page syndrome, we have prepared you some actions:

Determine your immediate objectives with cloud, and the readiness of your organization. Cloud Assessment Tool: https://aka.ms/CAF/gov/assess
Establish your governance MVP:
1. Small to Medium Entreprises
2. Large Entreprises

For all those journey we document a minimum viable product across the five disciplines, we explain the design decisions we took for you, the discussion points and alternative design considerations.

When we define governance, we also think about compliance to the rules, and automatic remediation methods for it: this is called Azure Policy.

Along the way, if you are going for ongoing compliance, why not going to continuous integration and continuous deployment for your infrastructure?

cicd

If you want to have a look at all of that in action, check at:

Our webinar on Azure Cloud and Compliance
Infra as Code hands-on-labs – https://www.azuredevopslabs.com/labs/vstsextend/terraform/

Azure Scaffolding

We used to talk a lot of “scaffolding” as it is an excellent checklist, or set of mandatory technical implentation details for a good cloud deployment. It is being replaced by the “landing zone” construct (see next section).

Here is a refresher picture about what scaffolding includes:

Important readings on Azure Scaffolding:

Azure Landing Zones

Landing Zone is our new construct to describe a good deployment, its replacing the scaffolding idea but takes all of its good ideas.

It has the idea of primitives which includes all mandatory decisions:

Management Groups
Resource Groups
Naming Standards
Number of subscriptions

On the technical implementations of Governance it includes all of:

Policies
Cost
Monitoring
Identity

Moreover, it comes with all set of decision trees in order to help you when it comes to implementation with your customers/partners:

Azure Virtual Datacenter

Azure VDC is a set of concepts, implentation guidance and automation scripts that allows you to build a highly available and highly secure datacenter, based on Microsoft Azure services.

You can find all the materials here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/architecture/vdc/

Check at the automation scripts and all the archetypes that allow you to deploy a VDC environment fast – based on Docker and Python : https://github.com/Azure/vdc

As last reference, as usual, our Azure Architecture Center

That’s it, now you will have a very well architected Azure deployment!

Arnaud