Microsoft Secure Score provides you with an prioritized list of the key controls you can enable to improve the security posture for your environment. The recommendations and best practices it suggests includes those from across Microsoft 365 Security and Azure Microsoft Cloud App Security which is a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), a new generation of security solutions, that is essential to any modern security strategy. It provides rich visibility, control over data travel, and sophisticated analytics to identify and combat cyber threats across cloud, on-premises and custom apps.
To ensure that customers enable key use cases to detect cloud-native attacks and protect against risky apps in their environment with Microsoft Cloud App Security, we will explore the top 5 most impactful Cloud App Security related Improvement Actions that Microsoft Secure Score has to offer. These will allow you to get the most out of your CASB investment and up-level the security for all your cloud apps, whether they’re Microsoft or 3rd party apps.
Get started with these top 5 Improvement Actions for Microsoft Cloud App Security
To maximize Microsoft Cloud App Security’s impact on your overall security posture, here are five of the top improvement actions you should start with:
- Use Cloud App Security to detect anomalous behavior
- Create a custom activity policy to discover suspicious usage patterns
- Discover Shadow IT and application usage
- Set automated notifications for new and trending cloud applications in your organization
- Review permissions & block risky OAuth applications connected to your environment
Use Cloud App Security to detect anomalous behavior
Designed with security professionals in mind, Microsoft Cloud App Security makes it easy to get started. It’s designed for a simple deployment, centralized management, and innovative automation capabilities. When you turn on the Cloud App Security console you can easily connect your apps and instantly leverage numerous built-in threat detection policies. They enable you detect insider threats, compromised accounts and brute force attempts. In addition, Microsoft Cloud App Security provides risk scores for all of the users in your organization, which enables the Security Operations team to prioritize their investigations.
Create a custom activity policy to discover suspicious usage patterns
Activity policies enable you to monitor suspicious user activities and be alerted on policy violations such as downloading a large number of files in a short period of time or sharing sensitive files with external users. Microsoft Cloud App Security also allows you to take manual remediation actions or setup automatic remediation to lighten the workload on your SecOps team.
Discover Shadow IT and application usage
In today’s modern enterprises, apps run the workplace. While we see an average of 129 IT-managed applications, our CASB discovery data shows that the total number of apps accessed by employees in large organizations exceeds 1,000. In Microsoft Cloud App Security, you have several options to activate the Discovery of Shadow IT, either by a single click enablement via Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, leveraging lots from your firewall, or using an existing Secure Web Gateway. Once discovered, Microsoft Cloud App Security assesses all apps against more than 90 risk and compliance factors and allows you to manage future access.
Set automated notifications for new and trending cloud applications in your organization
The initial Discovery and assessment of the apps in your organization can be time consuming depending on how many apps are in use. To ensure you can stay on top of the Shadow IT in your organization, it is recommended to implement continuous monitoring. Microsoft Cloud App Security allows you to setup policies to be alerted when new, risky or high-volume apps are discovered in your environment, so you can immediately evaluate and manage them according to the requirements of your organization.
Review permissions & block risky OAuth applications connected to your environment
OAuth is a web-based industry standard protocol that enables users to grant web apps access to their accounts and data without sharing their credentials. The use of OAuth in enterprises is increasing as a result of the continued adoption of cloud-based solutions. While extremely convenient, OAuth introduces a new threat vector to the security of organizations and enables potential back doors into corporate environments when malicious apps are authorized.
Microsoft Cloud App Security enables you to identify all OAUth apps that have been authorized against your corporate apps such as Office 365, GSuite and Salesforce, evaluate their risk and ban them if necessary. You can find additional details in this blog post.
Wrapping It Up
So, there you have it – a quick tour of the top Microsoft Secure Score related Improvement Actions for in Microsoft Cloud App Security. Start using Microsoft Cloud App Security today to get better visibility into your cloud environment and take control of all your cloud apps. More information on Microsoft Cloud App Security and Microsoft Secure Score can be found at Microsoft Docs (Microsoft Cloud App Security and).
More info and feedback
- Get started using the technical documentation for Microsoft Cloud App Security and Microsoft Secure Score
- Haven’t tried Microsoft Cloud App Security yet? Start a free trial today.
- As always, we want to hear from you! If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments, please visit us on our Tech Community page.
- For more resources and information on Microsoft Cloud App Security go to our website.
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