Securing multicloud databases to help reduce risks
Open‑source (OSS) relational databases are becoming increasingly critical and increasingly targeted in organization of all sizes. As organizations adopt multicloud architectures, these databases often run across Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), while security tools remain fragmented. The result is inconsistent visibility into sensitive data, disconnected alerts, and limited insight into how database exposure translates into real risk.
Today, Microsoft announces the general availability (GA) of Microsoft Defender for open‑source relational databases with support for Amazon Relational Database Service (AWS RDS). Customers can gain visibility into potentially sensitive data, identify indicators of database threats, and support risk prioritization across Azure and AWS through a unified experience in Microsoft Defender for Cloud, with capabilities that continue to expand across environments.
This GA release highlights Microsoft’s existing protection for open‑source relational databases in Azure and extends the same database‑focused security signals, risk context, and investigation capabilities to AWS RDS: helping organizations strengthen database security the way modern applications are actually deployed.
What’s new with GA support for AWS RDS
Defender for open-source relational databases now provides GA support for security capabilities designed for enterprise cloud environments, including:
- Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL
- Amazon Aurora for MySQL
- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Amazon RDS for MySQL
- Amazon RDS for MariaDB
These capabilities are integrated directly into Microsoft Defender for Cloud, providing consistent visibility and protection across Azure and AWS environments.
Core security capabilities for multicloud databases
Defender for Cloud delivers database‑specific security signals that help teams move beyond isolated alerts to risk‑based prioritization. This strengthens Defender for Cloud’s visibility into databases security by extending sensitive data discovery insights and threat protection specifically to supported AWS resources. As part of this delivery, we’ve also added recommendations that help validate AWS RDS resources’ enablement, discovery, scanning and protection status.
Advanced threat protection at the database layer
Defender for Cloud detects suspicious access patterns and brute force attempts that indicate active database threats. Alerts are enriched with cloud and workload context to help security teams quickly determine which issues require immediate attention.
Built‑in sensitive data discovery
Automated, recurring and agentless scans help identify data that may be sensitive, such as payment details or credentials without requiring additional configuration in supported AWS resources. This visibility helps teams understand where high-risk data resides and focus protection efforts where exposure matters most.
Attack path analysis with cloud context
Rather than viewing alerts in isolation, Defender provides visibility into potential attack paths, showing how exposed databases, weak authentication, and sensitive data can combine into real attack scenarios. This capability, provided by also enabling Defender CSPM, enables teams to prioritize remediation that breaks the attack chain to not only their Azure resources but also AWS RDS databases.
Unified investigation with Microsoft Defender portal
Database alerts integrate with Microsoft Defender portal, allowing security operations teams to correlate database incidents with signals from identities, endpoints, and workloads to support investigation and response workflows. This plan allows for supported AWS RDS signals to be added and correlated as well.
Why this matters now
Together, these capabilities help organizations move beyond isolated database alerts toward risk‑based prioritization, which becomes especially critical as open‑source databases increasingly store high‑value and regulated data in multicloud architectures.
Customer outcomes: prioritized database risk across clouds
With GA support for AWS RDS, organizations can move from fragmented database security to prioritized risk management across Azure and AWS:
- Detect real database threats by identifying risky access patterns tied directly to exposed databases.
- Understand where sensitive data lives through built‑in discovery that highlights high‑risk data stores automatically.
- See how attacks actually unfold using attack path analysis that connects exposure, misconfiguration, and data sensitivity and connecting those to actual alerts generated on the resource.
- Customer can respond faster with database alerts integrated into Microsoft Defender XDR for unified investigation across environments and correlation into incidents and attack stories across various resources and plans.
Together, these outcomes help security teams move from reactive database monitoring to proactive risk reduction in multicloud architecture.
Database security as part of a unified CNAPP strategy
This GA milestone is part of Microsoft’s broader Cloud‑Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) approach, which brings together posture management, workload protection, and threat protection across the cloud lifecycle.
By integrating database security into CNAPP, Defender for Cloud ensures databases are not isolated controls, but a critical part of a unified view across applications, identities, workloads, and data to support risk reduction while maintaining operational efficiency.
Get started today
GA support for AWS RDS is available now.
Billing for this plan starts on June 1, 2026, and charges will appear on the July 2026 bill.
Enable Microsoft Defender for open‑source relational databases in the Azure portal to begin applying additional protections for open-source databases across Azure and AWS with unified visibility and risk‑based security.
Learn more → Cloud Security Solutions | Microsoft Security
Resources:
- Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Cloud
- Read the Defender for open‑source relational databases documentation
- Explore sensitive data discovery
- Review available trial options
- Share your experience with Microsoft Defender for Cloud on Gartner Peer Insights
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