[Public Preview] Introducing Customizable Security Baseline Policies in Machine Configuration
Background: Azure Machine Configuration remains committed to enabling greater security and simplicity in at-scale server management for all Azure customers. Machine Configuration (previously known as Azure Policy Guest Configuration) enables both built-in and custom configuration as code allowing you to audit and configure OS, app, and workload level settings at scale, both for machines running in Azure and hybrid Azure Arc-enabled servers. We’re excited to announce Public Preview support for Customizable Security Baselines in Azure Policy and Machine Configuration. This feature empowers you to tailor industry security benchmarks—such as CIS benchmarks for Linux or Azure Security Baselines for Windows and Linux —to align with your organization’s unique compliance standards across both Azure and Arc-connected machines. This feature builds on top of our existing audit baseline capabilities for Windows and Linux. Now you can create, parameterize, and assign custom baselines at scale, enabling continuous compliance visibility across your entire environment. Learn more about how to get started here: Customize Security Baselines with Azure Policy and Machine Configuration. What's New? Customizable security baselines in Azure Policy and Machine Configuration bring a powerful new way to assess, monitor, and improve your security posture across both Windows and Linux servers. Built on industry benchmarks such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS) and Microsoft’s own Azure Compute Security Baselines, this capability enables you to adapt compliance frameworks to your organization’s specific needs — all while maintaining a consistent governance model across Azure and hybrid environments. By passing custom baseline parameters directly into Azure Policy, you can represent internal controls at scale, ensuring that compliance reflects your enterprise’s unique standards and regulatory requirements. This cloud-native approach embodies Microsoft’s Secure by Design and Secure by Default principles — ensuring your workloads stay compliant, wherever they run. Key Scenarios Baseline Customization Tailor your security standards through the Modify Settings wizard under Policy > Machine Configuration. You can: Enable, exclude, or adjust rules from existing benchmarks Apply organization-specific parameters Export your custom configuration as a downloadable JSON file Each baseline JSON file serves as a reusable, declarative artifact—ideal for policy-as-code workflows, version control, and CI/CD integration. Assign Audit Policies When you assign a baseline via Azure Policy, it automatically: Evaluates configurations against your defined standards Reports compliance in near real time Surfaces findings in Azure Policy, Azure Resource Graph, and the Guest Assignments view This integrated visibility helps IT administrators, security teams, and auditors track compliance status with minimal overhead. Integration and Automation Security baselines integrate seamlessly into your DevOps pipelines and configuration management workflows. Each baseline produces a declarative settings catalog (JSON) that can be versioned and deployed using: Azure CLI ARM templates Bicep CI/CD automation This ensures reproducible, traceable compliance configurations across environments. Supported Standards Standard Description CIS Linux Benchmarks Official CIS Benchmarks for Azure-endorsed Linux distributions, matching the latest CIS versions. Azure Compute Security Baseline for Windows Applies security controls for Windows Server 2022 and 2025, aligned with Azure Compute guidance. Azure Compute Security Baseline for Linux Enforces consistent controls aligned with Azure Compute recommendations. Availability Customizable security baselines are available in all public Azure regions. NOTE: Support for Azure Government and Sovereign Clouds will be added in a future release. These environments are not included in the current Public Preview. Getting Started Prerequisites Before you begin: Deploy the Azure Machine Configuration prerequisite policy initiative. (This installs the required Guest Configuration extension on supported VMs.) Ensure your Azure subscription or management group includes supported Windows or Linux VMs. Have sufficient permissions (Owner or Resource Policy Contributor) to create and assign custom policy definitions. Step-by-Step Guidance Select a baseline from the Machine Configuration tab in Azure Policy. Modify settings to enable, exclude, or parameterize rules to match your internal policies. Download JSON to export your customized baseline configuration file for programmatic and repeatable customization. Assign the policy which can be deployed through the Azure portal, CLI, or your CI/CD pipeline. Review compliance results to track outcomes in Azure Policy, Azure Resource Graph, or the Guest Assignments page. Learn More Azure Machine Configuration security baselines official documentation CIS Benchmark for Linux documentation Azure Windows Baseline and Azure Linux Baseline documentation Please note that the use of Azure Machine Configuration on Azure Arc-enabled servers will incur a charge.
GA: Enhanced Audit in Azure Security Baseline for Linux
We’re thrilled to announce the General Availability (GA) of the Enhanced Azure Security Baseline for Linux—a major milestone in cloud-native security and compliance. This release brings powerful, audit-only capabilities to over 1.6 million Linux devices across all Azure regions, helping enterprise customers and IT administrators monitor and maintain secure configurations at scale. What Is the Azure Security Baseline for Linux? The Azure Security Baseline for Linux is a set of pre-configured security recommendations delivered through Azure Policy and Azure Machine Configuration. It enables organizations to continuously audit Linux virtual machines and Arc-enabled servers against industry-standard benchmarks—without enforcing changes or triggering auto-remediation. This GA release focuses on enhanced audit capabilities, giving teams deep visibility into configuration drift and compliance gaps across their Linux estate. For our remediation experience, there is a limited public preview available here: What is the Azure security baseline for Linux? | Microsoft Learn Why Enhanced Audit Matters In today’s hybrid environments, maintaining compliance across diverse Linux distributions is a challenge. The enhanced audit mode provides: Granular insights into each configuration check Industry aligned benchmark for standardized security posture Detailed rule-level reporting with evidence and context Scalable deployment across Azure and Arc-enabled machines Whether you're preparing for an audit, hardening your infrastructure, or simply tracking configuration drift, enhanced audit gives you the clarity and control you need—without enforcing changes. Key Features at GA ✅ Broad Linux Distribution Support 📘 Full distro list: Supported Client Types 🔍 Industry-Aligned Audit Checks The baseline audits over 200+ security controls per machine, aligned to industry benchmarks such as CIS. These checks cover: OS hardening Network and firewall configuration SSH and remote access settings Logging and auditing Kernel parameters and system services Each finding includes a description and the actual configuration state—making it easy to understand and act on. 🌐 Hybrid Cloud Coverage The baseline works across: Azure virtual machines Arc-enabled servers (on-premises or other clouds) This means you can apply a consistent compliance standard across your entire Linux estate—whether it’s in Azure, on-prem, or multi-cloud. 🧠 Powered by Azure OSConfig The audit engine is built on the open-source Azure OSConfig framework, which performs Linux-native checks with minimal performance impact. OSConfig is modular, transparent, and optimized for scale—giving you confidence in the accuracy of audit results. 📊 Enterprise-Scale Reporting Audit results are surfaced in: Azure Policy compliance dashboard Azure Resource Graph Explorer Microsoft Defender for Cloud (Recommendations view) You can query, export, and visualize compliance data across thousands of machines—making it easy to track progress and share insights with stakeholders. 💰 Cost There’s no premium SKU or license required to use the audit capabilities with charges only applying to the Azure Arc managed workloads hosted on-premises or other CSP environments—making it easy to adopt across your environment. How to Get Started Review the Quickstart Guide 📘 Quickstart: Audit Azure Security Baseline for Linux Assign the Built-In Policy Search for “Linux machines should meet requirements for the Azure compute security baseline” in Azure Policy and assign it to your desired scope. Monitor Compliance Use Azure Policy and Resource Graph to track audit results and identify non-compliant machines. Plan Remediation While this release does not include auto-remediation, the detailed audit findings make it easy to plan manual or scripted fixes. Final Thoughts This GA release marks a major step forward in securing Linux workloads at scale. With enhanced audit now available, enterprise teams can: Improve visibility into Linux security posture Align with industry benchmarks Streamline compliance reporting Reduce risk across cloud and hybrid environmentsUpgrading your server and client TLS protocol just got easier using Automanage Machine Configuration
Ensuring secure communication protocols across server environments has been a clear requirement for IT admins, operators, and developers for the past two decades. What wasn’t clear was how to set a desired communication protocol and maintain this at scale, until now. Tech CommunityEverything New in Azure Governance @ Build 2025
You've come to the right place if you're looking for everything happening with Azure Governance at Microsoft Build, May 19-22, 2025. Azure Governance is an ecosystem of neatly integrated services that provide the ability to ensure speed and control across your cloud environment. From enforcing rules in your cloud environment to querying the state of your resources at-scale, Azure Governance services keep your resources secure and compliant with corporate standards. Join us at Microsoft Build! #MSBuild Session: "Unlock developer agility with a well governed environment" - Thurs, May 22 @ 8:30 AM PDT In a world where app and env requirements are ever changing, maintaining control can be a moving target. Come learn how to empower your developers to achieve more, without compromising on security, compliance, or operational best practices through Azure Governance products. In this session we'll be discussing newly released features within Azure Policy, dive deep into Policy as code, and announce a new grouping construct called Service groups designed to optimize cross subscription management Join the session here: https://aka.ms/AzGovBuild25 Sign up for our #MSBuild Product Roundtable Sessions! Are you going to attend Build 2025 in person in Seattle? If the answer is Yes, Azure product teams would like to invite you to the following Customer Feedback Roundtable sessions at Microsoft Build 2025. Sign up here to join our roundtable sessions: https://aka.ms/AzGovRoundtable. This is a unique opportunity for you to share your insights and help shape the future of Azure. These roundtables will be filled on a first come, first serve basis, so don't miss your chance to sign up now! If you are not attending Build in person, no problem! If you are interested, we would like to invite you to participate in future online feedback sessions. New Releases @ Build 2025 The Azure Governance team is excited to share all the following new features across our product portfolio. For each of the features, you will find an accompanying announcement with scenario details, documentation and blog posts to follow along! Jump to section (New!) Azure Service Groups Azure Policy Azure Machine Configuration Azure Resource Graph (ARG) Azure Resource Manager (ARM) (New!) Azure Service Groups Azure Service Groups - Public Preview A Service Group (SG) is a new grouping structure in Azure that supports flexible grouping of cross-subscription resources and multiple hierarchies of groups. Service Groups provide a unified view and management capabilities, enabling: Low Privilege Management: Service Groups are designed to operate with minimal permissions, ensuring that users can manage resources without needing excessive access rights and appealing to multiple personas. Flexible Cross-Subscription Grouping: Azure resources and scopes, from anywhere in the tenant, can become members of one or multiple service groups. Varying Hierarchies: Service Groups can be self-nested providing the ability to have multiple hierarchy structures of resource containers. Data Aggregation & Views: Aggregate data from resources across subscriptions for practical workloads. View application health (via Health Model) and important data values centered around your wanted perspective. You can reach our team by email at mailto:azureservicegroups@microsoft.com for any questions or comments! TechCommunity Blog: https://aka.ms/servicegroupspreview MS Learn Documentation: http://aka.ms/servicegroups Azure Policy New Features currently in Private Preview Many of the Azure Policy enhancements, including user-based exemptions, caller-type based enforcement (e.g., type user or service principal) and IP filtering are currently in private preview and will soon be available to the public. Stay tuned! Azure Machine Configuration Linux SSH Posture Control Policy - Generally Available We are excited to announce additional built-in capabilities for Linux management scenarios through Azure policy and Machine Configuration. Through new built-in policies, you can manage your SSH configuration settings declaratively at-scale. SSH Posture Control enables you to use the familiar workflows of Azure Policy and Machine Configuration to: Ensure compliance with standards in your industry or organization Reduce attack surface of remote management features Ensure consistent setup across your fleet for security and productivity SSH Posture Control also provides detailed Reasons describing how compliance or non-compliance was determined. These Reasons help you to document compliance for auditors with confidence and evidence. They also enable you to take action when non-compliance is observed. MS Learn Documentation: What is SSH Posture Control? | Microsoft Learn Windows Server 2025 Audit Policy (powered by OSConfig) - Generally Available You can now deploy the Windows Server 2025 security baseline to your environment and ensures that desired security measures are in place, providing a comprehensive and standardized security framework. The Windows Server 2025 baseline includes over 300 security settings to ensure that it meets industry-standard security requirements. It also provides co-management support for both on-premises and Azure Arc-connected devices. The OSConfig tool is a security configuration stack that uses a scenario-based approach to deliver and apply the desired security measures for your environment. MS Learn documentation: Configure security baselines for Windows Server 2025 | Microsoft Learn Onboarding Arc Machines at-scale to Machine Config in Azure Portal - Public Preview With the integration of Machine Configuration audit policies in the Arc at-scale onboarding experience, you can now quickly deploy audit policies to get a deeper look at the security posture of your Arc-enabled servers. Whether you're seeking to test Machine Configuration on an Arc machine or looking to deploy a policy across a broader scope of machines, your deployment workflow just got incredibly easy with this new integration. Azure Resource Graph (ARG) ARG GET/LIST API - Private Preview Now in Private Preview is the Azure Resource Graph GET/LIST API, a highly scalable, fast, and performant alternative to existing control plane GET and List API calls within the Azure ecosystem. This API allows you to mitigate issues related to throttling, such as performance degradation and failed requests offering a 10X higher Read throttling quota to callers, ensuring faster and more efficient read operations for your critical cloud native workload. Contact argpms@microsoft.com to join the private preview program! Azure Resource Graph Copilot – Generally Available With the release of the Azure Resource Graph (ARG) skill within Copilot, customers can access the ARG query skill through Azure Portal or Github Copilot. Questions about resource governance like “how many Linux VMs do I own” will be sent to the ARG Skill. With this release, customers can easily turn natural language questions into ARG queries. ARG Copilot helps users create queries to quickly surface insights about resources and simplify operational investigations. MS Learn documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/copilot/get-information-resource-graph Azure Resource Manager (ARM) EU Data Boundary enabled by ARM - Generally Available Going beyond Azure's existing data storage commitments, you can now store and process EU Data in the EU by leveraging Azure data boundaries enabled by Azure Resource Manager. With Azure Resource Manager, you can ensure that in-scope, global Azure metadata data, including EUII, EUPI, Customer Content, and Support Data, are routed, processed, and stored entirely within EU data boundary countries and datacenter locations. This builds on Azure's existing regional metadata privacy commitments and helps our European customers achieve greater control over data locality to meet regulatory, compliance, and sovereignty requirements. MS Learn Documentation: What is the EU Data Boundary? - Microsoft Privacy | Microsoft Learn Stay Updated Keep in touch with Azure Governance products, announcements, and key scenarios. Bookmark the Azure Governance Tech Community Blog, then follow us @AzureGovernance on X (previously known as Twitter) Share Product feedback/ideas with us here- Azure Governance · Community For questions, you can reach us at: Azure Policy: policypm@microsoft.com Azure Resource Graph: argpms@microsoft.comSSH Posture Control for Linux is now GA!
With the increasing importance of reducing the attack surface of any fleet of devices, SSH Posture Control provides a comprehensive solution to ensure your servers are configured according to best practices and your environment specific requirements. This results in enhanced security, improved compliance, and increased efficiency throughout your IT infrastructure. This feature not only audits your current SSH server settings but also can auto-remediate configurations to enhance your security posture. Key Features: Comprehensive Auditing: SSH Posture Control performs a thorough audit of your SSH server settings, and identifying potential misconfigurations. Automated Configuration: Save time and reduce errors with automated configuration options that align your SSH server settings with industry best practices. Support for Multiple Distros: Whether you're using Ubuntu, Red Hat, Azure Linux, or other supported distributions, SSH Posture Control has you covered. Azure Governance: SSH Posture Control integrates seamlessly with Azure Governance services such as Azure Policy and Machine Configuration. Each compliance check includes evidence via the Reasons field, indicating how compliance or non-compliance was determined. You can customize the SSH parameters or use the policy default values, which are aligned with the Azure security baseline for Linux Getting Started Ready to enhance your SSH server security? Take the first step towards a more secure and compliant server environment. For more information and detailed documentation click on the links below: https://aka.ms/SshPostureControlOverview https://aka.ms/SshPostureControlQuickstart https://aka.ms/SshPostureControlBrownfield SSH Posture Control | Not JUST Port 22 - YouTubeNow Open Source: nxtools, managing Linux IaC just got simpler using Automanage machine configuration
We are "nxcited" to announce the release of nxtools, an opensource collection of class-based DSC resources for commonly used Linux / Unix modules and built-in Machine Configuration packages for customers. Azure Automanage Machine Configuration (previously known as Azure Policy Guest Configuration) enables configuration as code allowing you to audit and configure OS, app, and workload level settings at scale, both for machines running in Azure and hybrid Azure Arc-enabled servers.
Azure Change Tracking & Inventory: Simplified onboarding to manage in-guest changes on Azure Arc VMs
Explore new Azure native few clicks onboarding experience for Change Tracking & Inventory on Azure Arc servers, streamlining in-guest change management operations, while strengthening your adaptive cloud strategy.
