Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) that aids in preventing, detecting, and responding to threats with increased visibility and control over resource security. It combines the functionalities of a Development Security Operations (DevSecOps) solution, a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solution, and a Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP).

These capabilities provide organizations with the ability to manage the security of their resources and workloads, both in the cloud and on-premises environments, thereby enhancing their overall security posture. Additionally, it employs monitoring components to collect and store data, applying security policies and initiatives when making recommendations. It oversees a variety of Azure services, including Virtual Machines, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, and various PaaS services. Furthermore, it offers protection to multi-cloud resources, such as Amazon AWS and Google Cloud.

Security policies and initiatives.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security in both cloud and on-premises environments by utilizing security policies and initiatives. These initiatives, applied to subscriptions, contain one or more security policies that result in recommendations to improve the security posture.

In Azure, a policy is a statement that defines the allowed or denied actions on a resource. Policies help create governance rules that apply to Azure resources to ensure compliance with corporate and service standards. On the other hand, an initiative is a collection of policies that are grouped together to achieve a broader governance objective. Initiatives allow for the grouping of multiple policies and their consistent application across all resources or subscriptions. This helps simplify management and ensure compliance with security and governance policies throughout the organization.

Next steps

It's your turn to continue learning about Defender for Cloud. To assist you, I'm sharing its official documentation as well as an interactive guide.

If you want to learn more about Microsoft Azure, I invite you to take a look at the Azure Advent Calendar 2023. There you will find different examples of how the community is making the most of cloud computing.