{"id":18150,"date":"2022-06-22T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/?p=18150"},"modified":"2022-06-23T21:22:05","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T20:22:05","slug":"data-security-and-encryption-best-practices-for-azure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/industry\/blog\/technetuk\/2022\/06\/22\/data-security-and-encryption-best-practices-for-azure\/","title":{"rendered":"Data security and encryption with Azure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nowadays, corporate data assets are being stored, processed, and shared more than ever before. Organisations are looking for more efficient ways of doing business, such as big data analysis and the migration of data to the cloud. To ensure that sensitive data isn\u2019t exposed to people that don\u2019t need access to it, putting security and controls in place is key.<\/p>\n
To protect sensitive data, such as personal identifiable data, company financials, and intellectual property, Azure offers a set of best practices for data security and encryption. To protect your data, you need to know which state your data resides in and what controls are available for that state.<\/p>\n
Best practices for Azure data security and encryption relate to the following states:<\/p>\n
Data encryption at rest is a mandatory step toward achieving data privacy and compliance.\u00a0The following best practices are applicable for protecting data at rest:<\/p>\n
Data at rest is encrypted by default in Azure Storage and Azure SQL Database. Many other services offer default encryption as well. Azure Key Vault can be used to store the keys that access and encrypt the data. See Azure resource providers encryption model support<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Protecting data at transit should be an essential part of the data protection strategy. Because data is moved back and forth between many locations, it is recommended to use SSL\/TLS protocols to exchange this data. You can also isolate the entire communication channel between your on-premises and cloud infrastructures by using a VPN. You can use Azure VPN Gateway<\/a> to encrypt traffic between an Azure virtual network and an on-premises location over the public Internet.<\/p>\n Below are best practices for using Azure VPN Gateway, HTTPS, and SSL\/TLS:<\/p>\n To protect your data in the cloud a key-management solution is mandatory. Azure Key Vault can be used to streamline the key-management process and enables you to maintain control of cryptographic keys and secrets that cloud applications and services use. It enables you to maintain control of keys that access and encrypt your data.<\/p>\n Below are the best practices for using Azure Key Vault:<\/p>\n Because most of the attacks are aimed at end users, the endpoint becomes one of the primary points of attack. By compromising the endpoint, an attacker can utilise the user\u2019s credentials to get access to the company data. Most endpoint attacks benefit from the fact that most users are administrators at their workstations.<\/p>\n Below are the best practices for managing secure workstations:<\/p>\n To secure email, data, and documents that you share outside your organisation, you can deploy Azure Information Protection<\/a> to classify, label, and protect documents and email. This can be done automatically, by defining rules and conditions, or manually by users.<\/p>\n The protection technology used by Azure Information Protection is on based Azure Rights Management (Azure RMS). This technology is integrated in other technologies, such as Office 365 and Azure Active Directory, and it uses encryption, identity, and authorisation policies to help you control your data, even when it is shared with others outside your organisation.<\/p>\n Best practices for using Azure Information Protection:<\/p>\n In this article we have covered several Azure best practices for securing and encrypting data. You can refer to Azure security best practices and patterns<\/a> for more security best practices to use when you\u2019re designing, deploying, and managing your cloud solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To ensure that sensitive data isn\u2019t exposed to people that don\u2019t need access to it, putting security and controls in place is key.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":36918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[594],"post_tag":[519],"content-type":[],"coauthors":[525],"class_list":["post-18150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technetuk","tag-technet-uk"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
Protect data at transit<\/h2>\n
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Use a key-management solution<\/h2>\n
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Manage with secure workstations<\/h2>\n
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Secure email, documents, and sensitive data<\/h2>\n
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Next steps<\/h2>\n