{"id":6821,"date":"2015-11-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/windowsserver\/2015\/11\/18\/protecting-your-datacenter-and-cloud-november-update\/"},"modified":"2024-03-11T09:20:37","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T16:20:37","slug":"protecting-your-datacenter-and-cloud-november-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows-server\/blog\/2015\/11\/18\/protecting-your-datacenter-and-cloud-november-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting your datacenter and cloud: November update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was authored by the Windows Server Security and Assurance Team<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six months ago, in a previous blog post \u201cProtecting your datacenter and cloud from emerging threats\u201d we introduced our strategy and direction on how Microsoft can help customers protect their datacenter and private cloud from emerging threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, we\u2019ll cover the great progress that was made since May 2015 in each of the areas we were focusing on and what offerings are already available for you to better secure your environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landscape shifts that affect the way we think about security<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the datacenter and cloud through security lenses, there are two major aspects that we need to pay attention to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Virtualization is everywhere and increasing number of high value assets such as domain controllers and company sensitive workloads are virtualized. While operationally this makes a lot of sense, from a security point of view, this shift increases the attack vectors ten-fold as anyone that has access to the storage, backup, network, hosts or fabric controller where these Virtual Machines are running can compromise them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2. Gaining administrative rights is a common attack vector. We trust our administrators but when their accounts are compromised through any of the ways attackers use today (such as phishing and malware), the attackers gain unprecedented access to the environment and can then stay in the system for a long time undetected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Principles for security and assurance solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have established a few key guiding principles that drive our work in security and assurance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Assume breach: analyze the environment to determine how an attack may propagate and make changes to contain any compromise by preventing lateral movement of the attacker inside the environment.
\u2022 Protect existing environments without requiring major upgrades and re-architecture of your datacenter or hosting infrastructure.
\u2022 Support the extension of your datacenter into the Azure cloud while bringing the Azure security and security operations to the datacenter and private cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Focus areas for datacenter and private cloud security<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the \u201cAssume Breach\u201d mindset and the desire to protect existing environments, we focused our initiatives on three main areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n