Improve Web App Security with Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud for Web Apps

In the age of AI-driven competitiveness, companies of all sizes have emphasized cloud-based app development. Bad actors always seek new methods to exploit misconfigured resources as developers rapidly launch new cloud apps. How can business cloud architects defend their cloud deployments from attacks? More significantly, how do you secure cloud systems that may differ from on-premises systems and cloud service providers?

Therein lies the power of a managed PaaS with integrated cloud security. Azure App Service integrates with Defender for App Service in Microsoft Defender for Cloud to defend multicloud and hybrid environments from development to runtime. This blog will reveal another well-kept secret: how easy and worry-free Defender for App Service integration can make online application security.

Zero-trust native security integration

Defender for App Service, a Microsoft first-party service, employs cloud scale to spot assaults on Azure App Service applications, improving security while migrating from on-premises web apps. With this move to App Service, you get automated platform maintenance and security patching to keep your OS, language frameworks, and runtime software up to date. 

Defender for App Service adds security to your App Service plan by assessing resources and making suggestions. It effortlessly interacts with Azure App Service, reducing deployment and onboarding complexity and requiring no app changes to identify threats. 

Web application vulnerabilities are typically probed by attackers. Azure application requests are reviewed and logged at numerous gateways before being sent to specified environments. Our Zero Trust method captures signals from your organization’s cloud app use without reconfiguration, with Azure Web Application Firewall optionally protecting data transport. Defender for App Service detects vulnerabilities and malicious activities in web apps and runtime activity.

These precise steps may protect your App Service resources, giving your team full visibility into possible risks and misconfiguration. Defender for App Service, integrated with Azure App Service and managed by Microsoft, protects your web apps with the newest security features without the need for Zero Trust expertise.

Improved scaled detection and response

The cloud offers scalable, updated, and properly managed security. Defender for App Service in Defender for Cloud lets you protect code management environments, establish strong security practices early in software development, and obtain useful security insights. 

Defender for Cloud consolidates security warnings from Azure services, including App Service. After examining these resources, it provides Microsoft cloud security benchmark-based cloud security recommendations. These guidelines provide extensive instructions for hardening App Service resources.

Microsoft clients say security benchmarks help secure cloud projects rapidly. A comprehensive cloud service provider security best practice framework may help you choose particular security configuration settings across various service providers and monitor them from a single pane of glass. 

These suggestions cover two crucial points:

• Security controls: General cloud workload security guidelines. Each proposal lists parties engaged in benchmark planning, approval, and implementation.
• Service baselines: Baselines for services Individual cloud services are controlled to offer security configuration suggestions. 

Defender for App Service is natively integrated with Azure App Service and easy to enable with a few clicks to investigate and respond to security occurrences. By combining the two services, your IT staff can swiftly detect and resolve the core cause of an attack to bring your apps back up.

Staying ahead of digital threats playbook

App Service Defender maps threats using MITRE ATT&CK. The MITRE ATT&CK architecture lists all the methods cyber attackers may break into and abuse computers. The framework helps cybersecurity specialists analyze and protect against these assaults by revealing bad actors’ methods and approaches. 

Even after a web app is compromised, Defender for Cloud can identify ongoing assaults. It may examine log and infrastructure data to detect unusual activities like new assaults or customer application intrusions.

Defender for App Service also uses Microsoft Threat Intelligence in conjunction with our expanded security team to detect threats.

Upgrade the security posture of your App Service-based online applications

Migrating programs to Azure App Service improves security in various ways. Recapping some benefits:

• Secure and fortified platform: Microsoft monitors and updates the infrastructure, network, and software, so you don’t have to.
• HTTPS/TLS encryption: Supports all incoming and outbound communication. Enforcing HTTPS and disabling obsolete protocols prevents unencrypted communications.
• IP addresses, client certificates, or user identities restrict app access: App Service authentication may interface with Microsoft Entra ID (previously Azure Active Directory), Facebook, Google, and OpenID Connect.
• Managed identities: Access Azure SQL Database and Storage without saving secrets in code or configuration files. Azure Key Vault may store critical app settings and connection strings as secrets, and Defender for Key Vault can monitor it.
• Compatible with other security products: Web application firewall (WAF), Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Azure Sentinel are industry-leading capabilities and technologies for App Service to identify and mitigate attacks.

In your App Service plan, enable Defender now

Defender for App Service continuously assesses and recommends ways to harden Azure App Service resources and improve security. It warns of user-agent injection, web shell activity, and dangling DNS. Users may access attack data and mitigation procedures in the Azure portal or use Azure Sentinel to investigate and respond to occurrences.

Defender for App Service is inherent to App Service, thus no installation or configuration is needed. Enable it on your App Service membership and set your plan using the price options.