What is Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) that is made up of security measures and practices that are designed to protect cloud-based applications from various cyber threats and vulnerabilities. Defender for Cloud combines the capabilities of:
- A cloud security posture management (CSPM) solution that surfaces actions that you can take to prevent breaches
- A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) with specific protections for servers, containers, storage, databases, and other workloads
Note
For Defender for Cloud pricing information, see the pricing page.
When you enable Defender for Cloud, you automatically gain access to Microsoft Defender XDR.
The Microsoft 365 Defender portal helps security teams investigate attacks across cloud resources, devices, and identities. Microsoft 365 Defender provides an overview of attacks, including suspicious and malicious events that occur in cloud environments. Microsoft 365 Defender accomplishes this goal by correlating all alerts and incidents, including cloud alerts and incidents.
You can learn more about the integration between Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Defender XDR.
Improve your security posture
The security of your cloud and on-premises resources depends on proper configuration and deployment. Defender for Cloud recommendations identifies the steps that you can take to secure your environment.
Defender for Cloud includes Foundational CSPM capabilities for free. You can also enable advanced CSPM capabilities by enabling the Defender CSPM plan.
| Capability | What problem does it solve? | Get started | Defender plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Centralized policy management | Define the security conditions that you want to maintain across your environment. The policy translates to recommendations that identify resource configurations that violate your security policy. The Azure cloud security benchmark is a built-in standard that applies security principles with detailed technical implementation guidance for Azure . | Customize a security policy | Foundational CSPM (Free) |
| Secure score | Summarize your security posture based on the security recommendations. As you remediate recommendations, your secure score improves. | Track your secure score | Foundational CSPM (Free) |
| Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) | Use the dashboard to see weaknesses in your security posture. | Enable CSPM tools | Foundational CSPM (Free) |
| Advanced Cloud Security Posture Management | Get advanced tools to identify weaknesses in your security posture, including: - Governance to drive actions to improve your security posture - Regulatory compliance to verify compliance with security standards - Cloud security explorer to build a comprehensive view of your environment |
Enable CSPM tools | Defender CSPM |
Protect cloud workloads
Proactive security principles require that you implement security practices that protect your workloads from threats. Cloud workload protections (CWP) surface workload-specific recommendations that lead you to the right security controls to protect your workloads.
When your environment is threatened, security alerts right away indicate the nature and severity of the threat so you can plan your response. After you identify a threat in your environment, you need to quickly respond to limit the risk to your resources.
| Capability | What problem does it solve? | Get started | Defender plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protect cloud servers | Provide server protections through extended protection with just-in-time network access, file integrity monitoring, vulnerability assessment, and more. | Secure your on-premises servers | Defender for Servers |
| Protect cloud databases | Protect your entire database estate with attack detection and threat response for the most popular database types in Azure to protect the database engines and data types, according to their attack surface and security risks. | Deploy specialized protections for cloud and on-premises databases | - Defender for Azure SQL Databases - Defender for SQL servers on machines - Defender for Open-source relational databases - Defender for Azure Cosmos DB |
| Protect containers | Secure your containers so you can improve, monitor, and maintain the security of your clusters, containers, and their applications with environment hardening, vulnerability assessments, and run-time protection. | Find security risks in your containers | Defender for Containers |
| Infrastructure service insights | Diagnose weaknesses in your application infrastructure that can leave your environment susceptible to attack. | - Identify attacks targeting applications running over App Service - Get alerted on suspicious Resource Manager operations - Expose anomalous DNS activities |
- Defender for App Service - Defender for Key Vault - Defender for Resource Manager - Defender for DNS |
| Security alerts | Get informed of real-time events that threaten the security of your environment. Alerts are categorized and assigned severity levels to indicate proper responses. | Manage security alerts | Any workload protection Defender plan |
| Security incidents | Correlate alerts to identify attack patterns and integrate with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Security Orchestration Automated Response (SOAR), and IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions to respond to threats and limit the risk to your resources. | Export alerts to SIEM, SOAR, or ITSM systems | Any workload protection Defender plan |
Important
As of August 1 2023, customers with an existing subscription to Defender for DNS can continue to use the service, but new subscribers will receive alerts about suspicious DNS activity as part of Defender for Servers P2.
Learn More
For more information about Defender for Cloud and how it works, check out:
- A step-by-step walkthrough of Defender for Cloud
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud - Use cases
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud PoC Series - Microsoft Defender for Containers
- Learn how Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides data security