You just gonna take that AWS? Let Microsoft school your users on cloud security?

Microsoft has torn nan wraps disconnected its multi-cloud information benchmark (MCSB), which replaces nan four-year-old Azure Security Benchmark. Crucially, arsenic nan sanction suggests, it now has usage and configuration guidance that reaches into rival environments.

That's right, nan operating systems shaper that brought america Patch Tuesday is offering information tips for users of different platforms.

MCSB v1 deed general availability coming and includes not only much accusation astir securing Azure instances but besides offers a fewer monitoring features – 172 automated checks, to beryllium precise – for Amazon Web Services arsenic good arsenic usage advice.

Given really galore organizations now usage 2 aliases much nationalist clouds – 87 percent of respondents successful Flexera's 2023 State of nan Cloud report said they person a multicloud strategy – it was important that Microsoft besides look outward erstwhile talking astir information baselines, according to Jim Cheng, elder package technologist astatine Microsoft.

We'll time off it up to you to determine if this is Redmond being genuinely adjuvant for multi-cloud folks, aliases nan IT elephantine pointing retired really different platforms request securing too, arsenic good arsenic Azure.

"Today we spot that our customers often person to aggregate and reconcile their information guidance crossed aggregate unreality platforms to meet information and compliance requirements," Cheng wrote successful October 2022, erstwhile MCSB v1 entered nationalist preview. "This often requires information teams to repetition nan aforesaid implementation, monitoring, and assessments crossed different unreality environments and often for different compliance standards. This creates unnecessary overhead, cost, and effort."

To thief germinate nan Azure Security Benchmark to MCSB, Microsoft created a azygous power model to reside information controls crossed clouds, starting pinch AWS, and providing a accordant personification acquisition for monitoring and enforcing nan MCSB successful Defender for Cloud.

Redmond is besides remaining aligned pinch manufacture information standards including CIS, NIST, and PCI.

"Similar to Azure, MCSB monitoring is enabled by default successful MDC [Microsoft Defender for Cloud] for AWS environments," Cheng wrote.

Google Cloud is adjacent successful line, pinch Microsoft extending nan MCSB scope to see nan level later this year. Once that is done, Microsoft's unreality information benchmark will person covered nan 3 largest nationalist unreality providers, which relationship for 66 percent of nan market, according to Synergy Research Group.

• Sensitive DoD emails exposed by unsecured Azure server
• Google Cloud's US-East load balancers are lousy pinch latency
• Among nan thousands of ESXiArgs ransomware victims? FBI and CISA to nan rescue
• Nearly 300 MSI motherboards will tally immoderate aged codification successful Secure Boot, nary questions asked

Adding Google Cloud will let users "to usage a azygous integrated dashboard to show your unreality information posture crossed each 3 awesome clouds," he wrote.

Since it went into nationalist preview, Microsoft has grown nan AWS monitoring capabilities to nan 172 checks and published 93 Azure work baselines successful nan caller MCSB format. The baselines touch connected a wide array of areas, from AI and instrumentality learning to analytics, compute, databases, and networking.

Along pinch adding Google Cloud to nan lists of unreality situation covered by nan benchmark, Microsoft will proceed adding monitoring checks to Defender for Cloud that will screen Azure and different clouds and much compliance guidance and evidence-gathering capabilities successful nan Defender for Cloud portal, according to Cheng. ®