As delivered at the IT Camp 19 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Karl Ots has assessed the security of over 100 solutions built on the Microsoft Azure cloud. He has found that there are 6 key security pitfalls that are common across all industry verticals and company sizes. In this session, he will share what these security pitfalls are, why do they matter and how to mitigate them.

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Top Azure security fails and how to avoid
them
Karl Ots

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Karl Ots
Chief Consulting Officer
karl.ots@zure.com
• Cloud & cybersecurity expert
• Community leader, speaker, author & patented inventor
• Working on Azure since 2011
• Helped to secure 100+ Azure applications, from startups to
Fortune 500 enterprises
• zure.ly/karl

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13,7 100%
4,5 / 5 3 6.
34 / 38
experts years avg. Azure
satisfaction Azure MVPs GPTW

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What to expect in this session
• Azure security landscape
• Top Azure security fails I have wandered upon in my adventures
• Why are they bad?
• How to fix them?
• Resources to help you secure your Azure environment, regardless of your
current status

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With great power comes great responsibility

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Secure DevOps kit for Azure (AzSK)
• Set of tools for assessing the security posture of your Azure environment
• Main toolset includes PowerShell module to scan your Azure platform and
resources against best practices from Microsoft Core Services Engineering
• Easy to get started with non-intrusive platform scans, expands end-to-end
tooling from developer machine to DevSecOps

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Secure DevOps kit for Azure (AzSK)
Run AzSK
PowerShell
tool
Analyze results
Improve
system
security

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Most fails described in this
session can be detected by
using AzSK

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Role Based Access Control
AAD Object Role Scope
RBAC
Assignment

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Role-Based Access Control
Subscription
Resource Groups
Resources
Owner
Can perform all management
operations for a resource and
its child resources including
access management and
granting access to others.
Contributor
Can perform all management
operations for a resource
including create and delete
resources. A contributor cannot
grant access to other.
Reader
Has read-only access to a
resource and its child resources.
A reader cannot read secrets.

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RBAC Roles
• A collection of actions
• Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/*
• Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/start/action
• Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/read
• +70 built-in roles for Azure RBAC
• e.g. Virtual Machine Contributor, Backup Contributor, Security Reader, etc.

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Security fail #1
• Unprotected public endpoints
• HTTP / RDP / SSH
• Mitigation:
• Every public IP is a risk and should be carefully reviewed
• Use Network Security Groups to control access to / from virtual machines
• Use Azure Security Center’s Just-in-time access to dynamically change NSG rules
• Use Web Application Firewall to control access to public HTTP endpoints
• Configure Service Endpoint Firewalls for PaaS services
• AzSK Control ID:
• Azure_Subscription_NetSec_Justify_PublicIPs

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Security fail #2
• Every user is an Owner
• …In the Subscription scope
• Mitigation:
• Default access scope should be Resource Group, not Subscription
• Default RBAC access should be Contributor, not Owner
• Instead of Owner, use User Access Administrator
• AzSK Control ID:
• Azure_Subscription_AuthZ_Justify_Admins_Owners

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Security fail #3
• Untrusted authentication provider being used
• (Microsoft Account, Gmail, unmanaged or external Azure AD…)
• Mitigation:
• Always use trusted Azure AD authentication
• Monitor Azure Subscription access using AAD PIM
• If necessary, limit AAD Guest user inviting
• AzSK control ID:
• Azure_Subscription_AuthZ_Dont_Use_NonAD_Identities

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Security fail #4
• Storage access keys used directly
• Mitigation:
• Storage Access Keys should be stored in Azure Key Vault and rotated programmatically
• Use data pane RBAC roles (new)
• Restrict access to Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/listkeys/action using RBAC
• AzSK control ID:
• Azure_Storage_DP_Rotate_Keys

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Security fail #5
• Insufficient monitoring and alerting
• Mitigation:
• Configure Activity Log retention, default is only 90 days!
• Enable Azure SQL Audit logging
• Monitor all HTTP endpoint traffic with Application Gateway / Web Application Firewall
• Enable Application Insight Smart Alerts
• Enable Advanced Treat Protection for Azure SQL and Storage Accounts
• Enable Service Health Alerts
• Enable custom Activity Log Alerts
• AzSK control ID’s
• Azure_AppService_Configure_Important_Alerts
• Azure_Subscription_Config_Azure_Security_Center
• Azure_SQLDatabase_Audit_Enable_Threat_Detection_Server

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Storage Advanced Threat Protection
Access from
unusual location
Application
Anomaly
Anonymous
access
Data Exfiltration
Unexpected
delete
Upload Azure
Cloud Service
package
Access
permission
change
Access
Inspection
Data Exploration

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Security fail #6
• No network controls for PaaS storage
• Mitigation:
• Enable Firewall for your storage layer services
• When using SAS tokens, enable IP restriction
• AzSK Control ID’s:
• Azure_CosmosDB_AuthZ_Enable_Firewall
• Azure_SQLDatabase_AuthN_Dont_Use_SQL_AuthN
• Azure_DataLakeStore_AuthZ_Enable_Firewall

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Secure DevOps kit for Azure (AzSK)
• Set of tools for assessing the security posture of your Azure environment
• Built by Microsoft Core Services Engineering
• Used to secure 1000+ Azure subscriptions at Microsoft
• Easy to get started with non-intrusive vulnerability scans, expands end-to-
end tooling from developer machine to CI/CD to continuous assurance
• Call to action: Use AzSK to scan your environment for security fails!

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Resources
• My slides: zure.ly/karl/slides
• Secure DevOps Kit for Azure:
• azsk.azurewebsites.net
• Microsoft Ignite 2018 session THR2104 Assess your Microsoft Azure security
like a pro:
• zure.ly/karl/THR2104
• Whitepaper: Develop Secure Applications on Azure:
• zure.ly/karl/secureapps

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Q & A