Forrester names Microsoft a Leader in 2023 Infrastructure-as-a-Service Platform Native Security report

As we continue to drive toward making the world safer and more productive for all, it is vital we empower our customers to secure every aspect of their organization. Each day we are seeing more advanced security threats as bad actors develop new tactics that aim to take advantage of businesses as they digitally transform and adopt a multicloud infrastructure. At Microsoft, we understand cloud security is a problem you manage, not a problem you solve, so we are constantly working to use data, intelligence, AI, and automation to provide a comprehensive solution that helps us all respond faster and even stay one step ahead of bad actors and events.

Core to this approach is our ability to help customers do more with the security of Microsoft Azure that’s built-in, embedded, and out of the box, and extending that protection to multicloud infrastructures. We are honored to be recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Infrastructure-as-a-Service Platform Native Security (IPNS), Q2 2023 report. The IPNS category compares public clouds and highlights the native security provided to customers on public cloud platforms. This includes capabilities for storage and data security, identity and access management (IAM), network security, and hardware and hypervisor security. In the report, it is great to see Forrester recognize the continued progress we have made, noting “Microsoft provides strong CSPM and CIEM [cloud security posture management and cloud infrastructure entitlement management] capabilities. It has made significant investments in CSPM and CWP [cloud workload protection]. The vendor sports a strong vision for IPNS offerings, and its execution roadmap and market approach are ahead of the competition.”

Additionally, Microsoft received a top score from Forrester in the current IPNS offering category and had the highest possible score in the data centers, security certifications, roadmap, market approach, innovation, and seven other criteria. The report states, “Microsoft offers strong admin IAM management, above-par CSPM and CIEM capabilities, and broad coverage guest OS [operating system] security. Network security capabilities and multicloud support are ahead of others evaluated as well.”

Microsoft is committed to continual innovation and investment in cloud security. In Azure, our security approach focuses on defense in depth, with layers of protection built throughout all phases of design, development, and deployment of our platforms and technologies.

In a constantly changing world, we work hard to release features that help our customers strengthen their security posture, accelerate protection against modern threats, and reduce risk throughout the cloud application lifecycle. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a critical component of that strategy. Natively available in Azure, it helps protect multicloud and hybrid environments end-to-end, from development to runtime as a comprehensive cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). Our multicloud approach means customers get the protection they expect from Microsoft—not only in Azure—but also by centralizing and unifying their security needs on other public clouds as well.

Customers like VECOZO choose integrated security from Microsoft across Defender for Cloud, network security, and identity to combine their various security layers and functionalities into an easy-to-deploy, easy-to-manage, highly secure environment. Igor van Haren, Lead Architect, VECOZO, said “There’s always security work to be done, but with Azure, we’ve gained improved visibility, removed some of the most tedious work from our administrators’ agendas, and adopted a number of solutions that aid our Zero Trust security approach.” Read more about VECOZO’s experience in their customer story.

Over the last several months we have also announced new feature releases across Defender for Cloud, network security, and other services that continue to build on our vision for a comprehensive, intelligent cloud platform. These include:

Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management is now generally available to help organizations get an end-to-end view of risks and prioritize remediation across their multicloud environments with contextual cloud security. And now, new integrated data-aware security posture capabilities allow teams to automatically discover their data estate, assess threats to their most critical assets and sensitive data, and proactively prevent breaches along potential attack paths.

Microsoft Defender for Storage now offers sensitive data discovery and malware scanning to address threats to critical storage resources in the cloud. New scanning capabilities prevent infiltration attempts with near real-time detection of metamorphic and polymorphic malware across cloud data.

Microsoft Defender for APIs is in preview. A new offering as part of Defender for Cloud, Defender for APIs helps organizations gain visibility into business-critical Azure APIs, understand their security posture, prioritize vulnerability fixes, and detect and respond to active runtime threats within minutes. For more information on future Defender for Cloud releases, our roadmap showcases a comprehensive list of information about new features.

Microsoft Azure Firewall Basic, a new SKU of Azure Firewall, delivers an enterprise-grade network firewall to small and medium businesses (SMBs) at an affordable price point. You get essential network firewall capabilities, like filtering of east-west and north-south traffic with built-in threat intelligence to block malicious traffic. As a cloud-native service, Azure Firewall is easy to set up, configure, and manage, and requires zero maintenance.

Microsoft Azure DDoS IP Protection, a new SKU of Azure DDoS Protection, is designed with SMBs in mind and delivers enterprise-grade, cost-effective DDoS protection. You can defend against the most sophisticated DDoS attacks with always-on monitoring and adaptive threat intelligence that is tuned to your normal traffic volume. Customers have the flexibility to apply protection on individual public IP resources.

These innovations highlight how Microsoft is committed to solving some of the toughest security challenges we all face today. By continually improving the platform, tools, and intelligence our customers need, we can help drive meaningful change in how we protect the world around us.

 We invite you to read the full Forrester report here.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and Twitter (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

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