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title description author ms.author ms.date ms.topic ms.custom
Function of cloud infrastructure and endpoint security
Understand the function of cloud infrastructure and endpoint security.
martinekuan
martinek
05/15/2020
conceptual
internal, UpdateFrequency3

Function of cloud infrastructure and endpoint security

A cloud security team working on infrastructure and endpoint security provides security protections, detective, and response controls for infrastructure and network components used by enterprise applications and users.

Modernization

Software defined datacenters and other cloud technologies are helping solve longstanding challenges with infrastructure and endpoint security including:

  • Inventory and configuration error discovery are much more reliable for cloud hosted assets as they're all immediately visible (vs. A physical datacenter).
  • Vulnerability management evolving into a critical part of overall security posture management.
  • Addition of container technologies to be managed and secured by infrastructure and network teams as the organization adopts this technology broadly. See Container security in Defender for Cloud for an example.
  • Security agent consolidation and tool simplification to reduce the maintenance and performance overhead of security agents and tools.
  • Allow-listing of applications and internal network filtering is becoming much easier to configure and deploy for cloud hosted servers (using machine learning generated rule sets). See Adaptive application controls and adaptive network hardening for Azure examples.
  • Automated templates for configuring infrastructure and security are much easier with software defined datacenters in the cloud. Azure example is Azure Blueprints
  • Just in time (JIT) and just enough access (JEA) enable practical application of least privilege principles to privileged access for servers and endpoints.
  • User experience becomes critical as users increasingly can choose or purchase their endpoint devices.
  • Unified endpoint management allows managing security posture of all endpoint devices including mobile and traditional PCs as well as providing critical device integrity signals for zero trust access control solutions.
  • Network security architectures and controls are partially diminished with the shift to cloud application architectures, but they remain a fundamental security measure. For more information, see Network security and containment.

Team composition and key relationships

Cloud infrastructure and endpoint security commonly interacts with the following roles:

  • IT architecture and operations
  • Security architecture
  • Security operations center (SOC)
  • Compliance team
  • Audit team

Next steps

Review the function of threat intelligence.