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Greetings for the day 🙂 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL 🙂

On every weekend we are starting sharing basic questions and answers (may help to prepare interview , certifications, migration, help to understand basic concepts…) related to Microsoft cloud technologies (Azure, Azure AD, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Teams, Power Platform and so on). Please have a look at our “Interview Preparation” section – https://knowledge-junction.in/interview-preparation/

In today’s article we will discuss about few concepts related to Azure Administration 🙂

Which tools Azure provides for Azure administration

• Azure provides three administration tools to choose from:
  • The Azure portal
  • The Azure CLI
  • Azure PowerShell

What is the Azure portal

• The Azure portal is a website that lets us create, configure, and alter the resources in your Azure subscription
• The portal is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that makes it convenient to locate the resource we need and execute any required changes
• It also guides you through complex administrative tasks by providing wizards and tool tips
• With Azure Portal we can:
  • Build, manage, and monitor everything from simple web apps to complex cloud deployments.
  • Create custom dashboards for an organized view of resources.
  • Configure accessibility options for an optimal experience
• Azure Portal maintain presence in every data center
  • Since Azure portal is in every data center, even though there is failure in any data center Azure portal remains available . This also avoids network slowdown being close to users
• Azure portal updates continuously and requires no downtime for maintenance

What is the Azure CLI

• The Azure CLI is a cross-platform command-line program to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands on Azure resources
• The Azure CLI is available two ways:
  • Inside a browser via the Azure Cloud Shell
  • With a local install on Linux, Mac, or Windows
• We have few very good Azure CLI articles, please have a look once –
  • Search Results for “azure cli” – Knowledge Junction (knowledge-junction.com)

What is Azure PowerShell

• Azure PowerShell is a module that we add to Windows PowerShell or PowerShell Core to allow us to connect to our Azure subscription and manage resources
• Azure PowerShell adds the Azure-specific commands
• Azure PowerShell is also available two ways:
  • Inside a browser via the Azure Cloud Shell
  • With a local install on Linux, Mac, or Windows
• We have few very good Azure PowerShell articles, please have a look once –
  • Search Results for “azure powershell” – Knowledge Junction (knowledge-junction.com)

What is the term “Security Posture” ? – The term security posture refers to cybersecurity policies and controls, as well as how well we can predict, prevent, and respond to security threats

What is Azure Security Center

• Azure Security Center is a monitoring service that provides visibility of our security posture across all of your services, both on Azure and on-premises
• We could navigate to Azure Security Center from Azure portal as shown in above Fig or by directly navigating to – https://azure.microsoft.com/services/security-center
• Security Center can
  • Monitor security settings across on-premises and cloud workloads
  • Automatically apply required security settings to new resources as they come online
  • Provide security recommendations that are based on your current configurations, resources, and networks
  • Continuously monitor your resources and perform automatic security assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities before those vulnerabilities can be exploited
  • Use machine learning to detect and block malware from being installed on your virtual machines (VMs) and other resources
  • We can also use adaptive application controls to define rules that list allowed applications to ensure that only applications we allow can run
  • Detect and analyze potential inbound attacks and investigate threats and any post-breach activity that might have occurred
  • Provide just-in-time access control for network ports. Doing so reduces your attack surface by ensuring that the network only allows traffic that you require at the time that you need it to

What is Security score

• Security score is measurement of an organization’s security posture
• Secure score is based on security controls, or groups of related security recommendations
• Our score is based on the percentage of security controls that we satisfy. The more security controls we satisfy, the higher the score you receive
• Security score helps to
  • Report on the current state of your organization’s security posture.
  • Improve your security posture by providing discoverability, visibility, guidance, and control.
  • Compare with benchmarks and establish key performance indicators (KPIs)

What is Azure Sentinel

• Azure Sentinel is Microsoft’s cloud-based SIEM system – Security Information and Event Management system
• Azure Sentinel allows us
  • Collect cloud data – Collect data across all users, devices, applications and infrastructure, both on on-premises and from cloud
  • Investigates threats and AI – Examine suspicious activities at scale
• Azure Sentinel supports number of data sources which it can analyze for security events

What is Azure Key Vault Service

• Azure Key Vault is a centralized cloud service for storing an application’s secrets in a single, central location
•  It provides secure access to sensitive information by providing access control and logging capabilities
• Azure uses industry-standard algorithms, key lengths, and HSMs. Access to Key Vault requires proper authentication and authorization
• By using Key Vault, we can monitor and control access to your application secrets
• We can integrate Key Vault with storage accounts, container registries, event hubs, and many more Azure services. These services can then securely reference the secrets stored in Key Vault

What are the benefits of Azure Key Vault Service

• Key Vault securely store and tightly control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, API keys, and other secrets
• Key Vault makes it easier to create and control the encryption keys that are used to encrypt data
• Key Vault enables us to provision, manage, and deploy your public and private Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) certificates for both our Azure resources and our internal resources

I’ll stop here 🙂 In next article I’ll come up with more administrative concepts in upcoming articles…

If you want to know more details about any concept, need to be included in this collection kindly please share or put in comment box. We will definitely include / discuss …

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Enjoy the beautiful life 🙂 Have a FUN 🙂 HAVE A SAFE LIFE 🙂 TAKE CARE 🙂