Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Let's talk a little bit about security baselines. Microsoft Azure doesn't monitor for, or respond to, any security incidents that are considered to be within the customer's area of responsibility. Instead, Azure provides tools like Azure Security Center that are intended for this purpose. Although Microsoft makes every effort to make every service as secure as possible by default, there is no way to predict how each customer will use each service. That being the case, you really need to review these security controls to ensure that they mitigate risks adequately.

Every Azure service comes with a default baseline that is already designed to provide security for most common uses. However, each customer is responsible for creating its own set of baselines to ensure adequate protection.

Now, because every environment is different, I'm not going to try telling you how to create a security baseline, because what I tell you might not fit your specific environment. Instead, we're going to talk a little bit about the tools that are available to you for configuring security baselines.

Let's start with the Azure Portal and Azure Resource Manager. These tools are most useful for creating resources and for applying access controls to those resources. These tools can also be used to secure virtual networks and to configure backups and disaster recovery options.

Azure Key Vault can be used to encrypt virtual drives as well as PaaS storage and databases. Azure Active Directory provides the identity management platform that's used to apply access controls to resources within Azure. It's also used to manage hybrid identity services.

Azure Policy is used to secure virtual networks and to restrict allowed types of resources. It can also be used to enforce geo-regional restrictions. Using Security Center, organizations can monitor the security health of networks and resources, and to detect malicious activity. Security Center also preemptively detects vulnerabilities. And like Azure Security Center, Azure Monitor can also be used to detect malicious activity within your environment.

Understanding these tools and how to use them will allow you to create security baselines that fit your organization.