Using Advisor

In the previous chapter, we looked at securing the available storage services in Azure. We looked at how the shared responsibility model for public cloud platform providers requires the customer to have implemented the appropriate solutions and controls to ensure their storage is secure and protected.

This previous chapter concluded part one of this cookbook, where we looked at Azure’s security features and capabilities as a first-party solution. We covered recipes that provided security for identities, networks, remote access, VMs, databases, and storage.

This first chapter in Part 2 of the cookbook, which covers Azure Security Tools, looks at the first of these tools, Advisor.

In this chapter, you will learn how to secure and protect Azure environments using the security aspects of the Advisor recommendations engine. Advisor can also provide recommendations for reliability, performance, cost, and operational excellence, although these are beyond the...

Technical requirements

For this chapter, it is already assumed that you have an Azure AD tenancy and an Azure subscription from completing the recipes in previous chapters of this cookbook. If you skipped straight to this section, the information to create a new Azure AD tenancy and an Azure subscription for these recipes is included in the following list of requirements.

For this chapter, the following are required:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
• An Azure AD tenancy and Azure subscription; you may use existing ones or sign up for free: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free.
• An Owner role for the Azure subscription.
• The following access permissions: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/advisor/permissions.

Reviewing the security recommendations

With the eagerness and excitement of moving workloads onto a cloud platform, unfortunately, things can get overlooked, and often governance and control can take a back seat. This can lead to less than optimal deployment, configuration, and operation practices and use of resources, resulting in a security breach and negatively impacting trust in adopting a cloud platform’s capabilities. We must not forget the shared responsibility we have, along with the cloud platform providers.

This recipe will teach you how to review the security recommendations provided by Advisor to improve your security posture and workload protection.

Getting ready

This recipe requires the following:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com
• Access to an Azure subscription, where you have access to the Owner role for the Azure subscription

How to do it…

This task consists...

Implementing the security recommendations

This recipe will teach you how to apply the security recommendations provided by Advisor to improve your security posture and workload protection.

Getting ready

This recipe requires the following:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com
• Access to an Azure subscription, where you have access to the Owner role for the Azure subscription

How to do it…

This task consists of the following tasks:

• Implementing Advisor’s recommendations

Task – implementing Advisor’s recommendations

Perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
2. In the search bar, type advisor; click on Advisor from the list of services shown.

Figure 7.7 – Searching for Advisor

3. When Advisor opens, it will load the Advisor score page.
4. On the Advisor...