Category: Key integration challenges

Roadblock #4 – Policy complexity

Defining and configuring complex security policies can be time-consuming and prone to misconfigurations.

Best practices are as follows:

• Start with foundational security policies and gradually add complexity as needed
• Leverage industry-standard templates for common policies
• Use automation to simplify policy creation and enforcement

Roadblock #5 – Alert fatigue

Overwhelming numbers of alerts can lead to alert fatigue, where important alerts may be overlooked.

Best practices are as follows:

• Customize alert thresholds and priorities based on the severity and business impact
• Implement intelligent alerting that correlates multiple events to reduce noise
• Use automated remediation to address common, low-level issues without generating alerts

Roadblock #6 – Integration complexity

Integrating the CSPM tool with existing security and operations tools can be complex.

Best practices are as follows:

• Use pre-built integrations where available
• Develop clear integration strategies and roadmaps
• Engage with the CSPM tool vendor or consult with experts to facilitate integration

Roadblock #7 – Monitoring and alerting configuration

Configuring the monitoring and alerting features of the CSPM tool correctly can be daunting.

Best practices are as follows:

• Consult with CSPM tool documentation and vendor support for guidance
• Start with a small set of critical alerts and expand gradually
• Conduct regular testing and validation to ensure alerts are functioning as expected

Roadblock #8 – Data privacy and security

Handling sensitive data collected by the CSPM tool can pose privacy and security concerns.

Best practices are as follows:

• Implement data protection measures, including encryption and access controls
• Comply with data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR) and data retention policies
• Conduct regular security assessments of the CSPM tool itself

Roadblock #9 – Compliance variability

Different cloud platforms may have variations in compliance standards and terminology.

Best practices are as follows:

• Ensure that the CSPM tool can handle these variations and offer consistent reporting
• Collaborate with compliance experts to align your policies and practices

Roadblock #10 – Scalability

The CSPM tool should be able to scale with your growing cloud infrastructure.

Best practices are as follows:

• Choose a CSPM tool that can handle increased volumes of cloud accounts and resources
• Regularly assess the performance and capacity of the tool to plan for scaling

Addressing these roadblocks and implementing the recommended best practices will help ensure a smooth onboarding process and effective use of a CSPM tool in securing your cloud accounts and resources.

The account onboarding process is also known as the account connection process for public clouds. It is the process of establishing a connection between a CSPM account and your CSP account such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, GCP, Oracle Cloud, and so on. When the connection between the CSPM tool and the cloud account is established, CSPM can access your cloud infrastructure and scan it for vulnerabilities and other security issues.

Note

To make the concept easily understandable, the Microsoft Defender for Cloud CSPM tool is taken as a reference wherever it is imperative to explain with an example. This book does not justify one tool over another. The tool is chosen based on the information available publicly. Generic and high-level steps are provided here, which is not enough for onboarding an account. You must follow vendor documentation and support for successful onboarding. It is beyond the scope of this book to dive deep into a particular tool.

Onboarding AWS accounts

Connecting your AWS accounts to Microsoft Defender for Cloud allows you to leverage the security capabilities of Microsoft Defender to protect your AWS resources and workloads. This integration provides centralized visibility, threat detection, and incident response across your AWS infrastructure. Microsoft Defender for Cloud protects workloads in AWS, but you need to set up the connection between them and your Azure subscription.

Every CSPM vendor provides comprehensive documentation and support for successful account onboarding as part of their contract with customers. To connect your AWS account to Microsoft Defender for Cloud, you should follow its documentation and guidance.

Follow this documentation link to connect your AWS accounts to Microsoft Defender for Cloud: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/defender-for-cloud/quickstart-onboard-aws.

Prerequisites

Before we set up the connection, you’ll need to be ready with the following:

• You need a Microsoft Azure subscription. If you do not have an Azure subscription, set one up.
• You must set up your CSPM (Microsoft Defender for Cloud in this case) on your Azure subscription.
• You must have access to an AWS account.
• Ensure you have appropriate permissions and access to manage AWS resources. You need to have Contributor permission for the relevant Azure subscription and Administrator permission on the AWS account.

Let’s begin!

1. Set up an AWS IAM role: The first step is to create an IAM role in your AWS account that grants necessary permissions to Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Assign appropriate permissions to the IAM role, such as read-only access to your AWS resources. Make sure to define a trust relationship between the IAM role and the Microsoft Defender for Cloud service principal.
2. Configure AWS account in Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Sign in to the Microsoft Defender Security Center. Navigate to Settings and select AWS accounts or Add AWS account. Provide the necessary details such as account name, AWS account ID, and the IAM role ARN (Amazon Resource Names) you created. Click on Add account to initiate the connection process.
3. Validate the connection: Microsoft Defender for Cloud will attempt to establish a connection with the specified AWS account using the provided IAM role. If the connection is successful, you will see the AWS account listed as connected in the Microsoft Defender Security Center.
4. Enable data collection: Once the connection is established, you can configure data collection settings for the AWS account. Decide which types of AWS data you want to collect, such as CloudTrail logs, VPC flow logs, or CloudWatch events. Enable the necessary data connectors and configure any required permissions or settings.
5. Monitor and respond to threats: Defender for Cloud will start collecting and analyzing the security data from your AWS resources. Monitor the alerts and security recommendations provided by Defender for Cloud and take appropriate actions to remediate any identified threats.

If you follow the documentation steps correctly, you should be able to see that your AWS account has onboarded into the Microsoft Defender for Cloud CSPM tool, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.1 – Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Now that we have seen how an AWS account can be onboarded to Microsoft Defender for Cloud, let us look at how to onboard the same for Microsoft Azure.