C# Object-Oriented Programming: Microsoft Azure Security Challenges

This report delves into the security challenges inherent in the Microsoft Azure platform, approached through the lens of object-oriented programming using C#. It identifies key security issues, including the shift in focus from infrastructure to applications, vulnerabilities in Azure Blob Storage, and the relative immaturity of Azure's firewall compared to traditional vendors. The report highlights the importance of security dashboards and centers, web application vulnerability scanning, and web application firewalls. It also discusses authentication and authorization methods, layered security architectures, and the utilization of role-based access control. Furthermore, the report explores encryption strategies, including encryption in transit and at rest, along with network layer controls such as network security groups and forced tunneling. The analysis underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to security, encompassing multiple layers and leveraging various Azure services and third-party appliances to protect data and applications in the cloud environment.

Running head: OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING WITH C#
OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING WITH C#
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Introduction
Windows Azure is a platform of cloud computing that is designed by Microsoft in
order to successfully create, implement and then manage services and applications through a
global network of datatcenters. Security is about management of the access of the users to the
applications, portals and platforms of the organization. The providers of public cloud like
Microsoft Azure introduce a distinctive set of challenges of security for the providers of
solution to struggle with as the customers increasingly shift their workloads to the platform
that are more cost-effective. However, there are many issues of security in Azure.
From focusing heavily on the applications than the infrastructures to having, more
number of customers with the data, those are private and not accessible over the internet.
The article focuses on the security issues of the Microsoft Azure Platform and the
mitigation of the issues of the issues of Microsoft Azure. The article also describes about the
new features in Microsoft Azure that can mitigate the risks Microsoft Azure.
Overview
It is known that security is one of the most important activities in the cloud. One of
the reasons to utilise Azure for the services and the applications is to obtain benefit of tools of
abilities and security. These abilities and tools help make it possible to develop solutions that
are secured in the Azure platform. Microsoft Azure gives integrity, privacy and accessibility
of data of the customers and it enables accountability that is transparent.
Azure Platform
Azure is a cloud service platform that is public, which wires a large collection of
operating systems, tools, frameworks, databases, devices and programming languages (Rath
et al 2019). Azure can run containers of Linux with integration of Docker; create applications

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with python, .NET, PHP, Java, and JavaScript; create back ends for the android, iOS and the
windows devices.
The Azure Services that are public of cloud sustain the technologies that are similar and
many developers and professionals of Information technology depends on and trust. When
assets of IT are migrated to a public provider of cloud services that are relied on the abilities
of the organization in order to protect the data and the applications with the controls and the
services that they offer in order to administer the security of the property that are based on
cloud.
The infrastructure of Azure is designed from the facility to the applications in order to
host thousands of customers at the same time and it provides a foundation that is trustworthy
in which businesses can meet their requirements of security.
There are various security features in Azure that will help the company in its security
of data and there are additional features of security that can be added in the Azure application
to enhance the security of data in Azure.
Security Issues of Microsoft Azure
There is a variety of security problems in Microsoft Azure that should be taken care of.
The security problems of Microsoft Azure are as follows:
 Focuses on applications than Infrastructure: Microsoft is more focused on the applications
of Azure and it has changed the conversation to be around APIs and SaaS. It does not
focus on how to create or migrate the architecture.
 Azure Blob Storage is common target of the hackers: The Azure has been hacked more
than the Amazon Web Services. This is because it is an environment that is trusted. The
campaigns that are trusted are oriented around blob storage of Azure and they are very

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cheap and very effective as it is trusted by default and they are attacked more often as the
attacker are very familiar with the ecosystem of Microsoft.
 Firewall is less mature and easier to implement: the firewall of Azure is not as mature as
the firewalls that are offered by the vendors of traditional firewall. Azure was the first
cloud service provider with an in-built firewall.
 Subject to many Identities based attacks: Microsoft has transferred its on-premise tools of
identity to cloud and it pushes heavily to be utilised around Microsoft Azure. People from
various countries attempt to attack against Azure by trying to utilise tenant ID of an
organization and passwords across all the websites.
 Azure deployments are IT-centric: Many IaaS deployments in Azure are IT-centric rather
than cloud centric because of the relationship of Microsoft with the enterprises that are
traditional.
Mitigation Strategies
Security and Audit dashboard
The solutions of audit and security in the Azure application gives a view that is
comprehensive in to the IT security posture of the company with the search queries that are
in-built for the problems that require immediate attention (Copeland 2017). The audit and the
security dashboard that is home screen for the whole thing that is associated to the security in
the logs of monitor of Azure. It gives handy that is high-level into state of security of the
computer systems. It consists of the capability to see all the proceedings from the past 7 days
and 24 hours.
Azure Security center
The security center is the Azure application helps to respond, prevent and detect the
pressure with maximized control and visibility over the safety of the resources of Azure. It

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offers combined security tracking and management of policy that is across the Azure
subscriptions, assists to detect the threats that can sometimes go unnoticed. It works with an
ecosystem that is broad of the solutions of security (Tiwari and Joshi 2016).
The security centre assists with the operations of security by giving a dashboard that
is single and that gives recommendations and alerts and can be acted upon straight away. The
issues can be solved immediately with just a click with the console of the security center.
There are various types of applications that can assist in the data security of Azure
cloud based applications. The applications include:
Web application vulnerability scanning
One of the easy methods to start with the testing of the weaknesses on the application
of app service is to utilise the combination with Tinfoil security in order to execute single
click weakness scanning on the application. The test results can be understood through a
report and learned to fix each of the vulnerabilities with instructions that are given in
systematic method (Lane, Shrestha and Ali 2017).
Web Application Firewall
The web Application firewall that is present on the Application Gateway of Azure
assists to protect the applications of web from the common attacks that are based on web like
SQL injection, session hijacking and many more. It comes preconfigured with the defense
from the threats that are recognised by the Open Web Application Security Project (Carutasu
et al 2016).
Authentication and Authorization in Azure app service

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The service of app approval and authentication is a functionality that gives a means
for the applications to sign in the end users so that the users do not have to change the code
on the backend of the application and effort with data per-user.
Layered Security Architecture
The App Service Environments gives a runtime environment that is isolated and
implemented into virtual network of Azure. The developers can develop security architecture
that is layered providing various layers of access of network for each of the tier of application
(. A very common wish is to hide back-ends of API from the general right of entry of internet
and allow only the APIs to be called by the web applications that are upstream. The groups of
network security can be utilised on the virtual networks of Azure subnets that contains
environments of app service in order to restrict access of public to the applications of API.
Role-Based Access Control
The storage in the Azure applications can be secured with the access control that is
based on role. Restricting the access that is based on the least privilege and need to know
principles of security is vital for the company that want to implement policies of security for
the admittance of data. These rights of access are decided by providing proper role of RBAC
to several groups and applications at a scope that is certain. The users can utilise roles of
RBAC that are built-in such as the contributor of account of storage in order to allocate
privileges to the end users. The right of entry to the keys of storage for an account of storage
utilising the resources manager of Azure model that can be controlled through the Access
control that is based on role.
Encryption in Transit
The Encryption in transfer is a procedure of protection of data when it is communicated
across various networks. With the storage of Azure, the data can be secured utilising:

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 Transport-level encryption like the HTTPS when the user transfers data in or out of the
storage of Azure.
 The client side encryption is utilised in order to encrypt data before they are transmitted
in the storage and then to decrypt data after the data is transmitted out of the storage.
 The Wire encryption such as the SMB 3.0 encryption for the file shares of Azure.
Encryption at Rest
For many companies, the encryption of data that is at rest is an important step towards the
data privacy, fulfilment and sovereignty of data. There are three Azure storage functionality
of security that provides the data encryption.
 Client side encryption: It provides the functionality of encryption that is at rest.
 Storage service encryption: It allows the users to request that the services of storage
encrypt the data automatically when it is written to the storage of Azure.
 Azure Disk encryption: It allows the users to encrypt the disks of the operating systems
that is utilised by a virtual machines of IaaS.
Network layer Controls
The control of network access is the act of limiting the connectivity from and to the
particular devices or the subnets, which represents the ore of the security of network. The
main objective of the control of network access is to ensure that the services and the virtual
machines are accessible to the devices and the users to which the end users want them
accessible.
Network Security Groups
A group of network security is a firewall that does stateful filtering of packets and it
enables the users to control the access that is based on 5-tuple. The groups of network

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security do not give inspection of the application layer or the control of access that is
authenticated. They can be utilised in order to control the traffic that is moving between the
subnets within a virtual network of Azure and the traffic that is between the internet and the
virtual network of Azure.
Forced Tunneling and Route Control
The capability to control to behaviour of routing on the virtual network of Azure is a
security of network that is critical and access control ability. The routes that are defined by
the user allow the users to customize paths that are outbound and inbound for traffic that are
moving out and in of the machines that are virtual and that are individual or the subnets to
make sure that the services are not allowed in order to start some connections to the devices
that are present on the internet.
The forced tunnelling is used commonly in order to force the traffic that is outbound
to the internet via the proxies of security that are on-premises and the firewalls.
Virtual Network Security Appliances
The groups of security of network of Azure , routes that are defined on the user and
the forced tunneling provides the user a security of level at the transport and the network
layers of the model of OSI (Mazumdar, Agarwal and Banerjee 2016). The users can access
these upgraded features of security of network by utilising security appliance of Azure
partner network. The appliance can be found by visiting the marketplace of Azure and then
penetrating for security of security and network.
Web Application Firewall
The firewall of web application is a functionality of the gateway of application of
Azure that gives defense to the applications of web that utilise the gateway of application for

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the functions of standard application delivery control (Qian 2018). The firewall of web
application does this by safeguarding them against most of the threats. The threats include the
protection of SQL injection, protection against the violations of HTTP protocol, protection
against the scanners, bots and crawlers. A web application firewall that is centralized in order
to protect against the attacks of web makes management of security very much simpler and
gives intrusions that are much better against the intrusion attack.
Security Center
The center of security continuously evaluates the state of security of the assets of
Azure for the security of network best practices When the security center recognises the
vulnerabilities of potential security, it develops recommendations that guides the users via the
procedures of configuring the needed controls in order to set and protection of the assets.
Antimalware and Antivirus
With the IaaS of Azure, the users can utilise the antimalware software from the
vendors of security in order to safeguard the virtual machines from the files that are
malicious, adware and the adjacent risks for the cloud services of Azure and the virtual
machines is a ability of protecting that helps to recognise and then get rid of the viruses and
the other softwares that are malicious. The Microsoft Antimalware gives alerts that are
configurable when they are known to be malicious or harmful to install or execute on the
systems of Azure. The Microsoft Antimalware can be implemented utilising the security
center of Azure.
Hardware Security Module
The authentication and the encryption do not upgrade the security unless the keys that
are used are protected (Stiles 2019). The users can simplify the security and the management
of the secrets and the keys that are critical by keeping them in the vault of key of Azure. The

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key vault gives the alternative in order to store the keys in the modules of security of
hardware. The keys of server encryption of SQL that is used for backup for the encryption of
transparent data and it can be stored in the key vaults with any of the keys. The permissions
and the right of entry to these items that are protected are controlled via the active directory
of Azure.
Virtual Machine backup
The backup of Azure is an important solution that safeguards the application data with
investment with zero capital and costs that is reduced of operation. The errors of applications
can corrupt the data of user, the errors of the humans can introduce some bugs in to the
application, and it can lead to problems of security. With the backup of Azure, the virtual
machines that are running on Linux and Windows are sheltered (Katzer 2018).
Secure Identity
Microsoft Azure utilizes the security technologies and practices across its services and
products in order to manage the access and the identity (Copeland 2017).
 Microsoft Authenticator: It offers a multi-factor authentication knowledge that is user
friendly and that works with Microsoft Accounts and Microsoft Azure Active Directory.
It consists of fingerprints that are based on approvals and support for wearables.
 Password policy enforcement: It maximizes the security of passwords that are traditional
by striking the requirements of length and complexity and the lookout of the account after
the attempts of failed authentication.
 Token based authentication: It enables verification through Active Directory of Azure
 Multi factor authentication: It needs the users to utilise more than one method for the
access in cloud and in premises. It gives authentications that are strong with simple
options of verification. It accommodates end users with a sign-in process that is simple.

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 Combined identity management: It enables the users to maintain the control of the access
of the users that is across platforms of cloud and internal datacenters thus developing
identity of single user for the verification and agreement to all the assets of Azure.
Azure Site Recovery
A very important part of the disaster recovery strategy of the organization is to figure
out the way to keep workloads of the corporate and the applications up and running when the
outages that are planned and unplanned occur (Rawat and Narain 2019). The Azure Site
Recovery assist replication of orchestrate, workloads recovery and many more and the
applications so that they are available from a location that is secondary if the location that is
primary goes down.
Secure Applications and Data
The Azure Active Directory, an identity that is comprehensive and access
management cloud solution. It assists to secure entry to the data that are present in the
applications in the cloud and in the website (Copeland 2017). It simplifies the management of
groups and users. It integrates services that are related to core directory, identity governance
that is advanced and many more. It makes it easier for the developers to create management
of identity that are based on policy into their applications. To upgrade the Active Directory of
Azure, the users can add capabilities that are paid, premium P2 editions and premium P1
editions.
Conclusion
The article concludes with the mitigation strategies of the security issues of Microsoft
Azure. Microsoft Azure is a cloud-based platform that is used by various organizations in
order to save important data and information. However, Microsoft Azure has various security
issues because the attackers are familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem. There are various

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security issues of Azure. The security issues of Azure include it is based on IT-centric and
not cloud centric and they are more vulnerable to attacks than the Amazon Web Services as
the attackers are more familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem. The mitigation strategies of
Microsoft Azure are also discussed in the article. The mitigation strategies will help the
various companies to mitigate the security issues of the Azure cloud services thus, solving the
security problems.

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