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Azure Security Center Pricing And Features: Monitoring Cloud Computing Resources

Posted by Kevin Booth on Jan, 21, 2022 12:01

Microsoft’s Azure Security Center is a solution for streamlined security monitoring across hybrid cloud workloads. It protects data centers from threats in both cloud and on-premises workloads. The platform is also compatible with hybrid clouds outside of the Azure environment. In this blog post, we will focus on understanding Azure Security Center Pricing and features in detail.

When your company makes its way to the cloud, the Azure Security Center is designed to answer a serious challenge. When migrating to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), the cloud client has greater obligations than when migrating to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where the cloud-service providers handle the majority of activities connected to network and service security.

Azure Security Center Pricing And Features

Security Center assists your organization by:

Azure Security center
  • After reviewing your environment, it provides your team with a clear picture of the state of your resources. This type of evaluation allows you to see if your resources are safe.
  • Sending out security alerts and making threat avoidance suggestions. Security Center keeps an eye on your workloads to see if any security regulations are being broken.
  • Seamless provisioning of services, as the Security Center is an integral element of the overall Azure solution. This allows you to effortlessly integrate Security Center into your Azure-based settings.

Organizations may use Azure Security Center to manage the security of an ever-increasing number of services that are always under attack from sophisticated malware.

Cloud Security Challenges

Azure Security Center Pricing

With its Free tier and expanded security features, Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps you safeguard resources across Azure, other clouds, and on-premises. The Microsoft Defender for Cloud Free Tier features a Secure Score for Azure and AWS environments, as well as continuous evaluation and security advice.

For the first 30 days, Microsoft Defender for Cloud is free. Any usage that lasts longer than 30 days will be directly charged according to the Azure Security Center pricing structure listed below.

Resource TypePrice
Microsoft Defender for Servers$0.02/Server/hour
Included data – 500 MB/day
Microsoft Defender for App Service$0.02/App Service/hour
Microsoft Defender for SQL on Azure$0.021/Instance/hour2
Microsoft Defender for SQL outside Azure$0.015/vCore/hour3
Microsoft Defender for MySQL$15/Instance/month
Microsoft Defender for PostgreSQL$15/Instance/month
Microsoft Defender for MariaDB$0.021/Instance/hour
Microsoft Defender for Storage1$0.02/10K transactions
Microsoft Defender for Kubernetes$0.00268/vCore/hour
Microsoft Defender for ACR$0.29/image
Microsoft Defender for Containers$7/vCore/month 4 5
Microsoft Defender for Key Vault$0.02/10K transactions
Microsoft Defender for ARM$4/1M API calls
Microsoft Defender for DNS$0.70/1M Queries

Microsoft Defender for IoT (formerly Azure Defender for IoT)

Defender for IoT delivers unified security for IoT/OT environments, offering two different sets of capabilities depending on whether you need to protect existing IoT/OT environments or are securing new IoT/OT devices that are provisioned and managed through Azure IoT Hub.

Agentless monitoring

Defender for IoT’s agentless monitoring features secure current business IoT/OT environments by automatically discovering assets, managing vulnerabilities, and detecting advanced threats.

For the first 1,000 committed devices, Defender for IoT’s agentless monitoring features is free for the first 30 days. Customers will be billed according to the rates shown below after that. Incorporating Defender for IoT alerts and incidents into Microsoft Sentinel is free.

SolutionPrice
Defender for IoT agentless monitoring – on-premises$1,400/month per 1,000 monitored devices, based on commitment1
Azure Security Center modules

Security for new devices provisioned through IoT Hub

For the first 30 days, these security features are completely free. Any usage that lasts longer than 30 days will be subsequently charged at the rates listed below.

SolutionPrice
Defender for IoT for devices managed by IoT Hub – by device$0.001/month
Defender for IoT for devices managed by IoT Hub – by messages$0.20/25K transactions

Primary Features of Azure Security Center

  • Examine and improve your cloud resources’ security settings.
  • Ensure that important industry and regulatory requirements are met.
  • Implement threat security for Azure, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and on-premises workloads.
  • Safeguard your multi-cloud and hybrid workloads from malicious assaults by detecting loopholes.

IoT Device Protection through Azure Security Center

Attackers aim to compromise IoT systems by exploiting security flaws, therefore incorporating security into every aspect of your IoT solution is critical for reducing threats to your data, company assets, and reputation.

Here is how you can protect your IoT device

For every aspect of your IoT system, reap the benefits of built-in safety, transparency, and management through Azure Security Center. With security by design, you can help avoid security leaks and weak areas in your devices and services, as well as get stack-ranked ideas for new security enhancements you may adopt. With easy-to-follow actions sorted by significance, you can keep a track of all of your IoT devices in near real-time, block hacked devices, and detect and eliminate risks. 

AI’s Role in Reducing False Alarms in Azure Security Center

The Azure Security Center Pricing model provides, enhanced visibility and management over the security of all your Azure resources, it lets you avoid, detect, and respond to attacks. AI improves the intelligence and speed with which you notice and respond to threats. Security-related events from Azure installations are automatically gathered and evaluated, with the help of Microsoft’s worldwide threat intelligence and expertise, to detect real threats and eliminate false alarms. The real-time warnings result in offering insights into the attack campaign and recommend solutions to swiftly remediate and recuperate.

Azure sentinel and SIEM

Connecting Azure Security Center with Azure Sentinel and SIEM

  • Open Azure Dashboard and sign in with a user who has access to both the workspace and the resource group for which Azure Sentinel is activated.
  • Type Sentinel in the all services box, and then click Azure Sentinel. Tap in the workspace that you created previously on the Azure Sentinel workspaces blade.
  • When the Azure Sentinel-Overview dashboard appears, go to the left navigation pane and click data connectors under configuration.
  • Start entering Azure Security Center in the find by name or provider field, and afterward click on Azure Security Center. Right after, Click on the open connector page.
  • Select the connect button corresponding to the subscription name that has the Azure Security Center standard tier selected in the Configuration section of the Azure Security Center connection page.
  • If you choose, you can connect to many subscriptions. The connection status will display as Connecting for a short time before changing to Connected once it is complete.
  • Close the Azure Security Center page after ensuring that it is connected, and then click Refresh on the Data Connectors page to see the connector status display as connected.
  • All security alerts that are triggered will display in Azure Sentinel beyond this point.

Azure Security Center Integration with Azure Workflow Automation

Azure Security Center’s workflow automation feature:

This feature allows Azure Logic Apps to be activated in response to security alerts and suggestions. Every security program, on the other hand, has numerous incident response protocols. Alerting relevant stakeholders, initiating a change management procedure, and implementing particular remediation steps are examples of these processes.

Experts advise that you automate as many steps of such procedures as possible. That is to say, automation saves costs while also increasing security by guaranteeing that process steps are completed consistently and according to specifications.

Creating a Logic App and defining automatically running process

  • To start with, select Workflow automation from the Security Center sidebar. You may add new automation rules, as well as activate, deactivate, and remove existing ones, on this page.
  • Next, click Add workflow automation to create a new workflow. Following that, you may:

    1. Give the automation a name and a description.
    2. Set the triggers that will initiate the automatic workflow.

Finally, there’s the Logic App, which will activate when your triggered conditions are satisfied.

  • Select create a new one in the Actions area to begin the Logic App development process. You’ll now be directed to Azure Logic Apps.
  • Next, give your resource a name, a resource group, and a location, and then select Create.
  • Then, you may pick from built-in, predefined templates in the security area in your new Logic App. Furthermore, the following Security Center connection triggers are available in the Logic App designer:

    1. When an Azure Security Center Recommendation is created or triggered, for starters.
  • Proceed to the process automation definition pane (“Add workflow automation”) after you’ve defined your Logic App. To make sure your new Logic App is accessible for selection, press Refresh.
  • Finally, choose a Logic App and save the automation. However, the Logic App option only displays Logic Apps that support the above-mentioned Security Center interfaces.
Benefitrs

Azure Consultations by EPCGroup:

The EPC Group is currently one of the most well-known Azure consulting firms in the market. As a Microsoft gold certified partner, they can assist our clients in securing their hybrid workloads against security threats posed by quickly changing workloads, increasingly advanced threats, and a scarcity of security talent. The integrated security solutions allow the user company’s IT security staff to detect and analyze threats and odd activity before they become a problem, as well as dissect the whole history and consequences of a cyber-attack.

Conclusion:

Within the current Azure Security Center Pricing and features it is a game-changer in the market as it is appropriate for both small and large businesses. It provides pricing tiers based on per-node use, allowing you to pay as you go. Servers, app services, SQL databases, storage transactions, IoT devices, and other services may be added in any quantity

About the Author

Kevin Booth

Kevin’s role at EPC Group is Director of Operations where his experience ensures EPC technical team have all the required information, tools, and knowledge to exceed client expectations. Another aspect of Kevin’s daily task’s is to course correct an entire division keeping up with best practices alongside the latest technological threats.

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