Cyber Intelligence
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Cloud Security

39 articles in this category

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Cloud Security16 min readJun 16, 2026

CIEM vs CSPM: Understanding the Difference and Why You Need Both

Your CSPM dashboard shows a clean score while a compromised Lambda function silently reads S3 buckets across accounts, because CSPM does not model who can do what to your cloud resources. This guide draws the exact line between CSPM and CIEM, covers where each fails without the other, and gives you KQL queries, CLI commands, and a hardening checklist to operationalize both.

CIEMCSPMCloud Security
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Cloud Security14 min readJun 9, 2026

Azure DDoS Protection Standard: When You Need It and How to Configure It

Azure DDoS Network Protection costs roughly $2,944 per month and stops Layer 3 and Layer 4 volumetric attacks: UDP floods, SYN floods, DNS amplification. It does not protect against HTTP floods, Slowloris, or TLS exhaustion targeting your Application Gateway. This guide covers the exact scenarios where the cost is justified, how to configure the plan correctly in Bicep, what Adaptive Protection actually does in practice, and how to set up the metrics and alerts required to claim SLA credits after a mitigation event.

Azure DDoS ProtectionDDoSAzure Security
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Cloud Security16 min readJun 9, 2026

Defender for Cloud Apps (MCAS): CASB Configuration for Zero Trust

Conditional Access secures the authentication gate but has no visibility into what users do inside cloud apps after sign-in, which OAuth apps hold delegated permissions to tenant data, or which unsanctioned SaaS tools are in use across the organization. This guide covers the complete Defender for Cloud Apps zero trust configuration: Cloud Discovery with Defender for Endpoint integration, Conditional Access App Control session policies, file-level DLP, and OAuth App Governance, with KQL queries to monitor enforcement from day one.

Defender for Cloud AppsMCASCASB
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Cloud Security15 min readJun 5, 2026

Cloud Incident Response Playbook 2026: Azure Sentinel, Defender XDR, and KQL

Responding to a security incident in the cloud is fundamentally different from on-premises IR. There is no physical access to affected machines, resources spin up and disappear in minutes, and the blast radius of a compromised identity can span an entire tenant in seconds. This playbook walks through the full NIST incident response lifecycle applied to Azure environments, with concrete KQL triage queries for Microsoft Sentinel, Defender XDR containment actions, evidence collection from Azure-native forensics sources, and a post-incident review framework. Whether you are handling a compromised service principal, an insider data exfiltration event, or a mass resource deletion, this guide gives you the exact commands, queries, and decision points to work through each phase systematically.

Incident ResponseMicrosoft SentinelDefender XDR
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Cloud Security14 min readJun 5, 2026

SOC 2 Type II Audit Preparation for Cloud Companies: 90-Day Checklist 2026

Most SOC 2 guides explain the framework. Almost none explain how to actually prepare for an audit when you run infrastructure on AWS or Azure. The gap between understanding the Trust Services Criteria and producing 12 months of auditor-ready evidence is where cloud companies fail. Auditors do not want your policy documents. They want log exports, access review records, penetration test reports, and proof that every control operated continuously, not just on the day the auditor arrived. This guide delivers a week-by-week 90-day preparation timeline, cloud-specific evidence collection for both Azure and AWS, a table of all five Trust Services Criteria mapped to the exact evidence auditors request, and the seven most common gaps that derail Type II opinions. Whether you are starting your first SOC 2 program or fixing a failed audit cycle, this is the operational guide you need.

SOC 2ComplianceCloud Security
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Cloud Security16 min readJun 5, 2026

Threat Hunting in Microsoft Sentinel: KQL Queries and MITRE ATT&CK Methodology 2026

Most security operations teams are reactive: they wait for an alert, investigate, and close. Threat hunting flips that model. A hunter starts with a hypothesis about attacker behavior, goes looking for evidence of that behavior in telemetry before any alert fires, and either confirms or disproves the hypothesis. In Microsoft Sentinel, that process is powered by KQL queries against your Log Analytics workspace, structured around the MITRE ATT&CK framework to ensure coverage maps to real attacker techniques. This guide walks through the full threat hunting cycle, eight production-ready KQL queries mapped to specific ATT&CK technique IDs, how to use Sentinel's dedicated hunting interface, how to build a hypothesis from threat intelligence, and how to convert a successful hunt finding into a permanent detection rule. Whether you are standing up a hunting program or deepening an existing one, this is the practical workflow.

Threat HuntingMicrosoft SentinelKQL
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Cloud Security18 min readJun 2, 2026

Container Security in Azure: AKS + Defender for Containers Complete Guide

Most AKS clusters deployed between 2020 and 2022 have no Pod Security Admission, overly permissive RBAC, and Defender for Containers disabled. That combination is not theoretical risk: a single privileged pod or unscanned image with a critical CVE is all it takes for a container escape to become a full cluster compromise. This guide covers the full security stack for production AKS workloads.

AKSKubernetesDefender for Containers
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Cloud Security10 min readJun 1, 2026

Build an Autonomous Phishing Triage Agent with Azure Logic Apps and MCP Servers

Azure Logic Apps Standard is moving toward agentic automation patterns, including preview support for exposing workflows as MCP servers and agent-style orchestration. This tutorial walks through a phishing triage reference architecture that checks URLs against VirusTotal, reads user risk scores from Microsoft Graph, and writes a structured verdict back to Microsoft Sentinel.

Azure Logic AppsMCPAutonomous Agents
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Cloud Security16 min readJun 1, 2026

Threat Modeling Azure Logic Apps Autonomous Agents Before You Ship to Production

Agentic automation with Azure Logic Apps and MCP servers introduces trust boundaries that do not exist in traditional playbooks: an LLM sits between your trigger and your actions, MCP servers extend its reasoning context, and your alert data enters an inference endpoint. This is a practical threat model covering prompt injection, MCP server trust, managed identity scoping, and a production readiness checklist.

Azure Logic AppsAutonomous AgentsThreat Modeling
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Cloud Security11 min readJun 1, 2026

Why Agentic AI in Azure Logic Apps Changes SOC Automation (And When Not to Use It)

Every mature Logic Apps SOAR playbook eventually becomes a 47-step branching tree that nobody fully understands. Agentic automation patterns replace parts of that tree with an LLM reasoning loop and approved MCP tools. This piece shows the real difference, covers where agents beat playbooks, and makes the case for when playbooks still win.

Azure Logic AppsAutonomous AgentsSOAR
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Cloud Security16 min readMay 28, 2026

GitHub Advanced Security: Complete Enterprise Setup and Optimization Guide

Most GitHub security deployments fail within 90 days due to alert backlog, not lack of features. The rollout sequence matters more than configuration: secret scanning first, code scanning with the default query suite, then dependency review. This guide covers enterprise-scale deployment across GitHub Code Security, GitHub Secret Protection, Defender for DevOps integration, and alert triage that actually works.

GitHub Advanced SecurityGHASCodeQL
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Cloud Security15 min readMay 28, 2026

Shadow AI in Enterprise: Detecting and Governing Unauthorized AI Usage

Your Conditional Access policies almost certainly have a gap for consumer AI tools. ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and Gemini fall through blocks designed for cloud storage because they are categorized differently in most CASB and proxy rule sets. This guide shows how to find exactly what AI traffic is leaving your environment and enforce policy before an auditor does it for you.

Shadow AIDefender for Cloud AppsCASB
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Cloud Security14 min readMay 26, 2026

AZ-500 vs SC-200 vs SC-300: Which Azure Security Cert Should You Get in 2026?

A senior engineer spent eight months studying for AZ-500 while his daily job was writing KQL detection rules and triaging Defender XDR incidents in Microsoft Sentinel. He passed, and forgot most of it within six months because the content never touched his actual work. This guide maps what each exam genuinely tests, who each certification is designed for, and provides a decision framework so you study the cert that reinforces the work you actually do.

AZ-500SC-200SC-300
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Cloud Security16 min readMay 26, 2026

Terraform Security Scanning: Checkov vs Trivy vs Terrascan Compared

A storage account with allow_nested_items_to_be_public = true slipped through a tfsec scan because a developer had suppressed the check three months earlier without removing the annotation after the risk was resolved. This guide compares Checkov, Trivy (the tfsec successor), and Terrascan across rule coverage, false positive rate, custom rule authoring, and CI/CD integration to help you build a pipeline that actually catches misconfigurations before they reach production.

TerraformIaC SecurityCheckov
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Cloud Security16 min readMay 22, 2026

Azure Firewall Premium vs Standard: When the Upgrade Is Worth It

Azure Firewall Standard blocked dozens of known-bad IPs during a red team engagement and missed the C2 channel entirely: it was HTTPS to a clean domain. Standard tier reads the TLS SNI header and stops there. This guide maps exactly what each tier detects, where the coverage gaps are, what the upgrade costs in practice, and the decision criteria that actually matter for regulated and unregulated workloads.

Azure FirewallAzure Firewall PremiumIDPS
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Cloud Security17 min readMay 22, 2026

Microsoft Security Score: How to Actually Improve It (Not Just Game It)

A tenant can jump from 45% to 78% in two weeks by accepting risk on 47 recommendations and excluding resources from scope without changing a single security control. This guide separates genuine hardening from score manipulation, maps which recommendations deliver real attack surface reduction, and provides the KQL queries and implementation sequence to build a credible 90-day improvement program.

Microsoft Security ScoreSecure ScoreEntra ID
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Cloud Security16 min readMay 21, 2026

Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Defender for Endpoint: What They Actually Cover

Defender for Identity sees everything in the authentication layer and nothing after a user logs on. Defender for Endpoint sees everything on the endpoint and nothing in the Kerberos or LDAP layer. This guide maps the exact coverage boundaries, overlap zones, common configuration gaps, and the KQL queries you need to correlate both products in Defender XDR.

Microsoft DefenderDefender for IdentityDefender for Endpoint
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Cloud Security20 min readMay 17, 2026

Microsoft Defender for Cloud 2026: New Features Deep-Dive

The early 2026 release wave is the largest update to Defender for Cloud since the product rebranded from Azure Security Center. Copilot for Security integration, the AI workloads protection plan, and revamped DevOps security all shipped within weeks of each other, with integration work left entirely to the operator. Here is what actually changed and what you need to configure.

Defender for CloudMicrosoft SecurityCSPM
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Cloud Security17 min readApr 26, 2026

Flexible Federated Identity Credentials in Entra ID: Secure GitHub Actions and Terraform Cloud Without Secret Sprawl

Standard workload identity federation works well until your trust rules start multiplying across branches, workflows, and environments. This guide explains how flexible federated identity credentials in Microsoft Entra ID reduce that sprawl for GitHub Actions and Terraform Cloud, with practical examples and guardrails.

Microsoft Entra IDWorkload Identity FederationGitHub Actions
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Cloud Security16 min readApr 18, 2026

Microsoft Sentinel to Defender Portal Migration Guide (2026-2027)

Microsoft Sentinel is generally available in the Microsoft Defender portal, and the Azure portal experience is scheduled to lose support after March 31, 2027. Every Azure security team needs a migration plan. This guide covers the unified portal's architecture, what changes for analysts, migration steps for workbooks and analytics rules, and the gotchas that will slow you down.

Microsoft SentinelDefender PortalMicrosoft Defender XDR

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