Azure security baseline for Service Fabric

This security baseline applies guidance from the Azure Security Benchmark version 1.0 to Service Fabric. The Azure Security Benchmark provides recommendations on how you can secure your cloud solutions on Azure. The content is grouped by the security controls defined by the Azure Security Benchmark and the related guidance applicable to Service Fabric.

You can monitor this security baseline and its recommendations using Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Azure Policy definitions will be listed in the Regulatory Compliance section of the Microsoft Defender for Cloud dashboard.

When a section has relevant Azure Policy Definitions, they are listed in this baseline to help you measure compliance to the Azure Security Benchmark controls and recommendations. Some recommendations may require a paid Microsoft Defender plan to enable certain security scenarios.

Note

Controls not applicable to Service Fabric, or for which the responsibility is Microsoft's, have been excluded. To see how Service Fabric completely maps to the Azure Security Benchmark, see the full Service Fabric security baseline mapping file.

Network Security

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Network Security.

1.1: Protect Azure resources within virtual networks

Guidance: Ensure that all Virtual Network subnet deployments have a network security group applied with network access controls specific to your application's trusted ports and sources.

Responsibility: Customer

1.2: Monitor and log the configuration and traffic of virtual networks, subnets, and NICs

Guidance: Use Microsoft Defender for Cloud and remediate network protection recommendations for the virtual network, subnet, and network security group being used to secure your Azure Service Fabric cluster. Enable network security group flow logs and send logs into an Azure Storage Account to traffic audit. You may also send network security groups flow logs to an Azure Log Analytics Workspace and use Azure Traffic Analytics to provide insights into traffic flow in your Azure cloud. Some advantages of Azure Traffic Analytics are the ability to visualize network activity and identify hot spots, identify security threats, understand traffic flow patterns, and pinpoint network misconfigurations.

Responsibility: Customer

1.3: Protect critical web applications

Guidance: Provide a front-end gateway to provide a single point of ingress for users, devices, or other applications. Azure API Management integrates directly with Service Fabric, allowing you to secure access to back-end services, prevent DOS attacks by using throttling, and verify API keys, JWT tokens, certificates, and other credentials.

Consider deploying Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) in front of critical web applications for additional inspection of incoming traffic. Enable Diagnostic Setting for WAF and ingest logs into a Storage Account, Event Hub, or Log Analytics Workspace.

Responsibility: Customer

1.4: Deny communications with known malicious IP addresses

Guidance: For protections from DDoS attacks, enable Azure DDoS Standard protection on the virtual network where your Azure Service Fabric cluster is deployed. Use Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrated threat intelligence to deny communications with known malicious or unused Internet IP addresses.

Responsibility: Customer

1.5: Record network packets

Guidance: Enable network security group flow logs for the network security groups attached to the subnet being used to protect your Service Fabric cluster. Record the NSG flow logs into an Azure Storage Account to generate flow records. If required for investigating anomalous activity, enable Azure Network Watcher packet capture.

Responsibility: Customer

1.6: Deploy network-based intrusion detection/intrusion prevention systems (IDS/IPS)

Guidance: Select an offer from the Azure Marketplace that supports IDS/IPS functionality with payload inspection capabilities. If intrusion detection and/or prevention based on payload inspection is not a requirement, Azure Firewall with Threat Intelligence can be used. Azure Firewall Threat intelligence-based filtering can alert and deny traffic to and from known malicious IP addresses and domains. The IP addresses and domains are sourced from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence feed.

Deploy the firewall solution of your choice at each of your organization's network boundaries to detect and/or deny malicious traffic.

Responsibility: Customer

1.7: Manage traffic to web applications

Guidance: Deploy Azure Application Gateway for web applications with HTTPS/SSL enabled for trusted certificates.

Responsibility: Customer

1.8: Minimize complexity and administrative overhead of network security rules

Guidance: Use Virtual network service tags to define network access controls on network security groups (NSG) that are attached to the subnet your Azure Service Fabric cluster is deployed in. You can use service tags in place of specific IP addresses when creating security rules. By specifying the service tag name (e.g., ApiManagement) in the appropriate source or destination field of a rule, you can allow or deny the traffic for the corresponding service. Microsoft manages the address prefixes encompassed by the service tag and automatically updates the service tag as addresses change.

Responsibility: Customer

1.9: Maintain standard security configurations for network devices

Guidance: Define and implement standard security configurations for network resources related to your Azure Service Fabric cluster. Use Azure Policy aliases in the "Microsoft.ServiceFabric" and "Microsoft.Network" namespaces to create custom policies to audit or enforce the network configuration of your Azure Service Fabric cluster.

You may also use Azure Blueprints to simplify large-scale Azure deployments by packaging key environment artifacts, such as Azure Resource Manager templates, Azure RBAC controls, and policies, in a single blueprint definition. Easily apply the blueprint to new subscriptions and environments, and fine-tune control and management through versioning.

Responsibility: Customer

1.10: Document traffic configuration rules

Guidance: Use tags for network security groups and other resources related to network security and traffic flow that are associated with your Service Fabric cluster. For individual network security groups rules, use the "Description" field to specify business need, duration and so on, for any rules that allow traffic to/from a network.

Use any of the built-in Azure Policy definitions related to tagging, such as "Require tag and its value" to ensure that all resources are created with Tags and to notify you of existing untagged resources.

You may use Azure PowerShell or Azure command-line interface (CLI) to look up or perform actions on resources based on their Tags.

Responsibility: Customer

1.11: Use automated tools to monitor network resource configurations and detect changes

Guidance: Use Azure Activity Log to monitor network resource configurations and detect changes for network resources related to your Azure Service Fabric deployments. Create alerts within Azure Monitor that will trigger when changes to critical network resources take place.

Responsibility: Customer

Logging and Monitoring

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Logging and Monitoring.

2.2: Configure central security log management

Guidance: You can onboard your Azure Service Fabric cluster to Azure Monitor to aggregate security data generated by the cluster. See example diagnostics problems and solutions with Service Fabric.

Responsibility: Customer

2.3: Enable audit logging for Azure resources

Guidance: Enable Azure Monitor for the Service Fabric cluster, direct it to a Log Analytics workspace. This will log relevant cluster information and OS metrics for all Azure Service Fabric cluster nodes.

Responsibility: Customer

2.4: Collect security logs from operating systems

Guidance: Onboard the Azure Service Fabric cluster to Azure Monitor. Ensure that the Log Analytics workspace used has the log retention period set according to your organization's compliance regulations.

Responsibility: Customer

2.5: Configure security log storage retention

Guidance: Onboard the Service Fabric cluster to Azure Monitor. Ensure that the Log Analytics workspace used has the log retention period set according to your organization's compliance regulations.

Responsibility: Customer

2.6: Monitor and review logs

Guidance: Use Azure Log Analytics workspace queries to query Azure Service Fabric logs.

Responsibility: Customer

2.7: Enable alerts for anomalous activities

Guidance: Use Azure Log Analytics workspace for monitoring and alerting on anomalous activities in security logs and events related to your Azure Service Fabric cluster.

Responsibility: Customer

2.8: Centralize anti-malware logging

Guidance: By default, Windows Defender is installed on Windows Server 2016. Refer to your Antimaleware documentation for configuration rules if you are not using Windows Defender. Windows Defender is not supported on Linux.

Responsibility: Customer

2.9: Enable DNS query logging

Guidance: Implement a third-party solution for DNS logging.

Responsibility: Customer

2.10: Enable command-line audit logging

Guidance: Manually configure console logging on a per-node basis.

Responsibility: Customer

Identity and Access Control

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Identity and Access Control.

3.1: Maintain an inventory of administrative accounts

Guidance: Maintain record of the local administrative account that is created during cluster provisioning of Azure Service Fabric cluster as well as any other accounts you create. In addition, if Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) integration is used, Azure AD has built-in roles that must be explicitly assigned and are therefore queryable. Use the Azure AD PowerShell module to perform adhoc queries to discover accounts that are members of administrative groups.

In addition, you may use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Identity and Access Management recommendations.

Responsibility: Customer

3.2: Change default passwords where applicable

Guidance: When provisioning a cluster, Azure requires you to create new passwords for the web portal. There are no default passwords to change, however you can specify different passwords for web portal access.

Responsibility: Customer

3.3: Use dedicated administrative accounts

Guidance: Integrate Authentication for Service Fabric with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Create policies and procedures around the use of dedicated administrative accounts.

In addition, you may use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Identity and Access Management recommendations.

Responsibility: Customer

3.4: Use single sign-on (SSO) with Azure Active Directory

Guidance: Wherever possible, use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) SSO instead of configuring individual stand-alone credentials per-service. Use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Identity and Access Management recommendations.

Responsibility: Customer

3.5: Use multi-factor authentication for all Azure Active Directory based access

Guidance: Enable Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) multifactor authentication and follow Microsoft Defender for Cloud Identity and Access Management recommendations.

Responsibility: Customer

3.6: Use dedicated machines (Privileged Access Workstations) for all administrative tasks

Guidance: Use Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) with multifactor authentication configured to log into and configure your Service Fabric clusters and related resources.

Responsibility: Customer

3.7: Log and alert on suspicious activities from administrative accounts

Guidance: Use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for generation of logs and alerts when suspicious or unsafe activity occurs in the environment. In addition, use Azure AD risk detections to view alerts and reports on risky user behavior.

Responsibility: Customer

3.8: Manage Azure resources from only approved locations

Guidance: Use Conditional Access Named Locations to allow access from only specific logical groupings of IP address ranges or countries/regions.

Responsibility: Customer

3.9: Use Azure Active Directory

Guidance: Use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) as the central authentication and authorization system to secure access to management endpoints of Service Fabric clusters. Azure AD protects data by using strong encryption for data at rest and in transit. Azure AD also salts, hashes, and securely stores user credentials.

Responsibility: Customer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitoring: The Azure Security Benchmark is the default policy initiative for Microsoft Defender for Cloud and is the foundation for Microsoft Defender for Cloud's recommendations. The Azure Policy definitions related to this control are enabled automatically by Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Alerts related to this control may require a Microsoft Defender plan for the related services.

Azure Policy built-in definitions - Microsoft.ServiceFabric:

Name
(Azure portal)
Description Effect(s) Version
(GitHub)
Service Fabric clusters should only use Azure Active Directory for client authentication Audit usage of client authentication only via Azure Active Directory in Service Fabric Audit, Deny, Disabled 1.1.0

3.10: Regularly review and reconcile user access

Guidance: Use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication with your Service Fabric cluster. Azure AD provides logs to help discover stale accounts. In addition, use Azure Identity Access Reviews to efficiently manage group memberships, access to enterprise applications, and role assignments. User's access can be reviewed on a regular basis to make sure only the right Users have continued access.

Responsibility: Customer

3.11: Alert on account login behavior deviation

Guidance: Use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Sign-in and Audit logs to monitor for attempts to access deactivated accounts; these logs can be integrated into any third-party SIEM/monitoring tool.

You can streamline this process by creating Diagnostic Settings for Azure AD user accounts, sending the audit logs and sign-in logs to an Azure Log Analytics workspace. Configure desired Alerts within Azure Log Analytics workspace.

Responsibility: Customer

3.12: Alert on account sign-in behavior deviation

Guidance: Use Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Risk and Identity Protection features to configure automated responses to detected suspicious actions related to user identities. You can also ingest data into Microsoft Sentinel for further investigation.

Responsibility: Customer

Data Protection

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Data Protection.

4.1: Maintain an inventory of sensitive Information

Guidance: Use tags on resources related to your Service Fabric cluster deployments to assist in tracking Azure resources that store or process sensitive information.

Responsibility: Customer

4.2: Isolate systems storing or processing sensitive information

Guidance: Implement separate subscriptions and/or management groups for development, test, and production. Resources should be separated by Virtual Network or subnet, tagged appropriately, and secured by a network security groups or Azure Firewall. Resources storing or processing sensitive data should be sufficiently isolated. For Virtual Machines storing or processing sensitive data, implement policy and procedures to turn them off when not in use.

Responsibility: Customer

4.3: Monitor and block unauthorized transfer of sensitive information

Guidance: Deploy an automated tool on network perimeters that monitors for unauthorized transfer of sensitive information and blocks such transfers while alerting information security professionals.

For the underlying platform which is managed by Microsoft, Microsoft treats all customer content as sensitive and goes to great lengths to guard against customer data loss and exposure. To ensure customer data within Azure remains secure, Microsoft has implemented and maintains a suite of robust data protection controls and capabilities.

Responsibility: Shared

4.4: Encrypt all sensitive information in transit

Guidance: Encrypt all sensitive information in transit. Ensure that any clients connecting to your Azure resources are able to negotiate TLS 1.2 or greater.

For Service Fabric client-to-node mutual authentication, use a X.509 certificate for server identity and TLS encryption of http communication. Any number of additional certificates can be installed on a cluster for application security purposes, including encryption and decryption of application configuration values and data across nodes during replication. Follow Microsoft Defender for Cloud recommendations for encryption at rest and encryption in transit, where applicable.

Responsibility: Shared

4.5: Use an active discovery tool to identify sensitive data

Guidance: Data identification, classification, and loss prevention features are not yet available for Azure Storage or compute resources. Implement third-party solution if required for compliance purposes.

For the underlying platform which is managed by Microsoft, Microsoft treats all customer content as sensitive and goes to great lengths to guard against customer data loss and exposure. To ensure customer data within Azure remains secure, Microsoft has implemented and maintains a suite of robust data protection controls and capabilities.

Responsibility: Shared

4.7: Use host-based data loss prevention to enforce access control

Guidance: For Service Fabric clusters storing or processing sensitive information, mark the cluster and related resources as sensitive using tags. Data identification, classification, and loss prevention features are not yet available for Azure Storage or compute resources. Implement third-party solution if required for compliance purposes.

For the underlying platform which is managed by Microsoft, Microsoft treats all customer content as sensitive and goes to great lengths to guard against customer data loss and exposure. To ensure customer data within Azure remains secure, Microsoft has implemented and maintains a suite of robust data protection controls and capabilities.

Responsibility: Shared

4.8: Encrypt sensitive information at rest

Guidance: Use encryption at rest on all Azure resources. Microsoft recommends allowing Azure to manage your encryption keys, however there is the option for you to manage your own keys in some instances.

Responsibility: Customer

Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitoring: The Azure Security Benchmark is the default policy initiative for Microsoft Defender for Cloud and is the foundation for Microsoft Defender for Cloud's recommendations. The Azure Policy definitions related to this control are enabled automatically by Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Alerts related to this control may require a Microsoft Defender plan for the related services.

Azure Policy built-in definitions - Microsoft.ServiceFabric:

Name
(Azure portal)
Description Effect(s) Version
(GitHub)
Service Fabric clusters should have the ClusterProtectionLevel property set to EncryptAndSign Service Fabric provides three levels of protection (None, Sign and EncryptAndSign) for node-to-node communication using a primary cluster certificate. Set the protection level to ensure that all node-to-node messages are encrypted and digitally signed Audit, Deny, Disabled 1.1.0

4.9: Log and alert on changes to critical Azure resources

Guidance: Use Azure Monitor with the Azure Activity Log to create alerts for when changes take place to critical Azure resources.

Responsibility: Customer

Vulnerability Management

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Vulnerability Management.

5.1: Run automated vulnerability scanning tools

Guidance: Regularly run the Service Fabric Fault Analysis Service and Chaos services to simulate faults throughout the cluster to assess the robustness and reliability of your services.

Follow recommendations from Microsoft Defender for Cloud on performing vulnerability assessments on your Azure virtual machines and container images.

Use a third-party solution for performing vulnerability assessments on network devices and web applications. When conducting remote scans, do not use a single, perpetual, administrative account. Consider implementing JIT provisioning methodology for the scan account. Credentials for the scan account should be protected, monitored, and used only for vulnerability scanning.

Responsibility: Customer

5.2: Deploy automated operating system patch management solution

Guidance: Enable automatic OS image upgrades on the virtual machine scale sets of your Service Fabric cluster.

Alternately, to test OS patches first before going to production, use the manual trigger for OS image upgrades of your scale set. Note that the manual trigger option doesn't provide built-in rollback. Monitor OS patches using Update Management from Azure Automation.

Responsibility: Customer

5.3: Deploy automated patch management solution for third-party software titles

Guidance: Enable automatic OS image upgrades on the virtual machine scale sets of your Azure Service Fabric cluster. Patch Orchestration Application (POA) is an alternative solution that is intended for Service Fabric clusters hosted outside of Azure. POA can be used with Azure clusters, with some additional hosting overhead.

Responsibility: Customer

5.4: Compare back-to-back vulnerability scans

Guidance: Export scan results at consistent intervals and compare the results to verify that vulnerabilities have been remediated. When using vulnerability management recommendations suggested by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, you may pivot into the selected solution's portal to view historical scan data.

Responsibility: Customer

5.5: Use a risk-rating process to prioritize the remediation of discovered vulnerabilities

Guidance: Use a common risk scoring program (e.g. Common Vulnerability Scoring System) or the default risk ratings provided by your third-party scanning tool.

Responsibility: Customer

Inventory and Asset Management

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Inventory and Asset Management.

6.1: Use automated asset discovery solution

Guidance: Use Azure Resource Graph to query/discover all resources (such as compute, storage, network, ports, and protocols etc.) within your subscription(s). Ensure appropriate (read) permissions in your tenant and enumerate all Azure subscriptions as well as resources within your subscriptions.

Although classic Azure resources may be discovered via Resource Graph, it is highly recommended to create and use Azure Resource Manager resources going forward.

Responsibility: Customer

6.2: Maintain asset metadata

Guidance: Apply tags to Azure resources giving metadata to logically organize them into a taxonomy.

Responsibility: Customer

6.3: Delete unauthorized Azure resources

Guidance: Use tagging, management groups, and separate subscriptions, where appropriate, to organize and track assets. Reconcile inventory on a regular basis and ensure unauthorized resources are deleted from the subscription in a timely manner.

Responsibility: Customer

6.4: Define and maintain inventory of approved Azure resources

Guidance: Define approved Azure resources and approved software for compute resources.

Responsibility: Customer

6.5: Monitor for unapproved Azure resources

Guidance: Use Azure Policy to put restrictions on the type of resources that can be created in customer subscription(s) using the following built-in policy definitions:

  • Not allowed resource types

  • Allowed resource types

Use Azure Resource Graph to query/discover resources within your subscriptions. Ensure that all Azure resources present in the environment are approved.

Responsibility: Customer

6.6: Monitor for unapproved software applications within compute resources

Guidance: Implement a third-party solution to monitor cluster nodes for unapproved software applications.

Responsibility: Customer

6.7: Remove unapproved Azure resources and software applications

Guidance: Use Azure Resource Graph to query/discover all resources (such as compute, storage, network, ports, and protocols etc.), including Service Fabric clusters, within your subscriptions. Remove any unapproved Azure resources that you discover. For Service Fabric cluster nodes, implement a third-party solution to remove or alert on unapproved software.

Responsibility: Customer

6.8: Use only approved applications

Guidance: For Service Fabric cluster nodes, implement a third-party solution to prevent unauthorized software from executing.

Responsibility: Customer

6.9: Use only approved Azure services

Guidance: Use Azure Policy to restrict which services you can provision in your environment.

Responsibility: Customer

6.10: Maintain an inventory of approved software titles

Guidance: For Azure Service Fabric cluster nodes, implement a third-party solution to prevent unauthorized file types from executing.

Responsibility: Customer

6.11: Limit users' ability to interact with Azure Resource Manager

Guidance: Use Azure Conditional Access to limit users' ability to interact with Azure Resources Manager by configuring "Block access" for the "Microsoft Azure Management" App.

Responsibility: Customer

6.12: Limit users' ability to execute scripts within compute resources

Guidance: Use operating system-specific configurations or third-party resources to limit users' ability to execute scripts within Azure compute resources.

Responsibility: Customer

6.13: Physically or logically segregate high risk applications

Guidance: Software that is required for business operations, but may incur higher risk for the organization, should be isolated within its own virtual machine and/or virtual network and sufficiently secured with either an Azure Firewall or Network Security Group.

Responsibility: Customer

Secure Configuration

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Secure Configuration.

7.1: Establish secure configurations for all Azure resources

Guidance: Use Azure Policy aliases in the "Microsoft.ServiceFabric" namespace to create custom policies to audit or enforce the network configuration of your Service Fabric cluster.

Responsibility: Customer

7.2: Establish secure operating system configurations

Guidance: Service Fabric Operating System Images are managed and maintained by Microsoft. Customer responsible for implementing secure configurations for your cluster nodes' operating system.

Responsibility: Customer

7.3: Maintain secure Azure resource configurations

Guidance: Use Azure Policy [deny] and [deploy if not exist] effects to enforce secure settings for your Azure Service Fabric clusters and related resources.

Responsibility: Customer

7.4: Maintain secure operating system configurations

Guidance: Service Fabric cluster Operating System Images managed and maintained by Microsoft. Customer is responsible for implementing OS-level state configuration.

Responsibility: Shared

7.5: Securely store configuration of Azure resources

Guidance: If using custom Azure Policy definitions, use Azure DevOps or Azure Repos to securely store and manage your code.

Responsibility: Customer

7.6: Securely store custom operating system images

Guidance: If using custom images, use Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) to ensure only authorized users may access the images. For container images, store them in Azure Container Registry and leverage Azure RBAC to ensure only authorized users may access the images.

Responsibility: Customer

7.7: Deploy configuration management tools for Azure resources

Guidance: Use Azure Policy aliases in the "Microsoft.ServiceFabric" namespace to create custom policies to alert, audit, and enforce system configurations. Additionally, develop a process and pipeline for managing policy exceptions.

Responsibility: Customer

7.9: Implement automated configuration monitoring for Azure resources

Guidance: Use Azure Policy aliases in the "Microsoft.ServiceFabric" namespace to create custom policies to audit or enforce the configuration of your Service Fabric cluster.

Responsibility: Customer

7.10: Implement automated configuration monitoring for operating systems

Guidance: Use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to perform baseline scans for OS and Docker Settings for containers.

Responsibility: Customer

7.11: Manage Azure secrets securely

Guidance: Use Managed Service Identity in conjunction with Azure Key Vault to simplify and secure secret management for your cloud applications.

Responsibility: Customer

7.12: Manage identities securely and automatically

Guidance: Managed identities can be used in Azure-deployed Service Fabric clusters, and for applications deployed as Azure resources. Managed Identities allows you to authenticate to any service that supports Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication, including Key Vault, without any credentials in your code.

Responsibility: Customer

7.13: Eliminate unintended credential exposure

Guidance: If using any code related to your Azure Service Fabric deployment, you may implement Credential Scanner to identify credentials within code. Credential Scanner will also encourage moving discovered credentials to more secure locations such as Azure Key Vault.

Use Azure Key Vault to rotate Service Fabric cluster certificates automatically.

Responsibility: Customer

Malware Defense

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Malware Defense.

8.1: Use centrally managed anti-malware software

Guidance: By default, Windows Defender antivirus is installed on Windows Server 2016. The user interface is installed by default on some SKUs, but is not required.

Refer to your Antimalware documentation for configuration rules if you are not using Windows Defender. Windows Defender isn't supported on Linux.

Responsibility: Customer

Data Recovery

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Data Recovery.

9.1: Ensure regular automated back ups

Guidance: The Backup and Restore service in Service Fabric enables easy and automatic backup of information stored in stateful services. Backing up application data on a periodic basis is fundamental for guarding against data loss and service unavailability. Service Fabric provides an optional backup and restore service, which allows you to configure periodic backup of stateful Reliable Services (including Actor Services) without having to write any additional code. It also facilitates restoring previously taken backups.

Responsibility: Customer

9.2: Perform complete system backups and backup any customer-managed keys

Guidance: Enable backup restore service in your Service Fabric cluster and create backup policies to back up stateful services periodically and on-demand. Back up customer-managed keys within Azure Key Vault.

Responsibility: Customer

9.3: Validate all backups including customer-managed keys

Guidance: Ensure ability to perform restoration from the backup restore service by periodically reviewing backup configuration information and available backups. Test restoration of backed up customer-managed keys.

Responsibility: Customer

9.4: Ensure protection of backups and customer-managed keys

Guidance: Backups from Service Fabric backup restore service use an Azure Storage account in your subscription. Azure Storage encrypts all data in a storage account at rest. By default, data is encrypted with Microsoft-managed keys. For additional control over encryption keys, you can supply customer-managed keys for encryption of storage data.

If you are using customer-managed-keys, ensure Soft-Delete in Key Vault is enabled to protect keys against accidental or malicious deletion.

Responsibility: Customer

Incident Response

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Incident Response.

10.1: Create an incident response guide

Guidance: Develop an incident response guide for your organization. Ensure there are written incident response plans that define all the roles of personnel as well as the phases of incident handling and management from detection to post-incident review.

Responsibility: Customer

10.2: Create an incident scoring and prioritization procedure

Guidance: Microsoft Defender for Cloud assigns a severity to each alert to help you prioritize which alerts should be investigated first. The severity is based on how confident Microsoft Defender for Cloud is in the finding or the metric used to issue the alert as well as the confidence level that there was malicious intent behind the activity that led to the alert.

Additionally, mark subscriptions using tags and create a naming system to identify and categorize Azure resources, especially those processing sensitive data. It's your responsibility to prioritize the remediation of alerts based on the criticality of the Azure resources and environment where the incident occurred.

Responsibility: Customer

10.3: Test security response procedures

Guidance: Conduct exercises to test your systems’ incident response capabilities on a regular cadence. Identify weak points and gaps and revise plan as needed.

Responsibility: Customer

10.4: Provide security incident contact details and configure alert notifications for security incidents

Guidance: Security incident contact information will be used by Microsoft to contact you if the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) discovers that your data has been accessed by an unlawful or unauthorized party. Review incidents after the fact to ensure that issues are resolved.

Responsibility: Customer

10.5: Incorporate security alerts into your incident response system

Guidance: Export your Microsoft Defender for Cloud alerts and recommendations using the Continuous Export feature. Continuous Export allows you to export alerts and recommendations either manually or in an ongoing, continuous fashion. You may use the Microsoft Defender for Cloud data connector to stream the alerts to Sentinel.

Responsibility: Customer

10.6: Automate the response to security alerts

Guidance: Use the Workflow Automation feature in Microsoft Defender for Cloud to automatically trigger responses via "Logic Apps" on security alerts and recommendations.

Responsibility: Customer

Penetration Tests and Red Team Exercises

For more information, see the Azure Security Benchmark: Penetration Tests and Red Team Exercises.

11.1: Conduct regular penetration testing of your Azure resources and ensure remediation of all critical security findings

Guidance: Follow the Microsoft Cloud Penetration Testing Rules of Engagement to ensure your penetration tests are not in violation of Microsoft policies. Use Microsoft's strategy and execution of Red Teaming and live site penetration testing against Microsoft-managed cloud infrastructure, services, and applications.

Responsibility: Shared

Next steps