What are common Azure security risks?
Azure security risks are vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and threats that can compromise your Microsoft Azure cloud environment, potentially leading to data breaches, unauthorized access, or service disruptions. These risks span identity management, resource configurations, data storage, and application security across Azure's complex ecosystem.
Managing these risks involves implementing proper identity access management (IAM) permissions, eliminating misconfigurations, protecting data, and securing containerized and serverless applications. This article examines Azure's most pressing security risks and provides actionable approaches for effectively mitigating these challenges.
Azure Security Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
In this Cheat Sheet we’ll explore detailed aspects of Azure best practices, from role-based access control (RBAC) to cloud security posture management, that you can adapt to secure your Azure subscriptions.
Azure shared responsibility model
Security in Azure is a shared responsibility between Microsoft and you, the customer. Microsoft secures the underlying cloud infrastructure, including physical data centers, networking, and the foundational services. You are responsible for securing your own data, identities, applications, and configurations within Azure. This means you need to manage access controls, monitor for misconfigurations, and protect your workloads and data. Understanding where your responsibilities begin and end is key to closing security gaps. Tools like Wiz can help clarify these boundaries by providing contextual risk assessment across your Azure environment.
Top Azure security risks
While Azure security is a vast topic, there are few common areas where security risks invariably creep in. Here are the top six usual suspects and the necessary guardrails to prevent these risks from leading to breaches:
1. Microsoft Entra ID complexity
Identity complexity represents one of Azure's most critical security challenges because Microsoft Entra ID manages access to all your cloud resources through intricate federation protocols, hybrid integrations, and conditional access policies.
Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) serves as Azure's native IAM solution. Its complexity creates multiple attack vectors: improperly configured SAML federation can allow authentication manipulation, misconfigured admin permissions create security gaps, and legacy account synchronization with on-premises environments can provide backdoor access to your entire Azure tenant.
Challenges can also arise from password policy shortcomings and the misuse of Azure service principals and Entra ID accounts. If password complexity requirements are not enforced, attackers can use brute-force methods to crack the password easily. Phishing attacks or malware can compromise even the strongest of passwords. And passwords that employees reuse across work and personal accounts are a common target for exploitation by attackers. This could lead to a domino effect: A compromised system with weak security where a password is reused could lead to a compromised Azure environment.
Implement robust processes to manage configurations, identities, and access controls to mitigate these risks:
Best practices to protect Microsoft Entra ID
Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all accounts, especially admin accounts with elevated privileges.
Implement Conditional Access templates that help align your IAM policies with Microsoft-recommended best practices.
Leverage Microsoft Entra Password Protection to ensure that users are not setting weak or commonly used passwords.
Implement access risk policies to identify and prevent suspicious logins that could indicate identity theft.
Use certificate-based authentication for service principals, in addition to granting access based on the principle of least privilege. When compared to passwords, certificates are difficult to crack or steal, considering you can securely store them in key management solutions.
2. Azure Resource Manager and policy misconfigurations
Infrastructure misconfigurations occur when Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, policies, and scripts contain security flaws that get deployed across your entire environment.
ARM enables infrastructure as code (IaC) and helps organizations shift security left. But when ARM templates contain misconfigurations, these flaws get replicated at scale. Overly permissive Azure policies compound this problem by allowing insecure deployments to bypass security checks entirely.
The result: a single misconfigured template can create widespread vulnerabilities across multiple resources and environments.
To ensure a secure Azure environment, it's crucial to implement strict controls on ARM templates and enforce well-defined security policies following Azure security best practices.
Best practices to protect Azure Resource Manager and implement effective Azure policies
Leverage Azure DevOps Services or other CI/CD pipelines to automate deployments and enforce security checks.
Define Azure policies that implement restrictions around locations, resource types, and configurations; group them using policy initiatives wherever possible.
Here’s a built-in policy that can be enabled to ensure that all your Azure virtual machine subnets have a network security group attached:
{
"properties": {
"displayName": "Subnets should be associated with a Network Security Group",
"policyType": "BuiltIn",
"mode": "All",
"description": "Protect your subnet from potential threats caused by unrestricted access by implementing a Network Security Group (NSG) to filter ingress and egress traffic. "metadata": {
"version": "3.0.0",
"category": "Security Center"
},
"version": "3.0.0",
"parameters": {
"effect": {
"type": "String",
"metadata": {
"displayName": "Effect",
"description": "Enable or disable the execution of the policy"
},
"allowedValues": [
"AuditIfNotExists",
"Disabled"
],
"defaultValue": "AuditIfNotExists"
}
},
"policyRule": {
"if": {
"field": "type",
"equals": "Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/subnets"
},
"then": {
"effect": "[parameters('effect')]",
"details": {
"type": "Microsoft.Security/assessments",
"name": "eade5b56-eefd-444f-95c8-23f29e5d93cb",
"existenceCondition": {
"field": "Microsoft.Security/assessments/status.code",
"in": [
"NotApplicable",
"Healthy"
]
}
}
}
},
"versions": [
"3.0.0"
]
},
"id": "/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/policyDefinitions/e71308d3-144b-4262-b144-efdc3cc90517",
"type": "Microsoft.Authorization/policyDefinitions",
"name": "e71308d3-144b-4262-b144-efdc3cc90517"
}Test and validate policies in non-production environments before production deployments, and implement a continuous monitoring process to review and update policies.
Monitor the misconfigurations flagged in Azure Security Center that can be traced back to ARM templates and implement remediation measures. For example, if Azure Security Center flags publicly accessible storage, you’ll likely trace this misconfiguration back to the settings mentioned in the ARM template used to deploy it.
3. Ensuring serverless application security
Serverless security gaps emerge when Azure Functions and Logic Apps expose APIs without proper authentication or authorization controls, creating direct backdoors into your environment.
Azure Functions and Logic Apps provide scalability and deployment ease. However, their API-driven nature creates exposure risks. Publicly accessible endpoints without authentication become immediate attack vectors. Authorization flaws allow privilege escalation once attackers gain initial access.
Additionally, vulnerable function code can expose sensitive data or resources through insecure coding practices, outdated dependencies, or insufficient input validation.
Best practices to protect your serverless applications
Along with strong authentication and authorization mechanisms, implement Azure API Management to control access to serverless function APIs.
Regularly review and audit API access to identify and address potential misuse.
Follow coding best practices such as input validation and the use of secure coding libraries to eliminate software supply chain vulnerabilities.
Carry out regular penetration testing and vulnerability scans on serverless functions to proactively identify gaps.
4. Cloud data storage threats
Data storage vulnerabilities in Azure primarily stem from compromised access tokens and misconfigured storage permissions that expose sensitive information to unauthorized access.
Access token compromise represents the primary threat vector. Leaked tokens provide direct access to your storage accounts through multiple attack paths:
Credential theft: Phishing attacks, malware infections, or human error expose access tokens
Third-party breaches: Compromised integrations provide backdoor storage access
Blob hunting: Automated scanning identifies publicly accessible storage accounts with weak controls
Insider threats add another layer of risk, as malicious employees with legitimate access can steal, modify, or delete data while appearing to follow normal access patterns.
Best practices to protect your cloud data storage
Implement the principle of least privilege and use shared access signatures (SAS) to ensure time-limited, granular access control.
Enable Microsoft Defender for Storage to identify misconfigurations that can be exploited by blob hunters.
Leverage encryption at rest to further protect data, even if storage accounts are compromised.
Implement zero-trust mechanisms and continuous log monitoring to identify suspicious activity.
Conduct rigorous assessments of third-party partners before moving forward with cloud storage integration.
Azure Vulnerability Management Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
If your organization runs critical workloads on Azure and you’re looking for a clear, practical starting point for vulnerability management – this cheat sheet is for you.
5. Azure Container Registry and AKS vulnerabilities
Container vulnerabilities threaten your entire Azure application stack because compromised images, build pipelines, and AKS configurations can propagate security flaws across all deployed workloads.
Image-based risks form the foundation of container security threats. Vulnerable container images containing malware, outdated dependencies, or security flaws compromise every deployment using those images.
Build pipeline compromise amplifies these risks. When attackers infiltrate your container build process, they can inject malicious code that image scanning tools may miss.
AKS misconfigurations create additional exposure through inadequate RBAC settings, overly permissive network policies, and weak cluster configurations that enable lateral movement and workload compromise.
Follow these steps to keep your containers safe:
Best practices to protect your Azure Container Registry and AKS
Scan container images for vulnerabilities using tools such as Trivy or Clair to ensure that only validated images are deployed.
Use Azure CNI and Kubernetes native network policies to restrict traffic that flows between pods. Below is a sample network policy that restricts traffic within the namespace so that only pods labeled dev2 can send traffic over port 443 to pods labeled dev1:
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
name: demo-policy
namespace: test
spec:
podSelector:
matchLabels:
app: dev1
ingress:
- from:
- podSelector:
matchLabels:
app: dev2
ports:
- port: 443
protocol: TCPImplement a process for consistently updating image dependencies and deploying patches.
Leverage Microsoft Defender for Containers to monitor assets (such as clusters, nodes, workloads, and container registries), identify vulnerabilities, and prioritize them based on severity. Microsoft Defender for Containers can also provide runtime behavior monitoring to identify potential malware infections and attacks attempting to compromise your workloads.
Ensure the security of your build pipelines and implement access-control mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access and tampering. Use platforms like Azure DevOps with built-in security features, including RBAC, secrets management, and logging. You should also ensure that you are granting users only the required permissions to execute their tasks in the build pipeline.
6. Azure Key Vault mismanagement
Secrets management failures in Azure Key Vault create widespread security vulnerabilities when weak access controls, excessive privileges, or poor secrets hygiene expose your most sensitive credentials.
Key Vault's security depends entirely on proper configuration. Common misconfigurations include overly broad access permissions, inadequate rotation policies, and insufficient monitoring of secrets access patterns. The widespread exposure of secrets—affecting 61% of organizations according to Wiz's Code Security Report—makes credential scanning and proper secrets management critical.
In turn, compromised secrets can expose sensitive data such as passwords, API keys, and encryption keys, potentially enabling unauthorized access to Azure resources and causing data leaks. Furthermore, compromised cryptographic materials could render your data encryption useless, allowing attackers to decrypt sensitive information.
Best practices for protecting Azure Key Vault
Define clear policies for secrets rotation, minimizing the window of opportunity for attackers.
Implement granular access control for both the management plane and data plane using Azure Entra ID. For the management plane, you can use the predefined Key Vault roles or create custom RBAC roles restricting admin rights. For the data plane, you can assign specific permissions to Entra ID identities such as “Get” and “List” for keys/secrets to ensure you’re in alignment with the principle of least privilege.
Automate Azure Key Vault configuration using IaC to minimize manual errors.
Implement conditional access policies to further strengthen access control settings. You can use conditions such as locations, device platforms, sign-in risks, and more to implement access control.
How to identify Azure security risks in your environment
Identifying security risks in your Azure environment starts with gaining visibility into all your resources and configurations. Here's a practical approach:
Inventory your assets: List all subscriptions, resource groups, VMs, storage accounts, databases, and applications running in Azure.
Review access controls: Check who has access to what. Look for overly permissive roles, unused accounts, and missing multi-factor authentication.
Scan for misconfigurations: Use Azure Policy, Security Center, or a third-party tool to flag resources that don't meet security best practices.
Check for exposed data: Identify storage accounts, databases, or APIs that are publicly accessible or lack encryption.
Monitor for vulnerabilities: Regularly scan your workloads and containers for unpatched software or known vulnerabilities.
Correlate risks: Don't just look at issues in isolation. Combine findings to spot toxic combinations—like a public VM with a weak password and admin access.
Wiz makes this process easier by providing comprehensive visibility and risk correlation across your entire Azure environment. With agentless scanning and a unified risk graph, Wiz helps you quickly identify, prioritize, and remediate the risks that matter most.
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Enhancing Azure cloud service provider security with third-party tools
Security gaps persist even with Azure's built-in tools because native solutions lack the contextual analysis needed to identify complex attack paths and prioritize risks effectively.
Specialized security solutions like Wiz address these limitations by providing comprehensive visibility and risk correlation across your entire Azure environment.
Wiz's cloud-native Kubernetes security solution can scan for weaknesses, prioritize risks, and integrate with your development process, empowering you to monitor and mitigate threats in real time. With Wiz, you can expect:
End-to-end scanning: Wiz scans your entire AKS cluster (clusters, hosts, and pods) to identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Prioritized risks: Wiz prioritizes vulnerabilities, threats, and misconfigurations by combining information from cloud platforms and runtime behavior, helping you resolve the most pressing issues first and reducing alert fatigue.
Shift-left security: Wiz integrates right into the development process by scanning code and container images to prevent the deployment of vulnerable code, unsigned images, or misconfigured applications.
Real-time threat monitoring: Wiz offers up-to-the-minute threat monitoring and identifies suspicious activity on worker nodes, including unauthorized access and data exfiltration.
Code-level protection: Wiz scans YAML files and application code. Our all-in-one platform also scans IaC files, Dockerfiles, Helm charts, and Kubernetes manifests.
Compliance management: Wiz offers pre-built controls and rules to help you comply with security standards like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and NIST. You can also create custom compliance rules.
Ready to simplify and strengthen your AKS cluster security? Schedule a demo to see our industry-leading platform in action.
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