Azure security starts with identity. Enforce MFA for all users, apply conditional access policies based on device compliance and sign-in risk, and eliminate standing global administrator access. Privileged Identity Management (PIM) should be used for just-in-time elevation to admin roles with approval workflows and session limits.
Entra ID is the control plane for most Azure access. Misconfigurations here cascade across every subscription. Review guest user access, application registrations, and service principal permissions regularly. Over-permissioned app registrations are an increasingly common attack path.
Network segmentation matters as much in Azure as on-premises. Use NSGs, Azure Firewall, and private endpoints to keep management interfaces and data services off the public internet. Hub-spoke topology with centralized egress inspection gives you consistent policy enforcement as workloads scale.
Private endpoints eliminate public internet exposure for PaaS services like Storage, SQL, and Key Vault. They are one of the highest-impact controls available and should be standard for production workloads handling sensitive data.
Defender for Cloud provides a strong starting point for posture management. Enable secure score tracking, remediate critical recommendations first, and integrate findings into your ticketing workflow. Use Defender for Cloud's regulatory compliance dashboard to map recommendations to ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and other frameworks.
Logging and monitoring should be centralized in a Log Analytics workspace with retention policies that meet your compliance requirements. Alert on identity changes, key vault access, and resource deployments in production subscriptions. Diagnostic settings should be enabled on every resource that supports them—do not rely on activity logs alone.
Azure Policy enforces guardrails at scale. Deploy initiative definitions for encryption, allowed regions, required tags, and denied resource types. Policies catch drift that manual reviews miss, especially in large tenants with many subscription owners.
Backup and recovery are security controls, not just operational ones. Test restore procedures for critical workloads, protect backups from ransomware with immutability features, and document RTO/RPO commitments that align with your risk appetite.
A practical Azure baseline combines strong identity controls, network isolation, continuous posture assessment, and centralized telemetry—implemented incrementally rather than as a big-bang project. Start with management group policies and identity hardening, then expand network controls and detection coverage subscription by subscription.