At Microsoft, we are passionate about helping organizations digitally transform and deliver a secure and seamless experience. Cloud security and identity are top priorities for most customers, as IT modernization often spans multiple clouds. Modern identity security must consistently protect all users and resources across multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. Today, Microsoft is taking an important step toward that goal by acquiring CloudKnox Security, a leader in cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM). CloudKnox provides complete visibility into privileged access. We help organizations set permissions appropriately and consistently apply the principle of least privilege to reduce risk. Plus, use continuous analytics to prevent security breaches and ensure compliance. This strengthens our comprehensive approach to cloud security.
As organizations embrace hybrid working and adopt more cloud services, new service units that collaborate and share data without human intervention are proliferating. B. Virtual machines and containers. The proliferation of these service accounts and identities, and their increasing amounts of permissions, privileges, and permissions expose organizations to new attack vectors. When these permissions are left in the dark or unmanaged, business-critical systems are vulnerable to intrusion and disruption. High-profile breaches show how malicious actors can abuse privileged credentials to get away quickly.
While organizations are reaping the benefits of cloud adoption, they still struggle to assess, prevent, enforce, and manage privileged access across hybrid and multicloud environments. Even stitching together multiple siled systems gives an incomplete view of privileged access. Traditional privileged access management, identity governance and management solutions work well for on-premises environments but lack the end-to-end visibility required for multi-cloud permissions. Nor does it provide consistent identity lifecycle management or governance across multi-cloud or cloud-native environments.
In January, when I shared the five identity priorities for 2021, I stressed the importance of a Zero Trust security approach that verifies explicitly, grants least privileged access and always assumes breach — with identity as your first line of defense. As the corporate network perimeter disappears, it’s crucial to establish a strong cloud identity foundation, so you can enforce least privileged access to protect business-critical systems while improving business agility. We’re committed to making it easier to enforce least privileged access for all user and workload identities.
The acquisition of CloudKnox further enables Microsoft Azure Active Directory customers with granular visibility, continuous monitoring and automated remediation for hybrid and multi-cloud permissions. We are committed to providing our customers with unified privileged access management, identity governance and entitlement management including:
Automated and simplified access policy enforcement in one integrated multi-cloud platform for all human and workload identities. Broadest signaling, high accuracy, machine learning based anomaly detection.
Seamless integration with other Microsoft cloud security services such as Microsoft 365 Defender, Azure Defender, and Azure Sentinel.
Our acquisition of CloudKnox and our recent acquisition announcements at RiskIQ and ReFirm Labs, backed by over 3,500 Microsoft attorneys, give our customers the strongest defense, from chip to cloud. , consolidation and expansion demonstrate our focus and execution. We process over 8 trillion security signals every day. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to strengthen and defend the future of hybrid work and multi-cloud environments by providing critical visibility, control, and oversight of your Zero Trust requirements.
We are thrilled to bring the CloudKnox team and technology to his Microsoft and their mutual customers and look forward to their contributions. We will be sharing more information as we integrate CloudKnox with Microsoft’s identity, security and compliance solutions.
