Keeping Azure secure – what you need to know

Here’s what you need to do

1. Follow Microsoft Security Best Practices.

2. Passwords

1. Follow password management policies with strong authentication and frequent password rotation
2. Use Passwordless sign-in with Microsoft Authenticator app
3. Verify all global admin users’ password recovery email and phone numbers within Azure AD and update if required

3. Access

1. Who has access to your Azure account? Review, audit and minimize access privileges and delegated permissions. Adopt a ‘least-privilege’ approach. Remove any unnecessary or unrecognised partner relationship accesses.
2. Review and tighten all tenant administrator accounts, including those with Administer on Behalf of (AOBO) in Azure subscriptions, and verify the authenticity of all users and activity.
3. Ensure that multifactor authentication (MFA) is enabled, and enforce conditional access policies. MFA is the best baseline security hygiene method to protect against threats. Follow the detailed guidance on setting up multi-factor authentication in Microsoft 365, and the guidance on deploying and configuring conditional access policies in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Contact SoftwareOne if you need assistance in getting this set up.

4. Activity

1. Review audit logs, sign-ins and any configuration changes. You can find these in your Azure AD sign in logs, Azure AD audit logs, and the Microsoft Purview compliance portal
2. Customers should frequently review subscriptions and resources or services that may have been provisioned unexpectedly.

Here's what we are doing

As a Microsoft partner who works with thousands of customers around the world, your security is our priority. This is how we are ensuring that we are keeping our customers secure:

1. All SoftwareOne access to customer environments is secured with MFA and Microsoft’s security feature DAP (Delegated Admin Privileges).
2. We follow the Secure Application Model framework.
3. Access rights are reviewed and changed regularly to reduce the likelihood that SoftwareOne accounts may be compromised. Delegated admin privileges are removed when not in use.
4. We track activity logs with custom security dashboards to show user activity and detect suspicious activities.
5. We follow a Zero Trust approach with passwordless sign-ins and use Privileged Identity Management to enforce just in time access to review and approve access.
6. SoftwareOne is actively engaged with our customers to detect any breaches to avoid and report financial spikes.
7. We have set alerts for fraud detection and overspend, to which SoftwareOne will react and advise impacted customers of such activity in their environment and assist them to remediate.
8. We follow Microsoft security best practice guidelines