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McAfee Extends Its Security Capabilities to Microsoft Azure

The list of major security players extending their offerings to protect Microsoft's cloud is growing.

McAfee this week announced new and upcoming security support for Microsoft Azure services via its Cloud Security Platform products -- namely, Skyhigh Security Cloud, Virtual Network Security Platform and Cloud Workload Security

The Skyhigh for Azure solution is now available, according to McAfee's announcement. It's one of the original cloud access security broker (CASB) solutions that was acquired last year by McAfee, an Intel spinoff company. CASB solutions typically are located on-premises or in a service provider's datacenters to add compliance, governance and security protections for organizations using cloud-based applications and services, according to Skyhigh's definition.

Organizations might use a CASB to identify the services used, including possible "shadow IT" applications. CASBs are also used to control data access and prevent the uploading of sensitive data.

Microsoft provides security protections for its Azure datacenters but organizations using Azure services still have their own security requirements to meet, which is what CASBs aim to provide.

McAfee Skyhigh for Azure supports Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Azure implementations, according to a McAfee blog post. It taps APIs for Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Active Directory, storage, SQL services, network security and logging. McAfee's solution is designed to indicate security misconfigurations, with the ability to track "60 Azure security configurations across all Azure services," according to McAfee. Skyhigh for Azure also can detect compromised accounts, block sensitive data storage and gather auditing information.

McAfee also described Azure support in its other solutions. The McAfee Cloud Workload Security product became available for use with Azure earlier this year. It can be used to protect workloads running on virtual machines. The McAfee Virtual Network Security Platform will be available to protect Azure users at the end of this month. This solution is designed to check for threats in virtualized infrastructure and block them.

Other well-known security solution providers also have been offering products designed to add protections for organizations using Azure services. Last month, the Symantec Web Security service was extended to add protections to Azure and Office 365. Kaspersky Lab last month rolled out its Kaspersky Security for Office 365 solution, which adds protections for Exchange Online e-mail users.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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