Azure Firewall Basic now in preview

By Dustin Ward

This blog was co-authored by Gopikrishna Kannan, Principal Program Manager, Azure Networking. Organizations are experiencing an increase in both the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks with the acceleration of digital transformation and the increase in hybrid work. While organizations of all sizes face similar security risks, cybersecurity is rapidly becoming a top concern for small…

Strengthen your security with Policy Analytics for Azure Firewall

By Dustin Ward

This blog was co-authored by Gopikrishna Kannan, Principal Program Manager, Azure Networking. Network security policies are constantly evolving to keep pace with the demands of workloads. With the acceleration of workloads to the cloud, network security policies—Azure Firewall policies in particular—are frequently changing and often updated multiple times in a week (in many cases several…

Azure Payment HSM achieves PCI PIN certification offering customers secure digital payments solutions in the cloud

By Dustin Ward

This blog post has been co-authored by Darius Ryals, General Manager of Partner Promises and Azure Chief Information Security Officer. Today we’re announcing Azure Payment HSM has achieved Payment Card Industry Personal Identification Number (PCI PIN) making Azure the first hyperscale cloud service provider to obtain this certification. Financial technology has rapidly disrupted the payments industry…

Azure private MEC—A thriving partner ecosystem

By Dustin Ward

In June of 2021, Microsoft introduced Azure private multi-access edge compute (MEC), a solution that enables operators and system integrators (SI’s) to deliver high performance, low latency connectivity, together with IoT applications at the edge, helping to deliver the next wave of digital transformation. This is made possible because Azure private MEC combines network functions,…

Dive deep into NAT gateway’s SNAT port behavior

By Dustin Ward

In our last blog, we examined a scenario on how network address translation (NAT) gateway mitigates connection failures happening at the same destination endpoint with its randomized source network address translation (SNAT) port selection and reuse timers. In addition to handling these scenarios, NAT gateway’s unique SNAT port allocation is beneficial to dynamic, scaling workloads…

Announcing Microsoft Dev Box Preview

By Dustin Ward

Many IT organizations must choose between giving developers the flexibility they need to be productive and keeping developer workstations managed and secure. Supply chain challenges have led to developers waiting weeks or months to get the hardware they need, forcing them to use aging hardware or unsecured personal devices. At the same time, hybrid work…