With Microsoft’s trusted Cloud, startups and ISVs are building a safer, secure digital world

This article has been sponsored by Microsoft.

According to the 2015 breach report from Gemalto 707.5 million data records were compromised. This data when broken down, translates into 1.9 million records getting compromised every day, 80,766 records compromised every hour, 1,346 records compromised every minute and 22 records compromised every second!

Today, as companies and devices continue to collect ever-increasing amounts of customer information, and as consumers’ online digital activities become more diverse and prolific, more and more data is at risk and trust is defining how and who the companies do business with.

Another report by McKinsey & Company on enterprise IT security implications released in January 2014 states that lack of cyber-resilience could cost the global economy as much as $3 trillion by 2020 by slowing down the pace of technology and innovation.

Yet, in spite of these evident threats and the dire consequences, many businesses still think twice about embracing the Cloud-first approach. The hesitation often stems from anxiety over privacy and security-related issues. Businesses want to retain control over their data, and they want that data to be kept secure and private, all while maintaining transparency and compliance.

A trusted Cloud partner bridges the gap between innovation and security concerns. The right partner, technology, and processes, can help the most complex enterprise move to the Cloud with confidence.

 The security Summit

Against this backdrop, Microsoft brought together eminent security leaders for an exclusive event on April 20, to help organisations in India understand cyber risks based on industry standards and to remediate current security gaps. The summit reiterated Microsoft’s commitment to helping organisations deal with security challenges. Leaders including; Capt. Raghu Raman, President Risk, Security & New Ventures - Reliance Industries and former CEO of NATGRID; Burgess Cooper, Partner - Information & Cyber Security - E&Y, spoke extensively on cyber security. Kevin Turner set the tone of the summit with his keynote address, highlighting how we are a part of the fourth industrial revolution and how digital disruption is driving massive business disruption. He also emphasised how Microsoft is differentiating with security and privacy.

Building a safer, secure digital world with Microsoft’s trusted Cloud

The Microsoft Cloud infrastructure supports over 1 billion customers across its enterprise and consumer services in 140 countries, and has built this kind of trust in the Cloud, because it has been built on four principles: Security, Privacy Control, Compliance, and Transparency.

Security

For Microsoft, security is more than just a feature. It is a commitment.

Security is built into the Microsoft Cloud from the ground up, starting with the Security Development Lifecycle, a mandatory development process that embeds security requirements into every phase of the development process. Microsoft ensures that its Cloud is protected at the physical, network, host, application, and data layers so that its online services are resilient to attack. The security feature, ensures that your organisation is protected from external cyber threats 24x7.

Privacy Control

When organisations plan to entrust data to the Microsoft Cloud, there are often many questions such as: Where is it? Who can access it? How can you verify that Microsoft is doing what it says?

The answer is: Because it’s your data, you decide who has access, and you decide where it is located. With Microsoft, you not only own your data, but also your customer data, and thereby control it. So, in the Microsoft Cloud, only you know where your customer data is located, who can access it, and under what circumstances, and how it is responsibly protected, transferred, and deleted.

For more than 20 years, Microsoft has been a leader in creating online solutions designed to protect the privacy of its customers, and today this experience has helped to lay the foundation for developing industry-leading privacy policies, compliance programmes, and security measures that apply across its Cloud computing ecosystem. In fact, Microsoft is the first major Cloud provider to adopt the first international code of practice for Cloud privacy, ISO/IEC 27018.

Compliance

To help organisations comply with national, regional, and industry-specific requirements governing the collection and use of individuals’ data, Microsoft offers the most comprehensive set of certifications and attestations than any Cloud service provider.

Transparency

Microsoft believes that for you to control your customer data in the Cloud, you need to understand how that data is handled. Microsoft is not only transparent about how it helps you secure, store, and access your data, but also how Microsoft responds to government requests for your data.

And you don’t have to take Microsoft’s word for it: you can review a wide range of evidence, including third-party audit reports and certifications, to verify that Microsoft meet the set standards.

Startups and ISVs share how they leverage Azure to deliver security solutions

Baraccuda Networks: Azure a natural extension for enterprises adopting public Cloud

When a leading financial sector company delivering hosted services, deployed a web application firewall, Baraccuda Networks (a worldwide leader in Security, Application Delivery and Data Protection Solutions) helped them configure the application security features on the unit to handle more than five web applications within a day.

Barracuda moved their security and archiving solutions onto Azure, reducing deployment time by as much as 50 per cent to 80 per cent, while the ease of deployment increased by 90 per cent. Explaining why Azure is a key component of their business, Aravindan Anandan, Consulting Systems Engineer – Asia Pacific, Barracuda Networks (India), says, “We consider Microsoft Azure a natural extension for enterprises adopting public Cloud platforms.”

Barracuda is the first Microsoft Certified Security Solution provider and also a top-performing ISV on MS Azure. Its success story is founded on how it leveraged Microsoft Azure Marketplace – an online store for thousands of certified, open source and community software applications, developer services and data—pre-configured for Microsoft Azure. Aravindan says, “It’s a great self-service platform for deploying highly scalable and secure networks. Without a common marketplace, administrators may be forced to spend a lot of additional time moving the virtual machine images or even hosting an application. With the marketplace, the time to go-live with their production setup is significantly reduced as they only need to focus on the execution of the systems rather than the installation efforts.”

Paladion: A security platform on Azure benefits us and our customers

A global cyber-security provider with 15+ years’ experience, Paladion offers a complete spectrum of information risk management solutions. Leveraging the robustness, reliability, and scalability of the Microsoft Cloud, Paladion helps customers achieve integrated security intelligence, visibility, and protection for all the distributed data, endpoints, mobile devices, and users. Rohit Kumar, Executive Vice President and Regional CEO, Sea and Cloud managed security, says, “As a part of our architecture, we need to have multiple networks within Azure. These need to be completely isolated from each other. Azure provides virtual networks that isolate VMs within a virtual network for defence-in-depth. Additionally, inbound access to VMs are blocked by default in Azure.”

Additionally, the three datacentres launched by Microsoft in India last year have been an added advantage and Paladion has been able to expand substantially. Rohit says, “Today, we have customers from segments like Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), which are now open to leverage public Cloud services because of local data residency.”

Paladion is appreciative of the support programmes Microsoft offers. Rohit says, “A compelling benefit for ISVs such as Paladion is the technical support that is provided for building Cloud competencies and well-established platforms to quickly rollout offerings in the market. The entire ecosystem of Microsoft sales and marketing teams, channel partners and Azure marketplace come together to make it happen.”

ParaBlu: Being integrated with Microsoft’s solutions adds credibility

Today, it is well-accepted that security solutions from a reputed Cloud provider can easily equal and, in many cases, surpass an enterprise’s on-premise defences. Yet, large enterprises with mature Information Risk Management and Compliance teams are deliberate about what data will be allowed to travel into the Cloud. And helping such organisations overcome their objections to Cloud adoption and usage is ParaBlu with its (Cloud Access Security Broker) CASB-enabled Cloud data management solutions.

Anand Prahlad, President and CEO, says, “Our Cloud data protection solutions puts control and security of data assets in the Enterprise’s hands to help them feel secure.”

The partnership with Microsoft has proved mutually beneficial. While ParaBlu’s range of secure Cloud data management applications have helped to accelerate Azure adoption in large enterprises, it has also benefited from being associated with Microsoft. Anand says, “In almost every instance, the fact that we’re integrated with Microsoft’s solutions adds a lot of credibility. Many of our customers are also Microsoft Cloud users. So, while they understand the advantages our solution offers, the fact that we’re a Microsoft Partner helps them place trust in us more easily.” 

ShieldSquare: Adopting Cloud is a win-win for customers and startups

ShieldSquare helps online businesses differentiate between human and non-human traffic (bots) on websites and mobile applications. Using cutting-edge technologies to detect, categorise and prevent malicious bots in real-time, and processing billions of page requests every month, ShieldSquare protects businesses spread across 68 countries against the threats of price scraping, spam, content theft and API abuse.

ShieldSquare was associated with Microsoft Ventures Accelerator, Bangalore, in 2013. The startup says that it has been able to maintain aggressive latency commitments and SLAs with Azure. The other benefits include easy integrations and the ability to quickly scale where there is an increase in the work load.

PavanThatha, CEO, says, “Adopting Cloud is a win-win situation for both our customers and us. In addition to enabling access from anywhere and reducing infrastructure costs, Cloud provides the required flexibility and scalability. The latest security features, updates and patches can be rolled-out on a Cloud solution so that they are available to our customers spread across so many countries.”