Hello folks,
This week is the last episode of season 4. We will be retooling the format during the summer to figure out how to make this more valuable for you and easier to produce for us. But today is Canada Day (The Canadian national holiday, it celebrates the anniversary of the Canadian Confederation which occurred on July 1, 1867) and Monday will be America’s Independence Day. So, like a holiday sandwich.
However, Amy Colyer (@wyrdgirl) and I will still be covering the news from Azure that the IT/Ops audience cares about. Or not… let me know in the comments. No really, please subscribe and let us know in the comments what you’d like to cover.
This week Amy and I will discuss news about Azure Key Vault, Azure WAF and Azure Backup.
here we go! … Join us online on YouTube? (Live at 10 am eastern time zone) or catch the replay below.
Azure Key Vault secrets provider on Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes
The Azure Key Vault Secrets Provider extension enables fetching the secrets, keys, and certificates from an Azure Key Vault into an Arc connected Kubernetes cluster. This remove the need to store and maintain secrets locally on the clusters and outsource the management of secrets to AKV as the central secrets management solution.
Centralizing storage of application secrets in Azure Key Vault allows you to control their distribution. Key Vault greatly reduces the chances that secrets may be accidentally leaked.
Azure WAF policy and DDoS management in Azure Firewall Manager
Azure Firewall Manager now supports managing DDoS Protection Plans for virtual networks and Azure Web Application Firewall (Azure WAF) policies for application delivery platforms: Azure Front Door and Azure Application Gateway.
Key benefits:
Central deployment and configuration
- Deploy and configure multiple WAF policies and DDoS plans
- Secure Azure Front Door Application Gateway with WAF policies at scale
- Protect Virtual Networks with DDoS plans and Azure Firewall simultaneously
- Upgrade from legacy WAF configuration to WAF policies on Application Gateway
View all application delivery platforms and virtual networks in a single place
- Gain visibility of all deployments across regions and subscriptions
Manage overall network security posture
- Adopt Zero-Trust principles by managing WAF, DDoS, and Azure Firewalls all in a central platform
- Monitor network security coverage in dashboard, across subscriptions
Learn more about how to configure WAF policies and DDoS Protection Plans in Azure Firewall Manager.
Multiple backups per day for Azure Virtual Machines
Azure Virtual Machine Backup allows you to create an enhanced policy and take multiple snapshots a day. Azure Backup now previews low recovery point objective (RPO) to as low as four hours.
With this capability, you can define the duration in which your backup jobs would trigger and align your backup schedule with the working hours when there are frequent updates. Understanding your need for higher retention in instant restore, the enhanced policy is designed to offer instant restore retention with a default of seven days retention and a maximum of 30 days. This ensures minimal data loss in the event of corruption or updates.
Check out the documentation to Learn to configure multiple backups per day via enhanced policy.
MS Learn Module of the Week
This week’s Learn module is Introduction to Azure Web Application Firewall you’ll learn how Azure Web Application Firewall protects Azure web applications from common attacks, including its features, how it’s deployed, and its common use cases.
Thanks for joining us for this week’s AzUpdate episode. Feel free to comment or reach out with any questions in the comments below or join us on our discord server.
Cheers!
Pierre