Security

At Microsoft, despite the evolving challenges in the cyber landscape, the Azure DDoS Protection team was able to successfully mitigate some of the largest DDoS attacks ever, both in Azure and in the course of history. In this review, we share trends and insights into DDoS attacks we observed and mitigated throughout the second half of 2021.

Semiconductors and microelectronics are one of the most important components in building cutting edge capabilities for our national security and defense technologies, from satellites and radar to vehicles and communications equipment.

DDoS attacks are rapidly evolving in complexity and frequency. Today, we are announcing the preview of inline DDoS protection which will be offered through partner network virtual appliances (NVAs) that are deployed with Gateway Load Balancer and integrated with Azure DDoS Protection Standard in all Azure regions.

The exponential growth of datasets has resulted in growing scrutiny of how data is exposed—both from a consumer data privacy and compliance perspective. In this context, confidential computing becomes an important tool to help organizations meet their privacy and security needs surrounding business and consumer data.

We continue to be amazed by the adoption, interest, positive feedback, and the breadth of use cases customers are finding for our service. Today, we are excited to share several new Azure Firewall Premium capabilities based on your feedback.

The pace of digital transformation has accelerated significantly during COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the adoption of cloud services. Bad actors, now more than ever, continuously look for ways to take applications offline. Azure DDoS Protection Standard provides enhanced DDoS mitigation features to defend against DDoS attacks.

As customers continue to adopt a Zero Trust security approach in their digital transformation, they often prefer a way to manage their network security policies and resources in one central place. Today, we are announcing that Azure Firewall Manager now supports managing Azure DDoS Protection Standard for virtual networks. This support is now in preview.

Security is based on the inherent need for safety. Today, we see that need challenged more than ever. In the past year alone, we’ve witnessed an exponential increase in ransomware, supply chain attacks, phishing, and identity theft. These activities fundamentally threaten our human desire for security in situations such as ransomware attacks on hospitals or supply chain attacks on industrial environments.

Today we’re announcing the general availability of Azure Government Top Secret, a significant milestone in our commitment to bringing unmatched commercial innovation to our government customers across all data classifications. This announcement, together with new services and functionality in Azure Government Secret, provides further evidence of Microsoft’s relentless commitment to the mission of national security, enabling customers and partners to realize the vision of a multi-cloud strategy and achieve greater agility, interoperability, cost savings, and speed to innovation.

In our 2020 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) retrospective, we highlighted shifts in the very active cyberthreat landscape. With the huge surge in internet activity, particularly with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, DDoS attacks have ramped up significantly in both volume and complexity.