Here are all the security features Microsoft unveiled at Ignite 2022

Cybersecurity is an area that Microsoft focuses on when it comes to every major event, and it did not skimp on it at its ongoing Ignite 2022 conference either. The company has revealed a wide range of cybersecurity enhancements that are now available or are coming soon across various products.

Starting with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, we have two new solutions in preview, namely Microsoft Defender for DevOps and Microsoft Defender Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). Additionally, a multicloud security framework is now generally available to benchmark your own infrastructure. Defender for Servers and Defender for Containers are getting agentless scanning, while Servers P2 will offer premium Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management capabilities. You can read all about this here. And if you're looking for some cost savings, Microsoft has announced a limited-time sale of 50% off Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 and Plan 2 licenses.

On the Microsoft 365 Defender front, Microsoft has revealed that ransomware attacks will now be automatically disrupted, which should reduce an organization's recovery cost too.

Interestingly, Microsoft Intune will be the umbrella term for the firm's endpoint management family of products moving forward, including Configuration Manager. Other add-ons coming to Microsoft Intune are Microsoft Tunnel for mobile app management (MAM) coming in January and endpoint privilege management, now in preview. An Advanced Management Suite will also launch in March 2023, offering a premium, but cost-effective, endpoint management solution. Moreover, Microsoft Entra Identity Governance is now in preview with capabilities like certificate-based authentication (preview), conditional access authentication context (generally available), and Workload Identities (generally available in November.

There are other smaller announcements in tow too, and we have summarized them below for your convenience:

• Microsoft Audit Search has been revamped with a faster, reliable search
• Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) now includes capturing reactions
• Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management has a bunch of updates
  • Retention labels - Generally available
  • Retain shared versions - Preview
  • Customizing Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management with Power Automate integration - Preview
  • Connect other systems to Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Graph APIs - Preview
• Insider Risk Management in Microsoft Purview has preview features too

  • Enhancements to triage and detection capabilities

  • Integration of Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance

  • Insights for actions by potential high-impact users

  • Improved analytics assessment insights

• Preview features to safeguard sensitive data through Microsoft Purview

  • Authorized Printer

  • Authorized USB

  • Authorized network share path

  • Network location as a condition

  • ​Sanctioned and unsanctioned site groups for different sensitive files

• New features for Microsoft Purview Information Protection

  • Out-of-the box trainable classifiers - Preview

  • Credential-sensitive information types (SITs) - Generally available

  • Co-authoring encrypted documents - Generally available

  • Manual application/editing - Generally available

  • Label protection - Generally available

  • New Office built-in features - Preview

  • Azure Information Protection scanner admin experience - Preview

• Microsoft Sentinel now has low-cost options for ingesting and archiving logs data

• Low-cost IP Protection option for Azure DDoS Protection is now in preview

• Azure has new confidential virtual machine options such as:

  • ​Confidential virtual machine node pools for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) - Generally available

  • Confidential virtual machine option for Azure Virtual Desktop - Preview

  • Confidential virtual machine option for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines - Generally available

  • Guest attestation for AMD confidential virtual machines - Generally available

Are there any cloud security options that pique your interest? Let us know in the comments below!