Tag: Azure

Security and privacy are critically important when storing and processing sensitive information in the cloud, from payment transactions, to financial records, personal health data, and more. With the general availability of DCsv2-series VMs, we are ushering in the start of a new level of data protection in Azure.

With more workloads moving to the cloud and more customers putting their trust in Microsoft, the Azure confidential computing team continues to innovate to provide offerings that keep and build upon that trust. Starting with our world-class security researchers, and working closely with industry partners, we are developing new ways to protect data while it’s in use with Azure confidential computing. DCsv2-series VMs can protect the confidentiality and integrity of your data even while it’s processed.

What is confidential computing?

There are ways to encrypt your data at rest and while in transit, but confidential computing protects the confidentiality and integrity of your data while it is in use. Azure is the first public cloud to offer virtualization infrastructure for confidential computing that uses hardware-based trusted execution environments (TEEs). Even cloud administrators and datacenter operators with physical access to the servers cannot access TEE-protected data.

By combining the scalability of the cloud and ability to encrypt data while in use, new scenarios are possible now in Azure, like confidential multi-party computation where different organizations combine their datasets for compute-intensive analysis without being able to access each other’s data. Examples include banks combining transaction data to detect fraud and money laundering, and hospitals combining patient records for analysis to improve disease diagnosis and prescription allocation.

Data protection powered by Intel hardware

Our DCsv2 confidential computing virtual machines run on servers that implement Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX). Because Intel SGX hardware protects your data and keeps it encrypted while the CPU is processing it, even the operating system and hypervisor cannot access it, nor can anyone with physical access to the server.

Microsoft and Intel are committed to providing best-in-class cloud data protection through our deep ongoing partnership:

“Customers are demanding the capability to reduce the attack surface and help protect sensitive data in the cloud by encrypting data in use. Our collaboration with Microsoft brings enterprise-ready confidential computing solutions to market and enables customers to take greater advantage of the benefits of cloud and multi-party compute paradigms using Intel® SGX technology.” —Anil Rao, VP Data Center Security and Systems Architecture, Intel

Partners in the Azure Marketplace

Microsoft works directly with platform partners to provide seamless solutions, development, and deployment experiences running on top of our Azure confidential computing infrastructure. Software offerings can be discovered through our Azure Marketplace including:

• Fortanix—Offers a cloud-native data security solution including key management, HSM, tokenization, and secrets management built on Azure confidential computing.
• Anjuna—Delivers secure Azure instances using end-to-end CPU hardware-level encryption without changing your application or operations.
• Anqlave—A valued partner in Singapore, offers enterprise ready confidential computing solutions.

“Anqlave’s proprietary, institutional-grade modern key management and data encryption solution addresses the most critical security issues we face today. With Anqlave Data Vault (ADV) secret management allows users to securely create, store, transport and use its secrets. Leveraging Azure confidential computing, allows us to make this technology more accessible to our enterprise customers and easily support their scale. Providing a secure enclave that is portable in the cloud is one the key reasons why our enterprises will prefer to host their ADV on Azure confidential computing regardless of their other cloud infrastructure.” —Assaf Cohen, CEO, Anqlave

How customers are succeeding with Azure confidential computing

Customers are already using Azure confidential computing for production workloads. One customer is Signal:

“Signal develops open source technology for end-to-end encrypted communications, like messaging and calling. To meet the security and privacy expectations of millions of people every day, we utilize Azure confidential computing to provide scalable, secure environments for our services. Signal puts users first, and Azure helps us stay at the forefront of data protection with confidential computing.” —Jim O’Leary, VP of Engineering, Signal

While many applications and services can take advantage of data protection with confidential computing, we have seen particular benefits with regulated industries, such as financial, government, and healthcare. Companies can now take advantage of the cloud for processing sensitive customer data with reduced risk and higher confidence that their data can be protected, including when processing.

For example, MobileCoin, a new international cryptocurrency trusts Azure confidential computing to support digital currency transfers. Their network code is now available in open source, and a TestNet is available to tryout:

“MobileCoin partners with Azure because Microsoft has decided to invest in trustworthy systems. Confidential computing rides the edge between what we can imagine and what we can protect. The praxis we’ve experienced with Azure allows us to commit to systems that are integral, high trust, and performant.” —Joshua Goldbard, CEO, MobileCoin

Confidential computing has proven useful for enterprise-grade blockchain, enabling fast and secure transaction verification across a decentralized network. Fireblocks is yet another customer taking advantage of Azure confidential computing infrastructure:

“At Fireblocks, our mission is to secure blockchain-based assets and transactions for the financial industry. Once we realized the traditional tech stack was not suitable for this challenge, we turned to Azure confidential computing and Intel SGX to implement our patent-pending technology. Our customers trust Fireblocks to securely store and move their digital assets—over $6.5 billion of them each month—and Azure provides a backbone for us to deliver on that promise.” —Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder, Fireblocks

Industry leadership bringing confidential computing to the forefront

Microsoft is not alone in bringing confidential computing to the forefront of the cloud computing industry. In September 2019, we were a founding member of the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC), which now consists of dozens of companies working to develop and open source technologies and best practices for protecting data while it’s in use. These companies include hardware, cloud, platform, and software providers.

Microsoft is also committed to the developer experience to ensure platform partners and application developers can build solutions that take advantage of confidential computing. We donated our Open Enclave SDK to the consortium, an open source SDK for developing platforms and applications on top of confidential computing infrastructure.

Get started today

Get started deploying your own DCsv2 virtual machine from the Azure Marketplace and install necessary tools. Then, run the Hello World sample using the Open Enclave SDK to begin building confidential workloads in the cloud.

Accelerate classified missions with unparalleled connectivity, high availability, and resiliency across three regions with more than 35 services

Azure Government Secret recently achieved Provisional Authorization (PA) at Department of Defense Impact Level 6 (IL6) and Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 503 with facilities at ICD 705. We’re also announcing a third region to enable even higher availability for national security missions to stay ahead of their unique threats.

Built exclusively for the needs of US government and operated by cleared US citizens, Azure Government Secret delivers dedicated regions to maintain the security and integrity of classified Secret workloads while enabling reliable access to critical data. The first cloud natively connected to classified networks; Azure Government Secret enables customers to leverage options for private, resilient, high-bandwidth connectivity.

Protect national security production workloads with geodiversity across three regions

Azure Government Secret is designed for the unique requirements of critical national security workloads that cannot be served out of a single geographic location. To provide the geodiversity required, Azure Government Secret delivers across three dedicated regions for US Federal Civilian, Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and US government partners working within Secret enclaves. These dedicated Azure regions are located over 500 miles apart to enable applications to stay running in the face of a disaster without a break in continuity of operations.

In addition, these regions provide greater choice when working across multiple locations and delivering cloud-to-edge scenarios. With comprehensive cloud services Azure Government Secret enables faster innovation for the mission from cloud to tactical edge meeting the critical availability needs of the warfighter.

Enabling classified missions at scale with more than 35 services

Designed and built for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Marketplace solutions, Azure Government Secret provides a broad range of commercial innovation for classified workloads.­ Some of the services include: identity, analytics, security, and high performance computing to support advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Operated by cleared US citizens, these new regions are part of Azure Government, delivering a familiar, consistent experience and alignment with existing resellers and programs. Eligible customers can also leverage cleared Microsoft cloud support for their workloads.

Gain speed by connecting directly or extending on-premises networks

With Azure Government Secret, customers can connect natively to classified networks or leverage options for private, resilient, high-bandwidth connectivity using ExpressRoute and ExpressRoute Direct:

• Native connection: Agencies with direct connections through US government classified networks can connect natively to Azure Government Secret.
• ExpressRoute: Extend on-premises networks into Azure Government Secret regions over a private connection facilitated by a connectivity provider with ExpressRoute.
• ExpressRoute Direct: Get the ability to connect directly into Azure Government Secret locations using ExpressRoute Direct.

Continued investments in commercial parity across data classifications

In addition to serving mission customers at DoD IL6 and ICD 503, we continue to invest in rapidly delivering new Azure Government capabilities to support mission needs across all data classifications for any US government customer. In the last six months we’ve continued our drive toward commercial parity, adding hundreds of features and launching 40+ new services and 101 total services in FedRAMP High, with more to come across Azure commercial, Azure Government and Azure Government Secret.

These continued investments enable customers across the full spectrum of government, including departments in every state, all the federal cabinet agencies, and each military branch, modernize their IT to better achieve their missions.

To learn more about Azure Government Secret contact us or visit Azure Government for national security.

As the world comes together to combat COVID-19, and remote work becomes a critical capability for many companies, customers have asked us how to best maintain the security posture of their cloud assets while enabling more remote workers to access them.

Misconfiguration of cloud security controls has been at the root of several recent data breaches, so it’s extremely important to continue monitoring your security posture as usage of cloud assets increases.

To help you prioritize the actions that you need to take, we are listing three common scenarios for remote workers and how to leverage Azure Security Center security controls to prioritize relevant recommendations for these scenarios:

1. As more users need to access resources remotely, you need to ensure that Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is enabled to enhance their identity protection.

• Azure Security Center has a security control called Enable MFA, ideally you should remediate all recommendations that are part of this security control, as shown below:

2. Some users might need remote access via RDP or SSH to servers that are in your Azure infrastructure.

• Instead of allowing full 24 x 7 access to those servers, ensure that you are using Just-In-Time (JIT) VM access to those servers. Make sure to review the Secure management ports control in Azure Security Center and remediate the recommendations that are relevant for this scenario.

3. Some of the workloads (servers, containers, databases) that will be accessed remotely by users might be missing critical security updates.

• Review the Remediate vulnerabilities control in Azure Security Center to prioritize the updates that must be installed. Make sure to review the result of all recommendations in built-in vulnerability assessment and remediate those items.

Security posture management is an ongoing process. Review your secure score to understand your progress towards a fully compliant environment.

Users of Azure are likely just a portion of your user base. Below is additional guidance on enabling and securing remote work for the rest of your organization:

We’re expanding the Microsoft Azure Stack Edge with NVIDIA T4 Tensor Core GPU preview during the GPU Technology Conference (GTC Digital). Azure Stack Edge is a cloud-managed appliance that brings Azure’s compute, storage, and machine learning capabilities to the edge for fast local analysis and insights. With the included NVIDIA GPU, you can bring hardware acceleration to a diverse set of machine learning (ML) workloads.

What’s new with Azure Stack Edge

At Mobile World Congress in November 2019, we announced a preview of the NVIDIA GPU version of Azure Stack Edge and we’ve seen incredible interest in the months that followed. Customers in industries including retail, manufacturing, and public safety are using Azure Stack Edge to bring Azure capabilities into the physical world and unlock scenarios such as the real-time processing of video powered by Azure Machine Learning.

These past few months, we’ve taken our customers’ feedback to make key improvements and are excited to make our preview available to even more customers today.

If you’re not already familiar with Azure Stack Edge, here are a few of the benefits:

• Azure Machine Learning: Build and train your model in the cloud, then deploy it to the edge for FPGA or GPU-accelerated inferencing.
• Edge Compute: Run IoT, AI, and business applications in containers at your location. Use these to interact with your local systems, or to pre-process your data before it transfers to Azure.
• Cloud Storage Gateway: Automatically transfer data between the local appliance and your Azure Storage account.  Azure Stack Edge caches the hottest data locally and speaks file and object protocols to your on-prem applications.
• Azure-managed appliance: Easily order and manage Azure Stack Edge from the Azure Portal.  No initial capex fees; pay as you go, just like any other Azure service.

Enabling our partners to bring you world-class business applications

Equally important to bringing you a great device is enabling our partners to bring you innovative applications to meet your business needs.  We’d love to share some of the continued investment we’re making with partners to bring their exciting developments to you.

As self-checkouts grow in prevalence, Malong Technologies is innovating in AI applications for loss prevention.

“For our customers in the retail industry, artificial intelligence innovation is happening at the edge,” said Matt Scott, co-founder and chief executive officer, Malong Technologies. “Along with our state-of-the-art solutions, our customers need hardware that is powerful, reliable, and custom-tailored for the cloud. Microsoft’s Azure Stack Edge fits the bill perfectly. We’re proud to be a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, working with Microsoft to help our retail customers succeed.”

Increasing your manufacturing organization’s quality inspection accuracy is key to Mariner’s Spyglass Visual Inspection application.

“Mariner has standardized on Microsoft’s Azure Stack Edge for our Spyglass Visual Inspection and Spyglass Connected Factory products. These solutions are mission critical to our manufacturing customers. Azure Stack Edge provides the performance, stability and availability they require.” – Phil Morris, CEO, Mariner

Building computer vision solutions to improve performance and safety in manufacturing and other industries is a key area of innovation for XXII.

“XXII is thrilled to be a Microsoft partner and we are working together to provide our clients with real time video analysis software on edge with the Azure Stack Edge box. With this solution, Azure allow us to harvest the full potential of NVIDIA GPUs directly on edge and be able to provide our clients in retail, industry and smart city with smart video analysis that are easily deployable, scalable and easily manageable with Azure stack Edge.” – Souheil Hanoune, Chief Scientific Officer, XXII

More to come with Azure Stack Edge

There are even more exciting developments with Azure Stack Edge coming. We’re putting the final touches on much-awaited new compute and AI capabilities including virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and multi-node support. Along with these new features announced at Ignite 2019, Data Box Edge was renamed Azure Stack Edge to align with the Azure Stack portfolio.

Our Rugged series for sites with harsh or remote environments is also coming this year, including the battery-powered form-factor that can be carried in a backpack. The versatility of these Azure Stack Edge form-factors and cloud-managed capabilities brings cloud intelligence and compute to retail stores, factory floors, hospitals, field operations, disaster zones, and rescue operations.

Get started with the Azure Stack Edge with NVIDIA GPU preview

Thank you for continuing to partner with us as we bring new capabilities to Azure Stack Edge. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

• To get started with the preview, please email us and we’ll follow up to learn more about your scenarios.
• Learn more about Azure Stack Edge.

Learn more about Azure’s Hybrid Strategy

Read about more updates from Azure during NVIDIA’s GTC.

These Denisovan discoveries were based on statistical models created by Cox and his colleagues and run on Microsoft Azure, which proved a key factor in their project’s success. Massey, unlike many other universities, does not have its own on-premises computer facility to carry out big data-based research.

“These are big, costly computers, but their capacity is limited. Lots of people want to use them, and that means that it is very hard to get the compute time you need when you need it. You have to wait in line,” Cox explains.

In this case, the team went with a Microsoft cloud option. “Azure works well for us. It has scalability and flexibility. It gives us the freedom to work at the pace that we need to get answers.”

Science moves fast

Cox estimates that if the team had instead used an in-house IT facility, their work might have taken an extra six months, year, or more to complete.

“It’s hard to say. But actually, it might have been never. That’s because the amount of computing time we needed would have meant that someone else probably would have got to the answers before we did, and they would have published before us. Science moves fast, and the questions would have been addressed by others if we hadn’t got there at the speed we needed.”

Businesses and bureaucracies routinely use the power of the cloud to sift through, analyze, and harness mountains of big data in fast, secure, and flexible ways. Cox says cloud computing brings the same benefits to the laboratory. “Processing so much data can be boring and laborious,” he says. “Azure frees us to do other things to develop our research.”

New technologies and solutions that operate in the cloud and leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to accelerate the pace of research. And the ability to process lots of data quickly can also open up new directions for scientific inquiry as it did for Cox and his colleagues.

Microsoft and Genesys, a global provider of contact center software, recently announced a partnership to enable enterprises to run Genesys’ omnichannel customer experience solution, Genesys Engage, on Microsoft Azure. According to the two companies, this combination will provide a secure cloud environment to help companies more easily leverage AI to address customer needs on any channel.

Headquartered in Daly City, California, Genesys has more than 5,000 employees in nearly 60 offices worldwide. Every year, the company supports more than 70 billion customer experiences for organizations like Coca-Cola Business Services North America, eBay, Heineken, Lenovo, PayPal, BOSCH, Quicken and more.

Transform spoke with Barry O’Sullivan, executive vice president and general manager of Multicloud Solutions for Genesys, to explore how technology is reinventing the customer service experience.

TRANSFORM: How are technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cloud transforming the customer service sector?

O’SULLIVAN: It’s broader than customer service. It’s the entire customer experience, which encompasses any point at which businesses engage with consumers, whether it’s in a marketing, sales or service context. What cloud, AI and machine learning enable is the ability to make every experience unique to each individual. Every consumer wants to feel like they’re the only customer that matters during each interaction with a brand. These technologies allow organizations to understand what customers are doing, predict what they will need next and then deliver it in real time.

Traditionally, companies haven’t been able to do that well, because it’s hard to get a fix on a consumer as they move between channels. Maybe they come to a physical store one day, then call the next day or engage via web chat. These technologies allow brands to stitch together every customer interaction, and then use the resulting data to personalize the experience.

TRANSFORM: Can you talk a little bit more about that customer journey and what customers will experience going forward?

O’SULLIVAN: Let’s use contacting the cable company to get internet service as an example. You check out their website, but maybe you get stuck and use web chat to interact with a customer service representative. Today’s technologies allow businesses to connect the dots to better understand the customer.

Before these technologies were available, interactions were disconnected, and important customer details and context didn’t move from one department or agent to the next. We all know what that’s like – just think about a customer service experience when you had to repeat your name and birthdate every time you were passed to a new agent.

Today’s technology can tie together a customer’s details, like their favored communication channel, past purchases, prior service requests and more, so the business really knows them. Then, using AI, it can match that customer with the contact center agent who has the best chance of successfully resolving the issue and achieving a specific business outcome, such as making a related sale.

TRANSFORM: All of those kinds of experiences seem to be present in some form today. Is there a change coming that’s going to take the consumer experience to the next level?

O’SULLIVAN: Personalized service is not a new concept, but very few businesses get it right. Today, it’s about so much more than targeting personas or market segments.

It’s really about enabling organizations to link together their customers’ and employees’ experiences to deliver truly memorable, one-of-a-kind interactions. When it’s done right, organizations already know who the customer is, what he or she wants and the best way to deliver it.

That means understanding customers so well that businesses know the best times to contact them, on which channel and even the best days for an appointment. It’s no longer one-size-fits-all service – it’s tailor-made customer care for each consumer.

TRANSFORM: Are your own customers ready to adopt the technologies to enable this kind of new experience?

O’SULLIVAN: When it comes to cloud, it’s not a question of if, but when and how. And that’s one of the reasons the announcement between Genesys and Microsoft is so exciting. We have a lot of customers, especially large enterprises, who love Genesys and love Azure and really want to see that combination come together. So, giving them that option and that choice is really going to accelerate the migration to cloud.

In terms of adopting AI and machine learning, many companies are in the early phases, but recognize the enormous potential of the technology. What makes AI truly compelling in the customer experience market is its ability to unlock data. Increasingly, businesses use digital channels, like web chat and text, to communicate with consumers, which combined with traditional voice interactions has resulted in copious amounts of data being produced daily. The key for organizations is figuring out how to harness and leverage it to more fully understand customers, their experiences and behaviors, as well as the needs of human agents. That’s where Genesys comes in.

TRANSFORM: How would you describe your experience working with Microsoft?

O’SULLIVAN: It’s a great partnership because we’ve got a common view of the customer and a very aligned vision on cloud. It’s all about delivering agility and innovation quickly and reliably to our joint customers. So, it really helps when we’re both all in on the cloud, all in on customer experience.

Our customers are really excited about this combination of Genesys and Azure. They can simplify their maintenance, reduce costs and streamline the buying process. We believe in the advantages of moving to cloud, and obviously Azure is a leader there.