Some fresh 2022 news from the Cloud Native world is summarized in our January issue. We hope you will learn something new and share the post with your team and community.

Contents

• New generally available updates and enhancements for Microsoft Defender for Cloud (former Azure Security Center)
• Azure Static Web Apps enterprise-grade edge is in public preview
• Visual Studio 2022: Azure IoT Edge tools extension is now generally available
• AKS: Kubernetes version alias support is in public preview
• AKS: Ultra disks support is now generally available
• Managed Certificate support for Azure API Management is in public preview
• Azure Key Vault: Increased service limits for all customers

New generally available updates and enhancements for Microsoft Defender for Cloud (former Azure Security Center)

The following updates were made to Microsoft Defender for Cloud in December 2021:

• General availability: Microsoft Defender for Containers plan
  Microsoft merged the two existing plans, Defender for Kubernetes and Defender for container registries into the new release of Microsoft Defender for Containers. Features of the two existing plans, such as vulnerability assessment for images in registries and threat detection for Kubernetes are now combined into this new plan. It also contains improved and new features, including vulnerability assessment of running images, multi cloud support and many new Kubernetes-aware analytics for host level threat detection. With Kubernetes-native at-scale onboarding, all relevant components are configured to be deployed automatically by default. Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Containers.
• General availability: New alerts for Microsoft Defender for Storage
  Microsoft Defender for storage detects threat actors attempting to scan publicly open containers and finding sensitive data in misconfigured storage containers. The alert that detected this was “Anonymous scan of public storage containers”. This alert has been split up into two new alerts to provide greater clarity about the suspicious event discovered. The first new alert is called “Publicly accessible storage containers successfully discovered” and means that a successful discovery of publicly open storage containers was performed in the last hour. The second new alert is called “Publicly accessible storage containers unsuccessfully scanned” and means that a series of failed attempts to scan public storage containers were performed in the last hour. Both alerts are only relevant to Azure Blob Storage. Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Storage.
• Other improvements to Microsoft Defender for Storage alerts
  Detecting access from a Tor exit node has been tuned to generate only for authenticated access. This enhancement results in a higher confidence and accuracy that an activity is malicious and reduces the benign positive rate. The alert has been renamed to “Authenticated access from a Tor exit node”. Another alert, now called “Unusual unauthenticated access to a storage container” has been improved to detect changes in access patterns, that might indicate exploitation of public read access to storage containers. Learn more about Alerts for Azure Storage.
• Removed alerts
  “PortSweeping” alert was removed from the network layer alerts due to inefficiencies.

Learn more.

Azure Static Web Apps enterprise-grade edge is in public preview

Site performance of modern web applications has a direct impact on search engine rankings, user experience and user conversion rates. Azure Static Web Apps enterprise-grade edge, powered by Azure Front Door, is here to increase your website page load speed, optimize reliability and enhance security on a global scale. It is a single source cloud CDN (Content Delivery Network) platform, combining the capabilities of Azure Front Door, Azure Static Web Apps and Azure CDN.

Some key features:

• Global presence by caching your website’s static content across 118+ edge locations (POP, points of presence)
• Native support of HTTP/2 protocol and end-to-end IPv6 connectivity
• Protection against DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks

Learn more.

Visual Studio 2022: Azure IoT Edge tools extension is now generally available

Developing, building, deploying, simulating and debugging of your IoT Edge solutions is now possible in Visual Studio 2022.

• New Azure IoT Edge project targeting different platforms (Windows amd64, Linux amd64, Linux arm64v8, Linux arm32v7)
• Local editing, building and debugging of IoT Edge modules
• Add a new IoT Edge module to solution and now includes support of .NET 6 for C# module
• Run IoT Edge modules in a local or remote simulator
• Manage IoT Edge devices and modules in IoT Hub
• Build and push docker images of IoT Edge modules

Learn more.

AKS: Kubernetes version alias support is in public preview

The “Kubernetes version alias” public preview feature is here to simplify the AKS setup. Usually, an AKS user must specify the exact patch number of the Kubernetes version he wants to use. With this feature, the patch number does not need to be specified anymore. For example Kubernetes 1.22 instead of Kubernetes 1.22.1. By specifying only up to the minor version, you will be placed on the highest patch version available within the specified minor version.

Learn more.

AKS: Ultra disks support is now generally available

Major features are the following:

• high throughput and high IOPS
• consistent low latency disk storage for stateful applications
• dynamically change the performance of the SSD without restarting your agent nodes
• suited for data-intensive workloads

Learn more.

Managed Certificate support for Azure API Management is in public preview

With Managed certificate support for Azure API Management in public preview, customers can quickly and easily secure their custom domain with a free certificate. The certificate is fully managed by Azure API Management. This includes provisioning, management and automatic renewal.

• Secure Azure API Management with an SSL certificate provisioned and managed by Azure API Management
• Available in all Azure API Management tiers at no cost

Learn more.

Azure Key Vault: Increased service limits for all customers

The subscription wide, and per Key Vault service quotas have doubled. If previously, e.g., for secret GET and RSA 2,048-bit software keys, you were able to receive 2000 GET transactions per 10 seconds, now you’ll receive 4000 per 10 seconds. The quotas depend on the operation type. The entire list of Azure Key Vault Service Limits can be accessed here. The current usage of your Key Vault can be viewed under ‘Overview’ -> ‘Monitoring’ in the Azure portal.

The service limits are increased by default on all vaults without requiring any manual step or additional cost.

Check out Monitor Key Vault with Key Vault insights.

Learn more.