Varonis Extends Industry-Leading Cloud Data Security to Azure Databases

Discover and protect critical data stored in Azure databases with Varonis' industry-leading cloud data security. 
Nathan Coppinger
3 min read
Last updated November 15, 2024
Azure Databases

Varonis’ latest update extends its industry-leading cloud data security capabilities to managed Azure databases, including MSSQL, MongoDB, CosmosDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and numerous unmanaged databases. 

Azure is a leading cloud infrastructure platform, with 95% of the Fortune 500 relying on it to run their businesses. With more and more valuable data stored in Azure, it’s critical to protect that data, prevent data breaches, and ensure that organizations using Azure meet compliance requirements.

In this blog, discover how Varonis’ new update enables IT and security teams to see where their sensitive data is stored, identify risks, and automatically improve their data security posture to prevent data breaches.

Automatically discover and classify sensitive data across your cloud ecosystem.

Databases can be an easy target for attackers, as it takes just eight hours to breach an unsecured or misconfigured database. To protect data in Azure databases, you first need to know the type of sensitive data you have and where it lives. 

Varonis automatically discovers and classifies sensitive data stored across your entire cloud environment, including managed and unmanaged Azure databases, containers, and blobs. With an industry-leading library of hundreds of built-in classifiers, Varonis automatically discovers sensitive and regulated data and identifies where it's at risk — all in real time.

With more than 15 years of successful classification outcomes across thousands of customers with multi-petabyte data stores, Varonis detects sensitive data like PII, financial data, intellectual property, and much more with pinpoint accuracy.

Automatically discover and classify sensitive data stored across the cloud and view results in an intuitive tree format.
azure tree
Automatically discover and classify sensitive data stored across the cloud and view results in an intuitive tree format.

See the exact amount and types of sensitive data stored across your Azure databases.

Review classification results to see the exact types of sensitive data in your environment.

image (7)

Review classification results to see the exact types of sensitive data in your environment.

Remediate configuration drift.

Once you understand where sensitive data lives and the type, the next step is to close security gaps. Varonis takes an active approach to cloud data security by continuously scanning the cloud infrastructure, identifying security gaps and misconfigurations, and enabling teams to fix security risks automatically.

Varonis starts by sorting the misconfigurations by severity in a centralized dashboard, making it intuitive to prioritize and remediate issues.

Varonis identifies risks that include: 

  • Publicly exposed database instances, containers, and blobs
  • Broad guest invitation permissions
  • Missing password policies
  • Default users with permission to create security groups

Many of the most common and time-consuming issues can be fixed automatically. With one click, you can effortlessly improve your Azure security posture and create near self-healing environments without impacting the business.

Varonis also automatically benchmarks your data security posture against standard frameworks and regulations like CIS, ISO, NIST, and HIPAA. This makes it easy to identify configuration drift and compliance gaps.

View misconfigurations sorted by severity in the Varonis posture dashboard and identify configuration drift across your cloud environment.

Azure misconfigurations

View misconfigurations sorted by severity in the Varonis posture dashboard and identify configuration drift across your cloud environment.

For issues that require manual remediation, each misconfiguration includes additional context explaining the security risks and providing detailed recommendations on how to fix the issue.

Expand each insight to review Varonis’ recommendations on how to fix issues.

Manual configuration fix-1

Expand each insight to review Varonis’ recommendations on how to fix issues.

Detect and respond to active threats.

In addition to improving the security posture of your cloud environment, Varonis monitors for activity that can signal insider threats and stealthy attacks. To do this, Varonis observes your Azure databases, containers, blobs, and the broader cloud environment for abnormal and risky activity, including: 

  • Abnormal asset deletions
  • Privilege escalations
  • Dormant accounts becoming active
  • Changes to critical security configurations

Varonis automatically detects risky or suspicious behavior and provides additional context to accelerate investigations.

Azure alerts

Varonis automatically detects risky or suspicious behavior and provides additional context to accelerate investigations.

Once detected, Varonis maps each alert to the relevant MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques so you can easily understand the attack's context, impact, and phase.

A granular cross-cloud audit trail of events provides a seamless understanding of how data is used and by whom. Armed with this information, you can quickly investigate threats, including lateral movement across your IaaS and SaaS environments. You can further speed up investigations by filtering the audit trail by privileged users, sensitivity, activity type, and more.

Varonis provides a complete cross-cloud audit trail to facilitate investigations and identify lateral movement.

Azure audit trail

Varonis provides a complete cross-cloud audit trail to facilitate investigations and identify lateral movement.

Manage third-party app risk.

Third-party apps present unique security challenges and contributed to numerous serious data breaches in 2023. Varonis enables you to discover all the third-party apps connected to your Azure environment — including unsanctioned applications users add without IT approval — and gain a clear view of their risks.

By mapping the permissions granted by users, monitoring app activity, and removing unsanctioned or unused app connections, Varonis enables you to understand each app’s blast radius. Drill down into each app to see the risks it poses, which users are connected to it, and which users have stale connections.

The third-party application risk dashboard provides an overview of apps in your environment.

Third-party app dashboard

The third-party application risk dashboard provides an overview of apps in your environment.

Try Varonis for free.

Available on the AWS Marketplace and Azure Marketplace, Varonis for Azure offers security teams a single control point to discover, monitor, and protect structured and unstructured data across Azure.

Ready to improve your cloud and data security posture and secure your most sensitive Azure data? Request a demo today.

What should I do now?

Below are three ways you can continue your journey to reduce data risk at your company:

1

Schedule a demo with us to see Varonis in action. We'll personalize the session to your org's data security needs and answer any questions.

2

See a sample of our Data Risk Assessment and learn the risks that could be lingering in your environment. Varonis' DRA is completely free and offers a clear path to automated remediation.

3

Follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and X (Twitter) for bite-sized insights on all things data security, including DSPM, threat detection, AI security, and more.

Try Varonis free.

Get a detailed data risk report based on your company’s data.
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