Period: today · Items: 2 · Source: Azure official updates RSS
Today’s Azure updates highlight a clear trend toward “making the default more secure.” For new Gen2 VMs, Trusted Launch is enabled by default, and for Azure SQL offerings, immutability for the most recent 7 days of backups is now built in by default. In practical terms, this means “the secure starting point is higher even if I don’t explicitly turn anything on,” which makes this a particularly important day for anyone studying security and recovery design.
· Trusted Launch — A trust-based boot model for Azure VMs that combines Secure Boot and vTPM
· Secure Boot — A protection mechanism that restricts execution during the boot chain to only signed, trusted components
· vTPM — A component that provides TPM functionality in virtual machine environments, enabling key- and measurement-based security
· Backup Immutability — A concept that prevents backups from being modified or deleted for a set period, helping protect against ransomware and accidental operations
· Secure-by-default — A product design approach that improves security in the default deployment state without requiring separate user configuration
2 items
What it is: Trusted Launch is a set of security features that makes the Azure VM boot path more trustworthy. What is new in this announcement is that Secure Boot and vTPM are automatically enabled by default for supported new Gen2 VM/VMSS deployments, and that behavior is now GA.
Why it matters: From an infrastructure engineering perspective, a “standard that deploys securely from the start” is far more important than “extra work to add security later.” Going forward, it is worth considering in VM design, golden images, and deployment automation whether you can assume Trusted Launch by default without exceptions.
Try it: In the Azure Portal, open the creation page for a new Gen2 VM and check whether Trusted Launch is applied by default in the security-related settings.
Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=568600
What it is: Backup immutability is a feature that protects backups from being modified or deleted for a defined period. The key point of this announcement is that Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance now provide protection for the most recent 7 days of backups as the default behavior.
Why it matters: When studying data platforms, it is easy to focus only on whether backups “exist,” but in real operations, it is often more important whether “backups can be tampered with.” Especially from the perspectives of ransomware response, prevention of internal mistakes, and recovery reliability, immutable backup is a concept well worth understanding.
Try it: Open the backup/recovery documentation and portal settings for your Azure SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance, and organize how your current PITR strategy relates to this new default protection for 7-day backup immutability.
Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/updates?id=568339
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