Discover and manage apps by using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, formerly known as Microsoft Cloud App Security, is a comprehensive solution for monitoring and controlling the use of cloud applications within an organization.

As part of the suite of tools available for security management, Defender for Cloud Apps integrates closely with identity and access management, particularly relevant to the SC-300 Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator exam.

Discovering Shadow IT with Defender for Cloud Apps

One critical feature of Defender for Cloud Apps is its ability to discover shadow IT in your environment. Shadow IT refers to apps and services used within an organization without explicit IT department approval. Discovering such apps is crucial since they can introduce security risks and compliance issues.

Defender for Cloud Apps uses traffic logs from networking equipment (like firewalls and proxies) to analyze and identify cloud applications being accessed. This is done through a feature called Cloud Discovery. Cloud Discovery analyzes your traffic logs against Microsoft’s cloud app catalog, which comprises over 16,000 cloud apps ranked and scored based on more than 70 risk factors.

For example, an administrator can upload firewall logs to Cloud Discovery. The analysis will reveal all the cloud apps used in the department, including unauthorized apps, and provide a risk assessment for each. Admins can then decide whether to sanction the app for official use or block it.

Managing Apps and Enforcing Policies

Once applications are discovered, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allows you to manage them efficiently and enforce consistent policies across your cloud environment. This is done through app information and policies.

For each discovered app, the Defender for Cloud App gives you detailed information like:

Policies are rules that are applied to cloud applications to control what users can and cannot do. Some of the policy types you can enforce include:

• Activity Policies: These policies can monitor specific activities within cloud apps, such as mass downloads, deletions, or logins from risky IP addresses.
• Data Transfer Control Policies: These policies restrict the uploading or downloading of data. For instance, you could prevent the download of sensitive documents from a corporate Dropbox account to a personal device.
• Risk-based Conditional Access Policies: These use a combination of signals like user activity, device compliance, location, and detected risk to determine what level of access should be granted to a user.

When applying these policies, admins can set up alerts to be notified when there are policy violations. For example, an alert could be created for when a user uploads a certain amount of data to an unsanctioned app, indicating a potential data exfiltration attempt.

Integrating with Identity and Access Management

Defender for Cloud Apps can integrate with identity and access management solutions like Azure Active Directory (AD). With Azure AD Conditional Access, it can leverage signals from Defender for Cloud Apps to create granular access controls, enforcing policies based on activities and user behaviors.

For instance, an organization could set a policy that requires users to perform multi-factor authentication when trying to access cloud apps outside the corporate network, or when accessing an app with a risk score above a certain threshold.

Automated Governance Actions

Defender for Cloud Apps can take automated governance actions based on the policies set. This can include actions such as:

• Approving: Sign-off on the use of an application within the organization.
• Banning: Block the application’s use to prevent any associated security risks.
• Quarantining Data: Isolate data that has been transferred to unsanctioned apps.

Integrating Defender for Cloud Apps with other solutions, like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, further enhances the security posture by providing endpoint-level insights into app usage.

Continuous Monitoring and Reporting

Continual monitoring ensures that admins are always aware of what apps are being used and how they are being used. Detailed reports and dashboards provide insights into user behavior, app usage patterns, and potential security issues.

In conclusion, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps delivers a robust toolkit for discovering, managing, and securing cloud applications in an enterprise environment. For those preparing for the SC-300 Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator exam, a strong understanding of Defender for Cloud Apps’ capabilities in identifying shadow IT, enforcing policies, integrating with identity management, and automating governance actions will be essential.