Microsoft has been working on improving the security of Azure virtual machines and has now released technology preview of Microsoft Endpoint Protection (MEP) for Windows Azure. This will essentially enable the admins and the developers to add antimalware protection to their Azure virtual machines and is currently available for free.
To deploy this tech review, you need to have Azure software development kit (SDK) 1.6 or later since this preview installs on top of the kit. During installation, the MEP anti-malware module is moved to the roles’ definition. The module comprises of SDK extensions to Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio.
So far, Microsoft has only provided a few details as to what this tech review can accomplish but hasn’t given a definite date for the final version of MEP for Azure. According to the official description of this tool, ‘Microsoft Endpoint Protection for Windows Azure provides anti-malware protection to the Windows Azure OS running Windows Azure services in the cloud. A Windows Azure SDK Import Module is provided for enabling and configuring anti-malware protection as part of an Azure service deployment. During service deployment, anti-malware is installed and updated in each Azure role virtual machine (VM).’
This year has kicked off with Microsoft paying special attention to its Azure-related services and products. This essentially means that the company sees its cloud based services as a key part of this future and so, we may hope a number of other products complementing this tech review this year.
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