Price reduction and upcoming features for Azure confidential ledger!
Effective March 1, 2025, you can keep your records in Azure confidential ledger (ACL) at the reduced price of ~$3/day per instance! The reduced price is for the computation and the ledger use. The price of any additional storage used will remain unchanged. To tamper protect your records: Automatically create hash (e.g. MD5 or SHA256) of your blob storage data and keep those in Azure confidential ledger. For forensics, you can verify the integrity of the data against the signature in ACL. Imagine doing this as you are migrating data from one system to another, or when you restore archived records from cold storage. It is also valuable when there is a need to protect from insider/administrator risks and confidently report to authorities. If you keep your data in Azure SQL database, you can use their security ledger feature to auto generate record digests and store them in confidential ledger for integrity protection and safeguarding. You can use the SQL stored procedure to verify that no tampering or administrator modifications occurred to your SQL data! In addition, we are announcing the preview of User Defined Functions for Azure confidential ledger. Imagine doing a schema validation before writing data to the Ledger or using pattern matching to identify sensitive information in log messages and perform data massaging to mask it. To increase your awareness, request access for this preview via the sign-up form. Get started by reading our documentation and trying out confidential ledger yourself! _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ What is Azure confidential ledger and what is the change? It is a tamper protected and auditable data store backed by a Merkle tree blockchain structure for sensitive records that require high levels of integrity protection and/or confidentiality. While customers from AI, financial services, healthcare, and supply chain continue to use the ledger for their business transaction’s archival needs and confidential data’s unique identifiers for audit purposes, we are acting on their feedback for scaling ledgers to more of their workloads with a more competitive price! How can I use Azure confidential ledger? - Azure SQL database ledger customers can enable confidential ledger as its trusted digest store to uplevel integrity and security protection posture - Azure customers who use blob storage have found value in migrating their workloads to Azure with a tamper protection check via the Azure confidential ledger Marketplace App. - Azure customers who use data stores and databases (e.g. Kusto, Cosmos, and Log Analytics) may benefit from auditability and traceability of logs being kept in the confidential ledger with new compliance certifications in SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO27001. How much does Azure confidential ledger cost? - Approximately $3/day/ledger _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Resources Explore the Azure confidential ledger documentation Read the blog post on: Integrity protect blob storage Read the blog post on: How to choose between ledger in Azure SQL Database and Azure Confidential Ledger Read the blog post on: Verify integrity of data transactions in Azure confidential ledger View our recent webinar in the Security Community Recent case studies: HB Antwerp & BeekeeperAIProtecting Azure customers with the power of Azure confidential ledger
The Azure confidential ledger Basic SKU preview will allow select customers using other Azure products to uplevel integrity protection by storing periodic data, blobs, and application signatures in Azure confidential ledger as a point-in-time source of truth. The Basic SKU will have limited transactions per second compared to the existing Standard SKU. It is ideal for cases where periodic hash digests are sent to the Azure confidential ledger for advanced integrity protection of your main data source. The Basic SKU will be free of charge for the duration of the gated preview.Try new Azure confidential ledger features, including an Azure Blob Storage Marketplace application
To support customers in regulated industries and compliance scenarios who asked about higher integrity protection of storage blobs, the Azure confidential ledger team has launched a preview of a managed Marketplace application that will further protect data: Blob Storage Digests Backed by Confidential Ledger (Preview)..... The Azure confidential ledger team has also launched new features to enhance product and auditing experience: The Azure confidential ledger Portal experience has been improved with a new Ledger Explorer feature that allows observing transactions and validating the cryptographic proofs of ledger transactions...Azure confidential ledger is now Generally Available!
I am pleased to announce that Azure confidential ledger is now generally available! Azure confidential ledger is an unstructured, trusted data store for important identifiers of sensitive data that require high integrity. Data records stored on Azure confidential ledger remain immutable (i.e. Write Once, Read Many) and can be cryptographically verified. It offers a simple experience with REST APIs that can be easily integrated into the application architecture.Latest innovations in Azure confidential computing
Today at Inspire 2022, we announce two major milestones in the Azure confidential computing portfolio: the general availability of Azure confidential ledger and general availability of the DCasv5 and ECasv5-series confidential VMs featuring the third generation AMD EPYC™ processors with Secure Encrypted Virtualization Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP).Getting started with portal for Azure confidential ledger
Earlier this year, Azure confidential ledger, a managed service for keeping sensitive records intact for perpetuity with high integrity, became available to customers in preview with Python and ARM quickstarts. To build on this, today, we are excited to announce the portal experience to create your confidential ledgers!Choosing an Azure Ledger Technology
At the annual Microsoft Build 2021 Developer Conference, we announced two new products that are based on blockchain technology. Azure Confidential Ledger, now in preview, offers a fully managed service for customers who need to store sensitive data with high integrity and confidentiality. Azure SQL Database ledger, also in preview, enables storage of sensitive relational data in a tamper-evident way.
Use AD to restrict access for VPN users
I'm a network technician, working mostly with campus networks (Cisco mostly) and security appliances like firewalls. I'm not very good at Windows Server configuration, so I need a bit of help solving an issue with AD and NPS that google does not solve for me. :) I'm setting up Remote Access VPN (it's not Direct Access or any other Microsoft VPN solution). When user A connects via VPN, he should not be able to access everything though the VPN tunnel, it should be locked down to a few IP addresses and port numbers, like: 192.168.40.0/24, port 80 172.16.55.43, port 22 User A might be member of a group, and others in that group should have the same restriction. The general idea is that an organisation should be able to configure this access restriction in AD and not have to log on to the firewall to do this. My question is how you configure this. The only way I have found is to create a separate Network Profile for every Group, and in that profile set group membership as a condition and a Cisco-AV-Pair specifying the ACL in the settings (pictures below). That's not a very scalable solution for large organizations. Is there a better way? I've set up a lab environment for this, based on a DC and a NPS server. I'm not sure if NPS is needed but it seemed reasonable (maybe there is an LDAP solution?). I've configured RADIUS authentication via the NPS server and it works, it's just the ACL bit on AD that's missing.
