Symantec Adds Extra Security Layer For Azure, Office 365 Users

Symantec has partnered with Microsoft so that entire network security stacks can be moved to the cloud, to allow secure connectivity to either Office 365 or Azure.

Specifically, Azure has been secured with the Symantec Web Security Service, which it is claimed will help actively protect Azure users from cyber threats, and help corporate users better control and protect enterprise use of the cloud.

This, says Symantec, will help overcome some of the security concerns that some organisations have when adopting a hybrid cloud approach.

Extra Protection

Symantec for a long while now has been using Microsoft as its strategic cloud provider.

That meant the security vendor essentially uses Azure for delivery of its Norton consumer products to more than 50 million people.

But now Symantec has added extra cloud protection for corporate users. It comes as cloud services such as Azure and Office 365 dramatically change the way that businesses use infrastructure. In the past corporations tended to have their own on-site data centres, through which they routed their traffic and accessed enterprise applications.

But with the advent of cloud-based offerings, more and more enterprises have adopted either private clouds, or indeed a hybrid cloud approach (combining both third party public and on-site private clouds).

For organisations still using the traditional on-site private cloud, they usually have had to install separate security infrastructure to access the web. But this security layer can add to latency and increase costs as organisations move to Office 365 and Azure.

So essentially now with the Symantec Web Security Service, corporate users can simply move their entire network security stack to the cloud.

“Symantec Web and Cloud Security delivers proven proxy-based network security that protects against web- and network-based threats and enables inspection of content for data loss prevention (DLP) compliance,” said the security firm.

“Symantec and Microsoft continue to share a commitment to online security,” said Sheila Jordan, senior VP and CIO at Symantec. “Through our efforts, we are bringing world class security solutions to Azure to help customers realize the speed, flexibility and capacity of cloud computing while staying protected against today’s evolving threats.”

Security Focus

“The collaboration between Microsoft and Symantec brings together advanced network security and intelligent cloud infrastructure,” said Scott Guthrie, executive VP of Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Group. “Symantec’s full suite of security and compliance controls complement our broad set of Azure security solutions to provide customers with an ideal, trusted cloud platform.

Remond has been thinking about security a lot recently. Last November Microsoft turned its attention to platform security with ‘Project Cerberus’.

This project aims to provide a critical component for security protection that to date has been missing from server hardware – namely protection, detection and recovery from attacks on platform firmware.

“Project Cerberus envisions that data can be processed in the cloud with the confidence that it’s running on hardware with uncompromised firmware,” wrote a Microsoft executive late last year. “With Project Olympus established as a base hardware platform upon which we can to build, we’re turning our attention to cybersecurity to continue to expand value to both Microsoft and the OCP community.”

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