Visual Studio Subscriptions have been added to MCA
Windows 10 ESU added to CSP
Microsoft Defender & Microsoft Purview Suites have now been made available to Business Premium users
That last point is very interesting as this brings a world of new security features to smaller organisations – which will have multiple impacts:
1) directly increase the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of SMB customers as they buy new add-ons 2) increase the chances of SMB customers adopting Copilot – as these new products address many of the security/data challenges… 2b) which will further increase the ARPU of SMB customers
Microsoft have long been calling out the strength of SMB driving M365 sales so this is a logical next step.
Microsoft have introduced another member of the Defender family – Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).
Certain features are available free of charge in any environment where Defender for Cloud is enabled, these include:
Asset discovery
Security recommendations & compliance with Microsoft benchmarks
Secure score for posture
Paid features include:
Attack path analysis
Cloud security explorer
Advanced threat hunting
and more.
Pricing
Defender CSPM protects all workloads across multi-cloud environments but is only chargeable for Server, Database, and Storage resources including:
VMs
Storage accounts
OSS DBs
SQL PaaS
SQL Servers
Pricing starts from May 1, 2023 and is $5* per billable resource per month but there are discounts available for Defender for Cloud customers:
Current Defender for Cloud Customer
Automatic Discount
Defender CSPM Price
Defender for Servers P2
25%
$11.25/ Compute or Data workload / month
Defender for Containers
10%
$13.50/ Compute or Data workload / month
Defender for DBs / Defender for Storage
5%
$14.25/ Compute or Data workload / month
*Pricing was initially announced as $15 per billable resource per month but was later reduced to $5. It also appears the above discount structure has been removed.
Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com
Microsoft have added more new products to the Defender family – “Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence” and “Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management” – and have brought out an SAP add-on for Microsoft Sentinel.
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence
This new offering, incorporating what was RiskIQ, effectively “maps the internet” and gives customers direct access to Microsoft’s real-time data and security signals; this enables organisations to “proactively hunt” for threats within their environment.
Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management
This helps organisations identify all their internet facing resources – including those you’re not aware of and/or have forgotten about. It’s so easy to lose track of your external facing devices with COVID changes, mergers, good old shadow IT, and the potential for mis-configured assets around the business.
Being able to see a continuously updated map of potentially vulnerable assets will be key for organisations looking to protect themselves, their assets, and their users.
Microsoft Sentinel for SAP
They have announced an SAP specific add-on for Microsoft Sentinel that will:
Monitor all system layers
Detect & respond to threats
Enable customisation to extend protection
According to Microsoft it will integrate with “virtually any” NetWeaver system. It launched in August 2022 and is free for the first 6 months. After that it will be an add-on charge to the regular Sentinel pricing.
During their Ignite 2021 conference, Microsoft announced a range of name changes across their security portfolio – these are:
Old name
New name
Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Azure Security Center + Azure Defender
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Azure Defender for IoT
Microsoft Defender for IoT
Azure Defender for Storage
Microsoft Defender for Storage
Azure Sentinel
Microsoft Sentinel
These are, I believe, all the changes but there may be some other “Azure –> Microsoft” changes that have taken place!
Whenever products change names, there’s the potential for confusion among partners and customers. While many of these are fairly straightforward, I can definitely see people getting confused between “Microsoft Defender for Cloud” and “Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps” 😂
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 