Azure – CIS Hardened Images

Hi there

Did you know you have CIS Hardened Images available on Azure Marketplace o deploy on your environment?

CIS Hardened Images, also known as virtual machine images, allow the user to spin up a securely configured, or hardened, virtual instance of many popular operating systems to perform technical tasks without investing in additional hardware and related expenses. As mentioned at https://www.cisecurity.org/blog/cis-hardened-images-now-in-microsoft-azure-marketplace/

CIS Hardened Images help organizations around the world bring the secure configurations of the CIS Benchmarks to the cloud. Available on multiple platforms (and for over a dozen technologies), learn more about how CIS Hardened Images can help you start secure and stay secure.

Some of the common threats that can be mitigated by using a CIS Hardened Image include:

Denial of service
Insufficient authorization
Overlapping trust boundaries threats

The CIS benchmarks contain two levels, each with slightly different technical specifications:

Level 1 – Recommended, minimum security settings that should be configured on any system and should cause little or no interruption of service or reduced functionality
Level 2 – Recommended security settings for highly secure environments and could result in some reduced functionality.

Microsoft Azure Marketplace offers currently (May 21st 2020)