Microsoft has signaled it wants to provide security for cloud-based companies in general, regardless of whether they use Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
Microsoft is a far different company under Satya Nadella than it was under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Instead of ruthlessly protecting and pushing its own operating systems and platforms, the company has shifted to the cloud, with a focus on providing the best applications and services on a variety of systems and platforms.
The company is now extending that philosophy to cloud security, with its latest update to Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Formerly known as Azure Defender, the company changed its name to better reflect its emphasis on securing multicloud environments. Microsoft has also added support for Google Cloud, roughly three months after adding support for AWS. In both cases, the company used open programming APIs to integrate Microsoft Defender with its rivals’ platforms.
“Today most of our customers have AWS and they have Azure and they have Google Cloud and they have different workloads around and then they have security solutions which are native to each of these,” Vasu Jakkal, CVP Microsoft Security, Compliance, Identity & Privacy told Bloomberg in an interview. “Think about the security practitioners sitting in a Security Operations Center looking at these alerts in this pane of glass — they’re dealing with three if not more.”
This is not the first time Microsoft has set itself apart from its rivals. In early February, the company released its Open App Store Principles, in which it committed to behavior that is almost diametrically opposite from the manner in which Apple and Google run their app stores.
For those who remember Microsoft of the ’90s and early 2000s, this open, enlightened Microsoft is a refreshing change, and increasingly serves as an example for the rest of the industry. Hopefully more companies will take note and imitate it.