79 operating systems of Azure and hybrid virtual machine images. It then feeds that data into Azure Monitor, where it informs insights and other services like Microsoft Sentinel. AMA sends various types of information to Azure Monitor. These include logs, or events that occurred within the system, and traces, or series of related events that follow a user request through a distributed system. These and other pieces of data help you monitor the health and performance of Azure virtual machines (VMs) at scale, including Linux VMs. Helping you make the most of CIS Hardened Images for Linux Overall, it was a smooth process testing the CIS Hardened Images for Linux. The Azure team made a few tweaks to AMA throughout the investigation to account for the differences across various Linux distributions but even so, there weren’t any issues with AMA functionality degradation when installed on a CIS machine. When the Azure team did make some changes to AMA, it did so to comply with the CIS Benchmarks settings post-AMA install. Primarily, these changes involved strengthening the permissions for file and directory ownership and ensuring a loopback network setup of an AMA sub-component. With the testing period over, AMA is now validated for successful deployment and overall functionality, including end-to-end data flow for all data types on images, for a range of CIS Linux Hardened Images. The Azure team has also integrated CIS Hardened Images into the pre-release validation process for continual re-validation when new AMA versions become available. This ensures no AMA functionality regression, thereby helping you maintain the performance and availability of these pre-hardened virtual machine images for Linux going forward. An ongoing partnership Microsoft and CIS are committed to continuing their partnership to make its products more secure and available on a variety of Linux environments, benchmarks and settings. Get started with with a CIS Hardened Image on the Azure Marketplace at: www.cisecurity.org/ cis-hardened-images/microsoft Mia LaVada is product manager of benchmarks and cloud at the Center for Internet Security IN FOCUS: MISA Photo: Microsoft Azure Monitor helps monitor the health and performance of Azure VMs at scale
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