Convenience vs Security

The convenience of Microsoft Azure come with some serious problems. It seemed like a good idea at the time to store your cloud service credentials in your on-premise identity management solution. With Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Azure, you got exactly that convenience.

The only problem is that when hackers get into your on-premise system, they own your cloud instances too. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an alert about SolarWinds hackers using privilege escalation to gain access to the Microsoft Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) and then producing OAuth tokens to move laterally to your cloud instances.

The SolarWinds hack shows that having intruders in your system is the new normal. You need to compartmentalize access, and storing all your access rights in one central place is a very dangerous convenience.