2.1 Ensure that Azure Defender is set to On for Servers

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This audit has been deprecated and will be removed in a future update.

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Information

Turning on Azure Defender enables threat detection for Server, providing threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and behavior analytics in the Azure Security Center.

Rationale:

Enabling Azure Defender for Servers allows for greater defense-in-depth, with threat detection provided by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).

Impact:

Turning on Azure Defender in Azure Security Center incurs an additional cost per resource.

Solution

From Azure Console

Go to Security Center

Select Pricing & settings blade

Click on the subscription name

Select the Azure Defender plans blade

On the line in the table for Servers Select On under Plan.

Select Save

Using Azure Command Line Interface 2.0
Use the below command to enable Azure Defender for Servers

az account get-access-token --query '{subscription:subscription,accessToken:accessToken}' --out tsv | xargs -L1 bash -c 'curl -X PUT -H 'Authorization: Bearer $1' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$0/providers/Microsoft.Security/pricings/VirtualMachines?api-version=2018-06-01 -d@'input.json''

Where input.json contains the Request body json data as mentioned below.

{
'id': '/subscriptions/<Your_Subscription_Id>/providers/Microsoft.Security/pricings/VirtualMachines',
'name': 'VirtualMachines',
'type': 'Microsoft.Security/pricings',
'properties': {
'pricingTier': 'Standard'
}
}

Default Value:

By default, Azure Defender off is selected.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/3459