9.2.2 Ensure that soft delete for containers on Azure Blob Storage storage accounts is Enabled

Information

Containers in Azure storage accounts may contain sensitive or personal data, such as ePHI or financial information. Data that is erroneously modified or deleted by an application or a user can lead to data loss or unavailability.

It is recommended that soft delete for containers be enabled on Azure storage accounts with blob storage to allow for the preservation and recovery of data when containers are deleted.

Containers can be deleted incorrectly. An attacker or malicious user may do this deliberately in order to cause disruption. Deleting a container results in immediate data loss. Enabling this configuration for Azure storage accounts ensures that even if containers are deleted from the storage account, the containers are recoverable for a specific period of time, which is defined in the "Retention policies," ranging from 7 to 365 days.

NOTE: Nessus has provided the target output to assist in reviewing the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Remediate from Azure Portal

- Go to Storage accounts.
- For each Storage Account with blob storage, under Data management, go to Data protection.
- Check the box next to Enable soft delete for containers.
- Set the retention period to a sufficient length for your organization.
- Click Save.

Remediate from Azure CLI

Run the following command to update container retention:

az storage account blob-service-properties update --resource-group <resource-group> --account-name <storage-account> --enable-container-delete-retention true --container-delete-retention-days <retention-days>

Impact:

All soft-deleted data is billed at the same rate as active data. Additional costs may be incurred for deleted containers until the soft delete period ends and the data is permanently removed.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/21611

Item Details

Category: CONTINGENCY PLANNING

References: 800-53|CP-2, 800-53|CP-10, CSCv7|10.4

Plugin: microsoft_azure

Control ID: 33fb83e4141f437eb80a59ac60e56e740d3d3deec82d9be1fe3b2ecf90421806