Heinrich Wewers and Satish Sunker unpack how Microsoft Defender for Cloud can help IT leaders improve cloud security posture, detect threats, and simplify compliance.
Cloud adoption continues to accelerate faster than many organisations’ ability to secure it. As workloads span Microsoft Azure, on-premises environments, and other cloud platforms such as AWS and Google Cloud, the attack surface increases, misconfigurations multiply, and visibility often diminishes.
For CISOs and IT leaders, this creates a fundamental challenge: how do you maintain consistent security and compliance across an ever-changing cloud estate?
“Unified protection is now at the heart of modern cloud security strategies,” says Heinrich Wewers, Senior Cloud Consultant at BUI. “The focus has shifted from securing perimeters to safeguarding identities, configurations and workloads wherever they reside. It’s a reality that makes Microsoft Defender for Cloud an indispensable tool in any defender’s kit.”
What is Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a unified platform for monitoring and improving the security posture of all cloud resources. It combines Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) capabilities. CSPM continuously assesses cloud configurations, identifies risks, and delivers actionable recommendations to prevent gaps, while CWPP protects live workloads such as virtual machines, containers, databases, and storage from active threats. Together, these capabilities provide a layered defence across the entire cloud estate.
“Microsoft Defender for Cloud gives you a single-pane-of-glass view across Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and even on-premises systems,” Wewers explains. “It doesn’t just alert you to problems; it tells you how to fix them and, in many cases, automates the process.”
Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates natively with Azure and extends protection to other clouds via built-in connectors. This unified approach enables the management of cloud infrastructure and workload security from a single interface, giving security teams consistent visibility and control without having to juggle multiple tools or dashboards.
Why Cloud Security Posture Management matters
Traditional perimeter-based security models are no longer effective in the dynamic and distributed nature of modern cloud environments: CISOs must secure virtual machines, identities, containers, databases, and APIs that expand and contract in real time. “Legacy tools lack visibility across multiple clouds. They also lack context awareness of cloud-native constructs and the automation needed for real-time detection,” observes Wewers. “Cloud security today is dynamic, identity-centric, and API-driven.”
In this landscape, many security incidents stem not from advanced zero-day exploits but from everyday misconfigurations and human errors. Problems such as excessive permissions on identities or service principals, missing endpoint protection on cloud VMs, and unmonitored configurations created during rapid deployment can all leave critical resources exposed, says Wewers.
Cloud Security Posture Management platforms such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud address these problems by delivering continuous visibility into cloud assets and their security status; applying baselines mapped to standards such as NIST to ensure consistent compliance; and prioritising remediation efforts by identifying which misconfigurations or vulnerabilities pose the highest risk.
“Cloud security posture management isn’t a one-time exercise,” Wewers emphasises. “It’s an ongoing process. Microsoft Defender for Cloud enables teams to spot risky configurations early on and prevent gaps from accumulating in the dark.”
Key capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Cloud
1. Continuous assessment and Secure Score
At the core of Microsoft Defender for Cloud’s posture management is continuous assessment, a constant evaluation of your cloud resources against Microsoft security benchmarks and global standards. Secure Score is the metric that brings this to life, explains Satish Sunker, Cloud Solutions Architect at BUI. “It continuously evaluates your Azure and multi-cloud resources against best practices and compliance standards. Each recommendation (such as enabling multi-factor authentication or restricting network access) carries a weighted impact score. As you implement the recommendations, your Secure Score improves, visually showing your progress toward a stronger security posture.”
Most organisations begin their journey with a Secure Score between 25% and 45%, depending on cloud maturity, Sunker shares. After remediating foundational issues, such as open management ports, unencrypted storage, and missing endpoint protection, many achieve 70% to 85% within months (indicating a well-hardened and monitored environment).
“Secure Score is an evidence-based, real-time metric that helps security teams prioritise actions with the biggest impact on risk reduction. Here at BUI, our customers consistently tell us that they value the contextual guidance, which turns a long list of findings into an actionable road map,” he adds. “Secure Score has also become a KPI for CISOs because it’s quantifiable, easy to track over time, and bridges the communication gap between technical teams and business stakeholders.”
2. Actionable recommendations and automated remediation
When Microsoft Defender for Cloud identifies risks, it doesn’t just report them: it actually tells you how to fix them. Sunker explains that remediation is intentionally straightforward: “Each recommendation links directly to the affected resource and includes guided or automated ‘fix’ actions. You can enable Just-In-Time VM access with one click, deploy Defender for Servers agents across subscriptions automatically, or apply policies through Azure Policy for long-term prevention.”
This built-in automation lowers the barrier to action, allowing even lean security teams to make meaningful improvements quickly. And because Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates tightly with Microsoft Sentinel and Logic Apps, many of these remediations can be orchestrated automatically, turning what used to be manual tasks into continuous protection workflows.
3. Threat detection and real-world protection
Microsoft Defender for Cloud actively detects and responds to cloud-native threats. It identifies malicious activity such as brute-force or anomalous login attempts, suspicious data exfiltration from storage accounts, malware and crypto-mining activity on workloads, SQL injection and privilege escalation in PaaS services, lateral movement between cloud resources, and much more.
Because it’s backed by Microsoft’s global threat intelligence and AI models, threat detection is highly contextual and continuously improving. In many real-world scenarios, BUI has seen this integration prevent incidents from escalating, says Sunker, providing an example. “Microsoft Defender for Cloud might flag anomalous network behaviour on a VM, while Microsoft Sentinel correlates that with a suspicious Entra ID login. That correlation allows our Cyber SOC analysts to stop lateral movement before compromise spreads.”
4. Compliance and governance
Regulatory frameworks such as ISO 27001, NIST, GDPR, and SOC 2 increasingly demand continuous, evidence-based compliance. Sunker notes that organisations are expected to prove continuous compliance, not just once-off compliance at audit time. Microsoft Defender for Cloud’s Regulatory Compliance Dashboard simplifies this task dramatically. It maps your configuration and control data against each framework’s requirements in real time, providing comprehensive visibility and insights for auditors and security teams alike.
“Compliance reporting used to involve manual audits and spreadsheets,” says Sunker. “Now, evidence is always current and exportable. You can even customise your compliance initiatives to match internal or industry-specific standards.”
5. Multi-cloud and hybrid support
Microsoft Defender for Cloud caters for the fact that most enterprises operate across multiple platforms. Using native connectors and Azure Arc, organisations can extend visibility and policy enforcement beyond Microsoft Azure to AWS, Google Cloud, and on-premises servers. This allows security teams to apply a single set of policies across all clouds, monitor non-Azure workloads in the same dashboard, and use Defender’s threat detection for AWS EC2, Google Cloud Compute Engine, and Kubernetes clusters.
“Hybrid and multi-cloud environments require consistent security controls,” notes Sunker. “Microsoft Defender for Cloud reduces fragmentation and provides a single source of truth for your posture.”
Integration across the Microsoft Security Ecosystem
Wewers highlights that Microsoft Defender for Cloud doesn’t operate in isolation. “It’s a foundational component of the broader Microsoft security ecosystem.”
- Its findings, alerts, and recommendations integrate directly with Microsoft Sentinel to provide unified SIEM and SOAR visibility.
- Through its connection with Microsoft Defender XDR, Defender for Cloud contributes workload and identity signals that enhance cross-domain threat detection across endpoints, email, and identities.
- In collaboration with Microsoft Entra ID, it supports identity protection by enforcing least-privilege access and monitoring risky sign-ins.
- And its integration with Azure Policy and Azure Arc extends governance, compliance, and security management across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
“This ecosystem integration allows for end-to-end visibility, from detection through investigation to remediation,” Wewers notes. “It turns Microsoft Defender for Cloud into a strategic control plane for security across the entire Microsoft security landscape and beyond.”
Future-proofing your cloud security posture
As organisations continue to evolve their digital strategies, cloud security posture management will remain a critical pillar of resilience, says Wewers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers not just visibility, but the intelligence and automation needed to stay ahead of threats in an ever-changing landscape. By unifying assessment, protection, and compliance under one platform, it enables security teams to move from reactive defence to proactive, strategic risk management.
“The most secure organisations are the ones that understand their security posture and continuously strive to improve it. Microsoft Defender for Cloud gives CISOs the clarity and confidence to do just that, across Azure and every connected environment,” he concludes.
To make the most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, many organisations choose to partner with a certified Azure Expert MSP. Working alongside seasoned specialists ensures that the tool is deployed and tuned effectively, delivering measurable improvements in security posture and compliance. If you’re ready to begin, we’re here to help. Contact the BUI team today.
