1.4.1. Shared Responsibility: Microsoft's Role

First Principle: Microsoft is responsible for "security of the cloud," which means protecting the underlying global infrastructure, hardware, software, and physical facilities that deliver all Azure services.

In the Azure Shared Responsibility Model, Microsoft's responsibility is to protect the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in Azure. This "security of the cloud" includes protecting the global infrastructure (Regions, Availability Zones) and the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run Azure services.

Key Microsoft Responsibilities ("Security of the Cloud"):

• "Physical Security": Data centers, servers, networking hardware.
• "Network Controls": Global Azure network backbone and infrastructure.
• "Host OS": Operating systems of the physical hosts providing Azure services.
• "Virtualization Layer": The hypervisor that isolates customer Virtual Machines.
• "Managed Services Infrastructure": Underlying infrastructure for Azure App Service, Azure Functions, Azure SQL Database, Azure Storage, etc. This includes patching and security configuration of these underlying hosts and platform components.

Scenario: You are developing a web application hosted on Azure App Service. You're concerned about the physical security of the servers running your application and the security of the underlying App Service platform that Microsoft manages.

Reflection Question: How does Microsoft's "security of the cloud" responsibility, by managing the physical security and underlying infrastructure for managed Azure services like App Service, enable you as a developer to focus on your application code and data, rather than the foundational environment?