4.3. Implement Security for Application Platform Services

💡 First Principle: Containers and serverless services shift more of the security responsibility to Microsoft (the platform manages the underlying OS and patching), but that shift doesn't eliminate application-layer risk — misconfigured permissions, exposed registries, and unauthenticated endpoints are still entirely the customer's responsibility regardless of how much infrastructure the platform manages.

Mental model: as compute moves from VM (most customer-managed) toward fully serverless (most platform-managed), the category of what you're responsible for narrows, but within that narrower category, the security discipline is the same as everywhere else in this guide — identity, network exposure, and configuration hardening.

⚠️ Common Misconception: A Web Application Firewall is not a substitute for securing an app's own authentication and authorization. WAF filters known attack patterns (like the OWASP Top 10) at the network edge — it doesn't replace identity-based access control, managed identity usage, or code-level input validation inside the application itself.