Noted security expert Charlie Bell, who spent over twenty years at Amazon before jumping ship to Microsoft last year, is now leading up Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management efforts as Executive Vice President.
Today, along with the announcements of Microsoft Defender for Google Cloud to go along with the already announced Defender for AWS, and the first preview of CloudKnox Permissions Management, Bell took to LinkedIn to talk about the future of cloud security and the necessity of a multi-cloud approach, calling cybersecurity “the biggest challenge of our time.”
Under Bell, Microsoft is focused on developing security solutions not just for Microsoft products, but for real world realities where customers are using multi-cloud approaches. Bell says:
If customers are dealing with separate security infrastructures for each cloud they’re operating in, it introduces incredible complexity, seams for attackers to exploit, and opportunities for mistakes.
So while we work to build industry-leading security products, we do so using open standards and federation to enable customers to flexibly, seamlessly, and simply manage their technology estate—on premises and into our inevitable multicloud world.
Ensuring that our security solutions are open and multicloud means including defenders across platforms, and that means we’re taking bigger steps forward in tackling a problem that requires cooperation and contributions from the whole industry.
Microsoft is taking a more pro-active stance on security, opening up Defender to more clouds and more devices, taking a hard line on security requirements for Windows 11 devices, and working to defeat cybercriminals in an ever more challenging landscape. While not getting your old device to run Windows 11 may be disappointing, security is a challenge that’s not going away.
