Azure is currently one of the fastest-growing businesses for Microsoft, and the company wants everyone to know that its cloud offering is as secure as Fort Knox. Indeed, Microsoft has just announced the Azure Security Lab, which will welcome security researchers willing to test Azure’s security in exchange of financial rewards.
“The isolation of the Azure Security Lab allows us to offer something new: researchers can not only research vulnerabilities in Azure, but they can also attempt to exploit them. Those with access to the Azure Security Lab may attempt the scenario-based challenges with top awards of $300,000,” explained Kymberlee Price, Principal Security PM Manager at Microsoft.
Security researchers willing to join Microsoft’s new Azure Security Lab can fill their application on this page. The new bounty program should be a good incentive to make the Azure ecosystem more secure for all customers, and Microsoft really needs Azure to be as secure as possible if it wants to be taken seriously as an Amazon Web Services competitor.
“In appreciation of their efforts and the opportunity to mitigate issues before they are publicly known and used for harm, we’ve issued $4.4 million dollars in bounty rewards over the past 12 months,” explained Price. “We appreciate our security partners across the industry, and believe the new programs we’re announcing today will help further protect the Azure ecosystem,” she added.
