Microsoft said it has acquired CloudKnox Security, an identity and access management (IAM) start-up that caters to the sensibilities of the modern cloud computing environment. CloudKnox Security provides visibility into privileged access and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM).
“Since IT modernization often spans multiple clouds, cloud security and identity are top of mind for most of our customers. Modern identity security needs to protect all users and resources consistently across multicloud and hybrid cloud environments,” wrote Joy Chik, corporate vice president of Microsoft Identity in a blog post announcing the acquisition on Thursday.
The acquisition motivated by the increasing number of businesses adopting multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud approach, Chik noted it will enable Microsoft to give organisations better privileged access management, Azure Active Directory customers continuous monitoring and enable auto remediation capabilities and permissions.
However, the acquisition is said to have its benefits and challenges. Chik points that while traditional entitlement tools work well for on-premises environments, but they aren’t suitable for the prevalent cloud computing environments.
“As the corporate network perimeter disappears, it’s crucial to establish a strong cloud identity foundation, so you can enforce least privileged access to protect business-critical systems while improving business agility,” reasons Chik.
CloudKnox said its platform currently supports private clouds and public clouds like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Microsoft seems to enhance its security portfolio recently and had announced the acquisition of RiskIQ, another security vendor earlier this month.
