I received a lot of queries if Trust Center is part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. In this article you will find the answer and the reasoning behind it. The short answer is: Trust Center is NOT part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Why?
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
First let’s understand what Microsoft Defender for Cloud is. It is a CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) and CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection) solution. It is built to constantly assess, secure and defend your cloud environment. Free plan of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is deployed by default to every subscription, yet you can change it to a paid plan to receive more security features.
What is important to remember, is that Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a service. It has tiers, one of which is a free tier. But it doesn’t change the fact that you can decide
- if you want the Microsoft Defender for cloud service to be enabled for your environment
- which tier/plan of Microsoft Defender for cloud you choose for your environment
- which of your cloud resources will be auto-provisioned with agents/addons that Microsoft Defender for cloud makes use of for collecting information
Azure Trust Center
Azure Trust Center is one place working as a sitemap to all privacy and security compliance resources. If you’re looking for information on how Microsoft Azure supports GDPR or ISO27001 – Trust Center is a place to go. It will either already have an answer for you, or will link to other Microsoft documentation that covers that topic.
Trust Center is not a service. It is just a website. You do not need to be logged on to access Trust Center’s articles. Trust Center does not have access to your cloud resources, it is a general knowledge for everyone, not specific to your environment.
Why Trust Center is not part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
- Microsoft Defender for cloud is a service which you can deploy and configure, where Trust Center is just a website accessed by everyone
- Microsoft Defender for cloud is specific to a given subscription where Trust Center is generic
- Trust Center provides information on compliance, where Microsoft Defender for cloud also provides actual alerts on potential breaches and recommendations for reconfiguration
- Trust Center is free and accessed anonymously, where Microsoft Defender for cloud has different plans, both free and paid
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud has a well defined structure, and Trust Center is not in it. Currently there are only below plans (parts) of Microsoft Defender for cloud:
- Microsoft Defender for Servers Plan 1
- Microsoft Defender for Servers Plan 2
- Microsoft Defender for Containers
- Microsoft Defender for SQL on Azure-connected databases
- Microsoft Defender for SQL outside Azure
- Microsoft Defender for MySQL
- Microsoft Defender for PostgreSQL
- Microsoft Defender for MariaDB
- Microsoft Defender for Azure Cosmos DB
- Microsoft Defender for Storage
- Microsoft Defender for App Service
- Microsoft Defender for Key Vault
- Microsoft Defender for ARM
- Microsoft Defender for DNS
Final verdict
Trust Center is part of Microsoft Defender for cloud. Is this true or false?
It is false. Those are two different offerings, serving different purposes.