Illumio has announced the general availability of Illumio for Microsoft Azure Firewall. This integrated solution is designed to make it easier to use Azure Firewall as a Zero Trust enforcement point to visualise and secure all traffic between Azure resources connecting through the Azure Firewall.

Illumio for Azure Firewall works to build resilience to ransomware and other cyber attacks while also maximising the impact and value of Azure Firewall as a security investment. 

As organisations look to reduce their risk from breaches and build cyber resilience, the Azure Firewall plays a strategic role in securing and protecting enterprise cloud environments by serving as the entry and exit point for data as it traverses the hybrid cloud ecosystem.

Illumio for Azure Firewall allows users to protect different parts of their cloud environment by enabling one-to-one mapping between a resource and its metadata in Azure and its associated workload and labels in Illumio.

According to the company, benefits of Illumio for Azure Firewall include: 

• Simple policy creation: Organisations no longer need to worry about writing firewall rules tied to an IP address or a host name that will change in a dynamic cloud environment. Illumio for Azure Firewall offers easy authoring of context-based, modern security rules that automatically adapt with Azure deployments and are simple to understand and manage. 
• Improve application uptime: Organisations can operate and innovate at scale without fear of breaking critical applications once they apply policy. Security teams can test and validate the outcome and impact of their security policies before fully enforcing them using a simulation mode, which protects applications and workloads. Once security teams are confident in the policy, they can deploy it to Azure Firewalls directly from the Illumio for Azure Firewall console.  
• Zero Trust at scale: Zero Trust Segmentation controls minimise the impact of cyber attacks, reducing organisations risk and increasing their resilience. Illumio for Azure Firewall gives organisations simplified context-based visibility of any communication across Azure Firewall and Azure network security groups, helping them prioritise and implement the most impactful security policies. And Illumio for Azure Firewall makes it easier to achieve and maintain least-privilege access on the Azure Firewall, bringing Zero Trust at scale to any organisation.  

Markus Lintuala and Mika Vilpo, Senior Technical Consultants at Elisa, says, "Illumio for Microsoft Azure Firewall is a modern and efficient approach to traditional firewall management. It brings native public cloud metadata into rule management. Traffic visualisation now informs traffic management, and this might change the way we operate so that we open only required and more specific ports for designated traffic." 

Narayan Annamalai, General Manager, Microsoft, comments, "Illumio for Microsoft Azure Firewall helps modernise firewall policy management by making it easy to enforce Zero Trust. Illumio for Azure Firewall extends Zero Trust Segmentation capabilities to the firewall and helps ensure that Azure users can incorporate the right protections into dynamic security policies at scale."

Mario Espinoza, Chief Product Officer at Illumio, says, "As the world around us becomes increasingly dynamic and hybrid, organisations must have agile Zero Trust policies in place to help them achieve a more resilient security posture. By partnering with Microsoft Azure, Illumio is extending the visibility and agility of Zero Trust Segmentation to anyone using Azure Firewalls.

"This allows organisations to reduce their risk and get even more impact from their security strategy by implementing security policy more easily and quickly. We are excited to see further validation of the growing importance of Zero Trust Segmentation controls specifically."