Windows Azure Security Notes (PDF) is a collection of our notes and learnings from exploring the cloud security space and working through Windows Azure security scenarios.   Note that this is not a guide and it’s not a Microsoft patterns & practices deliverable.  It’s simply a way to package up, hand-off, and share what we learned during the exploration stage of our patterns & practices Windows Azure Security Guidance project.

The key things you’ll want to explore in the notes are the various application scenarios, the cloud security threats and countermeasures, and the checklist.

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• Download Windows Azure Security Notes (PDF)

Contents at a Glance
Here is a quick look at the Windows Azure Security Notes:

• Ch 1 - Our Cloud Security Approach
• Ch 2 - Cloud Security Threats and Countermeasures
• Ch 3 - Design Guidelines for Improving Cloud Security
• Ch 4 - Choosing Web Application Security Architectures
• Ch 5 - Web App Security Scenarios
• Ch 6 - Choosing Web Services Security Architectures
• Ch 7 - Web Services Security Scenarios
• Ch 8 - Choosing Data Security Architectures
• Ch 9 - Data Security Scenarios

Reference

• Security Checklist for Cloud Applications
• Visual Threats for Web Applications
• Visual Threats for Web Services
• Cheat Sheet - Web Application Security Threats and Countermeasures
• Cheat Sheet - Web Services (SOAP) Security Threats and Countermeasures
• Cheat Sheet - Web Services (REST) Security Threats and Countermeasures
• Cheat Sheet - Data Security Threats and Countermeasures
• How To - Use Forms Authentication with Azure Table Storage
• How To - Use Forms Authentication with SQL Azure
• How To - Enable SSL with a Self-Signed Certificate on Windows Azure

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the following folks for sharing their time and expertise along the way:

• External contributors and reviewers: Adam Grocholski; Andy Eunson; Bill Collette; Christopher Seary; Jason Taylor; John Daniels; Juval Lowy; Kevin Lam; Long Le; Michael Smith; Michael Stiefel; Michele Leroux Bustamante; Norman Headlam; Rockford Lhotka; Rudolph Araujo; Sarang Kulkarni; Steven Nagy; Terrance Snyder; Will Clevenger
• Microsoft contributors and reviewers:  Akshay Aggarwal; Alik Levin; Andreas Fuchsberger; Babur Butter; Bharat Shyam; Dave Brankin; Danny Cohen; Diego Dagum; Don Willits; Eugenio Pace; Gabriel Morgan; Jeff Mueller; John Steer; Julian Gonzalez; Mark Curphey; Mohit Srivastava; Pat Filoteo; Rahul Verma; Raul Rojas; Scott Densmore; Sesha Mani; Serena Yeoh; Sriram Krishnan; Stefan Schackow; Steve Marx; Stuart Kwan; Terri Schmidt; Tobin Titus; Varun Sharma; Vidya Vrat Agarwal; Vikram Bhambri; Yale Li