Microsoft Azure {hardware}’s safety posture is foundational to the safety guarantees we make to our prospects. The availability chain of Microsoft Azure servers depends on a multifaceted and sophisticated ecosystem of companions throughout silicon manufacturing, meeting, techniques integration, transit, and operationalization in knowledge facilities. A number of interplay factors throughout this provide chain pose important threats to the safety and integrity of an Azure server touchdown in manufacturing. These dangers embrace firmware tampering, {hardware} tampering, set up of malicious code or spyware and adware, weakened safety controls, and plenty of extra. We at Microsoft consider it’s crucial to construct mechanisms to proactively detect and remediate such points throughout the early phases of product growth or earlier than servers dock in an information middle.  

{Hardware} Root-of-Belief (RoT) gadgets comparable to Cerberus and Trusted Platform Module are the cornerstone for establishing foundational belief on {hardware} elements in our cloud. This ensures the authenticity and integrity of those elements and their firmware with traceability all the best way again to silicon manufacturing. The easiest way to perform our goal is to confirm “provenance” of our servers all through their lifecycle from manufacturing facility to manufacturing utilizing {hardware} RoT gadget identities. Through the silicon manufacturing course of, the gadget id is securely extracted and annotated to uniquely establish trusted gadgets. This mitigates the chance of “rogue” gadgets discovering their means into the Azure fleet undetected (Determine 1). Lenovo is one in every of our main provider companions which might be pushing the boundaries of safe provide chain with us.

To additional defend these {hardware} RoT identities on which we anchor the chain of belief, we leverage the energy of enclaves and the Confidential Consortium Framework with Microsoft Azure confidential ledger to integrity-protect our provider provenance database. Study extra about our firmware integrity protections.

Azure confidential ledger integrity protects current databases and functions by appearing as a point-in-time supply of fact which supplies cryptographic proofs in verification eventualities. Particularly, saved knowledge shouldn’t be solely immutable and tamper-proof within the append-only ledger however can also be independently verifiable. It’s also useful as a repository of audit trails or data that must be stored intact and selectively shared with sure personas. Knowledge logged within the ledger stays immutable, privacy-enhanced, and protected against insider threats inside a company and even the cloud supplier.  

On this situation, Azure confidential ledger supplies industry-leading tamper-evidence capabilities to find out if any unauthorized manipulations have occurred with these delicate gadget identities. At totally different cut-off dates, verification checks are executed towards the Azure confidential ledger to make sure that the info is constant and pristine. Utilizing this know-how additionally mitigates tampering dangers from extremely privileged Azure operators. 

Azure confidential ledger is used to mild up a crucial infrastructure safety situation—Venture Odyssey. Venture Odyssey goals to cryptographically confirm the provenance of {hardware} RoT gadgets (hooked up to servers) as they undertake their journey from OEM flooring to Microsoft Azure knowledge facilities and all through their manufacturing lifecycle. As a part of the manufacturing workflow, suppliers add a signed manifest of {hardware} RoT identities right into a trusted ‘provenance database’ that makes use of tamper-evident Azure confidential ledger integration. Because the gadgets are assembled into elements, blades, and racks, their identities will be verified at every step of the availability chain course of. After lengthy journeys by air, land, and sea, the assembled racks arrive at Microsoft Knowledge Facilities the place they bear further checks to make sure that they weren’t tampered with throughout transit. Lastly, when a server is prepared for manufacturing, it undergoes attestation the place its {hardware} RoT id will be re-verified earlier than permitting it to hitch the manufacturing surroundings and host buyer workloads. Servers are anticipated to bear this course of periodically making certain that the {hardware} elements keep compliant all through their lifecycle, thereby making certain that malicious and unauthorized swapping of blades and motherboards is detected, and non-compliant servers will be tagged for eviction, investigation, and remediation. 

This is just one piece of our general {hardware} safety story. Microsoft Azure has developed complete safety necessities to allow safety capabilities comparable to safe boot, safe replace, attestation, restoration, encryption, and telemetry to make sure Azure {hardware} is resilient to such assaults by strong capabilities round prevention, detection, and response.  

Learn extra about how we safe Microsoft Azure’s {hardware} and firmware. 

At Microsoft, a core a part of our tradition is leveraging the work of one another to ship industry-leading safety to our prospects with a protection in-depth strategy. Azure {hardware} gadget provenance and provide chain safety is a elementary constructing block of our foundational safety stack. By cryptographic provenance verification of Azure {hardware} through Venture Odyssey and extra defense-in-depth protections of {hardware} gadget identities utilizing Azure confidential ledger, we’re setting the gold customary in cloud {hardware} provide chain safety to profit our prospects.

“Lenovo’s key precedence is to confirm and make sure the end-to-end safety and traceability for Microsoft cloud {hardware}. By implementing this course of in each our element and system integration factories, not solely can we belief that the {hardware} we obtain from downstream ODM/OEM suppliers is secured and trusted, however we will add the Lenovo fingerprint knowledge to the chain of belief, which helps guarantee Microsoft that the {hardware} obtained by knowledge facilities is absolutely secured and reliable. 

Integrating this resolution into the Lenovo international provide chain workflow was exceptionally clean because of the thorough documentation and examples that the Microsoft staff maintains on an ongoing foundation. Assuring the integrity and traceability of knowledge in Azure confidential ledger permits Lenovo to give attention to course of and product high quality, without having to spend additional growth cycles engaged on an in-house safety resolution.”—James McFadden, Govt Director, Provide Chain High quality & Engineering, Lenovo.

Study extra