Azure Review: Cybersecurity offerings; New migrations; Australia pricing; MCUs; Networking

As much of the world geared up for Christmas, hardly a channel vendor was stirring. But Microsoft put out a series of updates affecting PowerShell, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, log analytics and other aspects of Azure.

Ed Nightingale, partner director of engineering for Azure Sphere delved into the anatomy of microcontroller units, or MCUs, Microsoft managed operating systems for IoT. Until recently, MCUs were virtually all disconnected from the internet, but that has begun to change. "Connecting an MCU-based device to the Internet is a watershed moment because any MCU can become a potential general-purpose digital weapon in the hands of an attacker…If you've never thought about a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack launched by 100 million paper towel dispensers, consider this blog post your moment of clarity," he wrote.