Azure Updates: Firewall Manager; Bastion; Power BI; App Configuration; Zero trust architecture

Over the past week, Microsoft focused on changes to Firewall and Firewall Manager, the introduction App Configuration, updates to Power BI, and more.

Program managers Gopikrishna Kannan and Yair Tor explained recent Azure Firewall changes in two different blog posts. Back in November, Microsoft introduced the Firewall Manager preview for Firewall policy and route management within secured virtual hubs. As part of this release, Firewall Manager became integrated with iboss and Zscaler with upcoming integrations with Check Point. In the latest preview, Firewall Manager added automatic deployment and centralized security policy management. Firewall policy resources group app rule collections, network address translation and threat intelligence settings that can be associated with a firewall in a Virtual WAN Hub. Tor delved deeper into aspects of user feedback. The team expanded Firewall capabilities to support ICSA Labs Corporate Firewall Certification, forced tunneling, IP Groups, customer configured SNAT private IP ranges and ports restriction relaxation.