Malware Scanning in Defender for Storage is now generally available

Microsoft has announced that Malware Scanning in Defender for Storage is now generally available, providing a notable enhancement over Microsoft Defender for Cloud’s security offerings for Azure Blob Storage.

This is important, as it helps to catch both polymorphic and metamorphic malware, which may otherwise slip by traditional defences due to their ability to transform their code, or make slight changes to common properties such as file names, as they progress through a system.

How it works

Malware Scanning for Defender offers near real-time agentless protection which provides a full malware scan on uploaded content, using Microsoft Defender Antivirus capabilities to catch both types of malware. This requires zero maintenance on the user’s end, and enables automated responses at scale, to move or remove malicious files or move clean files to another destination.

In addition, Malware Scanning in Defender for Storage, has been shown to have great versatility in terms of its use-cases in beta testing over the past two years. It has proven itself useful for various applications, including web applications, content protection, compliance requirements, third-party integration, collaborative platforms, data pipelines and machine learning training data.

How to enable

You can enable Malware Scanning through multiple configuration methods, including Azure built-in policy, Bicep, ARM, Terraform, the REST API, or the Azure portal UI. It is recommended to enable Defender for Storage via a policy, as it facilitates enablement at scale and ensures that a consistent security policy is applied across all existing and future storage accounts. This keeps storage accounts protected with Defender for Storage according to your organisation’s defined configuration.

How it's priced

Malware scanning is billed per GB scanned, and an optional cap can be set on the amount of GB scanned in a single month, for each storage account, to help the solution to fit within your security budget. By default, this limit is set to 5 TB, if no specific capping mechanism is defined.

Need help adopting Malware Scanning? Get in touch today. Our experts can help you to get set up or answer any questions you may have.