Defender for Virtual Machines should be enabled

High Azure General defenderstatus-threat-protection-8

Microsoft Defender for VirtualMachines provides threat detection and security alerts

Applies to

Microsoft.Security/defenderStatus

What CGPulse checks

A resource passes this rule when plans.VirtualMachines must equal Standard. Anything else is reported as a finding with the evaluated property value attached as evidence.

How to fix it

Enable Defender for Virtual Machines to detect threats and vulnerabilities. In Azure Portal: Microsoft Defender for Cloud > Environment settings > enable Virtual Machines plan. See: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/defender-for-cloud/defender-for-servers-introduction

CLI

az security pricing create --name VirtualMachines --tier Standard

Terraform

resource "azurerm_security_center_subscription_pricing" "vms" {
  tier          = "Standard"
  resource_type = "VirtualMachines"
}

Compliance frameworks

Cloud Security BaselineLT-1

Vendor documentation

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