Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive cloud security posture management (CSPM) and cloud workload protection platform (CWPP). It includes specific plans for various resource types, such as "Microsoft Defender for SQL." This plan provides Advanced Threat Protection for Azure SQL Managed Instance by continuously monitoring for anomalous database activities, potential vulnerabilities, and security threats like SQL injection and unusual access patterns. It alerts security teams to suspicious events, enabling a rapid response to potential attacks on the database.

A. Microsoft Secure Score is a security posture assessment tool that provides recommendations; it does not perform active, real-time threat detection.

B. Application security groups are used to group virtual machines and define network security policies for them, not for detecting threats within a PaaS database service.

D. Azure Bastion is a managed service that provides secure RDP and SSH access to virtual machines, which is unrelated to database threat detection.

1. Microsoft Learn. "Overview of Microsoft Defender for SQL." Microsoft Docs. Accessed May 20

2024. In the "What does Microsoft Defender for SQL protect?" section

it explicitly lists "Azure SQL Managed Instance" as a protected resource. The document states

"It includes functionality for... detecting anomalous activities that could indicate a threat to your databases."

2. Microsoft Learn. "Advanced Threat Protection for Azure SQL Managed Instance." Microsoft Docs. Accessed May 20

2024. This document details the feature

stating

"Advanced Threat Protection for Azure SQL Managed Instance detects anomalous activities indicating unusual and potentially harmful attempts to access or exploit your databases. Advanced Threat Protection is part of the Microsoft Defender for Azure SQL offering."

3. Microsoft Learn. "Microsoft Secure Score." Microsoft Docs. Accessed May 20

2024. This source defines Secure Score as "a measurement of an organization's security posture" and focuses on "improvement actions

" confirming it is not a threat detection service.

4. Microsoft Learn. "Application security groups." Microsoft Docs. Accessed May 20

2024. This document explains that ASGs "enable you to configure network security as a natural extension of an application's structure

allowing you to group virtual machines

" confirming their role in network filtering

not threat analysis.