Zero Trust with Azure Firewall, Azure DDoS Protection and Azure WAF: A practical use case

Zero Trust security is crucial in today's increasingly dangerous cyber landscape. Adopting a "never trust, always verify" approach is fundamental for secure architectures. This document emphasizes the importance of using Azure Firewall, Azure DDoS Protection, and Azure WAF together to enhance web application security. The architecture tested involved traffic flowing through DDoS protection, WAF, and Firewall in sequence. These services work in tandem to mitigate threats across network and application layers. The scenarios illustrate how WAF detects application-layer attacks like SQL injection. DDoS protection handles network-layer threats like volumetric attacks. Azure Firewall adds another layer, flagging IDPS and blocking malicious traffic, even when WAF is bypassed. Layered security from WAF and Firewall is important to prevent path traversal attempts. Firewall also detects reconnaissance and blocks lateral movement, thereby enhancing overall security. The combined services fortify against diverse threats, following Zero Trust principles for a robust defense. This layered approach strengthens the cloud security posture aligning with Microsoft's Zero Trust best practices.