Microsoft has introduced three new features for the Azure Firewall. One is already generally available, the other two are currently limited to public preview.

There are three new monitoring and logging capabilities for the Microsoft Azure Firewall. The company just launched these, two are still in public preview and one is generally available immediately.

resource health

This is the first feature currently only available in public preview. It allows users to monitor the status of the firewall, literally monitoring how healthy the system is. Security and IT teams can proactively receive notifications of potential threats that could weaken their firewall. In addition, depending on the threat, the system immediately suggests customized solutions.

Users don’t have to do anything to check the resource health preview, which is automatically enabled on all Microsoft Azure Firewalls. The same applies to activating the functionality.

Embedded Firewall Workbooks

The second feature is currently limited to a public preview (found in the Monitor section of the Portal UI). It is a new platform that allows users to analyze firewall data while generating visually attractive reports. This is done via a clear dashboard.

Embedded Firewall Workbooks allow IT teams and administrators to gather data to better understand specific events. A deeper look into the system is also possible to view statistics on firewall activity across different endpoints. According to Microsoft, this should make it easier to better understand and analyze events.

Latency Probe Metric

This feature is usually available immediately. This data allows users to measure the overall firewall latency to better understand the health of the system. Admins and IT teams can monitor if there is noticeable latency in the network and immediately diagnose if this is due to the firewall.

This allows the alarm to go off faster if needed. It also helps proactively address service and network traffic issues within an organization’s infrastructure.

You can activate the latency probe metric immediately in the Azure portal in the metrics section. There is also a feedback icon on the portal that you can click if you have something to tell Microsoft. This applies to all three innovations.

Last month, numbers showed that Azure is still growing, albeit not as fast as during the lockdowns, when even more hybrid and therefore online work was done. In addition, it was previously announced that Meta’s Llama 2 LLM model will join Azure’s AI catalog.