Name update for Agent and associated resources in Azure Monitor – Container Insights

by Contributed | Jul 19, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

What is changing?  

When customers enable Container Insights, Azure Monitor deploys a containerized collection agent. This agent is being renamed from OMSAgent to Azure Monitor Agent. There are no feature updates or functional changes to the agent in this release.  

Why are the changes being made? 

The current OMSAgent name is a legacy name from the OMS product and does not reflect the branding for Azure Monitor and Container Insights products. The Azure Monitor Agent is being standardized as the single collection agent for Azure Monitor. The name change brings the agent’s name in line with these updates.  

When are the changes going live? 

The changes will roll out region by region starting from early September with AKS service update, expected to be these changes rolled out to all regions by the end of October. Exact dates and a version number of Container Insights image version with changes will be shared closer to the release date with an update to this blog post. 

AKS customers will receive the changes as part of an AKS service update. Arc and Hybrid customers will have to update the Extension and HELM chart versions manually. See detailed instructions below.  

What are the exact changes? 

The agent used by Container Insights has been renamed. So, customers will see a new pod name in their clusters. Alongside that, several other related resources have also been renamed. See the “List of renamed resources” and “List of renamed labels ” tables below for complete details.  

What is the impact? What do I need to do?  

Log analytics queries  

All log queries with string the omsagent in them will not work and results will only be returned for dates before the change. To mitigate, update the queries to have query clause to cover “omsagent” or “ama-logs” in existing queries. See examples below.  

Alert Rules 

Alert Rules with the string the omsagent will not work.  

1. Query alerts with the string “omsagent” 

1. Metric alerts which reference omsagent in a dimension   

You can find alert rules using  

Option 1 – In the Alerts section of Azure Monitor in the Azure portal

Option 2 – Programmatically using Azure Resource Graph queries  

Go to the “Azure Resource Graph Explorer” in the portal and run the below query:  
 
alertsmanagementresources 

| where properties contains “omsagent” 

The above steps should help you find the affected rules. To update the rules, simply edit them in the portal (as below).  

User scripts  

Any user scripts explicitly referencing the pod names will not work.  

Resource name in all UIs  

Customers will see the updated controller names in the Container Insights UI as well as the command line. 

Screenshot 1 – Container Insights Portal UI   

Screenshot 2 – Command Line 

Screenshot 3 – Workbooks    

Instructions for consuming the update 

Instructions for AKS customers  

No action needed from customers. Customers will receive this as part of an AKS service update.  

Instructions for Arc K8s customers  

Note: The extension version with the above changes is version 3.0.0 

1. Get the Azure Log Analytics Workspace Resource Id which configured on the existing Azure Monitor for containers extension  

az k8s-extension show –name azuremonitor-containers –cluster-name <cluster-name> –resource-group <resource-group> –cluster-type connectedClusters -n azuremonitor-containers 

1. Delete the existing Azure Monitor for Containers extension either through Azure Portal or Azure CLI 

1. Create Azure Monitor for containers extension either through Azure Portal or Azure CLI. Make sure to use the same Azure Log Analytics Workspace ResourceId which is obtained in Step #1, to ensure the data being ingested to the same Log analytics workspace as before  

Instructions for Hybrid customers  

Note: The Helm chart version with the above changes is version 3.0.0 

1. Get the Azure Log Analytics workspace which is being used for the Azure Monitor for containers HELM chart.  You can obtain through   

helm get values <azure-monitor-for-containers-release-name> -A 

1. Delete the Azure Monitor for containers HELM chart – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/containers/container-insights-optout-hybrid#how-to-stop-monitoring-using-helm 

1. Install the HELM chart as per the Instructions –  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/containers/container-insights-hybrid-setup#install-the-helm-chart . Make sure to same Azure Log Analytics Workspace to ensure the data being ingested to the same Log Analytics workspace as before. 

List of renamed resources 

Note: The xxxx below is a placeholder for random hash values appended to the resource name. In practice, a name like “ama-logs-xxxxx” will appear as “ama-logs-cfkst” or similar.   

List of renamed labels 

Microsoft Purview Information Protection now includes enhanced security for detection of credentials

by Contributed | Jul 18, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Hybrid work environments have introduced new vulnerable access points to organizations’ data and credentials, requiring improvements in credential security to help prevent the risk of cyber-attacks. In addition, the associated costs of security incidents that involve remote work are over $1 million more expensive on average than incidents that don’t involve remote work.¹ Sixty-one percent of data breaches involve credentials, making them the most compromised data type in breaches.² Cyber attackers often leverage compromised credentials to access personal data like medical history and banking information, which they can later sell on the “dark web.”

At Microsoft, our goal is to provide a built-in, intelligent, unified, and extensible solution to protect sensitive data across your digital estate – in Microsoft 365 cloud services, on-premises, third-party SaaS applications, and more. With Microsoft Purview Information Protection, we are building a unified set of capabilities for data classification, labeling, and protection not only in Office Apps, but also in other popular productivity services where information resides (e.g., SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Microsoft Teams), as well as endpoint devices.  

There are currently over 250 pre-built Sensitive Information Types available (e.g., PII identifiers, social security, credit card, bank account numbers, etc.). We are pleased to announce that we are now starting public preview* of 42 new Sensitive Information Types (SITs) enabling organizations to identify, classify, and protect credentials found in documents across OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Office Web Apps, Outlook, Exchange Online, Defender for Cloud Apps, and Windows devices. These credential SITs can be included in information protection auto-labeling and data loss prevention policies to help organizations discover a wide range of digital authentication credential types (aka “secrets”), such as user credentials (username and passwords), default passwords, and Azure cloud resources (e.g., Storage Account Keys, SQL Server Connection Strings, and SAS). Also included are new SITs for Amazon S3 Client Secret Access Key, X.509 Certificate Private Key, GitHub Personal Access Token, ASP.NET Machine Key, Slack Access Token, Google API, Ansible Vault, and more. Note that many of these SITs are credentials that provide access to cloud development and other resources, which have been the target of sophisticated attacks on DevOps pipelines within organizations.

List of all 42 new SITs:

New credential SITs key capabilities

• Within the Microsoft Purview compliance portal, these new credential SITs can be added to auto-labeling and DLP policies to quickly and accurately detect and classify complex digital authentication credentials


• System administrators can test the accuracy of individual SITs against sample data


• These new credential SITs will be visible in Content Explorer and Activity Explorer, enabling users to:
  
  
  
  • Locate documents that contain sensitive credentials within their environment
  
  
  • Identify activity involving the use of credential data within their environment
  
  
  
  

Public preview also includes:

*Note: Rollout has begun as of July 18th and is expected to be fully completed within a 24-hour window (July 19th).

**Note: Office client-side labeling is currently not supported, but it will be available sometime in CY22H2. Please stay tuned for additional updates on this capability. 

In-Product Screenshot(s)

Figure 1: Detection of general passwords using Credential SIT. Note that an E5 or A5 license is required for accessing Credential SITs, which will be in public preview within the next few weeks for commercial cloud customers and government clouds (GCC, GCC-High, Department of Defense).

Learn more about Microsoft Purview Information Protection and Credential SITs here. We are constantly extending our product capabilities to help organizations more easily classify and protect sensitive data.

Get Started 

We are happy to share that there is now an easier way for you to try Microsoft Purview solutions directly in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal with a trial. By enabling the trial in the Purview compliance portal, you can quickly access the new Credential SITs and Easy Trials, and start using all capabilities of Microsoft Purview, including Insider Risk Management, Records Management, Audit, eDiscovery, Communication Compliance, Information Protection, Data Lifecycle Management, Data Loss Prevention, and Compliance Manager. Visit your Microsoft Purview compliance portal for more details or check out the Microsoft Purview solutions trial (an active M365 E3 subscription is required as a prerequisite).

With Information Protection Easy Trials, users can apply default labels and get label recommendations on items containing sensitive data such as credit card numbers and activate features with a single click. System admins can review items containing credit card numbers and decide whether to automatically apply a label to them. Also, get further information on how to set up recommended information protection features and how to create auto-labeling policies.

We look forward to hearing your feedback! 

¹ IBM Security and Ponemon Institute, “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021,” July 2021

² Verizon “2021 Data Breach Investigations Report”, May 2021