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4.2 Ensure that 'Enable Infrastructure Encryption' for Each Storage Account in Azure Storage is Set to 'enabled'

Information

Enabling encryption at the hardware level on top of the default software encryption for Storage Accounts accessing Azure storage solutions.

Rationale:

Azure Storage automatically encrypts all data in a storage account at the network level using 256-bit AES encryption, which is one of the strongest, FIPS 140-2-compliant block ciphers available. Customers who require higher levels of assurance that their data is secure can also enable 256-bit AES encryption at the Azure Storage infrastructure level for double encryption. Double encryption of Azure Storage data protects against a scenario where one of the encryption algorithms or keys may be compromised. Similarly, data is encrypted even before network transmission and in all backups. In this scenario, the additional layer of encryption continues to protect your data. For the most secure implementation of key based encryption, it is recommended to use a Customer Managed asymmetric RSA 2048 Key in Azure Key Vault.

Impact:

The read and write speeds to the storage will be impacted if both default encryption and Infrastructure Encryption are checked, as a secondary form of encryption requires more resource overhead for the cryptography of information. This performance impact should be considered in an analysis for justifying use of the feature in your environment. Customer-managed keys are recommended for the most secure implementation, leading to overhead of key management. The key will also need to be backed up in a secure location, as loss of the key will mean loss of the information in the storage.

Solution

Remediate from Azure Portal

During Storage Account creation, in the Encryption tab, check the box next to Enable infrastructure encryption.

Remediate from Azure CLI
Replace the information within <> with appropriate values:

az storage account create \
 --name <storage-account> \
 --resource-group <resource-group> \
 --location <location> \
 --sku Standard_RAGRS \
 --kind StorageV2 \
 --require-infrastructure-encryption

Remediate from PowerShell
Replace the information within <> with appropriate values:

New-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName <resource_group> '
 -AccountName <storage-account> '
 -Location <location> '
 -SkuName 'Standard_RAGRS' '
 -Kind StorageV2 '
 -RequireInfrastructureEncryption

Enabling Infrastructure Encryption after Storage Account Creation
If infrastructure encryption was not enabled on blob storage creation, there is no official way to enable it. Please see the additional information section.

Default Value:

By default, Infrastructure Encryption is disabled in blob creation.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/16820

Item Details

Category: IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION, SYSTEM AND COMMUNICATIONS PROTECTION

References: 800-53|IA-5(1), 800-53|SC-28, 800-53|SC-28(1), CSCv7|14.8

Plugin: microsoft_azure

Control ID: a366f16e28110eebae420e4b91f48e7d4954a9103f9faa01492d3d1d55cef628