Just in time Access for Virtual Machines in Azure

The issue with sometimes having a virtual machine on Microsoft Azure is that if it is publicly accessible that the IP is uses is on a known IP range (Microsoft publishes the IP ranges here – –> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41653 which will make those IP addresses quite popular by hackers using different brute force mechanisms. (Having a VM available on Azure for 5 hours, I got about 1500 authentication attempts)

So therefore it is always recommended to lock down your virtual machines using network security groups and only give access when needed. Of course this is a cumbersome process because then you need to go in and alter the NSG rules when someone needs access. Luckily Microsoft recently released in preview, Just-in-time access for virtual machines using Azure Security Center.

NOTE: The just in time feature is in preview and available on the Standard tier of Security Center (Which can be setup on using trial in standard of 60 days) and only supports virtual machines using Azure Resource Manager.

This feature allows us to grant access to a virtual machine on a specific service such as SSH or RDP in a set amount of time for instance 3 hours and then the feature will revert the NSG rules back to the original configuration.

Read the entire article here, Just in time Access for Virtual Machines in Azure

via Marius Sandbu.