Hashicorp and Microsoft Collaborate to Help Organizations Adopt a Zero Trust Security Strategy

HashiCorp, Inc., a leader in multi-cloud infrastructure automation software, and Microsoft’s strategic partner, announced the general availability of HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) Vault Plus on Microsoft Azure. With HashiCorp Vault as a managed service for Microsoft Azure environments, organizations can swiftly deploy Vault and benefit from extensive secrets management and encryption capabilities while relying on HashiCorp experts to stand up and operate the Vault environment. HCP Vault Plus offers support for replication of secrets and policies across multiple datacenters and unlimited client application support, ensuring high availability.

“Securing sensitive data is critical for enterprises today to adopt a zero trust security strategy. Our security portfolio allows Azure customers to deploy an identity-based security solution across their entire IT estate,” said Chris Van Wesep, Senior Director, Product Marketing at HashiCorp. “We’re excited to round out the offering with HCP Vault on Azure so our customers can manage secrets across their Azure environments and reduce risks while operating more efficiently.”

In addition, HashiCorp has been accepted as a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) connected to its HashiCorp Boundary product.

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Zero trust security (ZTS) adoption accelerates across the enterprise

The transition to cloud computing has mandated an approach for infrastructure and applications that HashiCorp defines as a cloud operating model. The model recognizes the need to transition to a corporate security posture that inherently trusts nothing and validates everything, also known as a zero trust security framework. This approach to security, enabled by HashiCorp and Azure, is being adopted by organizations worldwide, including Mercedes-Benz R&D North America, ABN AMRO, and Hi-Rez Studios.

Hi-Rez Studios, an Atlanta-based gaming company, turned to HashiCorp and Azure when it needed a scalable solution to start its zero trust journey. As a result, the company could leverage HashiCorp Vault to control access to cryptographic keys needed to set up Azure Kubernetes Service clusters and HashiCorp Consul for service discovery and networking. “Historically, we’ve had multiple different secrets management mechanisms — including instances where secrets lived on somebody’s desktop and were copied into a new infrastructure for it to work correctly,” said Justin Driggers, advanced software engineer, Hi-Rez Studios. “Vault gives a single place to store all secrets, along with a robust set of access controls.”

“Zero Trust is an important security strategy that every organization needs to consider,” said Natee Pretikul, Principal Product Management Lead, Security Division at Microsoft. “Microsoft and HashiCorp have worked together to enhance our solutions to secure critical resources in a multi-cloud, and multi-platform world. We believe that our collaboration helps organizations achieve their security goals with greater productivity.”

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Accelerating zero trust adoption with HashiCorp and Microsoft

HashiCorp and Microsoft can help organizations accelerate adoption of a zero trust model at all levels of dynamic infrastructure with identity-based security. These two organizations offer complementary solutions that make implementing a zero trust security strategy a reality by ensuring that each access request, whether across clouds, on-premises, or low-trust networks, is authenticated, encrypted, and authorized with the least amount of privilege.

The HashiCorp ZTS solution is based on three components:

• Applications: HashiCorp Vault provides an identity-based approach to how applications access data
• Networks: HashiCorp Consul secures network traffic between applications and services
• People: HashiCorp Boundary ensures the right people have access to the right systems and services, but only for the time they need it

HashiCorp joins the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA)

As part of the ongoing collaboration between HashiCorp and Microsoft, HashiCorp has been accepted as a Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) member. Combining HashiCorp’s secure remote access solution, HashiCorp Boundary, with Microsoft’s enterprise identity platform, Azure AD, enables easy access to applications and critical systems. The solution provides the use of fine-grained authorization policies based on an organization’s trusted identities. HashiCorp and Microsoft are delivering a tight integration between Boundary and Azure AD to offer seamless, automated onboarding for Azure identities, targets, roles, and permissions into a Boundary environment.

MISA is an ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISV) and managed security service providers (MSSP) that have integrated their solutions with Microsoft’s security technology to better defend against a world of increasing threats.

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