Security and compliance are no longer optional in today’s digital landscape — they are essential. Whether you’re managing a small set of cloud resources or overseeing a multi-region deployment, implementing proper cloud hardening and security practices is vital. Tools like Azure Secure Score, STIG compliance benchmarks, and automated vulnerability remediation features in Azure play a key role in strengthening your cloud environment.

In this blog, we’ll cover frequently asked and important interview questions about these crucial compliance tools and frameworks. This guide is ideal for cloud engineers, security analysts, and IT professionals preparing for roles related to cloud security and governance.

Q1: What is Azure Secure Score?

Answer: Azure Secure Score is a security analytics tool within Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It provides a numerical score based on your organization’s current security posture and recommends actions to improve it. A higher score means your resources follow more security best practices, contributing to better cloud hardening.

Secure Score evaluates several categories:

  • Identity and access
  • Data security
  • Application controls
  • Network configuration
  • Device posture (for hybrid/on-premise assets)

Q2: Why is Secure Score important?

Answer: Secure Score helps:

  • Identify security gaps and misconfigurations
  • Prioritize remediation efforts
  • Track progress over time
  • Demonstrate compliance posture to auditors
  • Align with compliance tools like CIS benchmarks and STIG compliance

Q3: What are STIGs?

Answer: Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) are security configuration standards developed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). They define how systems should be configured to minimize security vulnerabilities.

STIGs are often applied to:

  • Operating systems
  • Databases
  • Network devices
  • Cloud services

Q4: Does Azure support STIG compliance?

Answer: Yes, Azure supports STIG compliance through:

  • Pre-configured STIG-hardened images in the Azure Marketplace
  • Integration with Azure Policy and Blueprints
  • Microsoft Defender for Cloud, which maps findings to STIGs
  • Custom initiative definitions that align with DoD and NIST requirements

This allows organizations — including federal agencies and contractors — to deploy secure, compliant infrastructure by default.

Q5: What is vulnerability remediation in Azure?

Answer: Vulnerability remediation is the process of identifying, assessing, and fixing security weaknesses in your Azure environment. Azure offers several tools and services for this:

  • Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Detects vulnerabilities in VMs, containers, and other services
  • Update Management: Automates patching for VMs
  • Qualys-based vulnerability assessment integration
  • Secure Score recommendations for prioritized fixes

Effective remediation is a key aspect of cloud hardening and maintaining regulatory compliance.

Q6: How does Azure help automate remediation?

Answer: Azure supports automated remediation using:

  • Logic Apps triggered by Defender for Cloud alerts
  • Azure Policy with “deployIfNotExists” or “modify” effects
  • Azure Automation Runbooks
  • Workbooks and alerts for continuous monitoring

These automation tools help fix issues without manual intervention and reduce time to remediation.

Q7: What compliance tools does Azure offer?

Answer: Azure provides a rich set of compliance tools, including:

  • Azure Policy: Enforces organizational standards
  • Azure Blueprints: Predefined templates for regulatory compliance (e.g., ISO 27001, NIST, FedRAMP)
  • Compliance Manager: Helps track and manage assessments and audits
  • Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Provides security posture management
  • Secure Score: Measures adherence to best practices

These tools simplify achieving and maintaining STIG compliance and other security frameworks.

Q8: What is the role of Azure Policy in maintaining compliance?

Answer: Azure Policy allows you to define and enforce rules across Azure resources. This ensures resources comply with internal standards or external regulations.

Use cases include:

  • Enforcing encryption standards
  • Denying untagged resources
  • Enabling diagnostics
  • Blocking use of non-STIG-compliant images

Policies can be automatically remediated using the “deployIfNotExists” effect, enhancing both governance and vulnerability remediation.

Q9: How do you monitor and improve Azure Secure Score?

Answer: Steps to monitor and improve your Azure Secure Score:

  1. Regularly review the Defender for Cloud dashboard
  2. Filter recommendations by impact and implementation effort
  3. Assign remediation tasks using Azure Workbooks or Logic Apps
  4. Integrate with Azure DevOps to track progress
  5. Implement Just-In-Time VM access, MFA, and network hardening

Incremental actions across identity, data, and workloads can significantly raise your score and reduce risk.

Q10: What’s the difference between secure score and compliance score?

Answer:

  • Azure Secure Score: Focuses on the technical security posture of your resources (identity, data, compute, etc.)
  • Compliance Score (Microsoft Purview): Focuses on meeting regulatory and compliance standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA)

Both scores serve different purposes but are often used together to measure overall risk and cloud hardening effectiveness.

Conclusion

In today’s cloud-centric world, organizations must go beyond basic deployments and adopt a security-first mindset. Tools like Azure Secure Score, STIG-hardened configurations, and automated vulnerability remediation workflows are vital components in building a secure and compliant cloud infrastructure.

Whether you’re preparing for a security-focused interview or looking to improve your current Azure environment, understanding these compliance tools will give you a significant edge.