We are pleased to announce general availability of Application Security Groups (ASG) in all Azure regions including Azure Government. This feature provides security micro-segmentation for your virtual networks in Azure.

The detailed announcement can be viewed here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/applicationsecuritygroups/

ASGs provide many security and manageability benefits such as:

Network security micro segmentation

ASGs enable you to define fine-grained network security policies based on workloads, centralized on applications instead of explicit IP addresses.

Security definition simplified

• Define your application groups and provide a moniker descriptive name that fits your architecture. You can use it for applications, workload types, systems, tiers, environments or any role.
• Define a single collection of rules using ASGs and Network Security Groups (NSG) and apply a single NSG to your entire virtual network on all subnets.
• Scale at your own pace.  When you deploy VMs, make them members of the appropriate ASGs.

Single network security policy

ASGs introduce the ability to deploy multiple applications within the same subnet, and isolate traffic based on ASGs. Using ASGs you can also reduce the number of NSGs used in your subscription.

Summary

Application Security Groups along with the latest improvements in NSGs have brought multiple benefits to network security, such as a single management experience, increased limits on multiple dimensions, a great level of simplification, and a natural integration with your architecture.

For more details see the NSG overview article, which also explains ASGs.  Learn how to implement NSGs and ASGs with the following tutorial.

Learn More About Azure Government

Microsoft is committed to providing the most trusted, comprehensive cloud for mission-critical workloads so that our nearly 6 million government users across 7,000-plus federal, state, and local organizations can achieve more in carrying out their mission-critical workloads.

We welcome your comments and suggestions to help us continually improve your Azure Government experience.  To stay up to date on all things Azure Government, click “Subscribe by Email!” on the Azure Government Blog. To explore Azure Government, request your free 90-day trial today. Or, check out purchasing options to get started now.