AZ-500 Microsoft Azure Security Technologies Exam

Implement Diagnostic Settings and Alerting for Container Apps

Azure Container Apps let you run microservices and containers easily in Azure. To keep these workloads safe, you need to collect data about what’s happening inside each container. Diagnostic settings enable you to export container logs and metrics for deeper analysis. Ensuring proper data collection helps you detect issues early and maintain service health. This setup lays the groundwork for effective security monitoring.

You can enable diagnostic settings to forward key container data to various Azure services:

• Log Analytics workspaces for interactive querying and trend analysis
• Event Hubs for streaming events to SIEM solutions or custom pipelines
• Storage Accounts for long-term archival of logs and metrics
  Collecting both logs and metrics ensures you capture user-facing errors and resource-level performance data. Centralizing logs simplifies troubleshooting and root cause investigations.

To strengthen your security posture, deploy Azure Defender for Containers. This service performs vulnerability assessments both during image build and at runtime. It scans container images for missing patches, outdated libraries, and known CVEs. At runtime, it watches for abnormal processes and suspicious behaviors inside running containers. Continuous visibility into vulnerabilities allows you to prioritize and remediate risks before they are exploited.

After collecting data and identifying vulnerabilities, you need to respond quickly to anomalies. Define custom alert rules in Azure Monitor or Azure Sentinel based on log query results or metric thresholds. For example, you can detect:

• CPU or memory usage spikes
• Unauthorized access attempts
• Unexpected container restarts
  These custom alerts help you spot abnormal container behaviors as soon as they occur. Timely alerts enable rapid response and help contain incidents before they escalate.

Link your alerts to automated actions to streamline incident handling:

• Send email or SMS notifications
• Trigger Logic Apps workflows for automated remediation
• Run Azure Automation runbooks or scripts
  This automated response reduces manual intervention and speeds up recovery. By combining diagnostic settings, Azure Defender for Containers, and tailored alerting, you build a layered security solution that continuously monitors, detects, and responds to threats in your containerized applications.

Conclusion

In this section, you learned how to secure Azure Container Apps by implementing diagnostic settings, deploying Azure Defender for Containers, and defining custom alert rules. Collecting logs and metrics, performing vulnerability assessments, and automating alert responses work together to provide continuous threat detection and response. This layered approach ensures your containerized workloads remain resilient, compliant, and secure throughout their lifecycle.