Generally Available: Azure Confidential Ledger Achieves ISO 27001 Certification

January 2025 Update 4

Generally Available: Azure Confidential Ledger Achieves ISO 27001 Certification

Azure Confidential Ledger is now ISO 27001 certified. ISO 27001 is an internationally recognized standard for information security management systems (ISMS). This certification demonstrates that Azure Confidential Ledger has implemented a comprehensive and robust framework to manage and protect customer data.

Achieving ISO 27001 compliance is part of our ongoing commitment to meet and exceed industry standards, ensuring that our customers can confidently use Azure Confidential Ledger for their most sensitive and critical workloads.

Public Preview: Seamless Amazon API Gateway Integration for API Center
We are excited to announce the release of an Amazon API Gateway integration for Azure API Center. This new feature allows customers to point to any Amazon API Gateway, and we will seamlessly import their APIs into API Center. This integration simplifies the process of managing APIs by automating the import process, ensuring that organizations can focus on their core business activities without worrying about manual updates.

One of the standout capabilities of this integration is its ability to handle changes on the AWS side. Once the APIs are registered, any updates or modifications made on AWS will be continuously synchronized with API Center. This ensures that organizations always have the most up-to-date information without any additional effort.

This integration not only enhances efficiency but also provides peace of mind, knowing that their API management is always current and accurate.

Retirement: All Azure Automation Jobs running on Agen-based Hybrid Worker will be stopped from 1 April 2025
Starting April 1, 2025, all jobs running on agent-based User Hybrid Runbook Worker will be stopped.

Azure Automation Agent-based User Hybrid Worker (Windows & Linux) retired on August 31, 2024, and is no longer supported. It poses a potential Security risk since Agent-based Hybrid Worker has not been getting any Security fixes post-retirement. Hence, it is strongly recommended that you move to extension-based User Hybrid Runbook Worker (Windows & Linux) for executing Hybrid jobs.

Key benefits of new approach:

• Enhanced security posture for your VMs through access control using system-assigned managed identities, instead of self-managed certificates
• Improved operational productivity for keeping the workers up to date, using automatic upgrades and at-scale management of the VMs
• Simplified installation of extension while eliminating the need to install Log Analytics agent.

Retirement: Azire Automation will disontinue execution of PowerShell runbooks usig AzureRM modules from Febraury 1,2025
Starting February 1, 2025, Azure Automation will discontinue execution of all runbooks that use AzureRM modules.
The AzureRM PowerShell module has retired on February 29, 2024, in favour of Az PowerShell that offers more security, stability and functionalities. You must update all runbooks from AzureRM to Az PowerShell and remove AzureRM modules from your Automation account, to ensure continued support and updates.

Retirement: Resources interacting with Azure Automation using TLS 1.0/1.1 protocol will be blocked from March 1,2025
Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1 are security protocols for establishing encryption channels over computer networks. Starting March 1, 2025, your resources interacting with Azure Automation using TLS 1.0/1.1 protocols won’t be able to connect to Azure Automation. All interactions through Webhooks, Agent-based/Extension-based User Hybrid Runbook Workers, Automation DSC navigating on the outdated TLS protocols will be blocked. All jobs running or scheduled on Hybrid Workers using TLS 1.0 and 1.1 protocols will fail.

Ensure your resources interact with Azure Automation using TLS 1.2 or higher. Follow these steps to disable TLS 1.0/1.1 protocols and enable TLS 1.2 or higher for Windows and Linux machines.

Generally Available: Changes to instance size flexibility ratios for Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances for M-Series
As we continue to offer a wide selection of SKUs for M-series Virtual Machines, we updated the instance size flexibility ratios for this product to optimize reservation discount within instance size flexibility groups and their respective SKUs. This update took place on December 6, 2024.

Gnerally Available:Azure RedHat OpenShift in Spain Central
Azure Red Hat OpenShift is now available in Spain Central region. This strategic expansion strengthens your multi-region deployment options across Europe, enabling enhanced geographic redundancy and scalability for your containerized workloads. The new region offers seamless integration with Spain Central's comprehensive suite of Azure services, allowing you to build sophisticated cloud-native solutions while maintaining data residency requirements.

Azure Red Hat OpenShift provides highly available, fully managed OpenShift clusters on demand, and is monitored and operated jointly by Microsoft and Red Hat.

Public Preview: Reduce costs with Hibernation Azure DevTest Labs
To help organizations optimize cloud costs and management, we’re excited to introduce hibernation for virtual machines (VMs) in Azure DevTest Labs, now in public preview. The new hibernation feature in Azure DevTest Labs helps customers control and reduce costs by pausing VMs while preserving their state, making it easy to resume work without losing progress. Once a VM is placed in a hibernated state, users aren't charged for the compute cost of the VM, just as they aren't charged for it in a stopped (deallocated) state. Hibernation costs only include storage (OS disk, data disks) and networking resources (IPs, etc.) attached to the VM.