Securing Azure cloud environments: implementing Prowler CSPM with Doppler integration

Following our previous explorations of AWS and GCP implementations, we turn our attention to Microsoft Azure. In this third installment of our series, we'll provide a detailed guide on configuring Prowler for Azure security assessments and demonstrate how to enhance its security through Doppler's secrets management platform.

Understanding Prowler's Azure implementation

Prowler's Azure implementation offers comprehensive security assessment capabilities across your Azure infrastructure, providing organizations with robust tools to evaluate their security posture and maintain compliance standards. The tool's flexibility in authentication methods stands as one of its key strengths, offering multiple approaches to accommodate different organizational needs and security requirements. These authentication options include Service Principal with Secret (Client Credentials), which provides programmatic access ideal for automated assessments; Azure CLI authentication, which leverages existing CLI sessions for interactive use; browser-based authentication for manual assessments and initial setup; and Managed Identity authentication for secure, certificate-based access when running within Azure resources.

Each authentication method serves specific use cases and operational contexts, with Service Principal authentication emerging as the preferred approach for automated and production implementations. This method offers the best balance of security and automation capabilities, making it particularly well-suited for continuous assessment workflows and integration with security orchestration tools. When combined with proper security controls and credential management practices, Service Principal authentication provides a robust foundation for implementing comprehensive security assessments across Azure environments. As we proceed with our implementation guide, we'll focus primarily on the Service Principal approach, which we'll later enhance through integration with Doppler's secrets management platform to ensure secure credential handling and rotation.

Configuring Prowler for Azure

Prerequisites

Before configuring Prowler, ensure you have:

• Python 3.9 or higher installed
• Prowler installed via pip: pip install prowler
• Azure CLI installed (for initial setup)
• Appropriate Azure permissions to create service principals

Setting up Azure authentication

First, create a service principal in Azure with the necessary permissions:

This command will output credentials similar to:

Required Azure permissions

Prowler requires specific permissions to perform its security assessments effectively. At a minimum, your service principal needs:

1. Reader role at the subscription level
2. Security Reader role at the subscription level
3. Key Vault Reader for assessing Key Vault configurations

Apply these additional roles:

Assign security reader role

Basic Prowler Azure execution

With the service principal configured, you can run Prowler using environment variables:

Enhancing security with Doppler

While the above configuration works, storing credentials in environment variables isn't ideal for production environments. This is where Doppler comes in to provide secure secrets management.

Setting Up Doppler for Azure Credentials

First, create a new Doppler project:

Next, you are going to want to store your Azure credentials in your Doppler project:

Integrating Doppler with Prowler

To develop a secure execution script, it is essential to create a robust process that effectively retrieves credentials from Doppler. This script should not only ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the credentials during the retrieval process but also facilitate the seamless execution of Prowler. The combination of these elements will enhance the security posture while maintaining efficient operations.

Advanced Prowler configuration

Prowler offers several options to customize your Azure security assessments. For instance, you can run scans against individual Azure services or a collection of services.

Prowler also allows you to exclude various services from scheduled or ad-hoc scans.

You can freely run specific checks against a service, such as ensuring that Azure Defender is enabled for all containers.

You are also able to perform compliance-based checks against industry-leading frameworks such as HIPAA.

Automating Regular Assessments

For continuous security monitoring, create an Azure Function that executes Prowler using Doppler-managed credentials:

Best Practices for production implementations

When implementing Prowler with Azure in production environments, several critical practices should be considered to ensure both security and operational efficiency. At the foundation of these practices is proper credential management, which begins with regular rotation of service principal credentials through Doppler's automated rotation features. Organizations should establish separate service principals for different environments, such as development, staging, and production, to maintain clear security boundaries and simplify access control. This separation also enables more granular monitoring of service principal usage through Azure AD logs, providing clear audit trails and helping identify any potential security concerns quickly.

The development of a comprehensive assessment strategy forms another crucial aspect of production implementations. Organizations should initially conduct broad scans across their Azure environment to establish a baseline understanding of their security posture. From there, they can refine their assessment approach based on specific security priorities and risk factors identified during these initial scans. For larger Azure environments, implementing progressive scanning techniques helps manage resource utilization and ensures thorough coverage without overwhelming system resources or generating an unmanageable volume of findings at once. Regular comparison against established baseline configurations helps identify security drift and ensures consistent security standards across the environment.

Output management represents the final critical component of a successful production implementation. Assessment results should be stored in secure, encrypted locations with appropriate access controls and retention policies. Organizations benefit from implementing automated analysis of findings, which can help prioritize remediation efforts and identify trending security issues across the environment. Integration with existing security information and event management (SIEM) systems ensures that Prowler findings become part of the broader security monitoring and incident response workflow, enabling security teams to maintain comprehensive visibility across their entire security landscape while leveraging existing tools and processes for managing security findings.

Final thoughts - implementing Prowler CSPM with Doppler integration

By combining Prowler's comprehensive Azure security assessment capabilities with Doppler's secure secrets management, organizations can implement robust and automated security assessments while maintaining strict control over sensitive credentials. This approach provides a foundation for continuous security monitoring and compliance validation across Azure environments.

Ready to enhance your Azure security posture? Try a Doppler demo today and explore these powerful features risk-free!