Topics for AZ-500 Test

It is important to keep in mind that before taking this exam, you must form a strong knowledge and understanding of the basic IT security principles. Also, if you want to nail the Microsoft AZ-500 exam at the first attempt, you should explore the four main topic areas listed below:

• Identity and Access Management;
• Data and App Security.
• Platform Protection Implementation;
• Security Operation Management;

Within the Identity and Access Management domain, the abilities being looked at include managing identities for Azure Active Directory, where the focus is on service principals security, groups for AD directory, AD users, configuring password writeback, authentication methods, and Azure subscriptions. The next item is about using Azure-based AD in configuring secure access. This encompasses technical issues such as Azure AD PIM (Privileged Identity Management), access reviews, activating and configuring PIM, conditional policies for access, and identity protection for Azure AD. Again, managing access for apps is another field to be studied in this first topic. Here, candidates build their capacity in aspects like app registration and API access. The final part involves managing access control where it is broken down into permissions for subscribing and resources, group permissions for resources, custom RBAC roles, interpreting permissions, and checking access.

Within the AZ-500 segment of Platform Protection Implementation, candidates must begin by implementing advanced security for networks. This covers VPN, groups for network security, Azure Firewall, application gateway called Azure Front Door, web apps firewall, Azure Bastion, service endpoints, and DDoS protection. The final step involves configuring compute advanced security. In this section, applicants learn about endpoint protection, carrying out VMs system updates, authentication, security configuration, vulnerability management, configuring SSL/TLS certs, and performing automation updates among others. And as far as the Security Operations Management objective is concerned, the areas of study include the use of Azure Monitor in security monitoring. With this, learning encompasses alerts, security logs, and diagnostic logging as well as log retention. It is followed by the area where security is monitored with the help of Azure Security Center. This concerns vulnerability scans, VM access, centralized management of policy, configuring compliance policies, and evaluating for compliance with the help of Azure Security Center. Also, to be covered is monitoring security with the help of Azure Sentinel. Learners will consider aspects such as creating and customizing alerts, configuring data sources, evaluating data sources and results coming from Azure Sentinel, and configuring workflow automation. Finally, candidates will get to cover the configuration of security policies, which includes configuring security settings and a playbook.

The final AZ-500 exam topic talking about Data and App Security begins by looking at configuring storage security. Here, exam-takers look at access control, key management, authentication of Azure AD, Azure AD Domain Services, Signatures for Shared Access, policy for shared access, and encryption of storage service. The second part involves configuring database security. This covers database authentication and auditing, advanced threat defence for Azure SQL, database encryption, and implementing encryption for the Azure database. Lastly is configuring and managing Key Vault. This touches Key Vault access, managing permissions to certificates, keys, and secrets, RBAC configuration, managing certificates, and secrets, configuring key rotation, and backing up and restoring items for Key Vault.

Reference: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-az-500.aspx

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