Azure Unstructured Data Exposure Remediation
Learn how to fix exposure of unstructured data in Azure environments. Follow step-by-step guidance for GDPR compliance.
Why It Matters
The core goal is to remediate and secure every location where unstructured data is improperly exposed within your Azure environment, preventing data breaches before they occur. Fixing unstructured data exposure in Azure is critical for organizations subject to GDPR, as it helps you ensure proper access controls and data protection measures are in place—mitigating the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive documents, images, logs, and other file-based data.
A comprehensive remediation approach delivers immediate security improvements, ensuring proper encryption, access controls, and ongoing compliance monitoring.
Prerequisites
Permissions & Roles
- Azure Storage Account Contributor role
- Security Admin or Global Admin privileges
- Ability to modify resource policies and RBAC
External Tools
- Azure CLI or PowerShell
- Cyera DSPM account
- Microsoft Purview (optional)
Prior Setup
- Azure storage accounts identified
- Exposure assessment completed
- Network security groups configured
- Backup and recovery plan in place
Introducing Cyera
Cyera is a modern Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) platform that discovers, classifies, and continuously monitors your sensitive data across cloud services. By leveraging advanced AI and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, Cyera automatically identifies and categorizes unstructured data in Azure Blob Storage, Data Lake, and file shares. Its intelligent content analysis goes beyond simple pattern matching to understand document context, sentiment, and data relationships, enabling precise remediation of exposed unstructured data while maintaining GDPR compliance requirements.
Step-by-Step Guide
Review the exposure findings from your discovery scan. Identify storage accounts with public access, overly permissive shared access signatures (SAS), and unencrypted data at rest.
In the Cyera portal, navigate to Remediation → Azure Storage. Review recommended policy changes, disable public blob access where appropriate, and implement least-privilege RBAC assignments. Configure private endpoints for sensitive storage accounts.
Ensure all storage accounts have encryption at rest enabled with customer-managed keys where required. Configure Azure Information Protection labels for sensitive documents and enable versioning and soft delete for critical data.
Run follow-up scans to verify exposure has been eliminated. Set up continuous monitoring alerts for configuration drift and establish automated remediation workflows for future exposures. Document changes for audit trails.
Architecture & Workflow
Azure Storage Services
Blob Storage, Data Lake, File Shares containing unstructured data
Cyera Connector
Scans storage accounts and applies NLP-based classification
Cyera Analytics Engine
Applies AI models for risk assessment and remediation planning
Azure Security Center
Policy enforcement and compliance monitoring
Remediation Flow Summary
Best Practices & Tips
Access Control Strategy
- Use Azure AD authentication over shared keys
- Implement time-bound SAS tokens
- Enable conditional access policies
Encryption & Protection
- Use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)
- Enable encryption in transit (HTTPS only)
- Configure Azure Information Protection
Common Pitfalls
- Forgetting to check legacy storage accounts
- Over-restrictive policies breaking applications
- Not testing backup/restore after changes