Question

A retail company runs Windows and Linux servers across on-premises datacenters, AWS EC2, and GCP Compute Engine. The security architect must ensure all these servers receive consistent security posture assessment, machine configuration baselines, and vulnerability findings surfaced in Microsoft Defender for Cloud, while minimizing the number of separate agents and management planes. Which foundational design decision enables this unified server posture across all environments?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the Azure Connected Machine agent to onboard all non-Azure servers as Azure Arc-enabled servers, then enable Defender for Servers and machine configuration through Defender for Cloud

Answer

Configure only the native AWS and GCP cloud connectors in Defender for Cloud, relying on their agentless scanning to cover on-premises servers as well

Answer

Install the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint agent directly on each server and forward all telemetry to Microsoft Sentinel for posture assessment

Answer

Deploy Azure Monitor Agent to each server and use Azure Policy guest configuration assignments scoped to on-premises resource groups