Understanding Azure Private Endpoints: What, Why, and How

As organizations increasingly move to the cloud, securing connectivity between resources becomes critical. Traditional models of accessing Azure services over public endpoints can expose organizations to various security threats, including data exfiltration and unauthorized access.

Enter Azure Private Endpoints—a powerful feature that allows secure and private access to Azure services over a private IP address within your Virtual Network (VNet), eliminating exposure to the public internet.

What Are Azure Private Endpoints?

An Azure Private Endpoint is a network interface that connects you privately and securely to a service powered by Azure Private Link. It uses a private IP address from your VNet, effectively bringing the Azure service into your private network.

Key Points:

• It maps a private IP from your VNet to an Azure resource (e.g., Blob Storage, SQL Database).
• All traffic to the service traverses the Microsoft backbone network, not the public internet.
• You can apply NSGs (Network Security Groups) and firewall rules to control access.

Why Do We Need Private Endpoints?

Here’s why organizations adopt Private Endpoints:

1. Enhanced Security

• Removes exposure of Azure PaaS services (like Azure Storage, Azure SQL, etc.) to the public internet.
• Protects against data exfiltration and man-in-the-middle attacks.

2. Access Control

• You can control access via NSGs, Azure Firewall, and custom routing.
• Enables segmentation within your environment.

3. Compliance

• Helps meet regulatory and compliance needs by ensuring traffic stays within private IP spaces.

4. No Internet Dependency

• Even if internet access is cut off, your private endpoint traffic continues to work as it’s within the Azure backbone.

Services Supported by Private Endpoints

Some commonly used Azure services that support Private Endpoints:

• Azure Storage (Blob/File/Table/Queue)
• Azure SQL Database
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Azure Web Apps (App Services)
• Azure Key Vault
• Azure Container Registry
• Azure Backup, and more…

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