📖 What is Shared Responsibility Model?
The Shared Responsibility Model defines which security and operational tasks are handled by the cloud provider and which are handled by the customer. This distribution of duties varies significantly depending on whether the service model is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS).
"Student, remember that regardless of the service model, the customer always retains responsibility for their own data and identity management."
📚 Certification: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
🔑 What are the Key Concepts of Shared Responsibility Model?
- ▸ In IaaS, the customer manages the operating system, middleware, and applications, while Azure manages the physical hosts and network infrastructure.
- ▸ PaaS shifts more responsibility to Azure, which manages the OS and runtime, leaving the customer to focus on application settings and data.
- ▸ SaaS provides the highest level of provider management, where Azure handles the entire stack except for the customer's data and identity management.
- ▸ Regardless of the service model, the customer always retains full responsibility for their data, accounts, and the management of user identities.
- ▸ Azure always maintains responsibility for the physical security of the datacenters, including power, cooling, and physical access to the hardware.
🎯 How does Shared Responsibility Model appear on the AZ-900 Exam?
You may be asked to identify who is responsible for patching the operating system in a scenario where a company deploys a virtual machine using IaaS. Remember that for IaaS, the customer manages the OS.
A scenario might describe a company using a PaaS offering like Azure App Service and ask who is responsible for managing the underlying server hardware and OS updates. The answer is always the cloud provider.
Expect questions that present a list of tasks—such as managing identities or physical security—and ask you to determine which are always the customer's responsibility regardless of the service model.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Does Azure handle backup and recovery automatically in all service models?
No. While Azure provides the tools and infrastructure for backups, the customer is responsible for configuring and managing those backups to ensure their specific data recovery objectives are met.
If a security breach occurs due to a weak user password in a SaaS app, who is responsible?
The customer is responsible. Identity and access management (IAM) is a universal customer responsibility across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, meaning the customer must enforce strong password policies.