Enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud for Virtual Machines

01 Sign in to the Microsoft Azure Portal.

02 Navigate to Microsoft Defender for Cloud blade at https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Security/SecurityMenuBlade/0.

03 In the main navigation panel, under Management, choose Environment settings.

04 Click on the name (link) of the Azure subscription that you want to examine.

05 In the navigation panel, under Settings, choose Defender plans to access the Defender for Cloud pricing plans available for the selected subscription.

06 On the Defender plans page, check the Defender for Cloud pricing plan status available for the Servers resource type, listed in the Plan column. If the pricing plan status for Servers is set to Off, Microsoft Defender for Cloud is not enabled for the Azure virtual machine (VM) servers provisioned in the selected subscription.

07 Repeat step no. 4 – 6 for each Microsoft Azure subscription available within your cloud account.

01 Run account get-access-token command (Windows/macOS/Linux) with custom query filters to describe the name of the Defender for Cloud pricing plan configured for the Azure virtual machines available within the current subscription:

az account get-access-token
  --query "{subscription:subscription,accessToken:accessToken}"
  --out tsv | xargs -L1 bash -c 'curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer $1" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$0/providers/Microsoft.Security/pricings?api-version=2018-06-01' | jq '.|.value[] | select(.name=="VirtualMachines")'|jq '.properties.pricingTier'

02 The command output should return the name of the configured pricing tier:

"Free"

03 Repeat steps no. 1 and 2 for each Microsoft Azure subscription available in your cloud account.

01 Sign in to the Microsoft Azure Portal.

02 Navigate to Microsoft Defender for Cloud blade at https://portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_Azure_Security/SecurityMenuBlade/0.

03 In the main navigation panel, under Management, choose Environment settings.

04 Click on the name (link) of the Azure subscription that you want to access.

05 In the navigation panel, under Settings, choose Defender plans to access the Defender for Cloud pricing plans available for the selected subscription.

06 On the Defender plans configuration page, under Microsoft Defender for, choose On for the Servers pricing plan listed in the Plan column, to enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud for Azure virtual machine (VM) servers. Choose Save from the top menu to apply the changes.

07 Repeat step no. 4 – 6 for each Microsoft Azure subscription available within your cloud account.

01 Define the configuration parameters for the account get-access-token command, where the "pricingTier" parameter value is set to "Standard" to turn on the Defender for Cloud pricing plan for VM servers. Save the configuration document to a JSON file named enable-defender-for-vm-servers.json and replace the highlighted details, i.e. <azure-subscription-id>, with your own Azure account subscription ID:

{
  "id": "/subscriptions/<azure-subscription-id>/providers/Microsoft.Security/pricings/VirtualMachines",
  "name": "VirtualMachines",
  "type": "Microsoft.Security/pricings",
  "properties": {
    "pricingTier": "Standard"
  }
}

02 Run account get-access-token command (Windows/macOS/Linux) using the configuration document defined at the previous step (i.e. enable-defender-for-vm-servers.json file), to enable the Microsoft Defender for Cloud for all the virtual machine (VM) servers provisioned in the selected subscription:

az account get-access-token
  --query "{subscription:subscription,accessToken:accessToken}"
  --out tsv | xargs -L1 bash -c 'curl -X PUT -H "Authorization: Bearer $1" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/$0/providers/Microsoft.Security/pricings/VirtualMachines?api-version=2018-06-01 -d@"enable-defender-for-vm-servers.json"'

03 The command output should return the information available for the enabled pricing tier:

{
  "id": "/subscriptions/abcd1234-abcd-1234-abcd-1234abcd1234/providers/Microsoft.Security/pricings/VirtualMachines",
  "name": "VirtualMachines",
  "type": "Microsoft.Security/pricings",
  "properties": {
    "pricingTier": "Standard",
    "freeTrialRemainingTime": "PT0S"
  }
}

04 Repeat steps no. 1 – 3 for each Microsoft Azure subscription available in your cloud account.