Adaptive application controls, the application whitelisting tool which Microsoft announced at its Ignite conference, is now available for public preview in Azure Security Center.
The adaptive application controls (AAC) protect applications from malicious and vulnerable exploits, using the whitelisting rules. It simply whitelists the applications that are good, and blocks the rest.
Microsoft said that AAC analyzes Azure virtual machines (VMs) using machine learning capabilities, create baseline of applications, group VMs, and further apply suitable whitelisting rules automatically.
These whitelisting rules can be viewed, modified, as well as the alerts can be received in case any application violate the rules; all in Azure Security Center. 
The groups of VMs can be managed and monitored using the application control policies. Users can specify the policies on the basis of different groups of VMs. It decreases the management difficulties, and increases the application protection. 
Whitelisting can provide critical protection for purpose-built servers running on a static set of applications.
Adaptive application controls are available for all versions of Windows VMs running in Azure, and can be purchased within standard pricing tier of Azure Security Center. Microsoft is offering a free trial for first 60 days.
