Microsoft Corp. today introduced Immutable Blob Storage, a new “tamper-proof” storage service in its Azure platform for safekeeping sensitive data.

The offering is aimed primarily at the financial sector, but could potentially also prove useful in other industries where firms are subject to strict regulations on how they manage information. Immutable Blob Storage essentially is a specialized version of Azure’s existing object storage with a number of added security features.

The first unique feature is the ability to configure an environment so that the records within cannot be deleted by anyone, including the administrators who maintain the deployment. This option is paired with a second security setting that enables companies to block edits to existing files. Banks and other heavily regulated organizations require such capabilities to prove the validity of their records during audits.

According to Microsoft, Immutable Blob Storage offers a number of manageability benefits as well. The service costs the same as Azure’s regular object service and the two products are integrated with another.

“The same Azure storage environment can be used for both standard and immutable storage,” Microsoft explained in a blog post. “This means IT no longer needs to manage the complexity of a separate archive storage solution.”

These features come on top of the ones that have been carried over to Immutable Blob Storage from the standard object service. Among them is a data lifecycle management tool that lets companies set policies for managing their data. If a certain record hasn’t been changed in a few months, for example, it can be automatically moved to a cheaper storage tier. 

Immutable Blob Storage is the latest addition to Microsoft’s growing lineup of industry-specific cloud offerings. Rivals Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google LLC offer niche products too in a bid to set their respective platforms apart. In March, for example, AWS introduced a tool called GameOn that enables video game developers to create competitions for players.

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