Installing Prowler on Azure – My Hands-On Learning Experience

Recently, I integrated Prowler to better understand how cloud security scanning tools help secure cloud deployments in real environments. I explored both the GUI and CLI versions on Azure to understand how each approach works for security scanning, identifying compliance gap and reporting.

This blog focuses on my initial hands-on experience with the Prowler setup on Azure Cloud Shell.

# What is Prowler?

Prowler is an open-source cloud security assessment tool used to scan cloud environments for:

• Security misconfigurations


• Risky settings


• Compliance gaps


• Exposed cloud resources

It supports multiple cloud platforms:

• Amazon Web Services(AWS)


• Microsoft Azure


• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Prowler can be used in two ways:

• CLI(Command Line Interface)


• GUI/Web Dashboard

# Installing Prowler on Azure

Below are the basic steps I followed during the setup process.

Step 1 — Open Azure Cloud Shell

• Login to your Microsoft Azure account


• From the top menu → click Cloud Shell icon [>_]


• Select Bash
  Azure Cloud Shell already includes Azure CLI, which makes the setup process easier.
  
  

Step 2 — Install Prowler (in Cloud Shell)

Run the following commands:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx

python3 -m pipx ensurepath

pipx install prowler

Step 3 — Run First Scan

Check the active Azure subscription:

az account show --output table

Run the scan:

prowler azure --az-cli-auth

OR scan a specific subscription:

prowler azure --az-cli-auth --subscription-ids <YOUR-SUBSCRIPTION-ID>

This performs a security assessment of the Azure subscription and generates security findings and compliance results.

Step 4 — View the reports

After the scan completes, Prowler generates reports in multiple formats, such as:

• HTML


• JSON


• CSV

Final Thoughts

This was my first hands-on experience with Prowler, and it gave me a practical introduction to cloud security scanning and compliance validation. If you are starting with cloud security or DevSecOps, Prowler is a good tool to explore because it is open-source, beginner-friendly, and supports multiple cloud platforms.