San Francisco, Aug 6 (IANS): To let researchers test its Cloud security services better, Microsoft has launched its Azure Security Lab in Las Vegas which would give experts a sandbox-like safe environment for their experiments.

At the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft said the new Azure Security Lab would be made available to security professionals invited by the software giant to "confidently and aggressively test Azure", ZDNet reported on Monday.

"The isolation of the Azure Security Lab allows us to offer something new: Researchers can not only research vulnerabilities in Azure, they can attempt to exploit them," the report quoted the company as saying.

The lab is isolated from the main Azure framework to prevent hacking attempts and tests from disrupting normal functionality.

In addition, the company has also doubled the top Azure bug bounty to $40,000.

The Microsoft Azure Bounty Programme invites researchers from across the globe to identify vulnerabilities in Azure products and share them with its team. Qualified submissions are eligible for bounty rewards.

As part of the programme, the company has already awarded over $4.4 million in rewards over the past 12 months - a jump from $2 million in 2018.