by Scott Muniz | Jun 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft Defender ATP’s industry-leading endpoint protection capabilities are now even more comprehensive with a new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) scanner.
The UEFI scan engine, a new component of the built-in antivirus solution on Windows 10, gives Microsoft Defender ATP the ability to inspect the firmware file system and perform security assessment. Threats and anomalies are reported in the Windows Security app and raised as alerts on the Microsoft Defender Security Center, empowering security operations teams to investigate and respond to firmware attacks.
To learn more, read UEFI scanner brings Microsoft Defender ATP protection to a new level.
by Scott Muniz | Jun 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As we announced last month, to reflect the fact that Office 365 Groups power collaboration across Microsoft 365, Office 365 Groups will become Microsoft 365 Groups. These changes will happen over time and will be reflected in all the connected endpoints over the next couple of quarters.
To align the Tech Community with the name change, we are also creating a new Community Hub called Microsoft 365 Groups. This new Hub will replace the existing Office 365 Groups community. Folks who are existing members of the Office 365 Groups Community Hub will be automatically joined as members of the new Hub. In addition, content from the conversation spaces in the Office 365 Groups Community Hub will be migrated to the Microsoft 365 Groups Hub, and the Office 365 Groups Hub will be redirected to the new Microsoft 365 Groups Hub. By migrating membership and content to the new Community Hub, we are making this move seamless and transparent for you, although you will need to update your bookmarks/favorites, as the URL will be changing.
We are making the transition on June 30, 2020, and we wanted to give everyone notice before doing so. The new Microsoft 365 Groups community will be your place to discuss best practices, news, and the latest topics related to Microsoft 365 Groups. It is intended as a place for sharing information and discussions.
Thanks for your help keeping the Office 365 Groups community a vibrant and useful place, and we look forward to seeing you in the new Microsoft 365 Groups community in the future!
–The Microsoft 365 Groups team
by Scott Muniz | Jun 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
You are reading the next issue of the Infrastructure + Security: Noteworthy News series! As a reminder, the Noteworthy News series covers various areas, to include interesting news, announcements, links, tips and tricks from Windows, Azure, and Security worlds on a monthly basis.
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Microsoft Azure
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Sign-in to Azure Active Directory using email as an alternate login ID (preview)
Many organizations want to let users sign in to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) using the same credentials as their on-premises directory environment. With this approach, known as hybrid authentication, users only need to remember one set of credentials. To help with the move to hybrid authentication, you can now configure Azure AD to let users sign in with an email in your verified domain as an alternate login ID.
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Add a self-service sign-up user flow to an app (Preview)
Ever wish you could use B2C style user flows with B2B accounts? Wait no longer. You can now create user flows for apps that are built by your organization. Once you associate the user flow with one or more applications, users who visit that app will be able to sign up and gain a guest account using the options configured in the user flow.
Check out this video for a demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFY6AjqBzLI&feature=youtu.be
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Log Analytics New Query Experience – Example Queries
Pre built queries that provide an instant insight into a resource or an issue shorten the time it takes to start using Log Analytics and provide a nice way to start learning and using KQL. We have been hard at work collecting and curating over 250 example queries, designed to provide instant value.
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Top 4 tips to protect your remote workforce with data compliance in OneDrive
Microsoft is committed to helping protect your company’s most critical data as the business world changes before our eyes. For content stored in the Microsoft Cloud, that commitment starts with OneDrive. Read this article to learn how Microsoft 365 and OneDrive helps keep your data secure and private at the same time reducing the stress on IT during compliance or litigation issues.
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What’s New in Microsoft Teams | May 2020
This month, we have new meetings, calling, devices, chat, collaboration, platform, and industry features we will not want you to miss. Read on to stay up-to-date. If you are interested in our recent Microsoft Build news, check out our Teams Build blog!
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Azure AD Connect sync V2 endpoint API (Pubic Preview)
Microsoft has deployed a new endpoint (API) for Azure AD Connect that improves the performance of the synchronization service operations to Azure Active Directory. By utilizing the new V2 endpoint, you will experience noticeable performance gains on export and import to Azure AD.
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Manage your authentication phone numbers and more in new Microsoft Graph beta APIs
We’ve had a ton of requests for APIs to manage users’ authentication methods. That’s why it is so cool that today we get to announce that the first set of these APIs has reached beta in Microsoft Graph.
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Windows Server
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Azure server-side encryption with customer-managed keys now available for Azure Ultra Disks
Azure Ultra Disk customers already benefit from server-side encryption (SSE) with platform-managed keys for Azure Managed Disks enabled by default. SSE with customer-managed keys (CMK) improves on platform-managed keys by giving you control of the encryption keys to meet your compliance needs.
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Changes to the Intune Exchange On-Premises Connector
Intune is deprecating the Exchange On-Premises Connector feature from the Intune service. This does not affect existing customers with an active connector, they will be able to continue using the connector for the time being. The only customers that will be impacted are those that do not have an existing active connector. Those customers will no longer be able to create new connectors or manage on-premises EAS devices from Intune.
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Windows Client
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Windows Virtual Desktop media optimization for Microsoft Teams is now available in preview
With media optimization for Microsoft Teams, the Windows Desktop client handles audio and video locally for calls and meetings. You can still use Microsoft Teams on Windows Virtual Desktop with other clients without optimized calling and meetings. Teams chat and collaboration features are supported on all platforms.
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Security
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Key Vault bring your own key (BYOK) is now generally available
The process of importing keys from on-premises HSMs to Key Vault HSMs is generally referred to as bring your own key (BYOK). Key Vault has supported BYOK with nCipher HSMs since its launch in 2015. The new BYOK method will enable Azure customers to use any supported on-premises HSMs to generate keys and import them into Key Vault.
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Say hello to the new alert page in Microsoft Defender ATP
We are excited to announce the public preview of a completely redesigned alert page in the Microsoft Defender Security Center. The new Microsoft Defender ATP alert page will enable security researchers to more effectively triage, investigate, and take effective actions on alerts.
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Azure Backup now provides protection against accidental deletion of Azure file shares
To provide protection against cyberattacks or accidental deletion, Azure Backup has added one more level of security to the Azure file shares snapshot management solution by providing protection against the accidental or malicious deletion of backed-up file shares.
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What’s New: Livestream for Azure Sentinel is now released for General Availability
Livestream lets you run queries that refresh every 30 seconds and notifies you of any new results. Creating a livestream enables you to (1) test newly created queries as events occur, (2) receive notifications from a session when a match is found, (3) promote a livestream to a detection rule to generate incidents in the future, (4) quickly launch investigations if necessary. You can quickly create a livestream session using any Log Analytics query.
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How to: Password-less FIDO2 Security Key Sign-in to Windows 10 HAADJ Devices
Fido2 support for single sign-on (SSO) was introduced first for cloud resources, and then expanded to include both cloud and on-premises resources. For both cases, you can use either Azure AD joined or Hybrid Azure AD joined Windows 10 devices. See this field experience case for to deploy in your environment.
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Safe Documents in Microsoft 365 E5
Safe Documents is a feature in Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5 Security that uses Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection to scan documents and files that are opened in Protected View.
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Detect and Remediate Illicit Consent Grants
In an illicit consent grant attack, the attacker creates an Azure-registered application that requests access to data such as contact information, email, or documents. Learn how to recognize and remediate the illicit consent grants attack in Office 365.
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Announcing general availability of Microsoft Information Protection in Power BI
Microsoft Information Protection is a built-in, intelligent, unified, and extensible solution to protect sensitive data across your enterprise – in Microsoft 365 cloud services, on-premises, third-party SaaS applications, and more. Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Information Protection’s sensitivity labels in Power BI. The same sensitivity labels you use to classify and label data in Microsoft365 apps can now be used to classify and label sensitive data in the Power BI service too.
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A new consolidated API version in Azure Monitor Logs is now available
A new API version for Azure Monitor Logs resource provider, 2020-03-01-preview, is now available. This API supports new functionality like customer-managed keys (CMK), bring your own storage (BYOS), along with other capabilities. The new version consolidates the functionality of all earlier versions including: 2015-03-20, 2015-11-01-preview, and 2017-04-26-preview.
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Updates and Support Lifecycle
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Azure Spring Cloud updates
New features in Spring Cloud that boost developer productivity, enable more DevOps scenarios, and make the platform production ready, are now available.
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Recent Updates to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
The Microsoft 365 admin center—admin.microsoft.com—is the hub of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve your Microsoft 365 admin experience, we have enhanced the Settings area, enabled dark mode across most pages, added several enhancements related to Microsoft 365 Groups, and added provisioning status for Microsoft Teams.
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Azure Firewall May 2020 updates
Two new key features are now available in Azure Firewall—forced tunneling and SQL FQDN filtering. Additionally, we’re increasing the limit for multiple public IP addresses from 100 to 250 for both DNAT and SNAT.
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Products reaching End of Support for 2020
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Microsoft Premier Support News
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Check out Microsoft Services public blog for new Proactive Services as well as new features and capabilities of the Services Hub, On-demand Assessments, and On-demand Learning platforms.
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by Scott Muniz | Jun 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Heya folks, Ned here again. I recently wrote a guest post on the IT Ops Talk blog about increasing security by controlling SMB traffic’s ingress, egress, and lateral movement. You’ll learn best practices, hands-on steps, and gain a deeper understanding of the Windows Defender Firewall’s capabilities.
Beyond the Edge: How to Secure SMB Traffic in Windows
I consider this required reading now for IT Pros. :)
– Ned Pyle
by Scott Muniz | Jun 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Microsoft Azure Backup Server is the on-premise backup server which works with Azure Backup to enable hybrid customers to backup file and folders, system state, SQL server, Exchange, SharePoint and Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines. Users with critical workloads like Microsoft SQL Server can benefit from Microsoft Azure Backup Server by choosing disk backups for better RPOs and RTOs. And can continue to backup to Azure for long-term retention using disk-disk-cloud backup strategy.
If you are new to Azure Backup Server and want to enable Microsoft Azure Backup Server, you can download Microsoft Azure Backup Server and start protecting your infrastructure.
Today we are thrilled to announce the Update Rollup 1 for MABS v3 which brings exciting new updates. This is an update which needs to be installed on the top of MABS v3 RTM.
Key features:
- Offline Backup using Azure Data Box (in private preview)
- First party backup solution for AVS
- Faster backups with tiered storage using SSDs
- Faster VMware backup
- Support for protection of ReFS Volumes (with deduplication enabled)
- Support for additional layer of authentication to delete online backup
Let’s get into a little more detail of each of these features. This may be little lengthy but worth a read.
Offline Backup using Azure Data Box (in preview)
With Microsoft Azure Data Box integration, MABS customers can overcome the challenge of moving tera bytes of backup data from on-premises to Azure storage. This reduces the time a customer takes to onboard to Azure backup for long term retention for on-premises workloads. The user experience is consistent to DPM 2019 and MARS agent.
This feature is currently in preview. You will not see an option to use Azure Data Box after updating the MABS v3 server to UR1. If you are interested to utilize Azure Data Box for offline seeding, please reach out to us at systemcenterfeedback@microsoft.com.
The update also enhances existing method of offline backup using Azure Import/Export Service. The authentication to Azure is done using Azure AD. The Azure Publish setting file is not required anymore. Please review the updated article for the pre-requisites and steps required to complete the offline backup using Azure Import/Export Service.
First party backup solution for AVS
We recently announced Azure VMware Solution which empowers customers to seamlessly extend or completely migrate their existing on-premises VMware applications to Azure. AVS customers can now use MABS to protect virtual machines deployed in Azure VMware Solution. This is currently in preview and supports VM level backup. You can read more about the steps to deploy and protect AVS virtual machine using MABS here.
Faster backups with tiered storage using SSDs
With MABS v3 UR1 we have made enhancements in the backup process which can take advantage of tiered storage to deliver 50-70% faster backups. By using a small percentage (4% of overall storage) of SSD as a tiered volume in combination with HDD storage, customers can achieve higher scale and better performance.
If you are using all internal storage for your MABS server, you need to add an additional SSD. If you are using an external storage for your MABS server, the SSD can be added in the external storage or it can be attached directly to the server. Using Windows Storage Spaces, you can easily create new tiered storage and migrate your backup data from non-tired storage volume. Refer the Setup MBS storage with Tiered Storage article to know step to configure tiered storage and migrate data to newly created volumes.
Faster VMware backup
Using MABS you can protect VMware virtual machines. You need to configure protection group which gather multiple VMs and apply the same data retention and backup settings to all VMs in the group. All your VMWare VM backup jobs within a single protection group would run in parallel, leading to 25% faster VM backups.
Additionally, this update also brings an option to exclude specific VMware VM disk from backup. Refer the steps document here to configure the disk exclusion.
Support for protection of ReFS Volumes and ReFS deduplication enabled volumes
Resilient File System (ReFS) on Windows Server maximizes data availability, scales efficiently to large data sets for workloads such as SQL server and provides data integrity by means of resiliency to corruption. With this update, customers can now use MABS to protect the ReFS volumes (with deduplication enabled) and workloads (Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint) deployed on the ReFS volume.
Support for additional layer of authentication to delete online backup
To prevent attacks and protect your backup data, Azure Backup has various security features. Checks have been added to make sure only valid users can perform various operations.
With MABS v3 UR1, we utilize an additional a layer of authentication for critical operations. You will be prompted to enter a security PIN when you perform Stop Protection with Delete data operations. To receive the pin, you can sign into the Azure Portal and browse to Recovery Services vault > Settings > Properties > Under Security PIN, click Generate. This PIN is valid for only five minutes, and it gets invalidated automatically after that period.
Depreciation of 32bit protection agent
With the release of UR1 for MABS v3, support for protection of 32 workload is deprecated. Post installing UR1 you will not be able to protect any 32bit datasource. If there is any existing 32bit protection agent, post UR1 the status of protection agent will be set to disabled. Any scheduled backups will fail with error agent is disabled. If you want to retain backup data for these agents, you can stop the protection with the retain data option. You will be able to restore the backup to only network file share. If you do not wish to keep the backup, the protection agent can be removed.
Starting from this release, users can now on-board to Azure Backup much faster with Azure Data Box. Features such as tiered storage, VMware parallel backup will also improve the overall backup performance. We look forward to hearing your feedback on these features and suggestions for future improvements through email at systemcenterfeedback@microsoft.com
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