Azure Firewall Manager Is Now Integrated with Azure Security Center

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Written in collaboration with @Yuri Diogenes (Principal PM CxE Azure Security Center Team)

Introduction

Azure Security Center is a unified infrastructure security management system that strengthens the security posture of your data centers, and provides advanced threat protection across your hybrid workloads in the cloud – whether they’re in Azure or not – as well as on premises.  Azure Firewall Manager is a security management service that provides central security policy and route management for cloud-based security perimeters.  To provide unified infrastructure and network security management to you, we have now integrated Azure Firewall Manager with the Azure Security Center.

Key Benefit

With the integration of Azure Firewall Manager with Azure Security Center, customers will now have a single pane of glass view of their infrastructure and network security.  Customers will be able to see the status of Network Security from the Azure Security Center directly.  Customers will no longer have to go into 2 different blades: in ASC for infrastructure security and in Firewall Manager for Network Security.

To learn more about this integration, visit the Azure Security Center blog – Azure Network Security Visibility and Control using ASC integration with Azure Firewall Manager

Additional Resources

• To learn more about Azure Firewall Manager, visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/firewall-manager


• To learn more about Azure Security Center, visit: https://aka.ms/ascninja


• Watch a demonstration of Azure Security Center integration with Azure Firewall Manager in this episode of Azure Security Center in the Field – Out of Band Edition

Azure Workbooks – Set it to Auto-Refresh

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

If you use workbooks or templates and  do not want to keep clicking refresh, you can now set it to auto-refresh.  Refresh frequency (interval) ranges from 5 mins to a day, just like Azure dashboard.

Here are three simple steps: 

1. Open workbook and Auto refresh is available in toolbar (default set to off) 

2. Click on Auto refresh, Choose the refresh frequency (interval) and click Apply. These intervals are same as Azure dashboard.  

3. Views will be updated at this interval 

Things to remember: 

Learn more here

Azure Network Security Visibility and Control using ASC integration with Azure Firewall Manager

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Written in collaboration with @Mohit_Kumar (Senior PM CxE Azure Network Security Team)

Current challenges

Recent attacks are a great reminder that security hygiene should be your number one priority. To implement security hygiene, you need visibility across different workloads, and network is a critical area for any infrastructure. Azure Security Center can help you to improve your security hygiene by providing a comprehensive cloud security posture management platform for Azure and Non-Azure workloads. Although Azure Security Center always had network security recommendations and capabilities, it was still not possible to have a centralized visibility of Azure firewall coverage and policies. At Ignite 2021 we announced a new integration with Azure Firewall Manager that enables you to see Azure Firewall coverage status across all networks and to centrally manage Azure Firewall policies.

What’s New?

With the integration of Azure Firewall Manager with the Azure Security Center, you can now visualize all-up status of their infrastructure and network security in one place. The Firewall Manager tile in Azure Security Center dashboard, under the Overview blade provides an all-up status of Azure Network Security across all Virtual Networks and Virtual Hubs spread across different regions in Azure.  With a single glance, you can see the number of Azure Firewalls, Firewall Policies and Azure regions where Azure Firewalls are deployed.

With a single click on the Firewall Manager tile or on the left-hand navigation pane in the ASC dashboard, you can get to the familiar Azure Firewall Manager dashboard to drill down deeper into different aspects of Network Security.

Advantages of this Integration

Prior to this integration, to determine which Virtual Networks (VNETs) and Virtual Hubs had an Azure Firewall deployed or which VNETs were peered with another VNET with an Azure Firewall in it or to find out the number of Firewall Policies they had, you had to look through multiple dashboards/blades in the Azure Firewall Manager. 

With the integration of Azure Firewall Manager with Azure Security Center, you will now have a single pane of glass view of their infrastructure and network security.  You will be able to see the status of Network Security from the Azure Security Center directly.  You no longer have to go into 2 different dashboards: in ASC for infrastructure security and in Firewall Manager for network security.     

Additional Resources

To learn more about Azure Firewall Manager, visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/firewall-manager

To learn more about Azure Security Center, visit: https://aka.ms/ascninja

Watch a demonstration of Azure Security Center integration with Azure Firewall Manager in this episode of Azure Security Center in the Field – Out of Band Edition

Mac updates: Control your USB devices with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac!

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

In line with our commitment to rapidly expand Microsoft Defender for Endpoint cross-platform capabilities, we are preparing a set of enhancements to further reduce organizational exposure attributed to common end user activities. Today we are thrilled to announce the public preview of USB storage device control for Mac!

Preventing threats and securing your organization takes a multi-layered approach. Many users will plug in USB removable storage devices without considering their potential security risk. Enabling removable device control policies reduces the attack surface on user’s machines and protects organizations against malware and data loss in these scenarios.

What level of USB device control comes with this new capability?

USB storage device control for Mac is designed to regulate the level of access given to external USB storage devices (including SD cards). The access level is controlled through custom policies.

• The capability supports Audit and Block enforcement levels.


• USB device access can be set to Read, Write, Execute, No access.


• To achieve a high degree of granularity, USB access level can be specified for Product ID, Vendor ID, and Serial Number.


• The custom policy allows customization of the URL where user is redirected to when interacting with an end user facing “device restricted” notification.

The USB device control policy is hierarchical. At the top of the hierarchy are vendors. For each vendor, there are products. Finally, for each product there are serial numbers denoting specific USB devices.

The policy is evaluated from the most specific entry to the most general one. When a USB device does not match any of the nested entries, the access level for this device defaults to the top-level permission.

|– policy top level

  |– vendor 1

     |– product 1

       |– serial number 1

        …

        |– serial number N

      …

     |– product N

  …

  |– vendor N

In cases when the USB device control policy restricts Mac end user actions, a notification appears informing the end user about the restriction imposed by the organization:

Security teams have visibility into instances of restricted actions involving USB storage devices in the Microsoft Defender Security Center:

USB device control events can also be explored using advanced hunting queries. For example:

DeviceEvents

    | where ActionType == “UsbDriveMount” or ActionType == “UsbDriveUnmount” or ActionType == “UsbDriveDriveLetterChanged”

    | where DeviceId == “<device ID>”

What are the available options to deploy USB storage device control policies for Mac?

USB device control policies can be deployed using , Intune, and manual deployment. For more information, read the Mac USB storage device control documentation [LINK] for detailed guidance on policy deployment (including examples of USB device control configurations).

What are the preview prerequisites for USB storage device control for Mac?

To experience the USB storage device control for Mac capability in public preview, you’ll need to have preview features turned on in the Microsoft Defender Security Center. If you have not yet opted into previews, we encourage you to turn on preview features in the Microsoft Defender Security Center today.

Ensure the following requirements are fulfilled:

• This new capability is supported on devices running macOS Catalina 10.15.4+


• Participating devices must be running with system extensions (this is the default on macOS 11 Big Sur)


• Participating devices must be registered for the InsiderFast Microsoft AutoUpdate channel


• Minimum client version for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for this capability is 101.24.59

For more information, see the Mac USB device control documentation for additional details on setting and checking the aforementioned prerequisites on participating devices.

We welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing from you!

You can submit feedback by opening Microsoft Defender for Endpoint application on your Mac device and navigating to Help > Send feedback. Another option is to submit feedback via the Microsoft Defender Security Center.

Monitor the What’s new in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Mac page for upcoming announcements (including general availability of Mac USB storage device control). 

If you’re not yet taking advantage of Microsoft’s industry leading optics and detection capabilities, sign up for free trial of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint today. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint team

Microsoft Teams Shared Channels with Pouneh Kaufman and Eileen Zhou – MidDay Café Recording

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft Teams Shared Channels have been a top request by customers as it facilitates secured, focused collaboration and sharing with external individuals and entities at the more granular channel level vs Team level.

On Monday 3/22, MidDay Café was joined by Microsoft’s Pouneh Kaufman and Eileen Zhou. Pouneh and Eileen presented all the latest around Microsoft Teams Shared Channels. It was a lively, informative, session with lots of questions from attendees.

 Agenda:

• Welcome and Introductions.


• Mid-Day Café News and Events


• Microsoft Teams Shared Channels with Pouneh Kaufman and Eileen Zhou.


• Open Q&A


• Wrap Up

Resources:

• The latest innovations with Microsoft Teams (by Nicole Herskowitz, from 10:55 – Microsoft Teams Connect)


• The Hybrid Workplace (by Jared Spataro, from 4:10 – Shared channel)


• Microsoft Mechanics: M365 updates (by Omar Shahine, from 01:17 – Shared Channels in Teams)

Keep up to date with MidDay Café:

• The MidDay Café Blog Board 


• Subscribe to the MidDay Café YouTube Playlist  


• Audio Podcast Subscriptions




• Audio Podcast RSS Feed 


• Subscribe to the Audio Podcast on Anchor 


• Subscribe to the Audio Podcast on Spotify  


• Subscribe to the Audio Podcast on Apple Podcasts  


• Subscribe to the Audio Podcast on Google Podcasts


• Subscribe to the Audio Podcast on Pocket Casts


• Subscribe to the Audio Podcast on Radio Public 

 Thanks for visiting – Michael Gannotti   LinkedIn | Twitter

Michael Gannotti

How to use Microsoft Word and Teams as a teleprompter for presentations

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

If you’ve ever wondered how news anchors or public speakers can stay on point and present their topics in a crisp and concise way, within a limited timeframe, chances are they are using a teleprompter.

In today’s work-from-home tip, Jeremy Chapman, from the Microsoft 365 team, will show you how you can use Microsoft Word to easily convert any document into something that works perfectly as a teleprompter. Then we’ll show you how to use Microsoft Teams as a way to project this teleprompter screen to a remote presenter or a second device like a phone screen.

Jeremy’s camera and prompter setup:

• Sony A7 II camera with F1.8 55mm lens


• Elgato Cam Link 4k USB 3.0 HDMI capture device


• Padcaster Parrot Teleprompter Kit


• Microsoft Surface Dial to scroll prompter text


• Feelworld FW568 5.5 inch 1080p HDMI Camera Field Monitor


• Shure MV7 microphone


• Blue Compass microphone boom arm

QUICK LINKS:

00:51 — Converting a Word document for teleprompter use

03:00 — Positioning the prompter screen for eye contact to the camera

03:54 — Using a Microsoft Teams meeting on a phone to send the prompter screen

04:52 — Using the Microsoft Teams web app to join a second meeting to view the prompter for in-person or remote co-presenters

05:41 — Closing remarks

Link References:

Use Microsoft Teams on the web to join a second meeting for sharing the teleprompter feed at https://teams.microsoft.com

Find more shows in our work from home series at https://aka.ms/WFHmechanics

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Video Transcript:

If you’ve ever wondered how news anchors or public speakers can stay on point and present their topics in a crisp and concise way all within a limited timeframe, the chances are they’re using a teleprompter. Now, if you’re not used to using a teleprompter, with a little practice reading into your camera a teleprompter can help get your presentations or speeches to the next level.

So in today’s work from home tip, I’ll show you how you can use Microsoft Word to easily convert any document into something that works perfectly as a teleprompter and I’ll show you how you can use Microsoft Teams as a way to project this teleprompter screen to a remote presenter or a second device, like a phone screen, that can be placed directly under your camera so that your eyes stay close to the camera lens.

So in my case, I’m using Microsoft Word and what I’ll demonstrate today works more or less the same way whether you’re on a PC or Mac. Here I have a script that I’m presenting from right now and the first thing that you’ll want to do in the View tab is change the view from Print Layout to Web Layout. Now, this ensures that you can use the full width of the page and not need to scroll past page breaks, which can often appear mid-sentence.

Now, the next thing that you’ll want to do is disable the ruler at the top of the screen by unchecking this box. You can leave the page background white like mine is now, which is helpful if you’re using the screen to help with your camera’s lighting, but depending on your screen brightness or setup, the white background can also make your face too bright, or if you’re using an actual teleprompter device on your camera that works like a two-way mirror effectively, the white background sometimes can cause the image to look a little foggy or milky and to counter these effects you can easily change the background to black.

Now, to change the background color, first you’ll want to select all of your text by using Control + A. Then go to the Home tab and make sure that you font color is set to Automatic. Now, this ensures that your font color will flip to white once we change the page color to black. And to do that, just search in Word in the search box for page color, then set it to black. Now our document is looking much more like a teleprompter but the font is still pretty small and if your camera’s far away or you’re going to project this onto a small screen then you’ll want to make the font larger and you can do that easily by using the zoom control in the bottom-right corner to get a comfortable font size.

Now, the last thing, and a very key step that you’ll want to do in Word, is to switch on focus mode. Now, this will full-screen Word and make it so it looks like a teleprompter and now it’s ready to go. But let’s say we want to use this for a two-person presentation and want to get the attention of each speaker or punch up various parts of the script. Now, for that, you can use highlighting in Word to help grab attention. So, for example, if I’m presenting with Megan, I can mark her name, change the highlight, and my name, also change the highlight, and with those different colors I can grab attention of the different presenters. Or I can bold and underline the text if I really want to land a point.

Okay, so now I have my prompter complete, but another key aspect of doing this well is getting the screen with Word to be as close as possible to your camera. And if you’re just using the camera on top of your laptop or your monitor, you’ll be looking pretty far down to read your text. So in my case, I actually have a device called a Padcaster that’s attached to my Sony DSLR camera lens and under it there’s a 5 1/2-inch field monitor used as a second display over HDMI attached to my PC with the display flipped so that the text reads the correct way and the text is directly in front of the lens. So this is how you would use Word if you were in a studio environment, maybe with a second person driving the teleprompter under the display on a larger teleprompter. Now, chances are you don’t have that setup at home, but if you want something like that, I’ve put all the links in the description below to everything that I’m using to record this particular video.

Now, something that you probably do have is a mobile phone that can run Microsoft Teams or Skype and you can use screensharing to project your script inward to both your phone if you’re presenting solo as well as to a remote co-presenter using their phone or monitor to display your script in real time to them even as you scroll. Now, the phone screen has two benefits. It’s not too wide or too tall in its landscape orientation, so your eyes won’t be visibly moving too much left to right, and you can mount it either just below or behind your camera so that your eyes stay with the audience. Now, to mount your phone, the best option is really to use a mini tripod with a phone holder or you can tape it just below your camera to your monitor and that also works in a pinch.

Now, let’s say this is a larger presentation, though, that’s running live and you’re presenting over Microsoft Teams and you don’t want people who are not presenting to see your teleprompter screen or to know that you’re reading from it. But a nice trick that you can use here is to join the main meeting or webinar using the Teams app that’s running on your PC or Mac and use a second meeting from the teleprompter using Teams on the mobile app on your phone or the Teams web client that you can get to at teams.microsoft.com. Now, this way, also your co-presenter if you have one will be able to join the main Teams meeting and also see your teleprompter on a second Teams meeting as you scroll so they can easily follow along and not miss their cues.

Now, another tip when using the Teams web client is to resize the window and make it smaller and place it as close as possible to the camera. So now you’re ready to go. But if this is the first time trying any of these tips out, I’d recommend setting everything up and testing things in advance before running your meeting or webinar. So those are just two tips that you can use when every word matters, whether you’re presenting on your own or to record a video like this one or on a larger Teams call or webinar.

To find more tips like this on Microsoft Mechanics, check out aka.ms/WFHMechanics. Subscribe to our channel if you haven’t already, and thanks for watching.

Simulating Targeted Throughput for Load testing with JMeter

by Contributed | Mar 22, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

By Tejas Shinde

JMeter is quite a versatile tool when it comes to Load Testing. Developers can use it to simulate various usage patterns; it also has various plugins that enable it to manipulate these usage patterns.

When we want to simulate the application load by using APIs, we think about targeted throughput. In such scenarios, typically, we want to load the system with specific throughput (requests per second) for a specified duration.

In this post, we will take a look at some JMeter plugins that we can use for controlling throughput and ways to use these plugins more efficiently.

We will use the following JMeter plugins for this example:

• Dummy sampler – To simulate request samplers


• 3 Basic Graphs – To monitor the active threads and transaction rate (throughput)


• Custom Thread Groups – For Concurrency Thread Group

In the following example, we will try to simulate the load of ~20 req/sec. There are various ways you can control the rate at which you can generate the requests; the most commonly used ways are either introducing think time in between the requests or using any of the throughput controllers. The JMX solution can be found at the bottom of this article

Every thread group uses the same two samplers that are under the Test Fragment “Request Samples” using the module controllers.

For “First Sampler”, response time is set to “${__Random(3000,5000)}” and for “Second Sampler” it is set to “${__Random(5000,10000)}”

Throughout this test plan, all the thread groups are set to use 500 threads. And will be executed for ~5 minutes. Typically, the total number of threads needed to achieve a throughput can be calculated by using the following formula Throughput * Avg. Response Time / 1000. To be on the safer side, instead of Avg. Response Time, we use Maximum Response Time in the formula. However, for demo purpose, we are going to use 500 as thread count in the below examples

We will discuss the following cases:

1. Without any throughput controlling measures


2. With sleep time (Using Constant Timer)


3. With Constant Throughput Timer


4. With Throughput Shaping Timer


5. With Concurrency Thread Group with Throughput Shaping Timer

Case 1: Without any throughput controlling measures

In this case, no throughput controlling is introduced. This gives us a rough idea about how much throughput we can achieve with 500 threads without having any throughput control.

Results:

When we run this thread group, the following are the results of the Aggregate Report:

In my case, JMeter was able to generate 81.2 requests/sec. (It may differ in your case based on the various factors)

As we can see, without using any throughput controlling measures, 81.2 req/sec were generated using 500 threads.

Case 2: With sleep time (Using Constant Timer)

In this case, throughput will be controlled by introducing sleep time in between threads. In this example, a Constant Timer with 15000 milliseconds is used for sleep time. You may need to try it out in a few runs to find the optimum value of sleep time to get the desired throughput.

Results:

Case 3: With Constant Throughput Timer

In this scenario, we will use Constant Throughput Timer. This timer will also work similarly to that of Constant Timer. It will pause the threads based on periodically based on the current value of throughput to match up the target throughput value. In this case, an advantage will be sleep time will be calculated automatically based on the target value.

*Note that the throughput value is in terms of req/min

Results:

Case 4: With Throughput Shaping Timer

In this case, we are using a JMeter plugin – Throughput Shaping timer. This plugin also works similarly to Constant Throughput Timer, which pauses the threads based on the target Throughput. However, a couple of advantages are the request bursts are more consistent in nature, and the samples lie very close to the median value, as can be seen in the throughput graph. Also, this plugin will allow us to simulate various levels of throughput values over a period of time which is not possible in the case of Constant Throughput Timer as it can target only a specific value.

Results:

Case 5: With Concurrency Thread Group with Throughput Shaping Timer

So far, in all of the previous cases, we have used 500 threads to generate the throughput of 20 req/sec. Depending upon the total number of requests and response time of those requests, it will be quite a calculation to identify the optimum number of thread count that is needed to generate the target output. In cases where the response time is quite low, we will need much less than 500 threads to generate that throughput. And similarly, in situations where response time is high, we may need more than 500 threads to generate the desired throughput.

To calculate the number of threads that are needed to generate the target throughput, we will use another plugin from JMeter in conjunction with Throughput Shaping Timer. Also, to generate the minimum amount of threads, we will use the Schedule Feedback function from JMeter, which will define the number of threads that should be running concurrently to generate the target throughput.

Following is the Concurrency Thread Group, which is from the “Custom Thread Groups” plugin. Target concurrency is defined using the feedback function that will work based on the feedback from Throughput Shaping Timer to provide the latest count of threads that are needed to achieve the target of the Throughput Shaping Timer.

Feedback function parameters can be explained as follows:

• ThroughputShapingTimer – Name of the element. In this case, the name of the Throughput Shaping Timer


• 5 – Number of threads at the start


• 500 – Maximum allowed threads


• 10 – Number of spare threads in the pool

Results:

So as you can see, by using less than 180 threads, we were able to generate a throughput of 19.1 (It’s less than 20 as a result of throughput ramp up and ramp down steps defined in Throughput Shaping Controller).

Caution:

• While using the concurrency thread group with Throughput Shaping Timer, makes sure that you specify the sufficient number of threads as if the number is not high, the plugin will show a warning message in the logs stating that there are not enough threads available in the pool to generate the target throughput


• Similarly, make sure that the specified thread count is not too high as it may result in a spike in throughput at the end of the test (as seen in the above throughput graph) while JMeter is shutting all the threads

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post has helped you learn how to control the throughput in your Load Test project by using the mentioned plugins. Please find references to the plugins and manual from JMeter below. You can also find an attachment containing the scenario that was used to write this article (JMX file).

Please leave us any questions or comments too. Thanks for reading!

References:

• JMeter plugins wiki – https://jmeter-plugins.org/wiki/Start/


• JMeter user manual – https://jmeter.apache.org/usermanual/

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