Azure Marketplace new offers – April 20, 2022

by Contributed | Apr 20, 2022 | Technology

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

We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. For this volume, 134 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

Get it now in our marketplace
	Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS: Cognosys provides this preconfigured image of Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS for Microsoft Azure. Deploy a self-managed Apache web server community edition at minimal cost while enjoying the benefits of enterprise-grade security.
	Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop Advanced CCU: Deploy apps and desktops at scale to any device with Citrix’s advanced concurrent user licensing model. Built on Microsoft Azure, this virtual desktop infrastructure solution allows you to manage all your environments from one cloud-based location.
	Datto Remote Monitoring and Management for MSPs: This solution allows you to manage multiple endpoints with the flexibility to monitor and mitigate risk with a centralized view. It provides a modern user experience with intuitive navigation, powerful search, and insightful dashboards.
	Easy Body Fit: Delight shoppers, boost sales, and reduce merchandise returns with this AI-powered Easy Body Fit sizing app. The body scan solution generates perfect 3D measurements and can help your customers find a flawless fit and style, while gathering crucial consumer intelligence.
	EVA Unified Commerce Consulting Sprint: This offer provides brands and retailers insight into EVA’s SaaS solution on Microsoft Azure. EVA is a global commerce platform that ensure a seamless shopping experience by designing customer-centric architecture for running instore logistics and order flows.
	Evertrack for Information Security: Evertrack is an AI-powered productivity management platform designed to help managers efficiently monitor, measure, track, and classify their teams’ activities. Evertrack, available only in Portuguese, is 100 percent LGPD compliant.
	Evertrack for IT Inventory Management: Evertrack for IT inventory management supports supervision of employees by combining centralized operations with information security data. Get an overview of your company’s micro and macro landscape. This application is available only in Portuguese.
	Evertrack for Operational Insights: This solution centralizes operational, IT, HR and information security insights so you can easily manage your employees and boost their productivity with data-driven and targeted strategies. Evertrack for Operational Insights is available only in Portuguese.
	Fish Crowd Detection API: This solution detects a school of fish and other marine life from an input photo using AI. The Fish Crowd Detection API can be useful in developing applications for deep sea exploration and building submerged surveillance cameras for fishing ships.
	Forecast Platform: ML DevOps Service: Utilizing Microsoft Azure services and reference architectures, HMS Analytical Software covers the complete project lifecycle from ideation and feasibility analysis to the operationalization of a strategic enterprise-grade manufacturing intelligence platform.
	IP Restriction by miniOrange: This solution enables easy setup of adaptive authentication methods for extra security. Configure a list of IP addresses to allow or deny access when a user tries to login into any of the applications configured with adaptive authentication, limit the number of devices, and more.
	Jekyll: This offer from Niles Partners provides Jekyll, a static html page generator, on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. Written in Ruby, Jekyll enables clutter-free and effortless site building by rendering markdown or textile templates so you can publish static pages in one go.
	LCMS: With LCMS, system providers can dispatch software updates to devices. It also provides a mechanism to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks. Additionally, it verifies the software is issued by a trusted source. This can prevent malware from being installed and damaging your devices.
	Lookout Cloud Security: Lookout Cloud Access Security Broker provides advanced security monitoring and control for Microsoft Office 365 and other cloud collaboration platforms. Integrated with Azure Information Protection (AIP) it offers deep visibility and end-to-end data protection and compliance.
	Magento Ready with Ubuntu Server LTS 20.04: readymind offers this optimized Microsoft Azure virtual machine instance of Magento with Ubuntu Server LTS 20.04. Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform. This app is available only in Spanish.
	MediaWiki: This offer provides MediaWiki on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine and is powered by Niles Partners. MediaWiki is a free and open-sources software designed to run on server farms and suited to power collaborative websites with various anti-spam and anti-vandalism extensions.
	Migrate to Azure Virtual Desktop: 2-Week Proof of Concept: Hexaware offers an implementation trial to experience Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop first-hand. It leverages Azure Virtual Desktop to build a turnkey, virtual workspace proposition that solves remote work issues and improves user experience.
	Opigno LMS + Support: This offer provides Opigno LMS with support from ATH Infosystems. Opigno is an open source, Drupal-based learning management system that offers engaging and fun lessons tailored to your specific environment, industry, and business objectives.
	People Smoking Blur API: This solution detects, localizes, and blurs people smoking objects from an input photo using AI. The smoking objects must be focalized, unobstructed, with the details very clear. Pictures are not stored. Also, the photo quality and angles contribute to a higher reading accuracy.
	People Smoking Detection API: This solution detects people smoking objects from an input photo using AI. The smoking objects must be focalized, unobstructed, with the details very clear. Pictures are not stored. Also, the photo quality and angles contribute to a higher reading accuracy.
	pi-cli – Cross Platform CLI Framework: pi-cli is Perpetual Intelligence’s cross-platform framework for building command-line systems or interface (CLI) in the .NET ecosystem. Create CLIs with a few flags or advanced CLIs with organization commands, command groups, and subcommands.
	PostgreSQL 13.3 on CentOS Stream 8.0: Optimized for production environments on Microsoft Azure, this EuroDB minimal image containing PostgreSQL 13.3 on CentOS Stream 8.0 from EuroLinux is designed to support the most demanding applications.
	PostgreSQL 13.3 with EuroDB Modules on CentOS Stream 8.0: This image offered by EuroLinux provides PostgreSQL 13.3 with EuroDB modules on CentOS Stream 8.0. EuroDB modules significantly expand the capabilities of the engine beyond those available in standard PostgreSQL database.
	Privacy Analytics Eclipse – Enterprise: Eclipse empowers healthcare organizations to automate de-identification of data at scale, significantly simplifying an expert determination approach (as defined under HIPAA guidance) to safely share and reuse data, while protecting individual privacy.
	Python on Ubuntu 20.04: This offer from Apps4Rent provides Python on Ubuntu 20.04. Python is a widely used programming language with a wide array of applications ranging from building websites, software, and games to programming networks.
	Sea Mine Detection API: Intended for military and naval training, this cross-browser REST API uses artificial intelligence to detect and classify underwater or floating mines from an input photo using AI. An online app may be used to check the input and output JSONs of the API.
	Secured DreamFactory on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS: This is a REST API for SQL and NoSQL databases, file storage, cache, email, and push notifications. Using DreamFactory, developers can build mobile, web, and IoT applications without hand coding APIs. Deploy DreamFactory instead of a vanilla install.
	SilverStripe: This offer from Niles Partners provides SilverStripe, an enhanced content management system that provides authors with an intuitive AJAX-based web interface, while developers can leverage modern programming techniques like OOP, MVC, and ORM with the robust PHP-based framework.
	Supermetrics for Azure Synapse: Supermetrics’ data integration solution makes it easy to move marketing data from different platforms to Azure Synapse or Azure Storage Container. Automated data pipelines enable you to trial and then purchase this SaaS offer at a fixed annual rate.
	Tanium: Tanium’s enterprise platform helps organizations gain visibility and control in real time across all endpoints regardless of their number or location. Turbocharge your security team’s capabilities so they can proactively hunt for new vulnerabilities and threats operations.
Go further with workshops, proofs of concept, and implementations
	Azure Arc Hybrid Cloud Management: 4-Week Pilot Implementation: Collect and aggregate your operational data across a hybrid datacenter environment while modernizing infrastructure and operations into a single pane of glass with Cyclotron’s pilot implementation.
	Azure Cloud Migration: 8-Week Implementation: Achieve better scalability, security, and versatility with this cost-effective and sustainable migration to Microsoft Azure. VENZO’s certified professionals will guide you throughout your cloud journey.
	Azure Data Warehouse: 6-Week Proof of Concept: In this engagement, Unify will work with your organization to align business, data, and analytics goals while developing a data warehouse strategy and proof of concept to support your self-service reporting needs.
	Azure DevOps Services Offerings: 8-Week Basic Implementation: Huco Fzco will help you optimize your development and delivery pipelines securely and enable you to bring your innovations to market faster using Microsoft Azure. Decrease time to market with seamless automated application delivery.
	Azure Digital Business Transformation: 8-Week Implementation: This offer from Publicis Sapient will include the foundational landing zone design and buildout on Microsoft Azure, including a defined business transformation strategy of leveraging Azure cloud services.
	Azure Sentinel: 4-Week Workshop: The experts from &Partners will provide an overview of Microsoft Azure Sentinel along with insights on active threats to your Microsoft 365 cloud and on-premises environments. You’ll gain end-to-end expertise, cost savings, audits, and more.
	Azure Virtual Desktop: 10-Day Implementation: CruicalLogics will bring the power of cloud-native resource management to your organization with the design, planning, introduction and management of Azure Virtual Desktop. This offer will devise a functioning platform and identify key deliverables.
	Azure Virtual Desktop for Healthcare and Life Sciences: 4-Week Implementation: In this offer, boxxe provides a range of modern, cost-effective, and flexible Azure Virtual Desktop services designed for the healthcare industry, so your staff can connect securely and provide services from anywhere.
	Azure Virtual Desktop Pilot: 12-Day Proof of Concept: Allow Phoenix to architect, deploy, and manage performant End User Computing (EUC) solutions to cope with the high demands of the modern, mobile workforce. This pilot offer is for up to 40 users to test and begin their move to Azure Virtual Desktop.
	Power BI Administrator from BSG: 4-Hour Implementation: Administrate your Microsoft Power BI tenant and back up and restore your artifacts in Power BI by leveraging Azure Blob Storage and Azure Functions with this offering from BSgroup. Monitor your user activity and store it for later analysis.
	Business Opportunities with Azure: Half-Day Workshop: This offering is only available in French. A Softcom Technologies Microsoft Azure cloud expert will help you identify opportunities to use Azure to help digitalize your business. Learn what it takes to set up Azure and more.
	Citrix on Azure Deployment Services: 7-Day Implementation: Wordtext Systems will help deploy Citrix virtualization on Microsoft Azure so your IT team can have the flexibility of delivering enterprise-class VDI infrastructure services for Windows apps and desktops with the benefits of cloud elasticity.
	Cloud for Marketing by 55: 1-Day Workshop: The objective of this workshop from 55 is to define the marketing data architecture and organization you need to implement the top priority use cases to meet your goals. Fully control the tools, data sources, and algorithms that inform your marketing decisions.
	Customer Data Intelligence Platform: 6-Week Proof of Concept: This offer from Publicis Sapient provides a real-time, unified intelligent insights view into your customer data by leveraging Microsoft Azure data, machine learning, and analysis services. The solution is focused on the retail and media industries.
	Cyber Resilience with SAP on Azure: This service from Kyndryl’s integrates the cloud-native environment of Microsoft Azure with Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Defender and other custom services to ensure your business data from SAP is protected.
	Data & AI Consulting Services: 3-Month Implementation: Inetum-Realdolmen will set up a modern data platform on Microsoft Azure so you can move past traditional reports and dashboards to building industry-level business analytics apps powered by AI and ML.
	DevOps Modernization: 2-Day Workshop: Active Solution will combine analytic design methods and qualitative assessments to identify your business objectives, user roles, and needs, resulting in a roadmap for a more comprehensive and efficient Azure DevOps process.
	Digital Identity Framework: 5-Week Implementation: Gain a global view of your organization’s user identities and protect your applications with Neudesic’s solution. Their experts will enable multifactor authentication through Microsoft Azure Active Directory and deploy an Azure landing zone.
	Digital Twin: 10-Week Proof of Concept: OpenSistemas will demonstrate how to make your product lifecycles and factory processes predictive, prescriptive, and self-aware. Utilizing Microsoft Azure IoT services you will learn to visualize and contextualize data on a virtual asset for sophisticated analytics.
	Disaster Recovery in Azure: 5-Week Implementation: Get trained on how to deploy a disaster recovery solution to keep your workloads and data safe in this implementation from AMTRA. Remediation of workloads on Microsoft Azure and DR solution compatibility are part of this cost-effective offer.
	GitHub Enablement: 1-Week Proof of Concept: Drive a cost-optimized, secure, and Microsoft Azure-ready GitHub migration journey with Insight’s offering. Insight will work with you to scope, plan, and execute a proof of concept of GitHub Enterprise and selected DevOps processes and apps on Azure.
	Infrastructure as Code (IaC) on Microsoft Azure: 3-Week Implementation: To address the issue of error-prone and time-consuming manual infrastructure setting, eliminating human error, VOLO offers Infrastructure as Code implementation along with configuration management for Azure.
	Managed Azure Sentinel Extended Detection Response: 1-Week Implementation: HTG will utilize Microsoft Azure security tools to deliver managed detection and response services in real-time so you can respond effectively against cyber events, including phishing, malware and ransomware attacks.
	Microsoft Azure + Nutanix Frame: 5-Day Workshop: Egroup will show you how to leverage the power of Microsoft Azure to quickly and easily deploy hundreds or thousands of Nutanix Frame-based applications and desktops as needed without the burdens of infrastructure management.
	Profisee Master Data Management: 4-Day Workshop: QS2’s customized Master Data Management workshop can be used as quick start for your data governance journey. The workshop environment is built using Profisee MDM running in QS2’s Microsoft Azure training environment.
	Rise Technology – App Modernization: 4-Week Implementation: Rise Technology will partner with you in your modernization projects by systematically reviewing a variety of environments and infrastructure and mapping their features and functionality to Microsoft Azure workloads.
	Rise Technology – Cloud Native App Redesign: 28-Week Implementation: Accelerate business outcomes with Rise Technology’s app redesign services. Utilizing Azure Kubernetes Service and microservices architecture you will learn how to create end-to-end CI/CD pipelines and automate processes.
	The Data Value Capture: 1-Day Workshop: By combining design thinking, industry and domain-specific expertise, and a set of accelerators that reside on the Microsoft Azure platform, Wavicle Data Solutions will identify opportunities and develop a value-based roadmap for modernizing your data platform.
	Thinkubator: 8-Week Implementation: Sogeti’s Intelligent Experience Thinkubator will implement a chatbot using Azure Cognitive Services to accelerate your business outcomes and AI digital transformation initiatives. Key focus areas include vision, speech, language, knowledge, and search.
	WatServ IoT Blueprint: 4-Week Discovery Workshop: Data engineers from WatServ will help you get clarity on your next IoT project using the power of the Microsoft Azure IoT platform. Unlock the full value of your data to meet your current and future business objectives.
Contact our partners
Abstracta – A Data Abstraction Platform
AccuNix
Aggregion Data Collaboration Platform
Aparavi
Apollo Hospitals AICVD
appCURE Packager v3
Apporetum – Application Access Management
AVEVA Data Hub
Azure Application Migration: 2-Day Assessment
Azure Discovery Service: 6-Week Assessment
Azure Governance: 4-Week Assessment
Azure Migration Readiness: 1-Week Assessment
Azure Platform Foundation and Landing Zone: 2-Hour Briefing
Azure Sentinel: Managed Services
Azure Virtual Desktop: 3-Day Assessment
Birlasoft iSight Platform
Calastone Funds Network
Calastone Money Market Services
Clea AI & IoT Solution
Client Lifecycle Management: Automated AML and KYC Compliance
Cloud Wallet: Take Control of Your Cloud Spend
Cyber Resilience Maturity: 2- to 3-Week Assessment
Cytomate Advanced Persistent Threats (APT)
Data & AI Discovery: 10-Day Assessment
Data Estate: 5-Week Assessment
Data Management & Governance: 12-Week Assessment
Data Strategy: 10-Day Assessment
Datacenter Transformation: 3-Week Assessment
Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure (DCMA) for MSPs
Datto SaaS Defense for Microsoft 365 for MSPs
Demand Forecasting SaaS Offering
DevSecOps: 4-Week Assessment
Distributed Market Infrastructure (DMI) Fund Services
DWH/BI Architecture: 4-Week Assessment
eMeetings Platform
Enterprise Microsoft Adoption: 1-Day Assessment
EY Data Fabric
EY Lifecycle Navigation (EY Lion)
F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense Service Node
FHIR Jumpstart
Hackrate Pentest-as-a-Service
Harbor Exporter Packaged by Bitnami
HCL Accelerate on Azure: 1-Hour Briefing
Hybrid Cloud Transformation Using Stack HCI & Azure Arc: 3-Week Assessment
IBM Consulting Global Azure App Modernization OpenShift Services
IBM Consulting Global Azure Cloud Native Services
IDENCE
KUDO for Microsoft Teams
Lead with Data: 10-Day Assessment
Link Retail Video Analytics
Managed Detection & Response
Managed SOC with CARE
Microsoft Azure Sentinel SOC Services: 8-Week Assessment
Modern Tech Ops Maturity: 2-Hour Assessment
NVISO Managed Security for SME
NXLog AIX Audit for Azure Sentinel
OpenText RightFax
Project Management Automation Tools
Retail Forecasting
Rise App Modernization: 1-Week Assessment
SecureKi Privileged Access Management Solution
SMB Microsoft Adoption: 1-Day Assessment
StormForge Optimize
Streamwise D.I. Solution
Sybase to Azure SQL Database: 5-Week Assessment
Synergy Indicata: Grant Management Software
Synergy Indicata: Portfolio Management, Monitoring & Evaluation Software
Synergy PFM: Integrated Public Financial Management
Tanium
TradLinx ShipGo
VenueArc – Automated Contract Generator
VenueArc – Clientele Management
VenueArc – Venue Booking Calendar
Verified Biometric Authentication

Adapting for the new workplace with updates from Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management

by Contributed | Apr 19, 2022 | Technology

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

Navigating uncertainty and corporate change can be a major challenge for organizations, especially for security and compliance teams. The processes and ways we engage with our colleagues, customers and partners look very different than they did just a few years ago. The nature of work is evolving, and our strategies on how to protect our users and our data must evolve with it.

Results from Microsoft’s most recent Work Trend Index indicated 52% of employees are considering a switch to remote or hybrid in the year ahead, and that 43% of employees are likely to consider changing jobs. Security teams will now have to be more diligent in protecting their corporate data as employees work from different locations or leave the organization.

We recently shared how Microsoft insider risk solutions were evolving to meet the needs of the Great Reshuffle, including enhanced data exfiltration detection capabilities and richer alert context.

Today we announced Microsoft Purview – a comprehensive set of solutions which help you govern, protect, and manage your entire data estate. This new brand family combines the capabilities of the former Azure Purview and the Microsoft 365 Compliance portfolio that customers already rely on, providing unified data governance and risk management for your organization. Insider Risk Management in Microsoft 365 will now be called Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management.

As part of this announcement, we are excited to announce the latest updates for Insider Risk Management:

• New policy recommendations, email notifications and sequence detection in analytics


• Policy triggers based on anomalous activity


• Detection capabilities for priority file types


• Expanded coverage with third-party alerts (via Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps)


• Recommended guidance and actions for Insider Risk Management admins


• Launch of our new “Become an Insider Risk Management Ninja” resource page

New updates to analytics

One of the best ways to get started with Insider Risk Management is with an analytics assessment. Within 48 hours of an Insider Risk Management administrator initiating the analytics assessment, the results provide actionable insights which may indicate risk of data leaks or theft, such as what percentage of users in your environment are performing exfiltration activities. These results are anonymized and aggregated, providing a top-level view of existing risks in your environment while protecting user privacy.

We are excited to announce that analytics will now be going further with new policy recommendations, email notifications and sequence detection capabilities in public preview:

• New policy recommendations: The results of an analytics scan will now include recommendations for policy thresholds, specifically built to address potential data leaks and IP theft. For example, if the analytics scan determines that your organization sends a large number of sensitive attachments to recipients outside of the organization, the recommended threshold for a data leak detection policy may be higher than in a typical organization. This helps security or compliance teams to set thresholds and policies that better reflect their organizations’ specific needs.

• Email notifications for analytics activation: We are now adding new email notifications so that Insider Risk Management administrators receive an email notification once analytics has been turned on and when the assessment results are first available.


• Enhanced insights with sequence detection: Identifying risky user behavior can be tricky when looking at isolated events, like confidential documents being sent to an external email recipient or downgrading a sensitivity label from “Highly Confidential” to “General”. When these events are tied together, however, security teams have more context and can better identify which activities pose a bigger risk. In Insider Risk Management, we refer to this as “sequence detection”: the activities may not raise alerts individually, but a flow of specific activities, like “Downgrade sensitivity level” > “Download” > “Exfiltrate”, may be something we want to flag as potentially risk activity. Analytics in Insider Risk Management will now include insights into the percentage of users who are performing sequences of risky activities, in addition to other data leak and exfiltration detection. (Learn more about sequences here: Investigate insider risk management activities)

New policy triggers based on anomalous activity

We are also further expanding Insider Risk Management’s ability to support organizations concerned about anomalous (or abnormal) activity. With our new anomalous activity policy trigger, security and compliance teams will have the ability to customize their policies to trigger on an anomalous activity, like an unusual amount of emails with attachments sent outside the organization, and bring users into scope of that policy.

This new capability means that Insider Risk Management can augment and support work done by security teams, by identifying what activities are abnormal or irregular for a user. Organizations looking to integrate more machine learning and automated decision making into their insider risk investigations may find that the anomalous activity trigger capabilities can help in identifying potential risks.

New detection capabilities for priority file types

When thinking about high-priority data or sensitive documents, your organization may have specific file types deemed particularly important. For example, an automotive company developing new car designs may create and save these designs in 3-D formats like .3dxml or .3mf. These files can be considered particularly sensitive due to the nature of their content, and organizations may want to prioritize these critical IP file types as high priority.

Insider Risk Management now allows organizations to indicate specific file types they would like to prioritize for additional visibility and scrutiny. Insider Risk Management administrators who are setting up new policies are able to indicate which file extensions should be considered high-priority, which can help in risk detection and surfacing important alerts.

Expanded coverage with third-party alerts (via Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps)

Insider Risk Management becomes even more powerful with alerts surfaced from third-party connected applications. We are now supporting nine additional third-party anomaly alert types via Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. These automatically enabled detection policies can detect and collate results, identifying behavioral anomalies across your users and devices in your network. Through this integration, Insider Risk Management expands coverage into multi-cloud environments including alerts identifying anomalous activity on Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services, and allows organizations to have visibility if users are performing potentially high-risk activities like unusual mass deletion of content from a connected cloud app.

To leverage these capabilities in your policies, update your Insider Risk Management settings to include the “Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps” policy indicators.

To learn more about anomaly detection policies in Defender for Cloud Apps, visit our Microsoft Docs page: Create anomaly detection policies in Defender for Cloud Apps.

Recommended guidance and actions for Insider Risk Management administrators

The best way to leverage the full capacity of Insider Risk Management is configuring the solution for your environment, your organizational requirements and your users.

Administrators are now more empowered than ever with guided recommendations for fine-tuning Insider Risk Management to fit their needs. These new recommendations are designed to help you to better manage noise from alerts in your environment, with recommended policy actions like adding domains, excluding specific file types or ensuring that all users are covered with at least one policy.

Watch part one of our new Insider Risk Management Mechanics video series

We have just kicked off a new Mechanics video series about our insider risk solutions. Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance. In our first video, we show how you can leverage machine learning to identify explicit high-risk incidents like data theft or workplace harassment and how our solutions provide designated stakeholders with context and workflows to take action on insider risk.

New “Become an Insider Risk Management Ninja” resource page

Microsoft has a number of resources to help you get started and to learn more about using and configuring Insider Risk Management. For the one-stop shop of our public-facing material and resources on the solution, check out the new “Become an Insider Risk Management Ninja” resource page at https://aka.ms/insiderriskninja.

This page will be updated quarterly so be sure to bookmark it to see the latest on Insider Risk Management!

Get started

These new features in Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management have already rolled out or will start rolling out to customer tenants in the coming weeks. These solutions are also generally available across government clouds, supported in Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC-High, and US Department of Defense (DoD) tenants.

We are happy to share that there is now an easier way for you to try Microsoft Purview solutions directly in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal. If you are a current Microsoft 365 E3 user and interested in experiencing Insider Risk Management, check out the Insider Risk Management Trial or the Microsoft Purview Trial to see how insider risk solutions and analytics can give you actionable insights.

Learn more about how to get started and configure policies in your tenant in the supporting documentation for Insider Risk Management. Keep a lookout for updates to the documentation with information on the new features over the coming weeks.

Enabling Full-stack Observability with Azure Monitor and Grafana

by Contributed | Apr 18, 2022 | Technology

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

Along with the announcement of Azure Managed Grafana, we are excited to introduce new Grafana integrations with Azure Monitor including the ability to pin Azure Monitor visualizations from Azure Portal to Grafana dashboards and new out-of-the-box Azure Monitor dashboards.

Full stack visibility from multiple sources in a single screen

Grafana allows you to query, visualize and create operational dashboards on Azure Monitor data. Using Azure Managed Grafana, you can now view your Azure monitoring data in Grafana dashboards in a few simple clicks. You can quickly pin Azure Monitor visualizations from the Azure Portal to new or existing Grafana dashboards by adding panels to your Grafana dashboard directly from Azure Monitor. Additionally, you can combine app and infrastructure metrics from multiple Azure sources into a single dashboard for full stack visibility.

How to create your first dashboard

In this example of a full-stack dashboard used to monitor Azure App Services, a DevOps engineer wants to include application layer response times from Azure Monitor application insights, garbage collection counts from Azure Monitor metrics and user events by type from Azure Monitor logs all in a single screen view.

After creating an Azure Managed Grafana workspace in the Azure portal, the engineer navigates to Azure Monitor metrics explorer to build the chart for the Garbage Collections metrics from the Azure App Service platform. Then, use Pin to Grafana to embed the chart into the dashboard.

Next, the engineer navigates to Azure Monitor Application Insights and uses Metrics to create a chart showing page load time component metrics before using Pin to Grafana to embed the chart into the same Grafana dashboard. 

Last, the engineer uses Log Analytics to write a custom query to view the number of user events on the App Service split by event type. This query can also be run in Grafana which supports Azure Monitor logs and Azure Resource Graph in addition to the Azure Monitor metrics shown above. 

The resulting Grafana dashboard highlights that multiple data sources and different layers of the application stack can be monitored in a single dashboard.

Get started quickly with new out of the box dashboards

You can also easily get started with full-stack Azure app and infrastructure monitoring using out-of-the-box Grafana dashboards. New dashboards are now available for several popular Azure Monitor insights and to view Azure alerts.  These dashboards are included in or can be downloaded from Azure Monitor Team dashboards. Use these out of the box dashboards ‘as is’ or as starting points for creating your own custom versions.

• Application insights dashboards
  
  
  
  • Application Overview – View the usage, reliability, and responsiveness of your app in a single screen. Drill down to additional dashboards and the Azure Portal in context to continue troubleshooting.
  
  
  • Application Performance – View response times for operations and dependencies
  
  
  • Application Failures – View failures by response codes, exception types and dependencies.
  
  
  
  

• VM insights dashboards
  
  
  
  • Azure VM Monitoring – VM Insights by Workspace
  
  
  • Azure VM Monitoring – VM Insights by Resource Group
  
  
  
  

• Container Insights
  
  
  
  • Azure Monitor for Containers – View cluster and namespace utilization, node infrastructure metrics based on data stored in the relevant Log Analytics workspace.
  
  
  
  

• Azure Monitor Alerts
  
  
  
  • Alerts at scale – View alerts with their monitor conditions and state across one of more resource groups. Drill into Alert consumption dashboard for additional details.
  
  
  • Alerts consumption – View the details of individual alerts. Drill into Portal with alert context to continue investigation.
  
  
  
  

Notes:

These new workflows are in addition to previously announced Azure Managed Grafana capabilities including:

• System-assigned Managed Identity


• Azure RBAC roles for Grafana administrator, editor, and viewer.

Get started today with this Quickstart on creating your first Azure Managed Grafana workspace.

Closing the Digital Divide with Mixed Reality

by Contributed | Apr 17, 2022 | Technology

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

Students at Grambling State University for the Babylon.js workshop.

When emerging technologies are on the rise, marginalized communities are often unfortunately the last to onboard due to lack of exposure and/or resources. Although as a company we have our fair share of academic initiatives and programs in place to provide skilling opportunities for students across various technology fields, what we lacked was mixed reality engagement with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). This year, we came together to launch a pilot program to help close the digital divide with respect to mixed reality technologies by providing mixed reality resources, workshops, and device access to students. This on-going effort is being completed with our Microsoft Partner, Engaged Media, LLC.

In February, we hosted an Intro to Babylon.js & WebXR workshop for the HBCU Legacy Bowl, a post-season all-star game presented by the Black College Football Hall of Fame. For the workshop, 80+ student athletes learned about careers in the XR industry and created their own virtual hall of fame using Babylon.js. The workshop concluded with a demo of the Black College Football Hall of Fame HoloLens Experience created by Engaged Media, LLC. The students were excited to not only try out the HoloLens 2 device but to also see themselves and other HBCU athletes who’ve come before them reflected in such immersive experiences.

April Speight with student athletes at the HBCU Legacy Bowl.

Ezra Jay demoing a HoloLens 2 with a student.

Our next stop in March was with Grambling State University and Southern University and A&M. We hosted a two-day hybrid workshop for both Babylon.js and HoloLens 2 Fundamentals. For the Babylon.js workshop, the students created a campus landmark utilizing custom 3D models created specifically for each school. As for the HoloLens 2 Fundamentals workshop, students received hands-on experience developing a Unity app for HoloLens and also subsequently trying out the app in the device.

A student at Grambling State University creating a 3D scene with Babylon.js

Jared Shepherd with two students trying out a HoloLens 2.

Students at Grambling State University working together.

The amount of appreciation and gratitude expressed by the students and faculty truly reflect the impact that engaging with HBCUs has on helping to close the digital divide. In all instances, it was the first time that these students had the chance to actually try out the HoloLens 2 devices. And for many, it was their first time creating for an immersive environment. While we still have a long road ahead of us, we’re looking forward to continuing making an impact for HBCU students across the country.

The success of this initiative would not be made possible without the collaboration between both Microsoft and Engaged Media, LLC. A generous thank you is extended to:

• April Speight (Sr. Cloud Advocate, Microsoft Cloud Advocacy)


• Tammy Richardson (Sr. Director Demand Planning, Microsoft Retail Stores & Merchandising)


• Jared Shepherd (Demand Planner, Microsoft Retail Stores & Merchandising)


• Jacqueline Beauchamp (Founder, Chairwoman and CEO, Engaged Media, LLC)


• Ezra Jay (Co-Founder & Development Director, Engaged Media, LLC)

We will continue moving forward with this program when the Fall semester starts in partnership with the Nonprofit Tech Acceleration for Black and African American Communities, an organization led by Darrell Booker within Microsoft Philanthropies. With a total of 102 HBCUs spread across the US, we look forward to spreading awareness and exposure of mixed reality to students!