Secure Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365 Policies

by Contributed | Mar 18, 2021 | Technology

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

Information security understanding is becoming more and more crucial for Enterprises in the last 40-50 years, and it is inevitable for any industry to protect resources against cybercrime or attacks. These security demands are further challenging in the Pandemic era where people are working remotely. However, Microsoft® Teams – a trustworthy centralized collaboration system providing greater security within Microsoft 365 through security, compliance, and protection offerings – is making organizations safe and employees more productive. Although Teams has its own org-wide policies (Teams policies, meetings policies, messaging policies and much more to control users accesses and information from Microsoft Teams Admin center), it is essential to configure security within Microsoft 365 to protect teams that is strongly coupled with SharePoint, Exchange, OneDrive, and any other integrated services as per the org need.

In short, Microsoft Teams as one of the Microsoft 365 applications leverages security advantages from SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange by default. For example, as a site member, if a user is not allowed to access a file stored in Teams’ SharePoint site, the same experience will be inherited in the team for the user, even though they can access the teams. All these workloads further can be configured-investigated-secured for Microsoft Teams in Microsoft 365 using various security, protection and compliance Microsoft 365 policies described as follows:

Note: This article only covers Microsoft 365 policies that can be leveraged in Microsoft Teams Security; for more information on other security and compliance features apart from Microsoft 365 policies, go to the “Learn More” section of this article located at the bottom.

Security and Protection Policies for Teams
Microsoft Teams as a part of Microsoft 365 services allows to configure essential Microsoft 365 security and protection policies such as Safe attachment policy, safe link policy, conditional access policy, data encryption policy as described below to protect teams content as per the organization need. A good way to start is checking the Microsoft Secure store to know the organization security posture – the higher the number, the greater the security – available at Microsoft 365 Security center as indicated in the following screen.

Based on the security score, you can make an action plan from the “Improvement Actions” to further boosting security score; for example, “Require MFA for administrative roles,” which prevents attackers from accessing important information in case of admin password leakage or Restrict anonymous users from joining meetings which helps to align with company regulation such as external partner, must have a valid account to join the Teams meeting. Additionally, security score also helps to compare your security score with similar organizations as yours as explained here.

Safe Attachment policy
With safe attachment policy, you can protect users from opening or sharing the malicious files in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. When a file is identified as suspicious as indicated in the following screen, users cannot access that file; however, they can delete it.

It is recommended to block the malicious files while configuring Safe Attachment policy from the Microsoft 365 Security center as indicated in the following screen.

Please find more information here to turn on safe attachments policy in SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams. Improve your action plans further when malicious links are found as explained here.

Safe Links policy
Safe links policy protects users from accessing the malicious links in emails, documents, and Teams conversations. This policy settings, allow to implement URL scanning and determine how user would interact with the link. For example, if user clicks in a link in teams chat, it shows warning page with malicious link information as indicated in the following screen.

It is a best practice to enable the “Do not allow users to click through to original URL” setting while configuring the Safe links policy as indicated in the following screen to protect users from clicking malicious URLs.

Please find more information on how Safe links policy can be configured and how it works here.

Conditional Access policy
Conditional access policy helps enforcing the desirable access controls such as allow/block access to user based on users, locations, devices, and applications to make organization secure by unexpected app access as indicated in the following screen:

For example, if a conditional access policy includes “Microsoft Teams” as a cloud app, then it will be applicable to specified users based on other criteria such as device/location/client application from where app will be accessed. And, when the specified user in the conditional access policy sign into Microsoft Teams, it would display a message as follows:

For more information about conditional access policy, please find the documentation here explaining overview, deployment and commonly used conditional policies in the organization.

Data Encryption Policy
Data encryption policy is a part of setting up Customer key for encrypting the content at application level that provides additional layer of security to align with organization compliance obligations, for example, leaving Microsoft 365 service. Now, you can have the customer key assigned for Microsoft teams to encrypt new Teams files stored in SharePoint online via single Data encryption policy at tenant level. As a customer you can revoke the access when you decide to leave the Microsoft 365 service, which deletes the cryptography of the data to meet security and compliance regulations.
To achieve encryption for Microsoft Teams using DEP and customer key, upload the keys in Azure Key vault and grant access to SharePoint online service. By doing so, the user’s file will be encrypted and accessible. However, the moment, keys are deleted when you decide to leave the service, users will not be able to access files from SharePoint Online as it will throw a message as follows as service has no information available to encrypt the data.

This layer of security does not allow anyone to access the data even from Microsoft, so as a customer you can be rest assured on the controls of your data. Please find more information about strengthening your data by setting up data encryption policy for Microsoft Teams using customer keys here.

Compliance policies for Teams
Microsoft 365 compliance policies help Microsoft Teams to match organization compliance guidelines through Information Barrier policy, Communication compliance policy, sensitivity label policy, data loss prevention policy and retention policy as described below. To know more compliance features apart from compliance policies, please review “Learn More” section located at bottom.

Information Barrier Policy
To regulate Teams communication between specific users for the compliance reason, an Information Barrier policy comes in handy that blocks/allow access between set of users to communicate by determining communication restrictions. For example, when team owner tries to add user in the teams affected by information barrier restriction, then it will show following message:

This policy can be triggered at 1:1 chat, group chat, meeting invitation, screen sharing, phone calls, adding user as guest. For more information, on IB policy, please click here.

Communication Compliance Policy
Communication Compliance policies in Microsoft 365, help detecting and acting up on unprofessional messages within the Microsoft Teams that may put your organization at risk. This helps regulating internal and external communications as per the organization standards. It also detects unexpected activities such as increasing Teams channel or volume of messaging data. Configuring Communication compliance policies support healthy culture between organization and employees. Behind the scenes, it uses machine learning over signals coming from various channel such as Exchange, Teams, Yammer, and Skype for Business. For example, as a Communication Admin, you can set up the policy for Teams that matches any offensive words defined in the condition as indicated in the following screen and as reviewer, you can get the trigger when that matches. Learn about planning and configuring communication compliance here.

Sensitivity Label Policy
Sensitivity label policy help secure and protect content in Microsoft teams which are created during the collaboration for example, creating or editing team. For instance, as an administrator, you want to allow users to create only private channels. In that case, create and publish sensitivity label called “Confidential” with the “Private” privacy option. Next, when user create a team and apply “Confidential” label to the team, User will only see “Private” as a privacy option as indicated in the following screen. Please find more information on sensitivity labels for Microsoft Teams here.

Data loss prevention policy
Prevent people from sharing sensitive information relevant to your business with internal or external users in Teams chat and channel messages by defining the data loss prevention policy. For example, if user sends a social security number in the Teams channel which is prevented by DLP policy created in Microsoft 365 compliance center, then the DLP policy automatically detects an action and block the message as indicated in the following screen.

You can also configure sending the incident reports to relevant users, when sensitive information is shared with specific instances at one time. Please find more information about DLP policies in the Microsoft Teams here.

Retention Policy
Retention policy helps to manage the Teams chats per the organization policies, legal requirements, or industry standards. For example, you can create a retention policy to delete the Teams chat after five years as indicated in the following screen. It also provides configuration settings such as retain chat data, delete it, or retain it for a specific period and then delete it. Please find more information about how retention policy works for Microsoft Teams here.

Learn More
Further information on security, privacy and compliance features, please have a look here. Know latest Teams announcement on security and compliance from here.

Dipti Chhatrapati is a passionate and ambitious Microsoft Professional with more than 12 years as a Developer, Consultant, Architect, and Manager for SharePoint (2007, 2010, 2013), Office 365, and Power Platform projects. Learn more at Insightrun with Dipti C.

To write your own blog on a topic of interest as a guest blogger in the Microsoft Teams Community, please submit your idea here: https://aka.ms/TeamsCommunityBlogger

Azure Marketplace new offers – Volume 123

by Contributed | Mar 18, 2021 | Technology

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

We continue to expand the Azure Marketplace ecosystem. For this volume, 103 new offers successfully met the onboarding criteria and went live. See details of the new offers below:

Applications Airline Crew Analytics: Crew management is one of the most complex airline processes. ZeroG provides visualizations and machine learning applications for airline managers and crew to enable collaboration via an easy web user interface. Alkira Cloud Services Exchange (CSX): Alkira Network Cloud offers global unified network infrastructure as a service. With Alkira, your company can deploy a global network for end-to-end and any-to-any connectivity across users, sites, and clouds. ALM/Quality Center: Manage software testing and quality management with this unified and flexible application lifecycle management product by Micro Focus, which provides visibility across all enterprise projects. Asset Insights for Transport and Logistics sector: Powered by IoT, AI, and machine learning, Mindtree’s digital solutions help logistics companies optimize operations, predict failures, increase productivity, and reduce costs in fleet operations, warehousing, and driver safety. Asset Performance with AVEVA: Combining operations management and asset performance technologies into one solution, AVEVA Insight delivers actionable information and AI capabilities to help improve asset reliability and operational performance. Audix Insights: Audix Insights brings together key data on a single dashboard. By correlating IT asset information with financial information, you will have an unprecedented view of the financial state and health of your IT infrastructure. BeProductive Suite: To help with Microsoft 365 adoption, MIGESA will identify use cases, train your team on tools, and contribute to the productivity of each person in your organization. This application is available only in Spanish. BI Margins Electricity Commercialization: Developed for the electrical marketing sector, Kiteris’ solution provides you with a detailed margin analysis based on billing information and cost structure. This application is available only in Spanish. bridge: Avatar: bridge is a revolutionary assistive technology solution for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. bridge Avatar powers instantaneous web interpretation, social media content, self-service kiosks, and visual announcements. CentOS 7.4: This preconfigured image is provided by Cognosys for CentOS 7.4 on Microsoft Azure. CentOS 7.4 is a Linux distribution providing a free, enterprise-class, and community-supported computing platform. CentOS 7.5: This preconfigured image is provided by ProComputers.com for CentOS 7.5. This minimal CentOS 7.5 image comes with an auto-extending root file system and contains just enough packages to run within Microsoft Azure. CentOS 7.6: This preconfigured image is provided by ProComputers.com for CentOS 7.6. This minimal CentOS 7.6 image comes with an auto-extending root file system and contains just enough packages to run within Microsoft Azure. CentOS 7.7: This preconfigured image is provided by ProComputers.com for CentOS 7.7. This minimal CentOS 7.7 image comes with an auto-extending root file system and contains just enough packages to run within Microsoft Azure. CentOS 8 with LVM: This preconfigured image is provided by ProComputers.com for CentOS 8 with Logical Volume Manager (LVM). The LVM volumes and the file systems are automatically extended during boot if the OS disk is bigger than the default one.   Contrast Security – DevSecOps for Modern Software: Use the Contrast application security platform to secure your apps in Microsoft Azure by assessing vulnerabilities, mitigating risks, and preventing attacks. Ensure security and compliance by embedding self-assessment and self-protection capabilities directly into your software. Control Plane Secure Communications Agent: This free virtual machine facilitates secure communications between workloads managed by Control Plane and virtual network resources. DevOps engineers can benefit from this Microsoft Azure agent to enable secure communications. COVID-19 Vaccine Pre-screening and Booking Assistant: Praktice.ai’s vaccine assistant virtually guides patients through the entire vaccination process, including screening, scheduling, and follow-ups. The solution helps health systems prequalify individuals and facilitate deployment. DeepTurnaround: Deployed on Azure Stack Edge devices, DeepTurnaround supplies airlines, airports, and ground service providers with automatically generated, reliable, and near real-time data of what happens at an aircraft stand. Denodo Standard 8.0 (BYOL): Denodo allows you to integrate and deliver data from any location to any consumer in real time on Microsoft Azure. Denodo Standard unleashes the power of modern data virtualization to accelerate your analytics and data services. DNS Server IaaS on Windows Server 2016: This preconfigured image by Virtual Pulse provides a Domain Name System (DNS) server on Windows Server 2016 that is ready to run on Microsoft Azure. DNS is a system that translates the domain names you enter in a browser to the IP address of the destination site. DNS Server IaaS on Windows Server 2019: This preconfigured image by Virtual Pulse provides a Domain Name System (DNS) server on Windows Server 2019 that is ready to run on Microsoft Azure. DNS is a system that translates the domain names you enter in a browser to the IP address of the destination site. Forescout: Continuous Device Visibility and Control: Enabling organizations to reduce cybersecurity risk and operational risk, Forescout provides visibility and control of devices across cloud, datacenter, campus, industrial, and operational technology environments. IT Business Management on Azure: ServiceNow IT Business Management enables you to create greater value from your initiatives and enable faster change across your organization. Plan, prioritize, and track work aligned to business objectives. JupyterLab 3 – Web interface for Project Jupyter: Linnovate offers this preconfigured image containing installation of JupyterLab. JupyterLab enables you to work with documents and activities such as Jupyter notebooks, text editors, terminals, and custom components in a flexible, integrated, and extensible manner. Kendis – Scaling Agile Platform: Kendis offers visual dependencies management and program increment (PI) planning for remote teams to identify dependencies, log risks, and set objectives. Kendis seamlessly integrates with Azure DevOps in few clicks. Konfluence: AI-driven Predictive Analytics platform: Konfluence is a self-service data engineering platform that breaks down silos and simplifies data lifecycles. Enterprise users and software engineers can now get an aerial view of their data by using Konfluence on Microsoft Azure. Legal Data Science Solutions: Legal Data Science analyzes administrative and judicial data using real-time data, Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Cosmos DB. This application is only available in Brazil. Logility Digital Supply Chain Platform: Logility’s platform helps accelerate planning and execution from product design to customer availability, providing collaboration across the enterprise and trading partner network. Loglook – Microsoft 365 log analysis and collection service: BEBE System’s LogLook collects and analyzes audit logs and visualizes the usage of Microsoft 365. This application is available only in Japanese. Lumedic Alphalytics: Developed for mid-sized health systems, this predictive analytics solution uses machine learning to identify hotspots of denied claims and hidden denials from seemingly unrelated data. Managed Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure: Arxus will guide you through a step-by-step journey to take advantage of all the benefits of Windows Virtual Desktop, resulting in a desktop solution matching your business needs. MFA across operating systems, apps and clouds: The Thales Group understands that security is only as strong as your weakest link. Thales helps protect your access points with multifactor authentication (MFA) across all operating systems, on-premises and in the cloud. MIFI: Safe E-invoices: MIFI is a secure e-invoice solution for Vietnam that helps businesses protect their data and comply with Vietnamese government requirements to use electronic invoices. This application is available only in Vietnamese. Migesa Easy Logistics: Manage and monitor your truck logistics processes in real time. Easy Logistics helps solve the challenges of field delivery services and efficiently managing your fleets. This application is available only in Spanish. MiSign Pro: Secure Digital Ink Solution and SDK: MiSign provides a solution to securely and electronically sign any document by using handwritten signature capture, digital signatures, or biometric data. Nexus Repository OSS: Linnovate offers this preconfigured image containing Nexus Repository OSS, a free artifact repository from Sonatype with universal format support. Noodle Factory AI Chat (for Learning & Education): Noodle Factory is an AI-powered chat platform that is ideal for higher education and corporate learning. Enable educators to instantly automate adaptive tutoring, mentoring, onboarding, and administrative tasks. NuaraHR: This human resource management solution automates and streamlines your organization’s HR processes, including leave application, performance appraisal, time tracking, payroll, and expense management. Nutanix Frame: This desktop as a service (DaaS) delivers Windows apps and desktops to users anywhere, on any device, with just a browser. Nutanix Frame is cloud native, multi-tenant native, and secure by design. O2 Network Archiver: Get a copy of your employees’ mobile calls and text messages in Microsoft 365. Use TeleMessage’s connector in the Microsoft 365 compliance center to import and archive messages and voice calls from the O2 U.K. mobile network. OH!play Corporate: Digible Conteudo Digital offers this event and marketing solution for streaming music content, producing broadcasts, and managing corporate events. This application is available only in Portuguese. OHS 12.2.1.4.0 Base Image and JDK8 on OL7.4: Oracle America provides this virtual machine with an Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 12.2.1.4.0 base image and JDK8 on OL7.4 for customers requiring very highly customized deployments on Microsoft Azure. OHS 12.2.1.4.0 Base Image and JDK8 on OL7.6: Oracle America provides this virtual machine with an Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) 12.2.1.4.0 base image and JDK8 on OL7.6 for customers requiring very highly customized deployments on Microsoft Azure. OpenUtilities: Bentley Systems enables global utilities companies to embrace digital transformation with software applications. Bentley Systems offers two OpenUtilities solutions in Microsoft Azure: Digital Twin Services and DER Integration. Patch & Asset: Heimdal Security safeguards both your remote and on-site employees by eliminating risks associated with outdated operating systems and apps. Remotely install Windows and third-party application updates. Power BI Solution Template for QuickBooks Online: QuickBooks has discontinued use of an online connector, causing Microsoft Power BI to no longer authenticate with QuickBooks. Fresh BI provides a Power BI solution template to connect to QuickBooks Online. Predictive Maintenance with AVEVA: AVEVA Predictive Analytics helps organizations increase returns on critical assets by supporting predictive maintenance programs. AVEVA helps asset-intensive organizations reduce equipment downtime, increase reliability, and improve performance while reducing operations and maintenance expenditures. Recorded Future: Recorded Future reduces security risk by automatically positioning threat data in your Microsoft Azure environment and delivering it to Microsoft Azure Sentinel and Microsoft Defender ATP, empowering analysts to identify and triage alerts faster. Rocket.Chat : Communication platform: Linnovate Technologies offers a preconfigured image that includes Rocket.Chat, a JavaScript-based web chat server built for communities and companies wanting to privately host their own chat service or for developers looking to build and evolve their own chat platforms. ScoutAsia: ScoutAsia provides a customized dashboard that shows the latest updates on companies, persons, and trends and lets you perform a deep dive into past and present relationships among individuals and companies. ServiceNow DevOps for Azure DevOps on Azure: ServiceNow DevOps ties your entire DevOps toolchain together with Microsoft Azure DevOps while delivering streamlined reporting, actionable insights, and automated control and governance. The Now Platform hosted on Azure is available in Azure regions in France and Singapore for highly regulated industries. ServiceNow HR Service Delivery (ServiceNow DC): Boost productivity and give your employees the experience they deserve with ServiceNow HR Service Delivery. With ServiceNow’s solution, you can capture and utilize knowledge that resides across teams and individuals, provide a single place for employees to get help, and automate onboarding and transitions. ServiceNow IT Asset Management on Azure: ServiceNow IT Asset Management lets you optimize hardware, software, and cloud costs while reducing risk. With this platform, you can automate workflow actions from a native configuration management database and simplify asset management across your organization. ServiceNow IT Service Management (ServiceNow DC): ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) provides a modern, cloud-based solution that lets you consolidate your IT tools into a single data model, transform the service experience, automate workflows, gain real-time visibility, and improve IT productivity. SHIELDrive (real drive): SHIELDrive is a cloud storage security broker that encrypts files and obfuscates filenames when files are uploaded. The app works via browser or as a Microsoft Teams app. SHIELDrive lets users manage their own unique encryption keys from creation to destruction. SingleStore Managed Service: Get SingleStore’s speed, scale, and capability without the headaches of installing, configuring, and maintaining software. SingleStore is a scalable SQL database that ingests data continuously to perform operational analytics. Smarter 365 IP Solution: Deploy your modern workplace and business applications in 15 minutes without any IT-specific knowledge with Eshgro’s Smarter 365 platform. This application is available only in Dutch. Soapbox Engage: From fundraising to advocacy, PICnet provides online engagement tools. Join a community of changemakers who use Soapbox Engage to propel their organizations’ online engagement with their communities. SpheraCloud: SpheraCloud operationalizes, scales, and optimizes integrated risk management strategies to identify, manage, and mitigate risk in the areas of environment, health, safety, sustainability, and product stewardship. SwiftKanban: SwiftKanban by Digite is a lean, agile, and visual work management tool to improve your work continuously. Based on the powerful principles of the Kanban method, SwiftKanban combines workflow modeling and flow metrics. TalkProcess forms: This business process mapping software collects process information digitally. The tool supports all project phases, including preparation, planning, communication, and information aggregation. This application is available only in Brazilian Portuguese. TELUS Network Archiver: Integrated with the TELUS Canada mobile network, the TeleMessage connector in the Microsoft 365 compliance center imports and archives SMS and MMS messages from the TELUS network. Teradici Azure Virtual Desktops for Manufacturing: Teradici Cloud Access Software, powered by PC-over-IP technology, provides secure access to graphics-intensive computer-aided design and other manufacturing applications, virtual desktops, and workstations running on Microsoft Azure. Teradici Virtual Desktop: Federal & Public Sector: Teradici Cloud Access Software provides secure Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual desktop access to graphics-intensive and CPU-based productivity applications from Microsoft Azure and Azure Stack for the federal and public sectors. Teradici Virtual Desktops for Game Developers: Game development demands high frame rates, low latency, and amazing responsiveness. Teradici Cloud Access Software enables game developers to work remotely, accelerate game production, and secure sensitive assets in Microsoft Azure. Trial access to PII Vault for testing, validation: PII Vault was built for organizations that need to combine private data from different sources or use their production data in non-production environments. Anonomatic enables those sources to anonymize their data behind their firewall. VERA: Validated Electronic Record Approval (VERA) is a software as a service application running on Tx3’s Helios platform to control life science quality assurance data and standardize approval lifecycles without restricting core functionality. VMware NSX – Cloud Service Manager: VMware NSX Cloud is a networking and security solution. The VMware NSX – Cloud Service Manager appliance provides a single-pane-of-glass visibility plane for managing your public cloud inventory. VMware NSX – Policy Manager: The VMware NSX – Policy Manager appliance provides a single-pane-of-glass management endpoint to define and manage networking and security policy constructs for hybrid cloud workloads and services. Windows Server 2019 with Filezilla FTP Server: This preconfigured image by Virtual Pulse provides Windows Server 2019 with Filezilla file transfer protocol (FTP) server. Filezilla FTP Server enables file downloads and uploads, server-client transfers, and connections from multiple computers. Consulting services AWS to Azure – 1-Week Assessment: Moresi.com can migrate your servers and databases quickly and safely from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure. Relying on Azure Migrate or Azure Site Recovery, Moresi.com can offer near-real-time data replication. Azure Cloud Foundation (ACF) – 1-Hour Briefing: With over 500 public cloud projects delivered, Nordcloud will help build a Microsoft Azure landing zone in alignment with the architectural approach and reference implementation of the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure (CAF) Foundation. Azure DevOps Services and 1-Day Workshops: Companies that can react quickly to change have a competitive advantage. Medium-sized companies can benefit from novaCapta’s detailed DevOps analysis and customized recommendations to address your business needs. This offer is available only in German. Azure Infra: Quick Start 1-Day Workshop: Adfolks will help your technical and business leaders understand Microsoft Azure infrastructure solutions and service models and how to utilize these services during the cloud adoption journey. Azure IoT: 3-Day Workshop: Lufthansa Industry Solutions will demonstrate how to build, configure, and test an end-to-end IoT solution using the Microsoft Azure command-line interface and Visual Studio Code. This service is available only in German. Azure Security Check: 1-Day Assessment: Somnitec’s assessment helps optimize and secure your Microsoft Azure environment. Somnitech will help minimize risk, recommend security adjustments, and provide clarity about your existing Azure usage. This application is available only in German. Azure Site Recovery: 8-Hour Assessment: ITsavvy complements your business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) strategies with a custom-built and custom-configured Microsoft Azure Site Recovery disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution. Azure SQL Migration 2-Hour Assessment: Are you looking for a database platform that scales as your performance requirements change? Primend can upgrade your existing databases to Azure SQL Server and configure all the necessary services and connections. Azure VMware (AVS) migration – 1-Hour Briefing: Nordcloud can migrate your on-premises VMware workloads to Microsoft Azure fast and risk-free. Running on Azure infrastructure, Azure VMware Solution is a Microsoft service verified by VMware. Azure-based Damage Detection – 8-Week Implementation: Affine enables defect detection and classification for the manufacturing and consumer packaged goods (CPG) verticals using Azure Cognitive Services and an automated machine vision detection framework. Bechtle Managed Azure Sentinel – 1-Day CIO Workshop: Bechtle’s managed Microsoft Azure Sentinel service helps improve your company’s security. Bechtle will demonstrate a security information and event management cloud solution to modernize your security operations center. Boost your Migration to Azure – 1-Week Assessment: Whether you choose a full-cloud or a hybrid scenario, Moresi.com provides a complete solution for a safe and easy migration to Microsoft Azure, predicting duration, feasibility, and costs. Cloud Ambition – 3-Week Assessment: What is your cloud ambition? KPMG can review your current cloud strategy and define or optimize a cloud vision underpinned with a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). KPMG will also prepare and facilitate a Cloud Ambition workshop. Cloud Applications – 7-Week Assessment: After an applications landscape assessment, KPMG will classify your applications, identify a migration strategy, develop business cases, and define a migration roadmap to Microsoft Azure. Cloud Cost Control – 10-Day Assessment: KPMG’s cloud cost management maturity assessment focuses on people, process, technology, and governance. By evaluating current cost management activities, KPMG will advise on the optimal ways to run workloads in Microsoft Azure. Conversion / 4: 10-Week Implementation: All for One Group offers a unique subscription for SAP S/4HANA conversion, which includes Microsoft Azure infrastructure, fully managed services, support, and upgrades. This service is available only in German. Data Modernization & Visualization: 2-Week Implementation: Adfolks offers rapid deployment of data modernization and Microsoft Power BI. Built on Microsoft Azure data technologies, Adfolks has designed a BI/ETL reference architecture for advanced analytics and machine learning. Datacenter Migration: 6-Week Implementation: Arxus delivers datacenter migration using a programmatic approach. Arxus’ Microsoft Azure Migration Program provides architects, engineers, and a project manager from Arxus’ Fast Track for Azure team. Developer Velocity Assessment: 2-Day Assessment: Arxus will assess your application team on the four most crucial elements of DevOps: lead time, implementation frequency, failure rate, and recovery time. This assessment will shed light on which tools can provide improvement. Energy control: 4-Week Proof of Concept: SYNNEX’s Forest Movement combines an Azure-powered Internet of Things (IoT) solution and expert consulting services to help organizations control their energy use, cut costs, lower their carbon footprint, and become more sustainable. FinOps: 1-Day Assessment: FinOps teams combine IT and finance functions. AG Tech will conduct an assessment to discuss how your cloud financial management needs could be addressed with FinOps practices in Microsoft Azure. Hosting Transformation Strategy: 6-Week Assessment: Aligning application needs with technology demand and business requirements, CS Technology (Australia) will develop a hosting transformation strategy to deliver a financial model, business case, and roadmap to Microsoft Azure. IAM – initial analysis processes: 1-Day Workshop: End the confusion with countless usernames and passwords for your employees. The All for One Group will work with you to optimize and automate your identity lifecycle management. This service is available only in German. Kudelski Security 5-Day Cloud Security Assessment: The Kudelski Group will help you understand the business and technical risks of moving to Microsoft Azure and identify vulnerabilities in your infrastructure, while defining security requirements, controls, standards, and policies. Managed Services: 30-Minute Implementation: Modality will establish a link to your tenant using Azure Lighthouse to provide a range of Microsoft Azure management services while you maintain control. Migesa Cloud Infrastructure Discovery: 3-Week Assesment: Migesa will review your inventories, capabilities, and dependencies in preparation for migrating to Microsoft Azure. You will get a roadmap to reduce costs and maximize security. This service is available only in Spanish. Migrate to Azure – Proof of Concept – 2 Weeks: Hitachi Solutions will help you understand Microsoft Azure to accelerate your cloud transformation journey, giving your organization a competitive advantage. You will also learn how to align IT infrastructure with business goals. Migration Expert: 10-Week Implementation: The All for One Group will migrate your encrypted emails from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange supported by Azure Active Directory. Your emails remain protected even after the migration. This service is available only in German. Nordcloud Azure optimized capacity – 1-Hour Briefing: Save on your cloud costs when you buy through Nordcloud. Cloud capacity experts will deliver improved public cloud control and lower total cost of ownership to your business, ensuring quality performance and high cost efficiency. Sogeti eAPM Assessment 1 Week: economic Application Portfolio Management (eAPM) from Sogeti, part of Capgemini, is an analysis tool with a graphical visualization layer to provide an in-depth view into an organization’s entire IT portfolio. Sogeti EMP Managed Services 1-Day Assessment: Sogeti, part of Capgemini, offers its Enterprise Portfolio Modernization (EPM) initiative, a suite of services that aligns application lifecycle and modernization capabilities with Microsoft Azure to offer a modern end-to-end approach to digital transformation. Virtual desktop enablement – 1-Hour Briefing: To support your organization’s remote work, Nordcloud can help with migrating to Windows Virtual Desktop in Microsoft Azure. Provide the familiarity and compatibility of Windows 10 with the new scalable multi-session experience. Wintellect App Modernization – 2-Week Assessment: Wintellect can move your legacy line-of-business applications to the modern web and desktop, then add the power of Microsoft Azure with modern DevOps processes, advanced security, and easy-to-configure backup and disaster recovery services.

Announcing General Availability for Organizational Reporting

by Contributed | Mar 18, 2021 | Technology

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

As a team manager or training manager, you know how important it is to support your learners on their training and certification journeys. Professionals who offer technical training to students at schools, colleges, and universities also understand this critical need. A key part of that support is getting insight into the learners’ and students’ journeys and achievements: Which roles and technologies are they investing their skills on? Have they completed any learning paths? How many modules have they finished? When a manager or trainer knows the details of a learner’s learning and development progress, they can help fill training gaps, measure and visualize what success means—both to the learner and to the organization—encourage them along the way, and celebrate their achievements.

To address this need, we’re happy to announce the General Availability of Microsoft Learn Organizational Reporting. This valuable service offers enterprise customers, partners, and academic institutions the ability to view and report on Microsoft Learn training progress and achievements for individuals within their organization’s tenant. The data used from Azure Data Share will incur costs associated with data storage within your existing Microsoft Azure subscription, but no separate or additional billing will occur.

Reporting details

Managers and trainers can explore and report on many activities of their employees, including:

• Microsoft Learn units and modules that are in progress and completed.


• Microsoft Learn learning paths completed.


• Badges, trophies, and experience points earned.


• Microsoft Certification (coming soon).

Please note that training service providers, like Learning Partners, can track their own employees’ progress but does not extend to accessing their clients’ learning specific data.

How it works

The system uses Azure Data Share to extract, transform, and load (ETL) user progress data into data sets, which can then be processed further or displayed in visualization tools, like Power BI. You can store data sets to Azure Data Lake, Azure Blob Storage, Azure SQL Database, or Azure Synapse SQL Pool. And you can create and manage your data share with the Azure Data Share no-code UI.

With Microsoft Learn Organizational Reporting, each user is assigned a unique object ID, and no personally identifiable information (PII) is stored in the data set. (Individuals can be identified by sending the object ID to the Microsoft Identity service.)

With this information, get the details on the number of users, most completed learning paths and modules, top users, completion rates (percentages), and more. And visualize the data in ways that support your learners and offer insight to your organization.

Figure 1. Sample Microsoft Learn Organizational Reporting in Power BI.

Setting up

It’s very straightforward to set up an Azure Data Share for Microsoft Learn Organizational Reporting. Use your Azure subscription and be sure your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account is attached to your organization’s tenant, since Azure AD will need access to the tenant’s Azure portal.

Next steps

If you’re ready to support your learners on their training and certification journeys with this practical information, set up Microsoft Learn Organizational Reporting. In just a few steps, you’ll have the details you need to keep current on what they’re learning and to visualize, report on, and celebrate their achievements. This service can give you deeper insight into your team’s progress to help reinforce training foundations and set them up for further success for specific job roles—a win-win for learners and organizations alike.

New Capabilities from Azure Live Video Analytics

by Contributed | Mar 18, 2021 | Technology

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

We just released new features and capabilities to the Microsoft Live Video Analytics (LVA) service and if you are thinking about Live Video Analytics (LVA) on a Windows IoT device, an Azure Percept DK (dev kit), or on other edge devices powered by AI acceleration from NVIDIA and Intel, then you will really want to learn more about it! Organizations can now drive the next wave of business automation via AI-powered, real-time analytic insights from their own video streams with Microsoft Live Video Analytics (LVA).

In line with Microsoft’s vision of simplifying AI and IoT at the edge from silicon to service, the new features and capabilities we announced at the Microsoft Ignite 2021 event will allow you to deploy LVA capabilities seamlessly on Windows IoT devices, for you to build intelligent video analytics systems leveraging and capitalizing on your Windows expertise and investments. We have also ensured that LVA functions on the new family of Azure Percept devices and works seamlessly across our partner platforms such as Intel and NVIDIA.

With our focus on ensuring a consistent experience for video analytics solutions developers, irrespective of the OS and of underlying hardware acceleration platform, here are the new capabilities that help complete your end-to-end scenarios:

• Deploy LVA with Azure IoT Edge for Linux on Windows (EFLOW) : Leverage LVA to build and deploy Video Analytics workflows on Windows IoT devices with EFLOW.


• LVA with Azure Percept: At Ignite 2021, we announced Azure Percept, an end-to-end platform for creating edge AI solutions in minutes with hardware accelerators built to integrate seamlessly with Azure AI and Azure IoT services. LVA can be leveraged on Percept to record and stream videos from edge to cloud to help you deliver business insights in real time.


• Intel OpenVINO DL Streamer – Edge AI Extension with LVA: With the latest release of OpenVINO’s DL Streamer – Edge AI Extension from Intel, you can leverage it alongside LVA to detect, classify, and track multiple object classes (e.g., person, vehicle, bike) at high efficiency on a variety of Intel HW architectures


• NVIDIA DeepStream — AI Skills and AI Acceleration for LVA: With the latest DeepStream release (5.1), you can now deploy LVA across multiple cameras for  object detection, classification and tracking on NVIDIA GPUs.

Since the preview launch of the Live Video Analytics (LVA) platform on June 2020, we evolved product capabilities and strengthened our platform to meet partner and customers’ needs in the version 2.0 refresh announced in Feb 2021 and related announcements. Additionally, we have a set of exciting capabilities that are not in the public domain yet, but we are getting ready to announce them soon at Build 2021. Please reach out to us (amshelp@microsoft.com) to learn more.

Leverage Windows edge devices as LVA processors

As a customer in industries like Manufacturing, Retail, Public Safety etc. you may have many Windows devices that are enabled as IoT sensors and processing devices. Along with Windows IoT, there is also a growing trend of Linux based containerized microservices backed by cloud-based ISV ecosystem especially for video analytics in real time. Many customers we talk to want to leverage their existing assets, be it cameras, Windows IoT devices or other IoT sensors to derive real time business intelligence by applying AI to video.

Using LVA on EFLOW you get the best of both worlds – a Windows IoT device that leverages existing Windows tooling, infrastructure investment and IT knowledge, Azure managed and deployed as well as gathering business insights via Linux based Live Video Analytics. At Ignite 2021, we delivered a set of simple steps, that can help you bring LVA and EFLOW together and unleash the power of LVA’s media graph on Windows IoT Edge devices.

As an example, you could be a retail store owner with cameras and network video recorders powered by Windows IoT and today the video might be archived and manually reviewed. With LVA and EFLOW, the operator can easily deploy Linux-based Azure Live Video Analytics on Windows, leveraging their existing Windows expertise and investments and could go from having a basic video recording system to an intelligent video analytics solution that can trigger actions driven by AI. You can also learn more about EFLOW, currently in Public preview about its features and deployments.

Live Video Analytics with Azure Percept

At Ignite 2021, our leadership team has announced Azure Percept that focuses on extending AI to the edge with an end-to-end platform that integrates Intel Movidius Myriad X vision processing unit (VPU) hardware accelerators with Azure AI and Azure IoT services and is designed to be simple to use and ready to go with minimal setup.

Percept helps customers overcome one of the key challenges of navigating the end-to-end edge AI solution creation. As a solution builder, you might already have a working AI model that you want to leverage as part of an end-to-end video analytics solution. We have partnered with the Azure Percept team to provide you with a reference solution. You can get started today by ordering your dev kit and leveraging the GitHub code.

As seen from the reference solution’s architecture below, Azure Percept leverages LVA to record video to the cloud, so that when combined with analytics metadata from the AI, you get a solution for object counting in pre-defined zones. You can visualize the results thanks to video streaming and playback capabilities of LVA.

LVA with Intel’s OpenVINO DL Streamer – AI Edge Extension

Last year, we announced an integration of LVA with Intel’s OpenVINO Model Server –Edge AI Extension module via LVA’s HTTP extension processor. This enabled our customers to run AI inferences such as object detection and classification on a variety of Intel hardware architectures (CPU, iGPU, VPU) at the edge and use cloud services like Azure Media Services and Azure IoT. At Ignite 2021, with the announcement of the OpenVINO DL Streamer – AI Edge Extension module, we are enabling additional capabilities over a highly performant gRPC extension processor while keeping the core OpenVINO inference engine the same to scale across the Intel architectures. With this integration you can now get object detection, classification and tracking for high frame rate video across multiple classes. See this tutorial for more details.

With the pre-validated configurations, pre-trained models as well as scalable hardware, users can jump start solutions to improve business efficiencies across variety of use cases such as retail, industrial, healthcare or smart cities. For example, with the vehicle classification model you can see the type of vehicle and add your own business logic i.e., validate certain vehicle types are parked in the designated area. With the object tracker you can track objects of interest and map on a timeline.

Get Started Today!

• Deploy LVA with Intel DL Streamer – Edge AI Extension using this tutorial


• Explore and deploy Intel DL Streamer – Edge AI Extension Module from Azure Marketplace


• Watch the Intel Ignite 2021 session

LVA with NVIDIA’s DeepStream SDK – AI Skills and AI Acceleration

LVA and NVIDIA DeepStream SDK can be used to build hardware-accelerated AI video analytics apps that combine the power of NVIDIA graphic processing units (GPUs) with Azure cloud services, such as Azure Media Services, Azure Storage, Azure IoT, and more.

NVIDIA recently released DeepStream SDK 5.1, bringing support for NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture GPUs for massive acceleration to inference.  With this release, you can leverage LVA to build video workflows that span the edge and cloud, and then combine DeepStream SDK 5.1 to build pipelines to extract insights from video.

Imagine you work for a county or city government that wants to understand traffic patterns across certain times, a retailer that wants to deliver curbside pickup to certain vehicle types, or a parking lot operator that wants to understand parking lot utilization, traffic flows and monitor in real time. With LVA managing video workflows and NVIDIA DeepStream’s investment in providing optimized AI for their underlying hardware architecture combined with the power of the Azure platform, you can now develop such video analytics pipelines from cloud to edge.

You can explore some samples on GitHub that showcase the composability of both platforms and have been tested for vehicle detection, classification, and tracking on high frame rate video. Feel free to add additional object classes such as bicycle, road sign etc. to leverage detection and tracking capability.

Get Started Today!

In closing, we’d like to thank everyone who is already participating in the Live Video Analytics on IoT Edge public preview. For those of you who are new to our technology, we encourage you to get started today with these helpful resources:

• Watch the Live Video Analytics intro video


• Find more information on the product details page 


• Try the new Live Video Analytics features today with an Azure free trial account


• Download Live Video Analytics on IoT Edge from the Azure Marketplace


• Get started quickly with our C# and Python code samples


• Search the GitHub repo for LVA open-source project

And finally, the LVA product team wants to hear about your experiences with LVA. Please feel free to contact us via TechCommunity  to ask questions and provide feedback including what future scenarios you would like to see us focusing on.

**Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.