Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Our Microsoft Defender for Endpoint AMA happened on February 17, from 8:00-9:00 AM PT. Our product team was on hand to answer questions about our threat and vulnerability management capabilities. See the past questions and answers here::

Details:
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint AMA – threat and vulnerability management   
Place: https://aka.ms/ama/DefenderforEndpoint

Don’t let insider threats go undetected. Learn how to uncover, investigate, and act on malicious activities in your organization.

Watch our 7-part Insider Risk Management Series:

• Episode 1: Identify and take action on critical insider threats
  Insider threats and risks are a major issue for all companies and can easily go undetected until it is too late. Leveraging AI to find what humans may have missed can provide you with a game-changing advantage. Come learn how new features in Insider Risk Management can give you broad visibility into potential insider risks and quickly take action with integrated investigative workflows.
• Episode 2: Creating and customizing built-in ML policies to quickly identify insider risks
  See how easy it is to configure a policy to detect insider risks within your organization. We offer pre-configured templates for risks ranging from IP Theft by Disgruntled Employees to Security Violations to Data Leaks. Policies can be utilized as is or customized to your organization’s needs.
• Episode 3: Utilizing integrated workflows to collaboratively remediate insider risks
  Come learn about the end-to-end integrated workflows that ensure the right people across security, HR, legal, and compliance are involved to quickly investigate and take action once a risk has been identified.  In addition to integrations with Advanced eDiscovery, we now have the ability to push tickets to Service Now and send alerts to the Office 365 Management Activity API which can then be consumed by SIEM systems such as Azure Sentinel.
• Episode 4: Leveraging an integrated end-to-end approach to identify and remediate insider risks
• Episode 5: Fulfill regulatory compliance requirements with Communication Compliance​
• Episode 6: Better with Microsoft Teams. Learn more about our latest native Teams integrated features!
• Episode 7: Learn how to reduce communication risks within your organization
  

Watch the series here:

• VIDEO: Security & Inside Risk Management –7-part Series
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtXp2b36yQ&list=PL3ZTgFEc7LytlC9XgsaYd2TzlvJH6xwdA

With so many different factors to keep in mind, choosing the best database for your SQL Server migration can be daunting. Download the Azure SQL Resource Kit for resources and information to help you get started with your migration to Azure SQL. You’ll learn how to choose the database service that fits your needs, utilize your existing on-premises SQL Server skills, and plan your successful deployment.

Explore the resource kit to:

• Understand how Azure SQL works and start your SQL Server migration with a free copy of the Azure SQL Revealed e-book.
• See real-world examples of how organizations deployed Azure SQL and are taking advantage of its wide range of features and functionality for data management solutions.
• Learn how to lower your total cost of ownership while improving operational efficiency.
• Choose the right database service, run your migration, and take advantage of the extensive free training resources available to you.

Get it here:

• DOWNLOAD Azure SQL Resource Kit
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/azure-sql-resource-kit/

Register for this digital event to reimagine your project management with Microsoft Project, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Microsoft Planner.

Complete your projects-big and small-on time with project management solutions built to meet your needs. Register now to learn how Microsoft Project, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, and Microsoft Planner work individually and together to supercharge your productivity.

Join us for this digital event to:

• Discover new features and best practices during the keynote and 6+ hours of additional on-demand demos and product walkthroughs.

• Connect with Microsoft experts, technology partners, and peers to expand your network.

• Get tailored guidance and questions answered from the engineering teams behind these products.

Details below:

• Date/Time:
  Thursday, March 18, 2021
  8:00 AM-9:30 AM Pacific Time
• Register:
  https://events1.social27.com/reimagine-projectmanagement/page/pre-signup

We recently launched an updated Azure Architecture Center:

• Azure Architecture Center
  Architecture diagrams, reference architectures, example scenarios, and solutions for common workloads on Azure
  https://aka.ms/all-architectures

Find examples like these:

• Extend an on-premises network using ExpressRoute
• Hub-spoke network topology in Azure
• Consumer health portal on Azure
  
• Azure AD identity and access management for AWS
• Azure security solutions for AWS
• Baseline architecture for an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster

Over 370+ architectural designs for implementing solutions within Azure with a consistent experience, and now much easier to filter and discover the right architecture for your organization!

Recently, there’s a been a few folks on Twitter talking about the Reply All storms that their organizations have suffered and the political consequences of those that participate – including their leadership.

We haven’t had a ReplyAll storm at Microsoft for a lonnnnng time.  Why?

Because there’s a Reply All Storm Protection feature in Exchange Online.

When a reply all mail storm happens in your organization, it can disrupt business continuity and in some cases even throttle the rest of your organization’s email for a period of time. At Microsoft Ignite 2019 we announced the Reply All Storm Protection feature to help reduce the impact that reply all storms can have on large organizations. This feature has completed our rollout, and is now available to all Office 365 tenants worldwide (except GCC-High… it’s coming).

Initially the Reply All Storm Protection feature will mostly benefit large organizations who have large distribution lists. When the feature detects a likely reply all storm taking place on a large DL it will block subsequent attempts to reply all to the thread and will return an NDR to the sender. The reply all block will remain in place for several hours.

Initially the Reply All Storm Protection feature will use the following conditions to detect a reply all storm:

• 10 reply all-s to over 5000 recipients within 60 minutes

It will then block subsequent replies to the thread for 4 hours.

The reply all storm NDR will look something like this:

Over time, as we gather usage telemetry and customer feedback, we expect to tweak, fine-tune, and enhance the Reply All Storm Protection feature to make it even more valuable to a broader range of Office 365 customers.

We’d love to hear your feedback on this feature. We are considering possible future enhancements to improve our reply all storm detection accuracy, add admin customizable thresholds and block duration, as well as producing reply all storm reports and notifications.

We’re already seeing the first version of the feature successfully reduce the impact of reply all storms within Microsoft (humans still behave like humans no matter which company they work for 😉 and believe it will also benefit many other organizations as well.

<taken from the Exchange Team blog>

• BLOG: Reply All Storm Protection in Exchange Online
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/reply-all-storm-protection-in-exchange-online/ba-p/1369811

Did you miss the Windows Virtual Desktop digital event? It’s not too late to get the latest insider tips, demos, and product updates. Watch on demand:

Take a technical deep dive into how to deploy and scale virtual desktops and apps with Windows Virtual Desktop. Whether you’re already running virtual desktops or just getting started, you’ll learn new ways to optimize your virtualization projects—directly from the Microsoft product team.

Register for this free digital event to:

• Get expert guidance on how to quickly and securely move your virtual desktops and apps to Azure.
• Learn best practices to monitor, automatically scale, and easily manage apps and images in your virtual desktop environment.
• Find out how to virtualize GPUs, multimedia, and high-performance computing workloads.
• Hear the latest product news and get details on upcoming features.
• See demos of virtualization tools and techniques.

Delivered in partnership with Intel.

Register here:

• TRAINING: Windows Virtual Desktop – Master Class
  https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-windows-virtual-desktop-On-Demand.html

An Azure AD workbook to monitor authentication requests for your applications!

To increase infrastructure resilience, set up monitoring of application sign-in health for your critical applications so that you receive an alert if an impacting incident occurs. To assist you in this effort, you can configure alerts based on the sign-in health workbook.

This workbook enables administrators to monitor authentication requests for applications in your tenant. It provides these key capabilities:

• Configure the workbook to monitor all or individual apps with near real-time data.

• Configure alerts to notify you when authentication patterns change so that you can investigate and take action.

• Compare trends over a period, for example week over week, which is the workbook’s default setting.

Read more here:

• Monitor application sign-in health for resilience in Azure Active Directory
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/monitor-sign-in-health-for-resilience

Microsoft State and Local Government leaders Mandy Ledford and Carol Workman, respective GMs of the East and West regions, preview the Showcase. This unique digital experience demonstrates the creative ways agencies are engaging citizens, empowering employees, optimizing operations and reinventing services. It’s easy to explore demonstrations, interviews and more in our five focus areas:

1. 21st century workforce
2. A safer, more secure nation
3. Connected governments and communities
4. Reimagined health and human services
5. Smart infrastructure
6. Modernizing citizen services for the digital age
7. Building trust in the online environment
8. Using AI to understand community needs
9. Accelerating state government remote work
10. Moving city government forward
11. Learning anytime., anywhere
12. Transforming workforce strategies with data-driven insights
13. Mapping the coronavirus in real-time
14. Reducing costs with proactive maintenance models
15. Working to feed the world
16. Connecting rural America to new opportunities
17. Improving legal case management
18. Connecting through remote learning
19. Preparing students for the future
20. Sustaining North America’s largest transportation network
21. Enhancing public safety
22. Modernizing unemployment administration
23. Using AI for accessible inclusive hiring
24. Keeping the community informed
25. Enhancing fleet operations
26. Seeing underground infrastructure in 3D
27. Automating emergency response
28. Engaging the public
29. …

Be sure to download the Showcase guides to plan your visit and quickly identify key solutions. Thank you for joining us; we look forward to collaborating to deliver results, drive modernization and enhance government services.

• View or download the Quick View Video Guide
• View or download the AI Guide

• Microsoft Digital Transformation Showcase –
  State and Local Government
  https://digitaltransformationshowcaseslg.event.microsoft.com/

Explore how data can be used during crises to make informed decisions that will affect the lives of people in your communities in this #GovAfterShock session hosted by @LivNeal

Microsoft Industry Digital Forum
Using data to inform policy making in times of crisis

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the importance of data in making decisions which affect the lives of people and communities around the world.

This session will explore perspectives on how data can be used to drive informed decision making, particularly in times of crisis, and will bring perspectives from gGovernment, the private sector, IGOs and NGOs – all of whom have vital roles in ensuring government can operate at pace and cooperate with each other to meet the needs of the community and further enable societies.
Within the discussion participants will have the opportunity to explore the role that skills have to play in success, enabling remote government access, empowering cross agency collaboration and how approaches to privacy and security can build trust.

• Host: Olivia Neal, Dir Digital Transformation, Worldwide Public Sector, Microsoft
• Moderator: Audrey Plonk, Head of Digital Economy Policy Division, OECD Panelist:
• Robert Opp, Chief Digital Offices, UNDP
• Bertrand Monthubert, Regional Councilor Data & AI strategy, Region of Occitanie
• Chris Calabrese, Sr Dir Privacy and Data Policy, Microsoft

This event is in partnership with Government After Shock.

• You are also asked to register for Government After Shock and attend the panel discussion Data Governance for a Digitally-Enabled State. Hear Dr Julia Glidden, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, Microsoft and government leaders discuss what needs to be done to realize the potential of a full data-driven public sector.

Register for the webcast here:

• WEBCAST: “Using Data to Inform Policy Making in Times of Crisis”
  https://info.microsoft.com/CO-DTGOV-WBNR-FY21-11Nov-17-GovernmentIndustryDigitalForum-5553_LP02OnDemandRegistration-Forminbody.html