Kurt Shintaku's Blog

The end of mainstream support for Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) is coming on January 2021.

ATA will continue to be supported in extended support however after this date:

• no further feature updates will be made to ATA (past updates are located here)
• no functional patches other than security fixes will be published for ATA

WHAT TO DO?
Azure Advanced Threat Protection (AATP) has been the evolution of Advanced Threat Analytics, operating in the cloud & delivering improved protection at a rapid pace.

Folks using ATA know that it has always been a few steps behind AATP in features & functionality because it requires manual on-premises software updates, relative to AATP which is updated regularly in the cloud on customer’s behalf. 

It’s recommended that IT organizations consider beginning their transition to Azure Advanced Threat Protection to ensure their Active Directory Domain Controller environment is securely monitored for breaches & anomalous behaviors.  Resources to migrate are available here.

For more information, read the notification about the ending of ATA’s mainstream support:

• NEWS: End of mainstream support for Advanced Threat Analytics January 2021
  https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=2138125

Determining the differences between Microsoft 365 F1, F3, E3, & E5 Suites can be difficult. 

On the surface, there’s a few pages documenting the general differences in applications & services available but scratching the surface reveals a lot more technical differences in those same services that you might not know about.

MARKETING COMPARISONS
These sites are a good starting point as they provide overall/all-up views on the available services & functional differences between each suite.

For example, these sites will tell you which M365 license suite has Exchange Online, which has the Office ProPlus apps, which have Azure Information Protection, etc.

• Comparison between Microsoft 365 Firstline Worker license suites F1/F3:
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/firstline
• Microsoft 365 F1:
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/f1
• Microsoft 365 F3:
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/f3
• Comparison between Microsoft 365 Enterprise license suites E3/E5 & F3
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compare-microsoft-365-enterprise-plans

SERVICE DESCRIPTION COMPARISONS
To understand feature level differences in each service or product, you need to go into the Service Descriptions for each suite/service.

For example, these sites will tell you “the differences in mailbox size” between suites, whether or not “mailbox litigation hold” or “data loss prevention” is available for a specific M365 license suite, etc.

• Microsoft 365 Service Description
  (with F3, E3, E5 comparisons)
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/office-365-platform-service-description/office-365-platform-service-description
• Exchange Online Service Description (with F3, E3, E5 comparisons)
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-service-description
• OneDrive for Business Service Description (F1, F3, E3, E5)
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/onedrive-for-business-service-description
• SharePoint Online Limits (F1, F3, E3, E5)
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/sharepoint-online-service-description/sharepoint-online-limits

Anyone that establishes a Contacts database in Teams/SharePoint Online can synchronize that database to their personal installation of Outlook.

Note: This synchronization does NOT mix the online database’s contacts with your personal contacts.  It establishes a new database in Outlook for you which is selectable to view & edit from the Contacts section of Outlook.

The following is for ANY person with access to the Contact database that wants to synchronize the contacts locally to Outlook:

To synchronize the database’s contacts with Outlook:

1. Open Outlook on your desktop. 
   This will make the next step smoother as
2. Go back to your browser and jump to the Contacts web view for your Contact database. (If you’re using Teams, see the first 3 steps of the blog post, “Part 1: Creating a Contacts Database”)
   
3. Click the “Return to classic SharePoint” link at the bottom of the page.  The view should change with 3 menu items appearing near the top of the screen: “BROWSE, ITEMS, LIST”
   (It is possible that this might not work the first time – so you may need to click it AGAIN, a second time.)
   




4. Click “LIST”.  This should reveal a “ribbon” of options.
5. Click “Connect to Outlook”
   This will immediately open a dialog box in Outlook requesting permission to establish a SharePint Contacts list sync.
   
6. Click the “Yes” button. Outlook will immediately establish a new Contacts database locally and sync it with the SharePoint Contacts database.
   The new Contacts database should appear on the left.
   (Note: In some rare cases, the new Contacts database will not appear in the Contacts database list despite having been created & synced. Simply restart Outlook to have it appear.)

That’s it.  At this point, you can:

1. Copy Contacts from your personal contacts database to the new Contacts database established within Outlook.
2. Any changes – additions, edits, deletions – you make to the newly created/synchronized Contacts database will be synced to the online database as well for others to see – and sync.

Caution: Any changes that OTHER people make to the synced contacts will also be synced back & reflected in the online database so be sure you trust those people you provide access to.

Everyone’s got contacts.  Very few people share them.

• Interested in hosting a list of Contacts in Teams/SharePoint Online so everyone can see them?
• Wish anyone could sync those Contacts to a separate contacts database in their installations of Outlook?
• Now imagine editing those Contacts within Outlook & having those changes synced back to the online database for everyone else to receive?

Creating shared contacts databases appears to be a lost art but can be very useful when sharing contacts with everyone in a group.

CREATING A CONTACTS DATABASE IN MICROSOFT TEAMS/SHAREPOINT ONLINE
Here’s some basic steps to creating an initial Contacts database.  The first few steps are only for Microsoft Teams users to find the SharePoint Online site associated with their Microsoft Teams channel.  The remaining steps are for SharePoint Online.

For Microsoft Teams only:

1. Open Microsoft Teams & go to the Teams Channel in which you wish to create the Contacts database.
   At the top of the screen you should see a menu with “Posts, Files, Wiki”, etc.
2. Click the FILES tab at the top of the screen.  A submenu should appear showing “New, Upload, Sync", etc.
3. Click “Open in SharePoint” in the Submenu that appears. If you don’t see this, click on the “…” to reveal “Open in SharePoint” and select it.
   This should open a browser to reveal the SharePoint Online site associated with the Microsoft Team you’ve selected.

For SharePoint Online:

1. Go to the SharePoint Online site you wish to build the Contacts database in.

For both Teams/SharePoint Online –
Creating the Contacts Database:

1. Click Home.  This step is important!  Clicking Home will reveal a special “+New” button on the screen that will allow you to create a new “App”.
2. Click “+New” & select “App”.
   (Note: You must have clicked “Home” prior for “App” to be displayed as a selection.)
3. Click the “Find an app” field & type “Contacts” & hit ENTER.
   This will search the possible apps for a Contacts database.
4. Select “Contacts”
1. Complete the “Adding Contacts” dialog box by filling in the “Name” field and click the “Create” button.
   Once completed, you will see a list of Site Contents for your SharePoint Online site. This should include an item of type “Contacts”
2. Click on the Contacts database you just created in the list. You’ll be taken to a web view of the contacts in the database.
   (There’ of course won’t be anything in the database list yet.  If you want to create a sample contact entry, click on “+New” and create a new sample contact)

Changing the List View of the Contacts list [OPTIONAL]
This is purely cosmetic however the default web view for each Contacts entry is not very useful and displays the following columns for all contacts at first:

• Attachments
• Title (Mr./Mrs./Ms.)
• First Name
• Company
• Business Phone
• Home Phone
• Email Address

It doesn’t display last name, job title, mobile phone, etc.  To change this, do the following from the Web View of your Contacts database:

1. Click “All Contacts” drop down list in the upper right hand corner.  You’ll be given a list of options.
2. Click “Edit current view”.  You’ll be given a list of Columns to display in the view.
3. Uncheck the columns/contact fields you don’t want to display and check those you do. Personally, I uncheck everything and then select:
1. Full Name
2. Job Title
3. Company
4. Email Address
5. Business Phone
6. Mobile Phone
7. City
4. Reorder the list of Columns by enumerating them in the “Position from the Left” column.
5. Click OK to save this view.

COMING UP NEXT…
In the next blog entry, I’ll explain how to set up synchronization of the empty Contacts database with your local installation of Outlook so you can start copying Contacts into it.

Enterprises & government agencies should start moving to Microsoft Edge (Chromium) “with IE Mode” & away from Internet Explorer 11 & Microsoft Edge (Legacy).

Why?

• Microsoft Teams web app will no longer support IE 11, beginning November 30, 2020
• All Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11, beginning August 17, 2021.

To be clear:

• IE 11 will still work & be supported by Microsoft support as part of Windows.
• IE 11 will no longer be tested or assured to function with Microsoft 365 services such as:
• Microsoft Teams web client
• Microsoft Outlook web client
• Any of the Microsoft 365 services such as SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Yammer Enterprise, etc.

The Trident HTML engine is basically no longer supported.  This means that Edge Chromium “IE mode” will ALSO not be a supported means of accessing Microsoft 365 services either:

Note: Using Internet Explorer mode in the new Microsoft Edge will not help to extend IE 11 access to Microsoft 365 apps and services beyond the dates listed above. Microsoft 365 apps and services will stop supporting IE 11 on the dates listed.

For more details, including information on how to get help to transitioning to the new Edge Chromium, read the announcement here:

• BLOG: Microsoft 365 apps say farewell to Internet Explorer 11 and Windows 10 sunsets Microsoft Edge Legacy
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/microsoft-365-apps-say-farewell-to-internet-explorer-11-and/ba-p/1591666

Learn how Microsoft Threat Protection can help you secure attack vectors across users, endpoints, cloud apps, and data.

Microsoft Threat Protection (MTP) is an integrated experience with AI and automation built in that’s also built on our best-in-class Microsoft 365 threat protection services and pools their collective knowledge and capabilities to accrue to something even better. It leverages and integrates these services’ industry-leading prevention, detection, investigation, and response techniques to help secure attack vectors across users, endpoints, cloud apps, and data. Empower defenders to move from reacting to employing their unique expertise to keep bad actors out.

View the overview here:

• VIDEO: Microsoft Threat Protection Overview
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQezlYKiDxQ
• SITE: Microsoft Threat Protection
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/threat-protection/integrated-threat-protection

A question I’ve gotten numerous times – enough that I’ve noticed – from customers is, “How much does SCCM Cloud Management Gateway cost in Azure consumption?”

If I’m being honest, I realize that this is a necessary question to be answered but it sort of ruffled my feathers because these things are so difficult to estimate given the variables in play:  Number of clients, need for high availability, size of packages to distribute, bandwidth costs, availability of reserved instances, etc.

But at the end of the day, the cost is never a lot.  Usually something like $200-$500/mo in Azure charge for a 10,000+ client configuration.

Well, Configuration Management expert, Johan Arwidmark answered the question for us by exposing all the costs for each variable allowing people to figure out what their estimated costs would be for an implementation in their environment:

A few days ago I asked my fellow tweeps for some real-world numbers of the cost of using the pretty amazing CMG feature for ConfigMgr. The CMG Platform as a Service (PaaS) is using a A2 V2 instance which will determine the minimum cost, but, obviously, the price will vary depending on usage, downloads, and storage costs etc.

Typically the CMG costs around $100 per month per instance, no matter if you’re managing 50 devices or 5000 you will pay that fee. Data is then so cheap ($0.087 at its most expensive) that it doesn’t really add much to the total cost for smaller environments.

Note: CMG does support BranchCache, and if you have remote branch offices where clients are using a CMG, you can reduce the download cost quite a bit by leveraging peer to peer.

TL;DR: Using a CMG is in general not very expensive at all.

The Numbers
Below is what I got so far, but if you can, please share your numbers in the comments below, and I’ll update the post.

…

Read more about his analysis here:

• BLOG: Real-world costs for using a Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) with ConfigMgr
  https://deploymentresearch.com/real-world-costs-for-using-a-cloud-management-gateway-cmg-with-configmgr/

Whether you’re a developer or an administrator, you’ll find everything you need to know about deploying and managing Linux workloads on Azure in this e-book.

This complimentary e-book provides comprehensive technical guidance on how to:

• Keep using the same Linux tools and commands that you’re used to on Azure.
• Use Ansible to manage your Linux instances in Azure cloud environments.
• Automate Linux deployments with Azure Resource Manager and PowerShell.
• Enhance your Linux security and use Azure identity management services.
• Manage containers in Azure environments.

Azure supports most common Linux distributions, including Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, and CoreOS—and more supported distributions are on the way.

Download it here:

• DOWNLOAD: Free eBook, “Hands-on: Linux Administration on Azure” (.PDF, 509 pgs)     
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/hands-on-linux-administration-on-azure/

We created a comic book that explains what Azure Static Web Apps are and how to use them.

A developer has been tasked by his professor to update the website for an upcoming seminar, migrating to the cloud and automating deployment (Probably a similar situation that most of us can relate to!)

He struggles but fortunately for him, Sophia, his friend, appears and explains to him how he can publish his site without having to write code, or connect with tokens, or write a yaml. He can now do it with any framework – from Angular, React and Vue.js.

Read more about how he easily solves his problem with Azure Static Web apps.

Grab the entire comic book here:

• DOWNLOAD: “Azure Static Web Apps” Comic Book
  https://github.com/msdevjp/AzureStaticWebApps-ComicBook/blob/master/AzureStaticWebApps_Fullver.pdf

These Comic Book is illustrations by Ai Minatogawa, Project owner @suzukin, Kudos so many Microsoft Japan members.

The News Bar brings you the latest news from the Microsoft News network of over 4500 of the world’s most respected journalism brands. In addition, you can configure it to provide you with up to date information throughout the day on your favorite stocks.

Microsoft’s Windows News Bar works just like the Windows Taskbar. It’s there when you need it, where you need it and how you need it.

Customize its appearance in settings to find the experience that’s just right for you. It can be placed on the sides of your display or at the top or bottom.  If you want to focus, don’t worry, you can minimize the News Bar at any time and then bring it back when you’re ready for it again.

The News Bar is in Beta now, try it out and let us know how we can make it better!

Download it for free from the Microsoft Store: (Requires Windows 10 version 17134.0 or higher)

• BETA: Microsoft News Bar
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/news-bar-beta/9p7glmhlw7x6