Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Today we announced Extended Security Updates enabled by Azure Arc, for Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 & SQL Server 2012 (years 2 and 3) – as a pay-as-you-go subscription!

This is enabled in the Azure Portal and is charged as a Pay As You Go service – perfect for securing older workloads outside of Azure that you’re planning to upgrade, migrate or decommission.

• Announcement blog: ”New options for Windows Server 2012/R2 end of support from Azure”
  https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2023/07/18/new-options-for-windows-server-2012-r2-end-of-support-from-azure/?WT.mc_id=modinfra-0000-socuff

• Deployment and screenshots: “New options for Extended Security Updates enabled by Azure Arc”
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-arc-blog/new-options-for-extended-security-updates-enabled-by-azure-arc/ba-p/3876737?WT.mc_id=modinfra-0000-socuff

Check your Azure portal for pricing.

Employees are looking to use AI tools to help them unlock creativity and productivity at work—70% say they would delegate as much work as possible to AI according to our Work Trend Index¹. But using AI tools that aren’t built for the enterprise inadvertently puts sensitive business data at risk. As organizations adopt AI, they want to be confident their data is protected.

Bing Chat Enterprise gives your organization AI-powered chat for work with commercial data protection. With Bing Chat Enterprise, user and business data are protected and will not leak outside the organization. Chat data is not saved, and no one at Microsoft can view customer data. Additionally, data is not used to train the models. 

Just like Bing Chat, Bing Chat Enterprise is grounded in web data and provides complete, verifiable answers with citations, along with visual answers that include graphs, charts, and images, and is designed in line with our AI principles².

Bing Chat Enterprise is now rolling out in preview at no additional cost as part of Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium subscriptions.

Get started today:

1. Review the Bing Chat Enterprise documentation on Microsoft Learn for guidance on how to turn on Bing Chat Enterprise for your organization.
2. Once Bing Chat Enterprise is turned on, users in your organization will be able to access it from Bing.com/chat , the sidebar in Microsoft Edge, and soon from Windows Copilot, just by signing in with their work accounts.

Reference links:

1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/will-ai-fix-work 
2. https://www.microsoft.com/ai/our-approach?activetab=pivot1:primaryr5

Are you an IT Professional?Do you automate things in PowerShell?

Wouldn’t it be cool to have an AI agent watch your comments and provide you with PowerShell code that fulfills the objective of what you’ve written?  Kinda like Autocomplete for PowerShell?

Enter GitHub Copilot for PowerShell.

• VIDEO: GitHub Copilot for PowerShell
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwtRzAFiXEM

Install & start your free trial of GitHub Copilot: https://aka.ms/get-copilot

More info:
https://github.com/features/copilot

Quick startup guide: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/quickstart

I’ve posted the following .PDF files because I can’t find them anywhere and they’re super-useful to folks trying to make heads or tails of what’s in the different suites that Microsoft customers can purchase:

• Enterprise
  • • Microsoft 365 E3, E5, E5 Security & E5 Compliance
    • Office 365 E1, E3, E5
    • EMS E3, E5
    • Windows 11 Pro, E3, E5
    • Microsoft 365 F1, F3, F5 Security, F5 Compliance, F5 Sec+Comp
• Government
  • • Microsoft 365 G3, G5, G5 Security, G5 Compliance
    • Office 365 G1, G3, G5 suites & F3
    • EMS G3, G5
    • Windows 11 G5
    • Microsoft 365 F1, F3, F5 Security, F5 Compliance, F5 Sec+Comp

You can download the documents below:

• “Transform your Enterprise with Microsoft subscriptions”
  Modern Work Plan Comparison – Enterprise
  https://aka.ms/M365EnterprisePlans 
• “Transform your organization with Microsoft subscriptions for GCC”
  Modern Work Plan Comparison – GCC
  https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ao0Dfn8MQdoAs9gfGeYZfYHb15TkGA?e=4VMM78

There is also a documented called “Licensing Guide Microsoft 365 Enterprise” that is available directly off Microsoft.com that may be useful for folks trying to understand what contracting vehicles are necessary to get this licensed:

• Licensing Guide for Microsoft 365 Enterprise (.PDF)
  https://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/Licensing_guide_Microsoft_365_Enterprise.pdf

Imagine an Azure Storage emulator you can install & run locally for free to test against.

That’s Azurite.

The Azurite open-source emulator provides a free local environment for testing your Azure Blob, Queue Storage, and Table Storage applications. When you’re satisfied with how your application is working locally, switch to using an Azure Storage account in the cloud. The emulator provides cross-platform support on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Find the emulator download and instructions here:

• Use Azurite emulator for local Azure Storage development
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-use-azurite?tabs=npm

It’s of course directly accessible using the Azure Storage Explorer.  Download the Storage Explorer here:

• Get started with Storage Explorer
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vs-azure-tools-storage-manage-with-storage-explorer?tabs=windows

[Microsoft 365 and Azure AD admins! This one is for you in case you missed the Message Center announcement.]

In today’s landscape, organizations and users utilize various authentication methods with varying levels of security. Unfortunately, users often select less secure MFA methods, even when more secure options are available. This may be due to convenience, lack of awareness, or technical limitations.

To encourage the use of the strongest available method, we are introducing system-preferred authentication for MFA. This system prompts users to sign in with the most secure method they’ve registered and the one that’s enabled by admin policy. This transition from choosing a default method to always using the most secure method will promote better security practices. If users can’t use the prompted method, they can choose an alternative MFA method.

We will begin rolling out in early July (previously late June) and expect to complete by early August (previously late July).

We launched this with Microsoft-managed set to disabled. As mentioned above, we will be setting "Microsoft-managed" to enabled from the first week of July 2023. While we highly encourage you to adopt this feature for your entire tenant, should you need to you can either scope the feature for a segment of your user population or disable it if necessary. The feature will ultimately be set to Microsoft-managed (enabled) for all tenants, with no option to disable it.

Deploying this feature with the rollout controls is highly encouraged to enhance security and ensure users always use the most secure authentication method first. The feature is now available from your tenant.

• Message Center (MC565271) for System-preferred MFA: https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?ref=MessageCenter/:/messages/MC565271
• General Availability Announcement for System-preferred MFA:
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-entra-azure-ad-blog/ga-system-preferred-multifactor-authentication/ba-p/3773138
• Docs (System-preferred MFA):
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/concept-system-preferred-multifactor-authentication

Up until now in Excel Desktop for Microsoft 365 Apps, you could create and modify automations using JavaScript and TypeScript using the Office Scripts Code Editor.

With the Action Recorder, you can automate repetitive worksheet tasks without needing any programming experience.

1. Open any existing workbook.
2. Select Automate >Record Actions (Preview).
3. Record actions in your workbook.
4. When you’re done recording, click the Stop recording button in the Record Actions (Preview) task pane to save the recorded actions into a script that you can run at any time on any workbook.

Not all actions are recordable at this time—we are continuing to add support to increase the number of recordable actions. We encourage you to continue trying to record actions useful to your workflow as that will help us prioritize the order in which we add support.

(Note: This feature requires Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or A3/A5)

Read more about this new feature in Excel here:

• Record worksheet actions using Office Scripts in Excel
  https://insider.microsoft365.com/en-us/blog/record-worksheet-actions-using-office-scripts-in-excel

As your digital footprint continues to expand with more identities, resources, apps, and endpoints to secure, identity and access must evolve.

We hope you will join us on July 11, 2023, as we introduce the next stage of our vision at Reimagine secure access with Microsoft Entra. Register for this digital event to hear from Microsoft Security leaders about the latest innovations and current best practices in identity and access. You’ll hear announcements about new products and capabilities, see demonstrations, and get insights about the future of identity and access.

Join this digital event to explore ways to:

• Provide secure access for any identity to any application or resource across your on-premises and multicloud environment.
• Keep up with a rapidly expanding and evolving cyberthreat landscape by optimizing your tech stack.
• Reduce your attack surface while improving experiences for all users—no matter where they are.

Have questions for experts? Ask them during the live Q&A chat.

• DATE/TIME:
  Tues, July 11, 2023, 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM PT

• EVENT PAGE:
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/06/07/join-our-digital-event-to-learn-whats-new-in-microsoft-entra/

Wouldn’t it be great to have reports that showed what the network connectivity performance was between your organization & Microsoft’s cloud?

Do you know what kind of speed & latency to M365 is being delivered on the circuit your network provider is providing you?

We are thrilled to announce the availability of a Public Preview for network provider performance and availability reporting in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

With these new reports, admins can see their users’ network performance and availability based on the detected network provider. Network performance and availability relates to the network connectivity between Microsoft 365 users and Microsoft’s network. These reports may also enable you to identify network settings that adversely affect your users’ experience with Microsoft 365.

The new reports (illustrated below) show tenant-wide information but if you added office network locations, then we provide reports based on office location, as well. The reports also separate network providers for corporate offices from those used by remote workers. They also separate network providers by ISPs and overlay providers (for example, VPN providers).

…

To apply to use the public preview solution, visit the site below.  Space is limited!

• Public Preview for Network Provider Performance and Availability Reporting
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/public-preview-for-network-provider-performance-and-availability/ba-p/3827239

<blatantly stolen from Merill Fernando>

Here’s a quick Microsoft Graph productivity tip. Need to figure out the Graph attribute for a setting in the admin portal?

1. Use the Graph X-Ray chrome extension (and yes, it works in Microsoft Edge), make the change in the UI and view the Graph API call that saves the change.
   https://graphxray.merill.net/
   
   
2. Unfortunately, not all admin portals use Microsoft Graph. In these instances, you can use a diff tool like Partial Diff to compare the json file to quickly figure out what changed.
   https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ryu1kn.partial-diff