Kurt Shintaku's Blog

[ORIGINAL – July 11, 2022]
Ever wanted an animated background in your video during a Microsoft Teams conference call?  Rogier Dijkman figured out how to do it – here’s a quick synopsis:

1. Take any animated GIF file, such as ANIMATED.GIF & rename it to ANIMATED.PNG. (You can convert any video file to animated GIFs at http://makeagif.com.)
2. Make a copy of ANIMATED.PNG & call it ANIMATED_thumb.PNG. (Add the text “_thumb” to the end of the file name in lowercase or this won’t work)
3. Copy BOTH files to:
   %AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads
4. Start a Teams meeting & turn on your camera. Click the Ellipsis (…) & select “Apply Background Effects”.
5. Select the Animated Background to enable it.

I’ve created a collection of 10 animated backgrounds for Microsoft Teams to get you started:

• Kurt’s Collection of Animated Backgrounds for Microsoft Teams (262MB)
  http://aka.ms/ksanimated

[UPDATE 4/28/23]
This has become so popular that I thought I’d release another “Version 2.0” set of Animated Backgrounds for Microsoft Teams.  For those of you who know me, yes, this contains that “moving clouds” background that you see behind me all the time.

• Kurt’s 2nd Collection of Animated Backgrounds for Microsoft Teams (114MB)
  https://aka.ms/ksanimated2

I’ve gotten the question a number of times in the past couple months so I thought I’d nip it in the bud here:

Q1: What licenses provide me with the ability to use Power Automate?

Q2: What are the limitations placed on Power Automate for each licensing scenario?

Here’s a chart that lays out the licenses that allow the user to access Power Automate and the limitations placed on each licensed scenario.

For more information on Power Automate licensing, visit the following links:

• Overview of Power Automate licensing
• Types of Power Automate licenses
• Frequently asked questions about Power Automate licensing

Wanna know how Microsoft’s cybersecurity shocktroopers address threats on our customer’s networks when they are concerned about a breach, Ransomware or some other security incident?

That’s the DART. DART provides onsite reactive incident response and remote proactive investigations.

Human-operated ransomware is not a malicious software problem—it’s a human criminal problem. The solutions used to address commodity problems aren’t enough to prevent a threat that more closely resembles a nation-state threat actor who:

• Disables or uninstalls your antivirus software before encrypting files
• Disables security services and logging to avoid detection
• Locates and corrupts or deletes backups before sending a ransom demand

These actions are commonly done with legitimate programs that you might already have in your environment for administrative purposes. In criminal hands, these tools are used maliciously to carry out attacks.

Responding to the increasing threat of ransomware requires a combination of modern enterprise configuration, up-to-date security products, and the vigilance of trained security staff to detect and respond to the threats before data is lost.

The Microsoft Detection and Response Team (DART) responds to security compromises to help customers become cyber-resilient. DART provides onsite reactive incident response and remote proactive investigations. DART leverages Microsoft’s strategic partnerships with security organizations around the world and internal Microsoft product groups to provide the most complete and thorough investigation possible.

This article describes how DART handles ransomware attacks for Microsoft customers so that you can consider applying elements of their approach and best practices for your own security operations playbook.

See these sections for the details:

• How DART uses Microsoft security services
• The DART approach to conducting ransomware incident investigations
• DART recommendations and best practices

…

Read more here:

• Microsoft DART ransomware approach and best practices
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security/compass/incident-response-playbook-dart-ransomware-approach

This is an excellent report from Microsoft‘s Brad Smith on the evolving theater and character of global conflict, and lessons learned defending against #cyber warfare.

"When countries send code into battle, their weapons move at the speed of light. The internet’s global pathways mean that cyber activities erase much of the longstanding protection provided by borders, walls, and oceans. And the internet itself, unlike land, sea, and the air, is a human creation that relies on a combination of public and private-sector ownership, operation, and protection."

This report provides analysis on the nation-scale use of cyber-attacks, network penetration and espionage, and cyber influence operations.

The report also offers a comprehensive strategy on how to detect, defend, disrupt, and deter foreign cyber influence operations through government and private sector #collaboration.

• DOWNLOAD: eBook, “Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War”
  https://aka.ms/June22SpecialReport
• BLOG POST: Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War
  https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/06/22/defending-ukraine-early-lessons-from-the-cyber-war/

The often question arises, “How can we change the Azure AD that we use for a given Azure subscription?”

Organizations might have several Azure subscriptions. Each subscription is associated with a particular Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) directory. To make management easier, you might want to transfer a subscription to a different Azure AD directory. When you transfer a subscription to a different Azure AD directory, some resources are not transferred to the target directory. For example, all role assignments and custom roles in Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) are permanently deleted from the source directory and are not transferred to the target directory.

This article describes the basic steps you can follow to transfer a subscription to a different Azure AD directory and re-create some of the resources after the transfer.

If you want to instead block the transfer of subscriptions to different directories in your organization, you can configure a subscription policy. For more information, see Manage Azure subscription policies.

…

For more details, read the following:

• INFO: Transfer an Azure subscription to a different Azure AD directory
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/role-based-access-control/transfer-subscription

There’s an interesting post that was written about the two sides of a data architect discussion: Data Lakehouse vs Snowflake as a data platform.

…

So how do we make sense of these competing patterns? Why is there such a big disparity between two approaches, and is there really such a major decision needed between open (spark/delta) v proprietary code (snowflake/relational) bases and repositories ? I believe that if you drill into the headline propositions, the reality is that any architecture isn’t an “either/or” but a “better together” and that a pragmatic approach should be taken.

…

• The Data Lakehouse, the Data Warehouse and a Modern Data platform architecture
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-synapse-analytics-blog/the-data-lakehouse-the-data-warehouse-and-a-modern-data-platform/ba-p/2792337

Most Azure subscribers set budget alerts on their cloud spend… but did you know you can now set an anomaly alert to notify you of unusual cost spikes?

The article helps you identify anomalies and unexpected changes in your cloud costs using Cost Management and Billing. You’ll start with anomaly detection for subscriptions in cost analysis to identify any atypical usage patterns based on your cost and usage trends. You’ll then learn how to drill into cost information to find and investigate cost spikes and dips.

You can also create an anomaly alert to automatically get notified when an anomaly is detected.

In general, there are three types of changes that you might want to investigate:

• New costs—For example, a resource that was started or added such as a virtual machine. New costs often appear as a cost starting from zero.
• Removed costs—For example, a resource that was stopped or deleted. Removed costs often appear as costs ending in zero.
• Changed costs (increased or decreased)—For example, a resource was changed in some way that caused a cost increase or decrease. Some changes, like resizing a virtual machine, might be surfaced as a new meter that replaces a removed meter, both under the same resource.

Read more here:

• Identify anomalies and unexpected changes in cost – Microsoft Cost Management
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/understand/analyze-unexpected-charges?WT.mc_id=modinfra-0000-socuff

Discover how the District Attorney’s office for the largest US county digitized its paper-based processes and moved its 26-year-old system to a modern platform:

Michael Fermin had attended a Microsoft Convergence conference and listened intently as Satya Nadella spoke about how every business should be looking at how it can transform through data. He took this seriously. He saw how his organization changed hands (which is the nature of government), but he knew the office needed to find a way for case data and their associated learnings, to live on into perpetuity. He knew there was an opportunity to optimize workflows and make people’s jobs easier through better access to information. His goal was to pursue a digital transformation strategy that would digitize paper-based processes and move the office to a modern software platform that could evolve with their changing needs.

…

View the video here:

• VIDEO: Digitize standard processes to increase employee efficiency
  https://www.microsoft.com/videoplayer/embed/RE50Dj6

View the write up here:

• BLOG POST: Discover how the District Attorney’s office for the largest US county digitized its paper-based processes and moved its 26-year-old system to a modern platform:
  https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/industry-blog/government/2022/06/29/digitizing-case-management-to-increase-employee-efficiency/

Want emails from your boss in your Outlook inbox to stand out in red & bold?

Want emails from VIP customer contacts in your inbox to use a slightly BIGGER font?

Outlook “Conditional Formatting” can accomplish this easily and make important emails “pop” in your inbox with very little effort on your part.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Open Outlook (Win32)
2. Click the “View” menu item.  The View bar will appear.
3. Click the “View Settings” button in Current View. The “Advanced View Settings:” dialog box will appear.
4. Click “Conditional Formatting…” button. The “Conditional Formatting” dialog box will appear. 
5. Click on the “Add” button.  A new conditional formatting “rule” will appear called “Untitled”.
6. Select “Untitled” in the “Rules for this view:” list box and change the name in the “Name:” field.

   Then click the “Condition…” button to set up what emails you want to highlight. The “Filter” dialog box will appear.

7. Click “From…” to select what person or persons you wish to highlight.  Once selected, click “OK” to go back to the “Conditional Formatting” dialog box.
8. Click the “Font” button tp configure how you wish the line item to appear.  You may change the font, font style (bold, italics, etc.) size (smaller, normal, big, bigger), color (red, blue, etc), & effects (underline, strikeout).
9. Click OK 3 times to return to the Inbox view.

The highlighting from your conditional formatting should take effect immediately.  In my case, I created a Conditional Formatting rule that looked for all of my customer’s CIOs and made them:

• Red
• 14pt font
• Bold

A typical highlighted email in my inbox looks like this:

Do you have questions about Microsoft’s Azure cloud & how it addresses Security, Privacy, Compliance, Reliability, Resiliency & Intellectual Property?

Microsoft has a site that goes over how Azure addresses all of these areas, especially:

• Azure security
• Azure compliance
• Azure data privacy and protection
• Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph

Download the book & visit the site here:

• SITE: Trust your cloud
  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/trusted-cloud/
• DOWNLOAD: eBook, “Trusted Cloud:Microsoft Azure Security, Privacy, Compliance, Reliability, Resiliency & IP”
  https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=392408&clcid=0x409