Kurt Shintaku's Blog

A preview release (0.46.0) of the Microsoft PowerToys has been released that includes a tool called “Video Conference Mute”:

Quickly mute your microphone (audio) and turn off your camera (video) with a single keystroke while on a conference call, regardless of what application has focus on your computer.

The PowerToys download is free for Windows 10 users.  Get it below by going to the link and downloading the PowerToysSetup-0.46.0-x64.exe from the GitHub page below:

• Microsoft PowerToys Experimental v0.46.0
  https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/

Documentation is available below:

• DOCS: PowerToys Video Conference Mute utility for Windows 10
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/powertoys/video-conference-mute

Endpoint DLP is currently available in Public Preview to customers’ tenants with Microsoft 365 G5, Microsoft 365 G5 Compliance, and Microsoft 365 G5 Information Protection and Governance.

Protecting sensitive data from risky or inappropriate copying, sharing, transfer, or use is a top priority for government organizations. Remote delivery of public services and data sharing across devices have created renewed emphasis on providing strong and coordinated protection on the endpoints government employees use every day.

To help government organizations accelerate their deployment of a comprehensive information protection strategy, we are announcing the public preview of Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to GCC, GCC High and DoD customers.

With Endpoint DLP, Microsoft 365 GCC, GCC High and DoD customers only need to create DLP policies once in the Microsoft 365 compliance center. They can then apply the policies to Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and now – to endpoints as well. All that is required is for the endpoint to be onboarded in their specific cloud environment using their established device management onboarding process.

…

For exhaustive details on the new availability of this service within Microsoft 365 E5, check out the following page:

• BLOG: Announcing Microsoft 365 Endpoint Data Loss Prevention public preview to US government customers
  https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/announcing-microsoft-365-endpoint-data-loss-prevention-public/ba-p/2757003

Learn how Microsoft To Do can help you get organized and manage your tasks better. Join us for a live event and Q&A with the Microsoft To Do Product team on September 21, 2021.

AMA with the Microsoft To Do Product Team (VIRT067EXT)
Meet the To Do product team and get your questions answered about productivity, upcoming features and tips.

• Date/Time:
  When: September 21, 2021 9:00 AM (America/Los_Angeles)
  Duration: 60 minutes
• Registration:
  https://learning.eventbuilder.com/event/50497?ocid=usoc_LINKEDIN_M365_spl100002494820765

OpenSilver is an open source implementation of Silverlight that doesn’t require plug-ins.  It’s designed to help folks transition past the soon-to-be unavailable Silverlight – for folks that still have intranet solutions written that haven’t been recoded.

With the browser industry shifting away from the plugins model, Microsoft Silverlight will soon reach the end of support, and the installer will no longer be available for download after October 12. Thousands of companies that relied on it for their Intranet applications are forced to rewrite them using other technologies, spending months or even years of man-hours, allocating critical resources that could be leveraged elsewhere, and risking ending up with applications that might have fewer features than the original ones.

OpenSilver is an open-source implementation of Silverlight that doesn’t require plugins. The technology has been in Technical Preview since March 2020 and is today being released in Beta. It provides a path forward for .NET developers and IT departments that still have legacy Silverlight applications. We envision two objectives for OpenSilver :

• To provide an alternative to rewriting from scratch with another technology, and allow for the migration of legacy Silverlight applications in a short period of time while retaining all the features of the original applications.
• To create a tool to build rich web applications from scratch using C# and XAML, with the efficiency and productivity of the Silverlight SDK.

…

Here is the statement about Silverlight’s end of support from Microsoft:

• Silverlight End of Support
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/silverlight-end-of-support-0a3be3c7-bead-e203-2dfd-74f0a64f1788

Read more about the project here:

• Open Silver – Beta
  https://opensilver.net/announcements/introducing-opensilver.aspx

The first 10 videos for the Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architecture (MCRA) are up on YouTube (more being added as we speak).

The first video is an introduction to the MCRA:

Introduction and overview of Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architectures (MCRA) with Mark Simos and Richard Diver. This video covers all the various different diagrams and sections in the MCRA, from the main capabilities diagram to the highly popular security operations (SecOps/SOC) and Zero Trust diagrams and the sections on key integration points and zero trust overall. We also cover newer diagrams including the multi-cloud section (covering AWS, GCP, and on-premises datacenters) and the operational technology (OT) diagram covering supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and industrial control systems (ICS).

See the entire series here:

• VIDEO: Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architecture – SERIES
  https://aka.ms/mcra-videos

Is Compliance your primary focus in the cloud?

If you want to follow all compliance-related updates in Azure, try Azure Compliance Heat Map.

• Azure Compliance Heat Map http://aka.ms/azcmplupd

For those customers who need more time to upgrade and modernize their Windows Server and SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 on Azure, we will now provide one additional year of free extended security updates only on Azure.

With this, customers will have until:

• January 14, 2024 for Windows Server 2008/ 2008 R2
• July 12, 2023 for SQL Server 2008/ 2008 R2

…to upgrade to a supported release.

Again – this is only available for Windows Server 2008/R2 and SQL Server 2008/R2 instance running in Azure and is available at no additional cost.  This is not available for instances running on-premises.

For reference, this is documented on this page under “Additional year of extended security updates, only on Azure, for Windows Server and SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2” and “General Questions for 2008/2008 R2 Extended Security Updates”.

• Extended Security Updates for Windows Server & SQL Server
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/extended-security-updates

Welcome to the Power Apps community call. These calls are the 3rd Wednesday of each month where we will share the latest news about Power Apps, demonstrate tips and tools to help you build awesome Power Apps. In these calls you will meet the Power Apps product team and community experts to get your questions answered.

For September we have two of the Power Platform MVPs: Reza Dorrani and May Alhajri covering two of the hottest Power Platform topics: Power Apps design and Power Platform integration.

This month’s agenda:

• Introductions Todd Baginski
• Value Proposition Design: Canvas by May Alhajri
• Power BI Tiles & Reports in Power Apps | Inventory Management Solution by Reza Dorrani
• PNP Updates by April Dunnam
• Next call details – 1 minute (Todd)
• Q&A – Till end of call (Todd and Chuck)

Details below.

• When: September 15th 8:00AM PST
• Where: https://aka.ms/powerappscall-join

(Source: Power Apps community call: Power Platform Integration and Value Proposition Design
https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/september-power-apps-community-call-power-platform-integration-and-value-proposition-design/)

IDC has released their MarketScape report for “Worldwide Advanced Authentication for Identity Security 2021 Vendor Assessment”.

Azure Active Directory, Azure AD MFA, Azure AD Conditional Access, and other Premium features have Microsoft positioned as a leader.

Microsoft is positioned in the Leaders category in the 2021 IDC MarketScape for advanced authentication for identity security vendor assessment.

The capabilities are included within the premium licenses for Azure Active Directory and are increasingly being adopted by larger organizations to meet their security and compliance needs. Hardly a compromise, Microsoft MFA is a strong offering and is getting stronger by the year; the company understands the importance of this security control point and is now sharing details about its efforts to improve offerings and drive the industry toward better user experiences. Previously, many licenses were bundled with O365, but Azure AD premium capabilities offer additional incentives that have propelled the company’s customer base in excess of 300,000 subscribers.

…

Download & read the report excerpt here:

• DOWNLOAD: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Advanced Authentication for Identity Security 2021 Vendor Assessment
  https://idcdocserv.com/US46178720e_Microsoft

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is massive and supports a lot of OSs – not just Windows.

Implementation and features vary, and Ru Campbell couldn’t find a document that easily compared them all, so he produced this .PDF.

• The Big Comparison of Defender for Endpoint Features by Operating System
  https://campbell.scot/the-big-comparison-of-defender-for-endpoint-features-by-operating-system/