Need to Know podcast–Episode 94

I’m joined by a returning guest, Microsoft MVP Troy Hunt to discuss the Ashley Madison hack and the impact that it had on Troy’s site Have I been Pwned? You’ll not only get a fascinating look inside a high profile hack but you’ll also learn a lot about Azure and how Troy utilises it effectively to handle the scale required for just such an event.

As always, a big thank you to Marc Kean for producing this episode and doing the intro and outros.

You can listen to this episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-94-troy-hunt/

or subscribe to this and all episodes in iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send me any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show. I’m also on the hunt for some co-presenters so if you are interested on being a regular part of the show please contact me.

Resources

Troy Hunt

Have I Been Pwned

Office 365 E5 SKU

Power BI adds Bing content pack

OneDrive for Business shared link expiry now available

Azure Backup now does servers

Microsoft Findtime

Enterprise Mobility Suite

Power BI adds Bing content pack

Power BI is a free (yes the basic offering is free) tool from Microsoft that allows you to analyse and report on data from all sorts of sources. You can upload your own spreadsheet for analysis and you can use the built in contents packs as you see above.

Microsoft has just release the Bing content pack for Power BI allowing you to analyse search terms.

To configure, all you need to do is all the Bing content pack from the Data Sources option. You’ll then need to enter a search term you wish to track (here “Office 365”.

Then you’ll get a dashboard you can start configuring.

The only limitation at the moment for the Bing Content Pack is that it doesn’t support the natural language query that the other content packs do. Hopefully, that feature will be coming in the future because that would really be a killer addition.

In the mean time, if you haven’t had a look at Power BI head over to:

www.powerbi.com

and sign for a free account and start making your data visual.

OneDrive for Business expiration of share links now available

You should find, if not already then soon, that you can now set an expiry time on something you share from your OneDrive for Business as shown above.

This gives you much greater control over your files by being able to automatically revoke access to information after a certain number of days.

This ability is not yet available in SharePoint Team Sites but I would expect to appear there soon as well.

For more information on sharing files from your OneDrive for Business see:

Share documents or folders in Office 365

Azure Backup now does servers

Azure backup has allowed to backup up files and folders from servers and workstations to Azure very quickly, easily and cheaply. I have detailed this previously at;

Azure desktop backup

As announced here:

Announcing Microsoft Azure Backup Server

Azure backup now has the ability to backup server workloads like Exchange, SharePoint and SQL to both a local storage location as well as to Azure storage.This means that it can not only protect files and folders but all of the data on premises just as quickly and easily as it could for files and folder, however now there is also the added ability to have a local copy of the backup as well.

This now makes Azure backup a really compelling option for any business and provides the flexibility many demand.

To get started have a look at the above links or login to your Azure backup vault and download the Application Workload client to get started.

Microsoft Findtime

Microsoft has just released a new product for Office 365 that allows you to more easily schedule meetings with both people inside and outside your organisation.

Take a look at these two videos for more information.

Basically, it is a add-in for Outlook on your desktop and your Outlook Online.

When you select the meeting poll button you’ll get a new pane in your Outlook on the desktop like that shown above where you can select a few options for a meeting to send to every one.

You can then post those option into the email and send it off, in this case, to someone outside the organisation. If they were inside the organisation you would see their availability.

The recipient receives the email invite with a link to a page as shown above allowing them to vote on a suitable times.

You get the same style of interface from Outlook Online as you can see above when requesting an appointment.

You receive notification of those preferences as shown above.

Once the times are clear for everyone the meeting is automatically finalised.

A new calendar appointment item is automatically added to everyone inside your organisation with the meeting details as shown above.

While those outside the business receive a normal calendar appointment, as shown above, in an email they can accept and add to their calendar.

You can now also login to a web dashboard to see and manage your appointment requests as you see above.

I’ve only started to play around with Findtime but I gotta say it is really cool and is going to be a big benefit to many people. Best part? It’s free for Office 365 subscribers, so go to

http://findtime.microsoft.com

and get started today!

Enterprise Mobility Suite

Introduction to Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite—Robert Crane Docs.com

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25195311-0229-9411-3450-000996151277%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

I did a presentation recently on the Enterprise Mobility Suite for Microsoft and have uploaded the slides (Above) to my docs.com for you to download if you want. You’ll find the direct link at:

https://doc.co/j28JKd/qcihGm

The main benefits I see of using the product is the fact that you get Azure AD Premium which means added features like password write back and more functionality in the Azure Single Sign On Portal amongst other things. There is plenty to commend EMS to customers but the first start for resellers is to understand the product.

Here are some additional links that I found relevant but didn’t include during my research:

Supported SaaS apps – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/active-directory/

Deploying the Azure RMS connector – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn375964.aspx

Advanced Threat Analytics – http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/server-cloud/products/advanced-threat-analytics/

Advanced Threat Analytics Installation – https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn707704.aspx

Although I did include this link to a presentation on Advanced Threat Analytics from Microsoft Ignite in May I’ll repeat it here because I think that anyone interested in what this product can do should take a look. It is also really cool technology as well, so even if you don’t you’d deploy I’d still encourage you to take a look.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3870

Office 365 E5 is here

After an announcement earlier this year Microsoft has released a new Office 365 suite plan called E5.

E5 will replace the current E4 plan that will be retired over the next 12 months. What does E5 include? Basically it includes everything E4 included but adds services like:

PSTN Conferencing provides the flexibility to dial in to a meeting from a traditional phone, in addition to the existing ability to join a meeting with a single click on your PC or mobile device.
Skype Meeting Broadcast makes it easier than ever to produce large virtual meetings for up to 10,000 meeting attendees, who can join from virtually any browser or device. Now Skype for Business truly is a single platform for every type of meeting.
Cloud PBX enables companies to eliminate separate PBX systems and transition to the cloud with Office 365 as the central location to manage users for communication and
With PSTN Calling, Office 365 customers can also subscribe to Microsoft managed calling plans and phone numbers, starting in the U.S. with more markets coming later.
Delve Analytics—Empowers individuals through rich dashboards that provide insights on time and relationships, with the goal of helping individuals get time back and spend it effectively.
Power BI—A business analytics service that enables information workers to visualize and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency and understanding through live data dashboards, interactive reports and compelling visualizations.
Customer Lockbox—Gives customers new approval rights, transparency and control over their data in the cloud.
Advanced eDiscovery—Integrates Equivio machine learning, predictive coding and text analytics capabilities, to reduce the costs and challenges that come along with sorting through large quantities of data for eDiscovery purposes.
Advanced Threat Protection—Protects against unknown malware and viruses by applying behavioural analysis.

For more information about the E5 SKU including pricing visit:

Office 365 Enterprise E5 overview and documentation

Join the CIAOPS Office 365 Tech email newsletter

One of the greatest challenges faced by IT Professionals today is simply keeping up with the technology. The problem is there are so many different sources that it comes from as well as the volume that it flows at.

What makes it even more difficult for todays IT Professional is that they need to be able to administer the systems as well as assist end users get the most from the same systems. This means understanding both the front and back end of systems. In effect that means keeping abreast of the twice the amount of information.

I do my best to provide the best quality of technical information via a number of sources but not all information is relevant to all audiences. With that in mind I have created an new email list dedicated to IT professionals and administrators of products like Office 365. It is aimed at providing technical information about the products in more depth to help administer them better.

You can sign up for this new CIAOPS Tech email list directly at:

http://eepurl.com/bFYpEX

If you are also interested in end user information via email I’d encourage you to sign up to my free 23 part SharePoint Online training course at:

http://bit.ly/gs-spo

because after the end of the SharePoint course the information continues with detailed emails about getting the best from Office 365 products like OneDrive, Delve and more.

Why via email? Email provides the ability to automatically collect the information, store it for later review. I have found that many people still prefer to use email as their primary source of information for these reasons.

There’ll still be plenty of detailed information in this blog and via my other social media sources as usual but if you want to receive information from me about Office 365 and the Microsoft cloud then subscribe to one or both of the above email lists as suits your needs. Of course you should also feel free to send me any suggestions, at any time, about what topics you’d like to see covered on these lists as I want them to be as relevant as possible.

As always, I appreciate people consuming what I produce via various channels and I look to continue to improve what is offered.