Need to Know podcast–Episode 293

Happy holidays everyone. Hope you are all enjoying the festive season. A few updates from Microsoft including the availability of Teams Premium plus an editorial on industry burnout. I’m seeing more and more IT Professionals becoming burnt out and feeling lost. At this time of the year take some time to look forward and decide whether it is time for a change. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out and share with others what your feeling. If anyone wants to chat feel free to reach out in total confidence via director@ciaops.com.

You can listen directly to this episode at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-293-are-you-burnt-out/

Subscribe via 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.

This episode was recorded using Microsoft Teams and produced with Camtasia 2022.

Brought to you by www.ciaopspatron.com

Resources

@directorcia

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Join my shared channel

CIAOPS merch store

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CIAOPS Blog

YouTube edition of this podcast

Microsoft 365 incident response training

GPT Chat

Try an improved Quick Assist experience

Reminder: End of servicing for Windows 10, version 21H1

Listen to your favorite Microsoft Tech Community Blog articles, powered by Azure Speech Services!

End user passwordless utopia

Microsoft Teams Premium Experiences and How to Set It Up

Teams Premium preview now available

New Work vertical in Windows Search

Basic Authentication Deprecation in Exchange Online – Time’s Up

Connecting to Azure IoT hub

The main aim of my dive into IoT was to get a remote device talking to Azure. After getting the IoT device connected to WiFi, flashing LEDs, accepting input from a button and capturing temperature data, it was now time to make that dream a reality.

There are different methods of connecting devices to Azure but for my first attempt I decided to use Azure IoT hub. The first step in that process is to login to the Azure portal and create a new IoT hub.

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To do this, select the Create menu option in the top left of the Azure IoT hub blade

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Once you have selected the Azure subscription and Resource group you’ll need to pick a Name for your Azure IoT hub. This name needs to be unique as a URL will be generated from this. Then select a Region and a Tier. You’ll notice that there is a Free tier, which I have selected for this example (very handy for tests like this).

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Next, you can configure your networking. Because my device will just connect to a public Internet connection I selected Public access.

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I left the management options as shown above.

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The add-ons shown here are not available on the Free tier.

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I didn’t need any tags.

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I finally get a summary as shown. Note that the cost will be $0 because I am using the Free tier. Select Create to complete the process.

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After a few minutes you should be able to see you IoT hub as shown above. Select Devices from the menu on the left.

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Now select Add device from the menu on the right as shown above.

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Give a the device a Name, and to keep things simple select Symmetric key for the Authentication type as shown. Ensure that the Auto-generate keys is select and that Connect this device to an IoT hub is set to Enable. Select Save to continue.

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You should now see the device you just created listed as shown above. Select the name of the device to view it’s properties.

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Here you will find the settings for your device. You’ll need to grab at least one Key and the matching Connection string to use when configuring your device.

With all of that information it’s time to head back and set up the device.

I have uploaded the code to get the device connected to Azure IoT hub here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Azure/blob/master/Iot/huzzah-iothub.ino

It is much more extensive that before and I will admit I am not yet 100% sure of what it all does but basically it connects the device to local Wifi then sends telemetry information to Azure IoT hub.

You’ll also need to have the file iot_config.h in the same directory when compiling your code. You can find an example of that here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Azure/blob/master/Iot/iot_configs.h

that file basically extracts all the unique security information like WiFi password, device keys and IoT Hub URL away from the main code. You’ll need to modify this file to suit your own environment before compiling.

The only other thing you’ll need to do is connect a single LED to pin 5 of the device to act as a diagnostic indicator. It will basically flash when data is sent to Azure IoT hub which gives a nice visual representation of something actually happening on the device.

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When you compile the code you’ll also need to ensure all the appropriate libraries are available. Details of each of these is contained in the code.

With the compiled code uploaded to the device you should see the LED light start to flash after a few seconds indicating that data is being sent. If you look at the serial port you should see diagnostic data like so:

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If you then look at the Overview page in the Azure IoT Hub you should the diagnostics reporting a number of messages increasing over time like so:

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You can also download a tool called the Azure IoT explorer which you will find here:

https://github.com/Azure/azure-iot-explorer/releases

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When you configure this for your IoT hub environment and drill down into the Device then Telemetry, as shown above, should allow to see the actual information being sent.

So there you have it. Once you have set up an Azure IoT hub and added a device to it you can grab the connection details and plug them into the code you use to configure your device. You can also use the Azure IoT Explorer to get more granular details of what your device is doing.

The next challenge is now to get the device working with Azure IoT central.

Adafruit Huzzah Temperature senor

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Last project was:

Input from button

Next up now is connecting the DHT20 temperature sensor to the Adafruit Huzzah. The idea is to read data from the sensor and display it via the serial output.

The wiring diagram is shown above and is pretty straight forward. The main thing is to get the pin functions for the sensor. All 4 pins needs to be connected. On the DHT20 pin 1 goes to the 3V output on Huzzah. Next, the DHT20 pin 2 goes to ground on the Huzzah.

The final 2 pins (SCL and SDA) are for serial communications. Thus, DHT20 pin 2 goes to the SCL connection on the Huzzah. Finally, pin 4 from the DHT20 goes to SDA on the Huzzah.

The code is also very straight forward and I found it here:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-aht20/arduino

and my version is at:

https://github.com/directorcia/Azure/blob/master/Iot/huzzah-tempsens.ino

To make this work you’ll also need to add the following the library:

Adafruit AHTX0

Once you combine all these elements you can compile the code and upload it to the Huzzah. Now, the Huzzah should produce a serial output that looks like:

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which shows the temperature and humidity of the room.

A pretty simple one when it comes to capturing temperature and humidity.

The next challenge will be to getting data in and out of Azure.

Defender EASM adds billable assets blade

I’ve talked about the value of Defender EASM before:

Go get Defender EASM

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I now notice that there is a Billable assets option on the menu as shown above. Given that the costs for Defender EASM are based assets:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/defender-external-attack-surface-management/

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knowing exactly what those costs are is great.

As you can see in my environment I have about 29 billable assets equating to a grand total of:

29 x $0.0.17 per day = $0.49per day = $15.28 per month

As I maintain, Defender EASM is cheap for value it provides and now you can more easily track costs. (Don’t forget you also get a free 30 day trial!)

Need to Know podcast–Episode 292

The editorial for this episode is an always controversial topic on backing up Microsoft/Office 365. I am going to highlight some of the facts that, unlike what some say, Microsoft does indeed backup customer data and you’ll find all the links in the show notes.

This is the last episode before Christmas so thanks to all listeners for their support and I wish everyone a happy and safe time over the holidays. No break here, and I’ll be back with the latest news and updates again soon.

You can listen directly to this episode at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-292-microsoft-365-backup/

Subscribe via 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.

This episode was recorded using Microsoft Teams and produced with Camtasia 2022.

Brought to you by www.ciaopspatron.com

Resources

@directorcia

@directorcia@twit.social

Join my shared channel

CIAOPS merch store

Become a CIAOPS Patron

CIAOPS Blog

YouTube edition of this podcast

Use Access policies to require multiple administrative approvals

Introducing enhanced company branding for sign-in experiences in Azure AD

Office 365 company branding requirements have changed

New Admin Center Unifies Azure AD with Other Identity and Access Products

New Layout Options for OneNote on Windows are coming soon

Introducing Microsoft Teams Premium

Announcing new removable storage management features on Windows

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps data protection series: Understand your data types

Microsoft Security Product Reviews: Give product feedback & get rewarded!

Backup

Revisiting some facts around Microsoft 365 backup

Do you need to backup Office 365?

Microsoft policy on backup (Sept 2022)

“Additionally, each service has established a set of standards for storing and backing up data, and securely deleting data upon request from the customer.”

The Essential 8 Security guidelines

Search essential 8

External email indicator needs refinement

A while back I wrote about how you can enable

Native external sender notifications in Exchange Online

which is a great security enhancement. However, now I’m beginning to see some push back from SMB customers.

Why? Well, if you take a look at my inbox you can probably see why:

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Most of my emails comes from external contacts, and only one is internal. That means I see the word ‘External’ a hell of a lot in my inbox. Many point out that this ‘External’ tag chews up a lot of precious screen real estate as it appears as a prefix in the From field during email preview..

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The challenge is that if you disable the external sender notification you also lose the warning “The sender user@domain.com is from outside your organization’, which is very handy.

It would be handy if we had a bit more customisation for the ‘External’ tag in the Set-ExternalInOutlook command, that would perhaps allow the tag to be disabled in the email preview but retain the warning line when an email item is full opened. I think that would work much better for SMB and many others also.

Hopefully, someone can let the appropriate people at Microsoft know that SMB users in particular are beginning to request this very important security feature be disabled to save screen real estate. That is a very bad thing I would suggest given the importance of email security, especially in SMB. However, I think Microsoft does need to look at this ‘External’ tag in light of the SMB experience, where there are more external than internal senders and screen real estate is at a premium.

Office 365 company branding requirements have changed

*** Update ***

The issue with my tenant not displaying company branding as it used to was due to a bug in the interface. Microsoft have now rectified that and I have access to company branding as I once used to.


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It seems that the requirements to configure Office 365 company branding have changed. The official documentation is here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/customize-branding#license-requirements

which says:

License requirements

Adding custom branding requires one of the following licenses:

  • Azure AD Premium 1

  • Azure AD Premium 2

  • Office 365 (for Office apps)

However, I definitely know this wasn’t the case until very recently, because a tenant I have without Azure AD P1 or P2 that allowed company branding configuration and now does not. So, something has indeed changed recently and I can find no acknowledgement or documentation of that. The existing branding of the tenant remains unchanged but I can no longer make changes.

If you don’t have Azure AD P1 or P2 in your environment you can always sign up for a 30 day trial and make changes. However, after that 30 days ends you’ll need to buy a full Azure AD P1 or P2 license it seems, if you wish to modify the company branding it seems.

I would have thought that in a world where we want to make tenants more secure using something like branding to help reduce the risk of phishing attacks tricking users into putting their details into false portals, the ability to brand a tenant would be available to all licenses.

Hopefully, this is simply an over sight by Microsoft and the ability is returned. However, for now it appears they are fully enforcing the licensing when it comes to company branding and requiring an Azure AD P1 or P2 licenced user to make changes.