CIAOPS Basic SharePoint Online Administration course now available

I have create a new short Introduction Sharepoint Online Administration online training course.

It’s a bit different from my other online courses in that it is much shorter and the cost is also much lower. I’m using it to see whether there is demand for these style of ‘short courses” and then maybe developing more along these lines. I’d love to know what you think about these style of ‘short courses’.

If you are interested, I’d encourage you to take a look at the new course and sign up. I’d also appreciate you referring the course onto others who may who might benefit.

You’ll find all my online courses at:

www.ciaopsacademy.com

and if nothing there takes your fancy, please contact me (director@ciaops.com) and let me know what you’d like to see so I can create it.

Azure and Windows 10 Enterprise State roaming

The march of Azure and Windows 10 integration continues on with the announcement of Enterprise State Roaming public preview.

This option basically allows Windows 10 machines that have their primary connection to Azure AD to have their settings roam between machines much like the situation now with Windows 10 and personal accounts.

To enable this you’ll need the most current build of Windows 10 and Azure AD Premium. You’ll then need to enable the setting in both Azure and Windows 10. This blog post from Microsoft outlines all the details:

More Azure AD and Windows 10 goodness: Enterprise State Roaming public preview!

To me this is further evidence of the growing native integration between Windows 10 and Azure AD. It also indicates why you should be payign close attention to this as it is becomes more powerful and feature rich.

Introduction to SharePoint Online

Here’s a longer webinar that I have created on the an Introduction to SharePoint Online.

In it you’ll get an understanding of how SharePoint Online integrates with Office 365, what plans are available and how to perform some of the most common operations with Sharepoint Online.

I’ve also made the slide deck of the presentation available on my docs.com here:

https://doc.co/RfbBqT/qcihGm

and embedded it below:

Introduction to SharePoint—Robert Crane Docs.com

https://docs.com/d/embed/D25194776-8118-2654-5680-000630277702%7eMd4186d87-61d5-259a-4d26-00a8bd86cfff

If you want to learn about SharePoint Online beyond these basics, I’ll direct you to my:

Free SharePoint Online training course via email

Getting Started with SharePoint Online course

Configuring Shared Document Access using Office 365 Team Sites course

Working with Private Documents using OneDrive for Business course

SharePoint Level 1 course

Let me know what you think of this tutorial and what more you’d like to see me do around Sharepoint Online.

Get a free Display Dock for Lumia 950 and 950XL

Microsoft Display Dock

Microsoft is offering a free display dock for Australian customers who purchase a Lumia 950 or 950XL between November 2015 and March 2016. The display dock allows you to connect your Lumia 950 or 950XL phone to external devices such as keyboards, monitors, mice, etc. This supports the continuum features of Windows 10 Phone.

To take up this offer follow these steps.

Fire up your Lumia 950 or 950 XL and open the Lumia Offers apps. If you don’t have this app on your phone simply download it from the store.

When you opne the app you should see the Display Dock Offer as shown above. Select this.

Ensure that you email address is listed in the box on this next screen and select the claim button at the bottom of the page.

You should then receive an email with a promotional code and a link to a site where you can enter the code.

Just enter the code you received in the email and select Submit. The code will be verified and if all is correct you’ll then need to enter a shipping address for the dock.

You’ll then receive a confirmation email that you claim has been submitted and you should receive your dock in 6 – 8 weeks.

I think the display dock is a ‘must have’ for Lumia 950 devices and now there is no reason not to get one. Good on ya Microsoft.

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 96

Marc Kean now joins me on a regular basis with the podcast to share his knowledge and experience on Azure and PowerShell. Marc also lined up our guest for this episode, Reid Purvis, Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure Technical Specialist based in Sydney.

Reid explains what Azure Express Route is all about and why it makes sense for even the smallest organisation these days. If you want to learn about Azure Express Route then this is episode for you.

You can listen to this episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-96-reid-purvis/

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.

Resources

Azure Service Updates – https://azure.microsoft.com/updates

Azure Resource Manager – a holistic view of Azure Resource Manager – https://resources.azure.com

Australian Azure Express Route – Getting Started

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/expressroute/

http://resources.azure.com/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/

Reid Purvis

Microsoft Cloud Infrastructure Technical Specialist (Sydney)

Email: reid.purvis@microsoft.com

Mobile: +61 427 038 685

Follow Me On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rpurvis (@rpurvis)

Need to Know Podcast–Episode 95

In this episode I’m joined by returning guest James Eling from Extreme Networks to talk about leadership, especially business leadership. James shares both his extensive knowledge and experience of being a leader both personally and in business. You’ll get some great insights here about what skills it takes to lead people and organisations through the process of improvement.

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-95-james-eling/

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

Get Started with the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client in Windows

Enabling Office 365 Planner

Retaining your OneDrive bonuses

Beware of malware Office 365 statements

Enterprise Mobility Suite

CIAOPS Academy

James Eling
www.extremenetworks.com.au
jeling@extremenetworks.com.au

@extreme_james

Mastering the Rockefeler Habits – Verne Harnish

Why technology will doom us all

As much as I like and make a living from technology, I have always maintained a healthy interest in all aspects of digital security. I have written plenty of previous articles about how technology is pretty devoid of good security in my opinion, such as:

Bad guy just keep winning

The world of security anonomalies

Security before convenience or else

Here’s another recent personal episode that once again proves my point that we are headed to a very bad place with technology due to a lack of focus and understanding of the real value of security.

While visiting a family member they informed me they feared their PC had been hacked. The reason sighted was they saw a message appear on the screen, while browsing the Internet, that told them their system had been hacked. They immediately panicked and turned the whole system off awaiting my arrival.

Time to investigate.

I powered the machine back up and ran a few scans and checked the logs and couldn’t see anything nasty. The family member told me that had been searching the Internet and viewing the resultant sites. The last one they remember visiting was:

Tasmanian Air Adventures

Rather the visting the site I ran my own search on the name of the business.

Above is the first result that was returned. If you look closely you’ll see that results returned are just ‘default text’ ( i.e. Donec ullamcorper…). This indicates to me that site still has some ‘defaults’ set somewhere. If that is the case then the site also probably has ‘default’ security, which really means no security!

After a little more digging I turned up the suspect HTML page and the above image from the browser cache which is what the user remembered seeing.

The suspect HTML also revealed that the exploit used was against an outdated Mailchimp WordPress plugin.

After some further checking I was confident that the exploit targeted the insecure server not client browsers. I re-assured the user that all was good and they didn’t have anything to worry about (for the reasons I’ll point out a bit later).

After some more digging it turns out that the company whose web site it was actually went into liquidation a while back.

Tasmanian Air Adventures in liquidation

That was about 10 months ago as of today.

So here are my comments/questions:

1. Why the hell is an insecure web site still allowed be to be running when that company was liquidated 10 months ago?

2. Who the hell is paying for that server to be still running?

3. If that web server was actually shared amongst others that insecure account now potentially makes all accounts on that server vulnerable.

I could go on but ….

My point here is that as we race towards making technology more and more part of our lives and our businesses, including connecting them all together all the time, we make ourselves more vulnerable to any single insecurity.

The Internet of Things sure sounds great but it will open a Pandora’s box of pain for everyone by connecting every device we see to the Internet. Why? Because all it requires is one insecurity in any of these connected system to give the bad guys a foot hold. In fact, I would contend that it is too late, they already well entrenched.

I’m scared. I really am. We are building a world that is going to fail, and fail potentially castastrophically. It is going to make us more vulnerable. It’s a world were the financial incentive is heavily stacked towards doing evil rather than good.

It is pretty much impossible these days to go totally unibomber and unplug. Thus, our only realistic option is to deal with the world we have created. That means taking total ownership of your own security.

Case in point, the family member who experience this issue was running a FULLY patched AUTOMATICALLY updating version of Windows 10 with other security measure in place thanks to your truly. Many people complain about the change Microsoft made to have Windows and Office automatically update. I, however, think that is GREAT! It is one thing EVERY piece of software MUST do in my opinion. Otherwise, we leave holes that the bad guys can crawl into and never be removed once they are in.

The reality, which I believe fails to be grasped, is that technology security is a losing equation. Every day more and more software and devices become vulnerable because they are not being updated YET they remain connected, just like the web server my relative was visiting.

I’m sorry, we are all doomed and technology is to blame. You have been warned.

Enabling Customer Lockbox

Microsoft already has a very secure process about when and how support staff may access your Office 365 tenant data. Here’s a great video that explains this:

The recent addition of Customer Lockbox provides additional control for the customer.

Basically, once Customer Lockbox has been enabled the user has the final say over when and for how long Microsoft may access the tenant data to provide support.

To enable Customer Lockbox you’ll need to have the appropriate license (i.e. the new E5 SKU includes Customer Lockbox for example), then you’ll need to login as an administrator to the Office 365 admin center.

If you then locate and expand the Service Settings option on the left hand side of the screen, you should see the list shown above. In the list is the option Customer Lockbox, which you should select.

Now on the right you should see the above screen. To eanble Customer Lockbox simply change the switch to ON (i.e. move to right).

You’ll then receive the above warning. Select Yes to enable.

You should now see that Customer Lockbox is enabled as shown above.

To find out more about Customer Lockbox visit:

Office 365 Customer Lockbox Requests

and note once Customer Lockbox has been enabled:

If a content access request is denied or isn’t approved within 12 hours, the request expires. If this happens, you might continue to experience a specific service issue that could be resolved by allowing an engineer to access the content. We’ll (Microsoft) let you know if this happens.

So in summary, Customer Lockbox is a feature you can add on to Office 365 to prevent Microsoft accessing your data with out your specific permission once enabled.

Here is also an overview video from Microsoft: