1. Azure Active Directory: New features and roadmap
2. New features security and compliance center
3. Windows Server 2019
4. Windows Information Protection

Azure Active Directory: New features and roadmap

During the session of Alex Simons “Azure Active Directory: New features and roadmap”, he showed the great functionality of iOS smartwatch authenticator, but the request didn’t came through. Really funny, but he actually forgot his phone on stage so it was obvious it didn’t came through.

However, we saw great new features in Azure AD. They are encouraging us to move from AD FS to Azure AD. Microsoft itself has already migrated 18.000 apps from AD FS to Azure AD (but still 3.000 to go Alex said).

Azure AD is really going to focus on passwordless sign on. Also, B2B and B2C will see great improvements. It’s going to be very simple to collaborate for example with a company that doesn’t even use Azure AD at all.

And we get hardware OAUTH tokens support in Azure AD! For those who really need this for security reasons, it’s going to be possible. Before, it was only possible with the on-premises MFA server but not anymore!

New features security and compliance center

As announced yesterday already, we no longer have Azure Information Protection, but Microsoft Information Protection. In this session we saw more in-depth new features of the security and compliance center which will be rolled out the coming months.  A great new look of the security and compliance portal.

I am really sorry about the picture below, I was too far away for getting a sharp picture, I will update them as soon as I have better material. But I think you can get an impression.

This compliance center will have tight integration with https://security.microsoft.com. It’s focusing more and more on “Assess, protect, respond, visibility and control”. With just a few simple clicks, you are able to remediate security after an attack. Sounds like a sales pitch, but I have seen it live and it just works.

Another great feature is that we will soon have “label analytics”! finally. We can see for example which labels are applied manually, which are pending, how many labels you have applied etc.

More info about “Assess, protect, respond, visibility and control” how Microsoft does it, here is an exact copy of text of the presentation:

Assess
Perform ongoing risk assessments with a compliance score across Microsoft cloud services.
Protect
Automatically classify and protect sensitive data across devices, apps and cloud services.
Respond
Efficiently respond to regulatory requests leveraging AI to find the right, most relevant data.
Visibility
Understand the security state and risks across resources.
Control
Define consistent security policies and enable controls.
Guidance
Elevate security through built-in intelligence and recommendations.

Windows Server 2019

Some great new features are announced! The best I heard so far is that we can now connect Windows Server 2019 to Azure Update Management. This way, we will have one unified, native updating way throughout our devices.

Also, Azure password protection is now hybrid available on Windows Server 2019. And of course, the Windows Admin Center (released before) is tightly integrated in Windows Server 2019. Within WAC, we can now manage Azure Network Adapter, Azure Site Recovery and Azure back-up.

Windows Information Protection

I have seen very great feature updates around Windows Information Protection! Instead of summing it up here, I dedicated a seperate blogpost about this. Read it here!

The post Microsoft Ignite day 2 appeared first on Erjen Rijnders.

1. Keynote
2. Transform your workplace with Microsoft 365
3. Microsoft 365 admin center
4. Windows 10 Virtual Desktop
5. What happened with RDMI?
6. Advanced Threat Protection for MySQL
7. Whats new in OME and AIP
8. Integrate Teams with a SharePoint library
9. Microsoft Threat Protection announced
10. Microsoft Information Protection
11. Microsoft Secure Score

Keynote

With about 30.000 people in one very big room, Satya kicked off with a welcome and received a big applause. Satya started sharing current customer success stories, mainly focused on AI. His question after the success stories: How are we evolving this and how do we keep innovating? The answer is, the Microsoft open data initiative! Together with Adobe and SAP, these three companies exchange data. Data becomes more and more important and in this way, Microsoft can create a great experience for us as customers. There will be one data model for all Azure applications so that our data will no longer be in silos. Well, I must say, that’s exciting news! Hopefully we will see this in action soon.

That said, Microsoft is also focusing more and more on selling an experience instead of a product (what we do as consultants for years already to our customers to be honest), but Microsoft will have more focus on this as well. Satya said that we need to transform our businesses industries, adopting the latest and greatest technologies, or
we will not survive. Also trust and collaboration is key aspect of success, Satya said.

It was an inspiring keynote, although not as inspiring as before and less announcements were given but still, great start of Microsoft Ignite!

Transform your workplace with Microsoft 365

The second session (more like a subkeynote) I attended was “Transform your workplace with Microsoft 365”. Ron Markezich came on stage thanking us for our partnership.

They key announcement in this session is a new Microsoft product: Microsoft Ideas. It brings a lot of AI into your daily work. Like in PowerPoint, it suggests the design of a slide. Like if you type Seattle, it gives you images of Seattle. But also, it checks for consistency throughout PowerPoint. In Excel, this same product gives you suggestions on a whole other level. Like you fill in some countries, it suggests you to add columns with the inhabitants etc.

In Word, it’s even cooler in my opinion. When you are working together in the same document, you can add tasks for another and even create tasks for yourself. For example, you type “@To Do”, you add a task for yourself. Giving a description, like “Keynote”, Microsoft Ideas gives you relevant documents which you can add in the document.

This is all possible, connecting with the Microsoft Graph API. Many applications are connected to this API which makes this possible. This product is going to be rolled out at PowerPoint first, later across more Office applications.

Microsoft 365 admin center

During this session, we saw Brad Anderson show the Microsoft 365 Admin Center! https://admin.microsoft.com gives you all the management within Microsoft 365, no longer go to protection.office.com, security.microsoft.com, compliance.microsoft.com etc. It looks promising.

Windows 10 Virtual Desktop

So many have waited for this (and we still have to wait a bit longer because the public preview will come end of this year), but it’s officially announced, the Windows 10 Virtual Desktop! No more planning, deploying, updating etc. It’s all managed by Microsoft. And the Virtual Desktops has built-in security and compliance.

As I mentioned, the public preview is available later this year, but it’s possible to join the public preview now by registering.

What happened with RDMI?

Well, not sure to be honest. No one mentioned it @Ignite, it looks like RDMI is now called Windows Virtual Desktops.

UPDATE: It is confirmed at Ignite 2018 that RDMI is now Windows Virtual Desktop.

Advanced Threat Protection for MySQL

Advanced Threat Protection for MySQL is out! Configure it using the Azure Portal, check here for detailed information:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/advanced-threat-protection-for-azure-database-for-mysql-in-preview/

Whats new in OME and AIP

100 million users are using OME since they announced it a year ago. We (@Sigmax) have used it a lot for our customers and a lack of functionality is the integration with Data Loss Prevention. But not anymore! It’s fully integrated. Also, we have OME reporting now. We can check the encrypted emails sent and also revoke an encrypted email finally! Another great feature is that we can now further customize the encrypted e-mail.

Integrate Teams with a SharePoint library

If you have implemented the SharePoint philosophy and you start using Teams, well, that philosophy is turned up-side-down inevitably because you have no control where Teams stores your data. Not anymore! You can now integrate a SharePoint library with Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Threat Protection announced

Before, we had Windows ATP, Azure ATP and Office ATP. Now we have it all together in one product: Microsoft Threat Protection (looks like we need to go to https://security.microsoft.com, in contrast what was announced in the Microsoft 365 admin center but we will see).

Microsoft Information Protection

We no longer have Azure Information Protection, but Microsoft Information Protection. The great thing is that we now have a unified way of labeling. We can use the same labels for Office Message Encryption and Data Loss Prevention which is great.

Labeling is now also available in Office for mac!

Microsoft Secure Score

Now integrated with Office 365 and EMS! If you were using it before, you will now see a lot more scores. Go to https://securescore.microsoft.com/ to check your security score!

The post Microsoft Ignite day 1: keynote and sessions appeared first on Erjen Rijnders.