In 2002, Bill Gates announced a new direction for Microsoft: A change in culture, process, and a fundemental shift in product design, and this was known as the Trustworthy Computing (TwC) initiative. In this first part of a series I'm going to start on Microsoft's approach to security, I thought I'd take a look back at the great steps Microsoft made to enhance trust and security across it's Office, Windows, and other products.
By now, we should have all received the news: Passwords are no longer enough. With faster and more powerful devices in the hands of determined cybercriminals, and the relative ease in which even "secure" password policies can be compromised by phishing attacks, the costs now outweigh the benefits of using predictable and vulnerable passwords. The... Continue Reading →
In 2014, researchers by the name of Mueller and Oppenheimer released a paper in the journal of Psychological Science title 'The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking'. In this paper, the authors suggest that extended research into memory and cognitive learning processes of students strongly indicated that the... Continue Reading →
Azure AD Connect is Microsoft's secure integration and synchronisation tool, designed to help sites adopt hybrid identities. The solution has a number of different components that can be enabled, and can manage everything from enabling secure Pass-Through Authentication (PTA) via your existing Active Directory (AD) Domain, or by synchronising your users, groups, and even devices,... Continue Reading →
I’ve seen a lot of confusion around this feature, and some people pointing at it as a weak point in identity security because they believe the synchronised content can be intercepted, replayed, or otherwise compromised. I’m here to say, this is not the case at all. I'm going to make this blog post really short:... Continue Reading →
As much as we all may wish for a newer, better and more secure communication tool to replace email, it looks like the legacy Inbox-filling communication tool is going to be with us for some time. And while the underlying technology that authenticates you email accounts has been modernised to not rely on legacy protocols... Continue Reading →
Like many things in Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), a lot of the advanced and bulk operations aren't possible in the standard web interface, and instead rely on the extensibility of PowerShell. Managing Exchange Online environments is no different, and while the Exchange Online Admin Center is mature and powerful, there are still a large... Continue Reading →
In part 1, which was posted a long time ago now (oops), I discussed how there's a push to move more workloads to the cloud, and for sites to switch the Modern Desktop via Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions. In this part, I'll cover what I've recently learned and implemented, in the hope that others... Continue Reading →
Preface: We’re currently planning the next phase of modernisation for our fleet of Windows devices. In our case, the environment already ticks a number of "best practice" boxes, and is already up-to-date according to Microsoft's definition of "Modern Desktop"... but there is always more to learn, and new features which can help you and your... Continue Reading →
Have you ever seen a product, or series of products from a long list of vendors, that just seem to have things backwards and you can't figure out why? This is exactly how I feel about hybrid electric cars... all of them (well, the production ones, anyway). As the name suggests, hybrids are a mix... Continue Reading →
In almost all Active Directory (AD) environments, access to resources will be managed via security groups, and group emails handled by distribution groups. While it is also possible to add devices to security groups, and use these to perform some pretty useful functions, it’s mostly all about the users. Managing Active Directory on-premises is an... Continue Reading →
I've had my eye on software by Rogue Amoeba for a while, but thought I'd try to find free alternatives instead. The end result? Don't waste your time, and just buy their stuff instead. While this is a Mac solution, there are similar solutions for Windows, and I'll look to post those soon (as many... Continue Reading →
In 2015, I had the privilege of attending the Microsoft Ignite conference on the Gold Coast. While I loaded up my schedule with plenty of sessions on Azure and Office 365, I also made sure to attend as many Surface-centric events as possible: And I managed to get to quite a few. One of the... Continue Reading →
In my previous two posts, I described the Microsoft Installer (MSI), as well as Application Virtualization (App-V), and now it's time to talk about Click-to-Run (C2R). Click-to-Run is actually an installer stub, streamer, and command line technology, based on Microsoft's App-V technology, and is currently used for the delivery of Microsoft Office ProPlus products. Traditionally,... Continue Reading →
In my previous article, I covered the Microsoft Installer (MSI), which is a traditional installation technology; and a technology that requires that the entire installer be downloaded/cached, and which then proceeds to write to the file system and registry in one go. As far as legacy installers go, MSI technology offers many advantages, but none quite... Continue Reading →
Webber Zone 
You must be logged in to post a comment.