UralTalk

Recently, I was asked for possible solutions to enforce VPN connection to access Office 365. This seems odd at first, for this is against one of the tenets of Office 365, accessing service from anywhere and on any device. But then there is always a certain use case that needs to be addressed. In this case, the customer had deployed Office 365 and federated using ADFS, a textbook deployment with 2 ADFS server farm, and 2 WAPs in the DMZ. Within the Microsoft 365 world, Intune and Conditional access would enable for enforcing policies. However, that will also require the customer to acquire additional licenses beyond O365 E3, which my customer did not want to do. I compiled some of the possibilities with ADFS to enforce VPN connectivity. Although I do not recommend anyone to bypass the features, I want to share this out to get some feedback from the community, to see if this is such a common scenario, or if anyone implemented any of these or other cost-effective solutions...

Hi, hope you enjoyed the last bit of Summer. It was a busy few months with a lot of things happening. There was good bit of updates in the Microsoft 365 world as well. Back in September I had mentioned of a few of the Microsoft 365 interesting and much discussed features among my clients (" Highly Discussed Office 365 features in dev/testing "). Here is an update on those features and others that are going the rounds: Following features in my September list have been launched and should be available in your tenant: Microsoft Bookings - mobile app read-only mode Microsoft Secure Score support for new controls Malware Detect Microsoft Teams - Call Queues ATP SIEM Integration And the "Privileged access management in Office 365" rolling out now. ATP SIEM integration is pretty big in that, a few of my clients are looking to have a consolidated place to get their reporting. Microsoft Teams - Call Queues is, for now, a port of existing Sky...

Here is an announcement from MSFT regarding file template management. Just checked my tenant and I do not see it yet so cannot give a firsthand experience. But going through the blog, it looks like the "Edit New menu" and "Add template" are new. With this, it is possible to add document templates to SharePoint document library content types. It will be interesting to see if this is available for both the classic site and modern site (library)? The menu dropdown is slightly different between them. While the title and description include "manage" in it, without a centrally managed deployment support (to all of the sites), the management part kind of weakens. I would think, from what I see in the screenshot, that a site owner will be able to create a template and upload. That could be an interesting governance experience. Now, what about ODFB? Each user's personal experience in their ODFB will differ from that of their experience in their te...

Privileged access management in Office 365, would be a pretty good feature for that organization needing to meet compliance requirements. Currently, I am helping a client to understand the security possibility in O365 so they can implement and enable secure sharing through ODFB. This new capability, when available, will basically bring a process/feature used by MSFT in their Office 365 service maintenance management. One can control access to the tenant by those with admin privileges. No more privileged users can log in and administer the services without an oversight. This feature creates a workflow, requiring approvals and expires the access after an interval of time. Everything is audited so compliance team is happy as well. Read more: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Security-Privacy-and-Compliance/Announcing-preview-of-privileged-access-management-in-Office-365/ba-p/183743

Some Office 365 features that are in dev/testing cycle as of 9/2/2018 that are interesting and quite often discussed with clients: Rich Yammer feeds in SharePoint New web part to add a fully functional native Yammer feed to any modern SharePoint site. Advanced anti-spoofing protection for external domains in Office 365 Extending coverage of Advanced Anti-spoofing protection for external domains in Office 365 and additional checks for stricter DMARC enforcement Microsoft Bookings - mobile app read-only mode Users with an Office 365 license who have been added to a booking calendar but are not the Bookings calendar admin can now use the Bookings mobile app in read-only mode to see their bookings. (For some reason, bookings have not picked up. I thought this would be helpful to every organization. Maybe we are not educating properly?) Microsoft Secure Score support for new controls Secure Score will add new controls to support Microsoft Cloud App Security and Azure...