Infrastructure + Security: Noteworthy News (December, 2017-Part 1)

Microsoft on November 21, 2017, announced new services to facilitate your VMware migration to Azure.

• On November 27, 2017, Azure Migrate, a free service, will be broadly available to all Azure customers. Azure Migrate can discover your on-premises VMware-based applications without requiring any changes to your VMware environment.
  
• Integrate VMware workloads with Azure services.
  
• Host VMware infrastructure with VMware virtualization on Azure.

Effective November, 16th.  Azure RIs enable you to reserve Virtual Machines on a one- or three-year term, and provide up to 72% cost savings versus pay-as-you-go prices.

Azure RIs give you price predictability and help improve your budgeting and forecasting. Azure RIs also provide unprecedented flexibility should your business needs change. We’ve made it easy to exchange your RIs and make changes such as region or VM family, and unlike other cloud providers, you can cancel Azure RIs at any time and get a refund.

Stay current with a constantly growing scope of Azure services and features. Learn how to manage and protect your Azure resources efficiently and how to solve common design challenges.

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Pass-through Authentication allows your users to sign in to both on-premises and cloud-based applications using the same passwords. This feature provides your users a better experience – one less password to remember, and reduces IT helpdesk costs because your users are less likely to forget how to sign in. When users sign in using Azure AD, this feature validates users’ passwords directly against your on-premises Active Directory.

Storage Replica may allow you to decommission existing file replication systems such as DFS Replication that were pressed into duty as low-end disaster recovery solutions. While DFS Replication works well over extremely low bandwidth networks, its latency is very high – often measured in hours or days. This is caused by its requirement for files to close and its artificial throttles meant to prevent network congestion. With those design characteristics, the newest and hottest files in a DFS Replication replica are the least likely to replicate. Storage Replica operates below the file level and has none of these restrictions.

Microsoft on November 8, 2017, released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17035 for PC to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring and for those who opted in to Skip Ahead. The new build features an ability to mute a tab that is playing media in Microsoft Edge, an ability to wirelessly share files and URLs to nearby PCs using the Near Share feature, improvements to Windows Update, and more.

Since Windows 10 originally released we have continued to make significant investments to Windows Hello for Business, making it easier to deploy and easier to use, and we are seeing strong momentum with adoption and usage of Windows Hello. As we shared at Ignite 2017 conference, Windows Hello is being used by over 37 million users, and more than 200 commercial customers have started deployments of Windows Hello for Business. As many would expect, Microsoft currently runs the world’s largest production, with over 100,000 users; however, we are just one of many running at scale, the second largest having just reached 25,000 users.

Windows Defender Exploit Guard is a new set of host intrusion prevention capabilities included with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. One of its features, Controlled folder access, stops ransomware in its tracks by preventing unauthorized access to your important files.

Many of the risks associated with ransomware and worm malware can be alleviated through systems design. Referring to our now codified list of vulnerabilities, we know that our solution must:

• Limit the number (and value) of potential targets that an infected machine can contact.
  
• Limit exposure of reusable credentials that grant administrative authorization to potential victim machines.
  
• Prevent infected identities from damaging or destroying data.
  
• Limit unnecessary risk exposure to servers housing data.

Planning and implementing a security strategy to protect a hybrid of on-premises and cloud assets against advanced cybersecurity threats is one of the greatest challenges facing information security organizations today.

Join Lex Thomas as he welcomes back Mark Simos to the show as they discuss how Microsoft has built a robust set of strategies and integrated capabilities to help you solve these challenges so that you can build a better understanding how to build an identity security perimeter around your assets.

On November 10, 2017, a vulnerability called #AVGater was discovered affecting some antivirus products. The vulnerability requires a non-administrator-level account to perform a restore of a quarantined file. Windows Defender Antivirus is not affected by this vulnerability.

Technical Preview Branch releases give you an opportunity to try out new Configuration Manager features in a test environment before they are made generally available. This month’s new preview features include:

• Improvements to the Run Task Sequence step
• The option for user interaction when installing applications as system

The article identifies the KB articles of the security fixes released on November 14, 2017, for SharePoint 2010 Suite, SharePoint 2013 Suite, and SharePoint 2016 Suite.

Microsoft on November 14, 2017, released security updates to provide additional protections against malicious attackers. By default, Windows 10 receives these updates automatically, and for customers running previous versions, Microsoft recommends that they turn on automatic updates as a best practice. More information about this month’s security updates can be found in the Security Update Guide.