Using the Workplace Analytics add-on to Office365 enterprise plans you can gain user behavioural insights and stats to improve productivity, workforce effectiveness and employee engagements. The metrics provide details on […]
Collect information with surveys, quizzes and polls using Microsoft Forms in Office365. It allows for question branching and colours/themes. It also provides charts that help you visualise response data. https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/06/23/microsoft-forms-public-preview-for-office-365-commercial-customers/
How to prevent and detect the Petya ransomware threat infecting Azure Virtual Machines using Azure Security Center. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/petya-ransomware-prevention-detection-in-azure-security-center/
Microsoft Stream now generally available to securely upload, share, manage and view videos within your organisation. Great intelligent features such as Speech-to-text transcribed audio, Face detection and Linked timecodes. https://blogs.office.com/2017/06/20/microsoft-stream-now-available-worldwide-new-intelligent-features-take-enterprise-video-to-new-heights/
Azure Site Recovery now supports managed disks. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/managed-disks-with-azure-site-recovery/
Gartner names Microsoft Azure as a leader in the Cloud IaaS MQ. Why? Azure is a comprehensive and secure Cloud platform across IaaS and PaaS, unparalleled integration with Office 365, […]
New Azure VPN gateways with better performance, a better SLA, the same price as older gateways and 6 times faster. Now offering custom IPsec/IKE policy selection and option to use […]
Storage Service Encryption for Azure Blob and File Storage using Microsoft managed keys stored in Key Vault. Decryption keys are now fully managed by the customer for much better security. […]
Here’s an interesting report from Forrester about how enterprises are embracing Cloud Computing. It’s US focussed but you can understand the business thinking about cloud adoption and how shifting to […]
Azure Security Center now adds Context Alerts to provide more details and create a bigger picture as to what happened at the time of a security alert being triggered. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/azure-security-center-adds-context-alerts-to-aid-threat-investigation/
Azure Backup now offers system state backups for Windows Servers offering a solid DR solution and offering protection for Active Directory, File-Servers and IIS Web servers. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/windows-server-system-state-backup-azure
Azure is now ISO 9001:2015 certified. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/we-re-all-about-the-quality-azure-achieves-iso-9001-2015-certification/
Some useful tips to secure your systems from the WannaCry ransomware and other vulnerabilities by applying some hardening. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/wannacrypt-attacks-guidance-for-azure-customers/
Office365 OneDrive Files On-Demand looks to be a useful addition. Free up storage on your device. https://blogs.office.com/2017/05/11/introducing-onedrive-files-on-demand-and-additional-features-making-it-easier-to-access-and-share-files/
Azure SQL Databases geo-replication now offers auto-failover including connection strings that don’t change – in preview. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/azure-sql-database-now-supports-transparent-geographic-failover-of-multiple-databases-featuring-automatic-activation/
Upto 4TB storage for Premium elastic pools in Azure SQL Databases. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/more-storage-for-premium-elastic-pools-in-azure-sql-database/
Optimisation tips and tricks with R Services on Azure SQL Server and any Machine Learning Services integrated with SQL Server. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/optimization-tips-and-tricks-on-azure-sql-server-for-machine-learning-services/
A new role can be applied to give specific users access to billing information – Billing Reader role. Invoice API is also in preview. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/azure-billing-reader-role-and-preview-of-invoice-api/
The most comprehensive whitepaper I’ve read to date on the technical requirements and solutions that can be implemented for GDPR compliance. Microsoft are taking this seriously and providing the solutions […]
Another great article this time showing how Azure Security Center has detected a bitcoin mining attack after some malware was downloaded. The characterises of the tasks performed by the malware […]