Password spray attacks on accounts have increased rapidly in recent months. As a result, the security risks for accounts that do not use MFA for authentication have increased significantly. Microsoft works in the past on different ways to enable MFA for all users they work with Azure and Microsoft 365. One first try was the activation of security defaults, but this can be deactivated by user.
Based on this development and for other reason Microsoft announced the enforcement for Mutlifactor authentication for all sign-in/access to the Azure Portal. This announcement was a little suprise and bringe some challenges to organization espesically when we take a look at service principals and break glass accounts. Don´t get me wrong, it is mandatory to enable MFA for all users they access your tenant and have a valid and regulary reviewed Conditional Access policy in place. But for some special accounts this was not the focus or recommended. In this article I will explain how Microsoft rollouts this enforcement which steps you have to proof and how you can ensure that you are not affected or prepared for the upcoming changes.
Our 4th edition of the Cloud Identity Summit 2023 is over and it was a blast to meet all this great speaker and the Identity Community this year virtual and in-person in Koblenz.
This year we were kindly provided with the location by the Debeka Innovation Center (DICE) which is located near the University of Koblenz and close to the Moselle. The location is a designed as a open space to enable new thinking and new technologies which is a perfect match for our Cloud Identity Summit.
The 4th edition offered 10 sessions in two parall tracks, divided into Identity Security and Identity Management and it was really a pleasure to see this big identity experience in the different Identity topics on this day live at our conference. The speakers who made the extra journey to the event can certainly be called who as who of the identity scene. Therefore, at this point I would like to thank you explicitly, because without you this event would not have been possible:
Sefallah Tagrerout and Jean-Francois (Jeff) Aprea – Securing your Azure Ad with our Zero Trust Approach!
Jan Vidar Elven – Monitoring and Reporting on Activities and Security in Microsoft Entra Azure AD
Fabian Bader – From (tier) zero to cloud hero: How to pwn Azure AD from on-prem
Kenneth van Sarksum – Implementing and building advanced Microsoft Entra Id Conditional Access scenarios
Christopher Brumm – Walk the walk – explore ways to ensure strong authentication in real life scenarios
Sfefan van der Wiele – Walk the walk – explore ways to ensure strong authentication in real life scenarios
Daniel Krzyczkowski – The future of customer identity with Microsoft Entra
Nicki Borell – Azure AD Identity Governance – What do your users do with their access
Sander Berkouwer and Raymond Comvalius – Just apply the basics in your Azure AD tenant!
Anton Staykov – Seamless cross-tenant application access with Entra Azure AD Cross-Tenant sync
Koblenz is the hometown of Thomas Naunheim therefore we had also recommendations for sightseeing tips, city walks and Restaurants and start to meet the speaker on Wednesday in a Restaurant close to the Rhine and the Deutsche Eck (German Corner). After our great dinner, we made a short city walk to the Deutsche Eck and after this to a final beer for a good preperation for our conference on Thursday.
We started our hybrid conference a little late with a strong focus on the in-person experience and also broadcast the Sessions live to the world via teams.
In my estimation it was a complete success due to four factors:
Which is thanks to the great speakers who share their knowledge with great pleasure
The on-site participants who brought a lot of fun and made the sessions interactive, through their numerous questions
The great help of our team which made sure that the speakers and participants felt comfortable
Our great sponsors (adesso SE and glückkanja-gab AG) without whom this event would not have been possible for many reasons
We hope that the conference meet the expectations from our attendees and will plan for 2024 and we really want your Feedback for good and not so good thinks. The really goal of this conference it´s a conference from the community for the community. So gave us your feedback for a better Cloud Identity Summit in 2024!
Many of my customers move to the cloud in the last recent years. This means for existing environments a start of a journey away from on-prem system going forward to cloud environments. We all know a journey starts with preperation and needs different steps and is always not a good idea to work on all systems together. But on the other hand, same system still exists in there old way and use sometimes old, unsecure protocols for communication and authentication.
To adress this issues Microsoft announce Septemper 2019 in a blog article “Improving security” the disabling of support for Basic authentication for the protocols like EWS, POP, IMAP and Remote Powershell. After the plan the corona crisis came up and Microsote decided to postpone the disabling of the noted protocols.
In September 2021 Microsoft released new information about this in the article “Basic authentication and Exchange Online” including some updated information. Microsoft will disable basic authentication beginning 1st of October 2022 for all protocols except SMTP auth. This means the following protocols will be disabled:
The full event month of September is slowly coming to an end and what better way to end it than with a great Azure conference? I´m really happy to announce that I will speak at the Experts Live Netherlands. The Experts Live Netherlands is one of the biggest Experts Live conferences next to Experts Live Europe and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
After 8 Months of planning the Cloud Identity Summit 2022 is over and I can say it was really a pleasure to help to organize this great Community event from my perspective. Four years ago Thomas Naunheim come up with the Idea to create a event focus on Identity for the Community. We discuss this in our Azure Bonn Orga Team and finally the Cloud Identity Summit was born. At the end of 2019 we plan the first edition for 2020 as a in-person event, but things changed and we changed the format to an virtual event and this also for 2021.
Back in february we start planning for the 3rd edition 2022 and we decided to go back to our original idea to hold it as a in-person event, but with the experience of two virtual events we move it to an hybrid event. Yesterday was our 1st Cloud Identity Summit 2022 as hybrid edition and I can say, I was really exited about it. Why?
I’m excited to announce that we’re kicking off another Azure AMA on Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices session – English Edition. The last session was delivered in German and we get a lots of Feedback to repat this in English. I’m really happy to announce that your wish comes true and Marcel and Patrick was also available for a 2nd session 🙂
Marcel and Patrick are two Azure MVPs and do a lot of work in the AVD community. Marcel is known as the brains behind the WVDAdmin and Project Hydra products, which are services to automate all things Azure Virtual Desktop. Patrick has also been active in the AVD community for many years with great sessions and insights about AVD and is the organizer of AVD TechFest together with Simon Binder.
Added some details about v. 1.6.11.3 which fixes a security issue.
Microsoft released a major update of Azure AD Connect. This major release brings a lots of new features and requirements for the local infrastructure. In this article I will cover the latest information and how you can upgrade to the new release.
The new version 2 of Azure AD Connect was released on 20/07/2021 and bring the product to the version 2.0.3.0 the lastet release of version 1 was 1.6.4.0 1.6.11.3. Microsoft found a security issue in 1.6.4.0 and 2.0.3.0 and updated the Azure AD Connect v2 to 2.0.8.0.
Microsoft released also an update for AAD Connect v1 and brings it to 1.6.11.3. This is for customers who running an older version of Windows Server who can not upgrade to WS 2016 and fixes an security issue in 1.6.4.0.
Microsoft released the new v. 1.6.4.0 this fixed a bug in the previous release 1.6.2.4, because after upgrade to that release, the Azure AD Connect Health feature was not registered correctly and did not work. When you installed 1.6.2.4 please do a upgrade to the new 1.6.4.0 release.
Microsoft has released a new Version of Azure AD Connect. The new release going a big step forward from 1.5.4.5 to 1.6.2.4 and brings a lots of improvements and changes.
Please note:
This release changes the sync process to the new Azure AD V2 endpoint and is not supported for the German national cloud, the Chinese national cloud and the US government cloud. Please be aware of this notes and only use this version in Global Cloud Tenants or switch back to V1 endpoint, when you install this version in National Cloud environments.
I install the new relase on the weekend for a customer, because of changing the Azure AD Connect server. The new relase allows to import settings from a previous version. The new relase brings a lot of new features:
This release defaults the AADConnect server to the new V2 end point
This release require a full sync after installation
This version changes the synchronization to the new Azure AD V2 endpoint
This release is only supported for Global Cloud user – if you using National cloud environments, please take a look at the MS Docs article for futher details
Due do the covid pandamy, many organizations in Germany are in a challenging phase as many employees need to be given the opportunity to work from home. Many companies have not yet made this option available to their employees, or only to a few. Microsoft has created a new option with Windows Virtual Desktop to give employees the ability to work from anywhere and the clients are always hosted in Azure and accessible via an app or browser.
I am very happy to have received an invitation to the WVD Tech Fest. The first conference only focusing on WVD with three parallel tracks around everything you need to know about Windows Virtual Desktop. The agenda is pretty complete and the organizers Simon Binder and Patrick Köhler are doing a great job. The conference will take place on 25/02/21 and is free. So take a look at the Website, plan your Agenda and grab your Ticket.
Azure Files is one of my favorite topics and due to many WVD projects in the past, I will address the question is Azure Files the optimal WVD profile store solution. And I can say: it depends – but you will learn more in my session on Thursday between 10:50 – 11:20 AM 🙂
Take this oppurtunity to learn more about Windows Virtual Desktop and hopefully this can be a solution for your organization to enable more people to work from anywhere and get everyone safely through these challenging time. I hope to see many of you there 🙂
In the past Thomas Naunheim and I do a lot of architecture and designing prinicple for integrating Azure in company environments. We have the idea to create a Azure Governance Best Practices session in the last couple of months to give the community our insights and best practices for Starting/Integrating Azure environments. The goal is to give you insights, where you can find the best documentations to start with a Cloud journey and which technical Azure features help to bring and hold your environment in an compliant and secure state.
The session contains the following topics:
Cloud Adoption Framework
Well-architecture Framework
Insights about Azure Policies and Azure Security Center
Azure Enterprise Scale architecture
Azure Ops
Identity and Access Management
We are exited to hold the session at the GermanyClouds Meetup on november 26. Did you interested in this topics or you are in the beginning or implementig phase, join us. We will happy to see you there and get your questions.
