One of my goal this year was to work more and more with the Microsoft security solutions and got deeper into the different services and possibilities. My focus on this is to get a better understanding how we can secure our Hybrid Cloud environment with the different Microsoft defender products.
Category Archives: Azure
Speaking at Cloud Brew 2022 about Azure Arc
After many hybrid events in the last few years I really like to get back to in-person or hybrid events to see the community live at the events and discuss and learn from each other about different projects and meet some new people.
About the Cloud Brew
One of my favorite conference in 2019 was the Cloud Brew in Belgium, it was a great conference because of different things:
- Great list of speakers and sessions
- Deep dive technical sessions
- Big community from around europe
- One of the biggest Azure related conference in belgium
- Great place in the beautiful former brewery Lamot
The Cloud Brew 2022 will take place from 18/11/ – 19/11/2022 in Lamot, Mechelen in Belgium. There are some free seats available.
About my session
Continue reading Speaking at Cloud Brew 2022 about Azure Arc
My favorite Microsoft Ignite 2022 Fall Highlights
After the pandemic beguns Microsoft switched the both big conference Microsoft Build and Microsoft Ignite to virtual only events. The Ignite was two times a year in 2020 and 2021. For 2022 it was long time not clear will it go back to an in-person event or still stay as a virtual event.
The Microsoft Ignite 2022 has start 2 hours ago as an hybrid event delivered from Seattle with 6 Spotlight events around the globe and delivered as before virtually. I’m a little disappointed because a lot of the content is pre-recorded and even great speakers like Donovan Brown don’t hold their sessions live in Seattle but are only shown there virtually as well.
In this article I will share the important announcements from my perspective from the Microsoft Ignite 2022. Most of you know me as an Azure Governance, (Hybrid) Infrastructure and Security guy, so please forgive me for focusing on these things.
Continue reading My favorite Microsoft Ignite 2022 Fall Highlights
Azure Firewall Basic is available as Public preview
Microsoft announces with the Azure Firewall Standard and Premium two new Firewall Services available as PaaS solution what are a great benefit to classic Firewall deployments, because of native Autoscaling Features, no need for VM Management and more. Unfortunately the price was to high for SMBs, with 900€ for the Standard and over 1200€ for the Premium Edition. A frequently requested Features, was a cheaper variant aimed at small and medium businesses.
This wish has been answered and is now available in the form of the Azure Firewall Basic edition. The Azure Firewall Basic (AzFw Basic) is available as public preview and the planned subscription must first be prepared before the deployment can begin with some Powershell commands. This article will guide you through the setup process for a Hub and Spoke Network and the main difference between the three Azure Firewall editions.
Azure Firewall edition comparison
Microsoft already introduced the Azure Firewall as Standard Edition in 2018 and expanded it with numerous updates in 2019. The Firewall Manager followed at the end of 2019 to manage various Azure firewalls under one roof. Mid of 2021 Microsoft announced the Azure Firewall Premium edition and extend the capabilities compared to the standard edition by the following features: TLS Inspetion, IDPS, Web categories and URL Filerting.
The acceptance of the firewall has been high so far due to the numerous features and the fact that the firewall is provided as a PaaS solution. As an SMB solution, the prices called are too high and that is where the Basic Edition is now trying to attract attention.
The following table list the difference between the edition. Please note the Maximum throughput between the different edition. Azure Basic Firewall is limited at time of article of 2 VMs under the hood and a maximum troughput of 250 (maybe increase to GA).
Continue reading Azure Firewall Basic is available as Public preview
Microsoft will disable Legacy Authentication 1st of October 2022 – What this means and what you have to do
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:
- Exchange Web Services (EWS)
- Exchange ActiveSync (EAS)
- POP
- IMAP,
- Remote PowerShell
- MAPI
- RPC
- OAB
Speaking at Experts Live Netherlands 2022
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.
Continue reading Speaking at Experts Live Netherlands 2022
Cloud Identity Summit 2022 Recap
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?
Microsoft announced Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage in preview – for me a big announcement this year
In the past, it was quite quiet about new features and announcements in the Azure IaaS space. Yes, sometimes there were new VM sizes with more cores or more RAM, but in general there were no surprising announcements last year. From my point of view, this has changed with MS Inspire, which is currently underway.
Microsoft announced, surprising from my point of view, a new Disk SKU for Azure VMs called Premium SSD v2 Disk. The last announcement in this area was 2019 with the introduction of Ultra Disks.
Continue reading Microsoft announced Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage in preview – for me a big announcement this year
How I passed the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam SC-100 and why I am now a Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert
Three months ago on 7th of April Microsoft announce a new exam for security architects and introduce again the existing exams SC-200, SC-300, AZ-500 and MS-500. The article contains the new announcement of the new exam SC-100 to become Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect.
I took the Microsoft Cybersecurity Beta exam #SC100 and got yesterday the confirmation that I passed the exam. This is great news for me as it confirms that I am gaining a better and better knowledge in Azure Security topics.
In this article I will introduce the exam, how to get the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert award and which materials I used to prepare for the exam.
Continue reading How I passed the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam SC-100 and why I am now a Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert
Azure AMA – Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices #AVD with Marcel Meurer and Patrick Koehler – English Edition
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.
Azure AMA – Azure Virtual Desktop Best Practices will take place live on Youtube on March 18, 2022 between 1:30 – 2:30 PM CET. You can register for this event via our Azure Bonn page. Please note that this is a live AMA session and we would love for you to join us live and bring your questions to the session. If you don’t have time this time, please use our Microsoft forms to submit your questions before the session starts. This session will be held English.