Tag Archives: Microsoft

Allgemein, Azure Active Directory, Cloud, Community, Events, Microsoft

Cloud Identity Summit 2023 Recap

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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!

Allgemein, Azure Security, Cloud, Defender for Cloud, Microsoft, Zero Trust

Microsoft Defender for CSPM is GA – Information about activation, billing and new pricing information

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Microsoft announced with Defender for Cloud Security Posture Management a new plan in the Defender for Cloud product family which focuses on a central view on the security posture of the customer.

In this article I will give a overview about which topics Defender for CSPM covers, how it will be enabled and how the pricing is actual working which holds some suprises if Defender for Servers is already in use.

Continue reading Microsoft Defender for CSPM is GA – Information about activation, billing and new pricing information →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure Network, Azure Security, Cloud, Microsoft, Zero Trust

Azure Firewall Basic SKU is now GA

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Microsoft announces with the Azure Firewall Standard and Premium two native 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 last year October with the Azure Firewall Basic edition (public preview). The Azure Firewall Basic (AzFw Basic) has leaved the Public Preview and are now GA. The planned subscription must first be prepared before the deployment can begin with some Powershell commands.

Now Azure offers three different Azure Firewall solutions. The following table list the different SKUs and the price for using in West Europe (03/2023).

Microsoft has made some changes to deploy the Firewall Basic compared to the Firewall Standard and Premium SKU for better Service avalability. This article will give you a short overview of this changes.

Continue reading Azure Firewall Basic SKU is now GA →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure Security, Cloud, Microsoft, Zero Trust

How I successfully passed the MS Defender for Cloud Ninja training and how the security community helped me

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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.

About the Microsoft Security Community

Continue reading How I successfully passed the MS Defender for Cloud Ninja training and how the security community helped me →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure Arc, Azure Automanage, Azure Network, Azure Security, Azure VM, Cloud, Microsoft

My favorite Microsoft Ignite 2022 Fall Highlights

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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 →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure Active Directory, Azure Security, Cloud, Microsoft

Microsoft will disable Legacy Authentication 1st of October 2022 – What this means and what you have to do

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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
Continue reading Microsoft will disable Legacy Authentication 1st of October 2022 – What this means and what you have to do →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure Active Directory, Azure Security, Cloud, Community, Events, Microsoft

Cloud Identity Summit 2022 Recap

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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?

CIS 2022 – Conference view
Continue reading Cloud Identity Summit 2022 Recap →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure VM, Cloud, Microsoft, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022

Microsoft announced Azure Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage in preview – for me a big announcement this year

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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 →
Allgemein, Azure, Azure Network, Azure Security, Azure Sentinel, Certifications, Cloud, Microsoft

How I passed the Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam SC-100 and why I am now a Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect Expert

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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 →
Allgemein, Community, Microsoft, MVP

Microsoft MVP for Azure 2022-2023

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Every year on July 1, the MVP renewal process takes place and Microsoft notifies us on that day if we will be awarded another year as an MVP based on our contributions. So most of the MVPs look into their inboxes and wait for the mail notification. Some colleagues call the day the F5 day, because second by second the inbox is updated 🙂

This year there were some technical difficulties and so late on July 1 there was an announcement that the MVP announcement would be delayed until July 5. A murmur went through the internet. 🙂

But late Tuesday I got to rejoice again, because that’s when the mail came and I was once again recognized as a Microsoft MPV in the Azure category for 2022-2023. It’s a great award, and I’m very pleased to have received this special award for the fourth year in a row.

Continue reading Microsoft MVP for Azure 2022-2023 →