Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 12:31PM We are seeing quite a few more Phishing Scams the past couple of months and some of them are really hard to tell if they are the real thing or just another SCAM!
This article in Naked Security from Sophos approaches this discussion from a different direction because it comes from some of the Phish Threat creators over at Sophos. Take a look!
Monday, January 4, 2021 at 5:24AM I posted an article Last Thursday discussing a site that provides discounted audio books has an alternative to audible.com. The site that introduced me to Chirp.com Is one that my wife loves called BookBub. This site provides discounted Ebooks for most of the major ebook readers. You can read these on Kindles, IPad, Kobo, your smart phone, in other words any kind of eReader device. you will see recommendations for all kinds of books from up to the minute popular artists and blogs that you might find very interesting. There are so many different things available at the site it is well worth your taking a moment to take a walk.
Books Friday, January 1, 2021 at 5:03AM ioSafe is one of our vendors that we use for onsite safe storage and one of their techs posted a great article on hard drive life expectancies for both spinning (HDD) and solid state (SSD) drives. It is worth a few minutes to learn what you can expect from each kind of drive and how the environment and use of the drive will effect the drive's life expenctancy.
Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 5:11AM There are a lot of special deal sites out their for purchasing things on the cheap, but this one I have really begun to enjoy. I am a big audo book listener fan, currently my library over at Audible is over 1500 strong, and this is a new upcomer that also offers an inexpensive method for obtaining your very own audiobook library.
You can find this site at: www.chripbooks.com and begin your seach for bargain basement books to listen to. They have a wide variety that will open up your listening options. They have their own book listening control app for iOS and Android or you can listen to your selection through a browser as well. The app is not as extensive as Audible's but is quite functional.
So, if you are well versed in listening to books or just thinking about trying it out, this is a great way to get started.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 1:55PM We are approaching the end of year and
I cannot believe I have not posted anything since August. Bad Bob!
Well, this will not do at all. So, my new commitment to you is to try to do a lot better as of 1st so that is my New Year's resolution. Expect to see more from this site starting after the 1st of the year.
Happy New Year's Everyone!
Tuesday, August 4, 2020 at 9:40AM Office versions and connectivity to Office 365 services
Hope everyone is well. Please note the bellow communication from Microsoft regarding Office versions that will be supported for connecting to Office 365/Microsoft 365 services. Older versions than Office 2016 will not be blocked, but upgrades are recommended over time.
Starting on October 13, 2020, only these versions of Office will be supported for connecting to Office 365 (and Microsoft 365) services:
Examples of Office 365 services include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.
Important
We won’t take any active measures to block other versions of the Office client, such as Office 2013, from connecting to Office 365 services, but these older clients may encounter performance or reliability issues over time.
After October 13, 2020, ongoing investments to our cloud services will not take into account older Office clients. Over time, these Office clients may encounter performance or reliability issues. Organizations that use these older clients will almost certainly face an increased security risk and may find themselves out of compliance depending upon specific regional or industry requirements.
Therefore, administrators should update older Office clients to versions of Office supported for connecting to Office 365 services.
We recommend that you upgrade older Office clients to a subscription version of the Office client, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. The most up-to-date subscription versions of the Office client are always supported connecting to Office 365 services.
We provide various services to help you upgrade to subscription versions of the Office client. The following list provides some examples of resources that are available:
After October 15, 2020, you must be using at least TLS 1.2 to connect to Office 365 services. For more information, see TLS 1.0 and 1.1 deprecation for Office 365 and Preparing for TLS 1.2 in Office 365 and Office 365 GCC.
There are some changes planned related to the use of Basic Authentication with Exchange Online. For more information, see Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – April 2020 Update.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 5:21AM Microsoft's support for Office 2016 for Mac and Office 2010 will reach their end of support on October 13, 2020. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support, bug fixes, or security updates for Office 2016 for Mac and Office 2010. You will still be able to use these versions of Office, but over time, organizations may face an increase in security risks and compliance issues.
Also, as previously announced, after October 13, 2020, customers will need to be running Microsoft 365 Apps, Office 2019 or Office 2016 to connect to Office 365 services. Microsoft will not take any active measures to block legacy versions of the Office client from connecting to Office 365 services, but these older clients may encounter performance and/or reliability issues over time. For related Office client support timelines, see the Microsoft 365 and Office system requirements matrix.
Key Points:
Because of the changes listed above, we strongly recommend that you upgrade to one of the latest versions of Office as soon as possible:
A key difference between Microsoft 365 Apps and Office 2019 is that Microsoft 365 Apps is updated on a regular basis with new features. Office 2019 has the same set of features that it had when it was released in October 2018. Prior to deploying either version, please check the System requirements for Microsoft 365 and Office as well as the Microsoft 365 and Office system requirements matrix to ensure that the version you choose is supported on the operating system you are using.
In order to identify users on Office 2010 and Office 2013 clients, deploy Microsoft 365 Apps or a supported non-subscription version of Office to those desktops, and ensure that they will have supported access to Office 365 services after October 13, 2020, there are two Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager dashboards (updated as part of version 1902) that you can use:
Additional information:
Monday, July 27, 2020 at 12:12PM MC216749, Stay Informed, Published date: Jun 18, 2020
Updated July 24, 2020: We have updated this post with Additional Information to provide clarity on how to get started with Walkie Talkie.
Walkie Talkie, which provides instant push-to-talk communication, will soon be available in Public Preview on Teams for Android.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 57157.
When this will happen
We will begin the rollout in mid-July and expect to be complete by end of July.
During Public Preview, you need to enable Walkie Talkie using the Teams Admin Center to provide access to people in your organization. Once enabled, Walkie Talkie will become available on the Android app within 48 hours. Walkie Talkie allows users to connect with their team using the same underlying channels they are members of. Only users who connect to Walkie Talkie in a channel become participants and can communicate with each other using push-to-talk.
Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 12:01PM We had several clients call in yesterday telling us that their Outlook application was crashing when it was launched. It appears from Microsoft's post that it was caused by a forced update to the Outlook client. See information provided by Microsoft below:
Title: Users experiencing Outlook connection issues and crashes User Impact: Users may have experienced crashes or may have been unable to access Exchange Online via Outlook.
More info: Users may need to restart their Outlook client for the fix to take effect.
Our analysis indicates that Outlook on the web and mobile clients were unaffected. Users may have been able to leverage those protocols as an alternative means to access email and service features while we remediated this problem.
Affected users would have received an error message that stated: "Outlook couldn't start last time. Safe mode could help you troubleshoot the problem, but some features might not be available in this mode. Do you want to start in Safe Mode?"
Further information on what admins were able to see in event viewer for this crash event could have been found here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/active-investigation-into-outlook-crashing-on-launch-9c59ad4b-813c-432a-afdc-f14717a4528d?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us
Final status: We've confirmed that the issue has been successfully resolved after extended monitoring of our telemetry. If users are continuing to see impact, please restart your Outlook client for the changes to take effect.
Scope of impact: This issue may have potentially affected any of your users attempting to use Outlook.
Start time: Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 11:12 AM (3:12 PM UTC)
End time: Wednesday, July 15, 2020, 6:35 PM (10:35 PM UTC)
Root cause: A recent change to the Outlook client inadvertently resulted in this issue.
Next steps:
We'll publish a post-incident report within five business days.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020 at 12:10PM With all of the changes that have occured in the past 6 months one of the biggest is providing different methods of providing information to our clients and employees. While you may have become a master of using online video conferencing like Zoom and Teams, being able to create presentations that are more on-demand may be something that you want to have available to share.
You have probably dabbled with PowerPoint presentations and while they can be good live making them into on-demand content may be more desirable. A product that I like to use is Camtasia by TechSmith. This product is used by thousands of presenters, trainers and teachers to capture screens, present ideas and automate/capture your presentation.
See Video Overview Below:
Wednesday, July 8, 2020 at 10:59AM Major Update Announcement from Microsoft:
Since the release of SharePoint workflows, Microsoft has evolved workflow orchestration to not only encompass SharePoint, but all the productivity services you use with Microsoft 365 and beyond. With the continued investment in Power Automate as the universal solution to workflow, Microsoft is retiring SharePoint 2010 workflows.
Key Points:
[How this will affect your organization]
If your organization still uses SharePoint 2010 workflows, they will no longer function after November 1st, 2020. SharePoint 2013 workflows will remain supported, although turned off by default for new tenants starting November 1st, 2020. We recommend customers to move to Power Automate or other supported solutions.
[What you need to do to prepare]
You will want to notify your users, workflow developers and site owners. Update your user training and prepare your help desk.
For admins:
Learn more
Thursday, July 2, 2020 at 9:55AM |
Major update: Announcement started |
|
Monday, June 22, 2020 at 9:38AM If you haven't discovered Microsoft Mechanics you really need to create a link to their publications on YouTube. They are full of insightful hints on how to use Microsoft products and might give you a leg up on developing a new program for your company.
In this episode, you will see a brief overview of the changes to the Power Apps application and also how to incorporate it back into your Teams environment. Take a look!
Tuesday, June 16, 2020 at 2:27PM Synchronized Security has been a buzzword for quite a few years now with Sophos in the process is spreading across more of the product line every day. When considering security for your network you need to look at a multi layered approach it is not just one single stop gap between your system and the people trying to penetrate it.
Sophos Provides this in spades. When putting together a plan, your protection begins at the firewall and then centers around your endpoints. The one you consider your endpoint strategy you need to consider all the different things that could come in touch with those devices. So, looking at email protection (both inbound and outbound), direct attacks with trojans and ransomware (Intercept X Advanced) and encryption utilizing all of these products in together will give you the best protection possible.
Take advantage of our in-house experts to help you design the protection that will cover your network the best….
Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 9:03AM |
|
Tuesday, June 2, 2020 at 9:31AM A Microsoft Mechanics episode that I found very interesting discussing Microsoft Power Virtual Agents showing you an example of a finished interactive bot application and then how to build it.
If you are new to Power Virtual Agents, it's Microsoft's newest member of the Power Platform. The Power Platform is Microsoft's family of tools for low-to-zero-code modern app development, process automation, business insights, and now – chatbots. Interested in testing it out for yourself? Go to powervirtualagents.microsoft.com
Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 12:40PM Microsoft Teams Rooms provide a complete meeting experience that brings HD video, audio, and content sharing to meeting spaces of all sizes, from small huddle areas to large conference rooms. With this feature we are enabling easy management of Teams room devices in the Teams Admin Center.
This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 64022.
When this will happen
Admins will be able to see the Microsoft Teams Room devices in Teams Admin Center > Devices > Teams Rooms, with the ability to manage devices remotely.
Some of the remote management activities include: changing device settings, restarting devices, device health monitoring of the room system and peripherals like cameras or microphones. Admins can also view device usage and call quality for meetings in which the device participated.
To enable device management for Microsoft Teams Rooms in Teams Admin Center, admins will need to ensure their Teams room devices are up to date with the latest software provided by Microsoft.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020 at 11:45AM Here is a new posting from Microsoft Mechanics that shows quite a few new Teams updated for May 2020.
Here's what we'll show you:
Learn more about Microsoft Lists at https://aka.ms/MicrosoftLists For a comprehensive roundup of all the new capabilities in Microsoft Teams, check out https://aka.ms/Teams2020Updates
Monday, May 18, 2020 at 10:39AM Our web meeting yesterday provided us with a look at very interesting updates to the Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR license that will be released soon.
The features shown in this video provides a sophisticated management engine for accessing the logged data the is part of the EDR product. It will give you direct access to machines and the ability to create queries that drill into issues, equipment, status of updates and much more. In the hands of IT Administrators this will give them much greater insight into their systems that they are managing for now additional cost.
All of this is availble now through the early access program but will soon be available in the product.
If you have been hesitating jumpiing into Intercept X Advanced with EDR these new features may be just the thing to get you there!
Overview of Live Discover and Live Response
Available in EDR 3.0 (Central Intercept X with EDR License)
Early Access Program (EAP) is open to all customers and trial accounts in Central starting in April
Friday, May 15, 2020 at 9:50AM This is a 12-minute overview for getting started with Intercept X and Endpoint Advanced protection inside Sophos Central. Skip ahead to these sections: 00:00-01:09: Sophos Central overview
