Synchronized Security - Sophos does it best!

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….

Announcement:Microsoft 365 Apps on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

As previously announced, Windows 8 ended support on January 12, 2016 and Microsoft 365 Apps ended support on Windows Server 2012/R2 on January 14, 2020 As innovations continue to be released for Microsoft 365 Apps, we would like to remind our customers that new features in Microsoft 365 Apps may create stability and performance issues when running on older or unsupported operating systems. Note: If your organization is not running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 you can safely disregard this message. In particular, any Microsoft 365 Apps updated to version 2005 or later will result in functionality and stability issues for Office applications due to innovations that are not compatible with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. For Windows 8 devices, in order to remain unaffected while continuing to receive updates to Microsoft 365 Apps, we recommend upgrading to Windows 8.1, or preferably Windows 10. For those devices running Windows Server 2012 we recommend upgrading to Windows Server 2019, or preferably moving to Windows Virtual Desktop solutions. Always-up-to-date information on current system requirements can be found on the Office Resources page, with related timelines available in the Office system requirements matrix. [How does this affect me?] If you are running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 and update Microsoft 365 Apps to version 2005 or later, you will experience functionality and stability issues in your Office applications due to innovations that are not compatible with those operating systems. [What do I need to do to prepare for this change?] If any of your users are running Windows 8, we recommend upgrading to Windows 8.1, or preferably Windows 10 prior to updating to a version of Microsoft 365 Apps version 2005 or beyond. For devices configured for Office auto-update, you may also choose to temporarily disable automatic updates until you are able to upgrade Windows. In order to better understand whether your organization will be affected by this change, and whether you need to migrate users, the System Center Configuration Manager (Current Branch) Computers with a specific operating system report allows you to identify computers which may be running versions of Office which need operating system updates.

How to Build (automated, no code) Chatbots with Microsoft Power Virtual Agents

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 

New Feature: Microsoft Teams room management within Teams Admin Center

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

• The roll out will begin in mid-June 2020 and be complete by the end of June.

How this will affect your organization

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.

What you need to do to prepare

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.

• Plan Microsoft Teams rooms
• Manage your devices in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Updates | May 2020 and Beyond

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:

• Expanded view of participants from 4 to 9 of the most recently active.  
• Raise Hand feature allows you to get the attention of others in a meeting. 
• New pre-join meeting experience lets you dial in your settings and background effects prior to joining a meeting. 
• Pop-out windows for meetings, chats, and apps coming soon to Teams.  
• Microsoft Lists brings the power of lists and related workflow automation into Teams as an integrated app experience.  
• Developer and admin experiences get better with the Visual Studio extension for Microsoft Teams and simplified publishing flow from Power Apps into Microsoft Teams.

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

Sophos EDR 3.0 Overview PowerPoint Presentation

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

Sophos Central How-To: Getting Started With Intercept X and Endpoint Advanced

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

Sophos Email Encryption

Message encryption from Sophos Email provides an easy-to-use push-based email encryption service. Converting a standard email into one with encrypted attachments - sent directly to the recipient’s inbox.

Sophos Email Tour

Sophos Email is a cloud-based secure email gateway. Built to integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange, Office 365 and Google Apps and more email servers and services it’s engineered to keep businesses safe from all email threats, simply stopping spam, phishing, malware and data loss and keep people communicating and productive. Learn more at www.sophos.com/email

How to configure Sophos Email for Office 365

This section describes how to set up Sophos Email for Office 365.

You need to:

1. Add your domain and verify ownership.
2. Add mailboxes to Sophos Email.
3. Bypass Exchange Online Protection in Office 365.
4. Restrict delivery to Sophos IP addresses.
5. Configure a Secure connector between Office 365 and Sophos Email.
6. Modify MX records to point to Sophos Email.
7. Test and confirm mail flow.

Click here to go to the documentation!

The Planner app in Teams will be renamed with an updated experience powered by Planner and To Do

The Planner app in Teams will become the Tasks app. Users will now be able see their individual tasks and team tasks in a single app. We’re also introducing both a list view and a new mobile tasks experience within the Teams app for mobile devices. The Planner app will be renamed after the rollout is complete, as described below.

We will begin roll-out in May or June and expect to be complete by mid-July.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 57213

[How does this affect me?]

Users will see personal tasks powered by To Do (which also powers Outlook tasks) and team tasks powered by Planner. Existing Planner tabs will behave the same as they do today but will show an additional list view. Users will be able to add new Tasks tabs to the channels in teams they belong to. Users can also access the Tasks app in the same ways they previously accessed the Planner app.

Renaming the Planner app in Teams to Tasks and enabling a mobile experience in Teams 

We’re planning to rename the Planner app to Tasks. The new Tasks experience will contain individual tasks and team and channel tasks, similar to how Files encompasses a user's personal files in their own OneDrive for Business as well as their team and channel files.  We’ll make this adjustment in two steps. 

Once we’ve made the new tasks experience broadly available to all public cloud organizations, we’ll enable the Tasks in Teams mobile experience and complete a logo update and an interim rename of the Planner app. Its interim name will be Tasks by Planner and To Do. This will help ensure the app can be found when searching for Planner while adding a tab or searching for the app in the app catalog.

A few months after the interim name change, the app name on desktop will be shortened to Tasks. 

This name change applies only to the Planner app in Teams. All other Planner clients and To Do clients will keep their existing names, and users can continue to use those clients to manage tasks just as they do today. 

The upgrade will also include task publishing functionality.

Note - Government tenants will see the name change when it rolls out but will not see the additional user experience changes until a later date. We will communicate via Message center once these are available.

[What do I need to do to prepare for this change?] 

Your organization’s internal training or documentation may need to be updated to reflect the name change and updated experience. 

Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium

(formerly Microsoft 365 Business)

• Stay up to date with the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.
• Connect with customers and coworkers using Outlook, Exchange, and Teams.
• Manage your files from anywhere with 1 TB of cloud storage on OneDrive per user.
• Defend your business against advanced cyberthreats with sophisticated phishing and ransomware protection.
• Control access to sensitive information using encryption to help keep data from being accidentally shared.
• Secure devices that connect to your data and help keep iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac devices safe and up to date.

Compatible with Windows 10 Pro. Some management features are not supported in Windows Home. All languages included.

The reason I posted the article is to address one of the features of this license. You are given upgrade rights for previous versions of Windows with this subscription but it has to be a pro version. So if you have a PC with Windows 10 (Home) on it, it does not qualify for the upgrade with this license.

Customers who wish to run Microsoft 365 Business Premium in their organization must be running Windows 10 Pro* on their desktops in order for the service to manage their PCs.
*Windows 10 Pro upgrade rights are included with Microsoft 365 Business Premium if the machines are presently running Windows 7 Pro or 8.1 Pro.

Changes to Microsoft’s O365 Naming Licensing

Microsoft’s Licensing has always been a bit confusing but recent changes in their naming has just added more confusion into the mix!

Hopefully, I can shed some light on the new changes and make this a little easier to understand… The chart below should be a good start.

Old Product Name	New Product Name	Notes
Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials	Microsoft 365 Business Basic	Entry level Business Hosted Email that also includes access to Teams, Web versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote (plus Access and Publisher for PC only), 1TB Storage through OneDrive, SharePoint
Microsoft Office 365 Business	Microsoft 365 Apps for Business	No Hosted Email with this one but does include the whole Office suite for your desktop computer and mobile devices (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher and Access) and also includes access to Teams, Web versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote (plus Access and Publisher for PC only), 1TB Storage through OneDrive, SharePoint
Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium	Microsoft 365 Business Standard	Combine the previous two products and you have this one. Hosted Email, Desktop Suite, and the rest of the Online Apps
Microsoft 365 Business	Microsoft 365 Business Premium	Microsoft 365 Business Premium combines all the features included in Office 365 Business Premium with Windows 10, and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Hopefully this will help you understand the products a little better in the Microsoft Office 365 Business Product Line. If you have questions please don’t hesitate reaching out to me at: bob@bobstechtalk.com.

New Start

It has been awhile since my last posting with all the daily commitments that draw upon our resources. So… I am going to look at some of the things that we are doing for our customers to ease their ability to support their customers and still keep their companies running as well as some of the new ways that people are using to communicate with each other as we keep our distance during this trying time.

One of the wonderful things that a lot of our clients found out when this lockdown started was that if they subscribed to our PAconnect Security Suite products they already had the rudimentary products available to them to keep connected to their office remotely. Part of this package is LogMeInPro which we use to help us support you but alternately it also gives you direct access to your office desktop machines from the safety of your home office.

If you are subscribed and you want help to activate your connection, please contact us to help you do this. If not, and you think this is something that you would like to implement, we can set this up for you so that it is implemented securely.

Call us at 724-838-7526 or email us at support@paconnect.com.

Thank you.

MyAnalytics

Microsoft is continuing to expand upon its BI Power technology by using this technology to track and report on your productivity. Called MyAnalytics, this report provides information based upon how you are using Outlook. Obviously, the first requirement is that you are using Outlook to be able to collect information about how you are using it, ha ha.

If you are like me and you dump everything into Outlook to manage your busy lifestyle, then all sorts of things start popping up showing you how you are using your time. It also pulls information from Teams and reports on the audio and visual conversations that you have there as well.

You’ll find this report by looking under more apps in your Office 365 dashboard. If you are an active Outlook/teams user, the analytics that are provided can be very enlightening. Take a quick look at the video that is available on the home screen to give you a quick idea of what this application is supposed to help you with.

Senior Care Providers Scramble After $14M Ransomware Attack Hits Tech Firm VCPI

Heath firms are seeing themselves as the big-ticket target more and more these days. A week ago, we saw a report of another Health Care Provider being attacked with ransomware for the tune of $14M in BitCoin to unlock their encrypted data.

For more information Click Here to see the article. But if this scares you, and it should, call us to see if you are protected from this sort of attack, and if not how we can help you stave off this type of attack!

WWW – Wood Wide Web!

Yes, Wood! This play on words for the Fungal Network that lives and thrives in a forest floor that performs quite similarly to what we perceive of the human World Wide Web by sharing resources between the root systems of the trees in the forest. The fungal forest provides an integral part of the thriving environment of trees and provides a much needed symbiosis between all the organisms living in the forest. A healthy forests starts beneath our feet, beyond our visual world where we can see and learn from this marvel.

To learn more, Google Wood Wide Web or look up the Wikipedia article.

Interesting Phish Attempt happened today…

I had a call on my home phone today from “Amazon fraud department” stating that there was an attempt to purchase computer and some other items from El Salvador and had gotten on Mike account and wanted to block the order. While initially it sounded pretty good in that I’m glad the fraud department was on it to but, the moment they wanted to gain access to my computer using TeamViewer I knew this had to be a scam. They had no reason to actually access my machine directly even if they wanted to guide me through changing my password and/or login information. So, just be careful of individuals calling your home and asking for any type of direct access to your computer right off the cuff as soon as they begin talking to you.

Remember, this is social engineering, so they’re very good at what they do to make you feel as though they are doing you a favor and are trying to help you out. Don’t fall for it!

Eclipse Manager – Simple Microsoft Project Management

If you are not ready to swing into the Microsoft’s Project Management Program but still want to be able to track project tasks and time spent on them, you may want to take a quick look at their new Eclipse Manager Product. There are two versions, the free one really is just a slight step above Microsoft Planner but the Pro version adds several additional key components to make it really functional.

For just $1.99 per month you can upgrade the free version of Eclipse Manager and add the following functions:

• Track Costs - Cost tracking lets you assign values against tasks, great for projects where you will invoice.
• Offline Usage - Eclipse Core requires a constant internet connection to sync the files to the server. With Eclipse Pro you can take your computer offline and then sync the tasks when you reconnect.
• Export to Excel - Eclipse Pro lets you export your projects to Excel.
• Review - With the Review page you get to see the bigger picture view of your projects and tasks.
• Access to Reports - Eclipse Pro allows you to use the reports page to see insights into your past and current progress.

So if you are interested in finding out more about these products, you can access the Guide Page and look through the different functions by going to: http://www.eclipsemanager.com/guide

If you don't see it in your Windows 10 Start Screen, try going to the site and sign up for it and down load the app. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/top-free/apps/pc?category=Business&cid=eclipsewebsite

 

Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams

They come in many forms, but they are getting more and more sophisticated and taking companies and individuals for larger amounts of money. Naked Security wrote a report yesterday about the City of Ocala, Florida that wrote out a check after it received fraudulent new payment information that was processed into their system. The scammers used all of the right processes and until the Construction Company called the city about the payment.

Naked Security has a great posting on the many ways that this is happening and what to look for to protect yourself and your organization from this happening to you: Click Here