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Microsoft unboxes Exchange Online certification in bid to push customers off-prem

More support engineers needed to keep the email flowing, it seems

Richard Speed Fri 24 Jun 2022 // 12:18 UTC

Microsoft has added a certification to augment the tired eyes and haunted expressions of Exchange support engineers.
The "Microsoft 365 Certified: Exchange Online Support Engineer Specialty certification" was unveiled yesterday and requires you to pass the "MS-220: Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Online" exam.

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Microsoft postpones shift to New Commerce Experience subscriptions

The whiff of rebellion among Cloud Solution Providers is getting stronger

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 06:47 UTC

Microsoft has indefinitely postponed the date on which its Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) will be required to sell software and services licences on new terms.
Those new terms are delivered under the banner of the New Commerce Experience (NCE). NCE is intended to make perpetual licences a thing of the past and prioritizes fixed-term subscriptions to cloudy products. Paying month-to-month is more expensive than signing up for longer-term deals under NCE, which also packs substantial price rises for many Microsoft products.
Channel-centric analyst firm Canalys unsurprisingly rates NCE as better for Microsoft than for customers or partners.

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Start using Modern Auth now for Exchange Online

Before Microsoft shutters basic logins in a few months

Jeff Burt Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 22:59 UTC

The US government is pushing federal agencies and private corporations to adopt the Modern Authentication method in Exchange Online before Microsoft starts shutting down Basic Authentication from the first day of October.
In an advisory [PDF] this week, Uncle Sam's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) noted that while federal executive civilian branch (FCEB) agencies – which includes such organizations as the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and such departments as Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, and State – are required to make the change, all organizations should make the switch from Basic Authentication.
"Federal agencies should determine their use of Basic Auth and migrate users and applications to Modern Auth," CISA wrote. "After completing the migration to Modern Auth, agencies should block Basic Auth."

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Microsoft gives its partners power to change AD privileges on customer systems – without permission

Somewhat counterintuitively, this is being done to improve security

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Fri 1 Jul 2022 // 06:02 UTC

Microsoft has created a window of time in which its partners can – without permission – create new roles for themselves in customers' Active Directory implementations.
Which sounds bonkers, so let's explain why Microsoft has even entertained the prospect.
To begin, remember that criminals have figured out that attacking IT service providers offers a great way to find many other targets. Evidence of that approach can be found in attacks on ConnectWise, SolarWinds, Kaseya and other vendors that provide software to IT service providers.

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FabricScape: Microsoft warns of vuln in Service Fabric

Not trying to spin this as a Linux security hole, surely?

Richard Speed Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 13:40 UTC

Microsoft is flagging up a security hole in its Service Fabric technology when using containerized Linux workloads, and urged customers to upgrade their clusters to the most recent release.
The flaw is tracked as CVE-2022-30137, an elevation-of-privilege vulnerability in Microsoft's Service Fabric. An attacker would need read/write access to the cluster as well as the ability to execute code within a Linux container granted access to the Service Fabric runtime in order to wreak havoc.
Through a compromised container, for instance, a miscreant could gain control of the resource's host Service Fabric node and potentially the entire cluster.

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PowerShell pusher to log off from Microsoft: Write-Host "Bye bye, Jeffrey Snover"

'If you ever were rooting for somebody, please do him a favor and go tell him'

Richard Speed Wed 29 Jun 2022 // 09:05 UTC

Jeffrey Snover's lengthy and occasionally controversial term at Microsoft is to come to an end this week, as the PowerShell inventor sets off for pastures new after more than two decades at the Windows giant.

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Wi-Fi hotspots and Windows on Arm broken by Microsoft's latest patches

Only way to resolve is a rollback – but update included security fixes

Richard Speed Mon 20 Jun 2022 // 15:30 UTC

Updated Microsoft's latest set of Windows patches are causing problems for users.
Windows 10 and 11 are affected, with both experiencing similar issues (although the latter seems to be suffering a little more).
KB5014697, released on June 14 for Windows 11, addresses a number of issues, but the known issues list has also been growing. Some .NET Framework 3.5 apps might fail to open (if using Windows Communication Foundation or Windows Workflow component) and the Wi-Fi hotspot features appears broken.

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Microsoft promises to tighten access to AI it now deems too risky for some devs

Deep-fake voices, face recognition, emotion, age and gender prediction ... A toolbox of theoretical tech tyranny

Katyanna Quach Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 22:54 UTC

Microsoft has pledged to clamp down on access to AI tools designed to predict emotions, gender, and age from images, and will restrict the usage of its facial recognition and generative audio models in Azure.
The Windows giant made the promise on Tuesday while also sharing its so-called Responsible AI Standard, a document [PDF] in which the US corporation vowed to minimize any harm inflicted by its machine-learning software. This pledge included assurances that the biz will assess the impact of its technologies, document models' data and capabilities, and enforce stricter use guidelines.
This is needed because – and let's just check the notes here – there are apparently not enough laws yet regulating machine-learning technology use. Thus, in the absence of this legislation, Microsoft will just have to force itself to do the right thing.

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Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio: Too edgy for comfort?

And perhaps too heavy, which is a weighty issue for a machine that turns into a tablet

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 21 Jun 2022 // 07:25 UTC

Desktop Tourism My 20-year-old son is an aspiring athlete who spends a lot of time in the gym and thinks nothing of lifting 100 kilograms in various directions. So I was a little surprised when I handed him Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio and he declared it uncomfortably heavy.
At 1.8kg it's certainly not among today's lighter laptops. That matters, because the device's big design selling point is a split along the rear of its screen that lets it sit at an angle that covers the keyboard and places its touch-sensitive surface in a comfortable position for prodding with a pen. The screen can also fold completely flat to allow the laptop to serve as a tablet.
Below is a .GIF to show that all in action.

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Azure issues not adequately fixed for months, complain bug hunters

Redmond kicks off Patch Tuesday with a months-old flaw fix

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Tue 14 Jun 2022 // 13:30 UTC

Updated Two security vendors – Orca Security and Tenable – have accused Microsoft of unnecessarily putting customers' data and cloud environments at risk by taking far too long to fix critical vulnerabilities in Azure.
In a blog published today, Orca Security researcher Tzah Pahima claimed it took Microsoft several months to fully resolve a security flaw in Azure's Synapse Analytics that he discovered in January.
And in a separate blog published on Monday, Tenable CEO Amit Yoran called out Redmond for its lack of response to – and transparency around – two other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by anyone using Azure Synapse.

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