To enable IT admins to better manage the various aspects of Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business services, Microsoft is announcing the new Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center.

Now, there’s an admin center just for calling and messaging.

This new portal will offer a unified experience to manage both Teams and Skype for Business and will also include Call Analytics and the Call Quality Dashboard. Admins can also get end-to-end insights and the ability to manage Teams settings on a user level in this new portal.

Following features are available in this release:

Microsoft Teams messaging policy: Create custom policies for messaging scenarios for your users.

User management: Assign policies and configure your users.

Microsoft Teams guest messaging settings: Control the messaging capabilities for guest accounts in Microsoft Teams.

Federation settings: Manage federation between tenants for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business. (Please note that federation for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business will roll out in stages and this setting might not be visible for you during the initial rollout.)

Audio conferencing: Configure dial-in numbers and settings for Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.

Enhanced anti-spoofing safeguards are rolling out for Office 365.

Microsoft services like OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams are closely guarded by ATP (Advanced Threat Protection). Besides, there are numerous feature updates available in Office 365 threat protection service to address the evolution and advances in the threat landscape. The addition of enhanced Anti-Spoofing capability in Office ATP for protecting against spoofed emails from external domains further strengthens this security framework.

Anti-spoofing in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection

The newest anti-spoof features help protect organizations from external domain spoof.  Office 365 recognizes emails from external domains having proper SPF, DMARC, and DKIM authentication settings as legitimate/authentic and therefore allow them to pass authentication, uninterrupted.

This normal process is however challenged when external domains do not have these settings properly configured. Without enforcement of these settings, domains show a high likelihood of being manipulated and maliciously spoofed, leaving customers vulnerable to phishing or spam attacks. The new external domain anti-spoofing capabilities help detect and block emails from external domains that do not have the following features,

1. Correct authentication configuration
2. An email infrastructure source with an unknown history

How does it work?

A newly enhanced filter in ATP first checks if the email from external domains, passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC test.  If not, the filter thoroughly checks for historical sending patterns of that domain and associated infrastructure. If any suspicious behavior is noted, ATP assumes the sender does not bear a good reputation and as such, proceeds to junk the message.

Also, a feature worth noticing about Anti-spoofing – The filter constantly evolves and enhances itself based on mail flow patterns it observes.  ATP subscribers can access the spoof intelligence report in their Antispam Policy and take necessary actions if required.

What Is EU GDPR? 

The EU GDPR is a law designed to protect and empower residents of the EU by guiding business usage of personal data. In essence, it is reshaping the way corporations handle personal data by controlling its collection, use, and storage. It will replace the regulations and frameworks of the existing 20-year-old directive (95/46/EC).

Who Is the GDPR Protecting and Empowering? 

The data subject: This is any individual that can be directly or indirectly identified or uniquely singled out in a group of individuals, from any stored data.

What Is the GDPR Protecting? 

Personal data: This is any information relating to an individual, whether in reference to their private, professional, or public life. It includes things like names, photos, email addresses, location data, online identifiers, a person’s bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, work performance details, subscriptions, purchases, tax numbers, education or competencies, locations, usernames and passwords, hobbies, habits, lifestyles, or a person’s computer’s IP address.

Who Is the GDPR Regulating? 

The data controller: This is the person who, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes for, and means of, processing personal data. A data controller is not responsible for the act of processing (this falls to the data processor); they can be defined as the entity that determines motivation, condition, and means of processing.

Generally, the role of the controller is derived from the organization’s functional relation with the individual. That is, a business is the controller for the customer data it processes in relation to its sales, and an employer is the controller for the employee data they process in connection with the employment relationship.

Who Else Is the GDPR Regulating? 

Data processors: This is the person who processes personal data on behalf of the controller. Typical processors are IT service providers (including hosting providers) and payroll administrators. The processor is required to process the personal data in accordance with the controller’s instructions and take adequate measures to protect the personal data. The GDPR does not allow data processors to use the personal data for other purposes beyond providing the services requested by the controller.

What Does the GDPR Consider “Processing?” 

Processing refers to any operation or set of operations performed upon personal data, whether or not by automatic means—such as collection, recording, organization, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking, erasure, or destruction. Processing must be fair and lawful, although transparency is significantly strengthened. The processor may not use the personal data for their own purposes.

What Rights Do the Data Subjects Have? 

Under the GDPR, data subjects can request the following:

• To be informed about the data processing
• To consent to the processing of their personal data (opt in) or object to the processing of their personal data (opt out)
• To obtain their personal data in a structured and commonly used format in order to transfer that data, in certain circumstances, to another controller (data portability)
• To not be subject to fully automated data processing or profiling
• To know what data is processed (right of access)
• To correct where any data is incorrect
• To have data erased under certain circumstances, for example, where the retention period has lapsed or where consent for the processing has been withdrawn (referred to commonly as the “right to be forgotten”) and to register a complaint with the supervisory authority

Other Key Elements to Consider in Preparing for GDPR

We’re not done yet. There are four more important elements to consider with GDPR as you become ready.

1) Data Breach Notification

For controllers, GDPR requires that breach notice must be provided, where feasible, within 72 hours of becoming aware of a breach; processors need to provide notice to controllers without undue delay. Any data breaches must be documented.

2) Data Minimization

This requires the level and type of data being processed to be limited to the minimum amount of data necessary. This requires you to ensure that the purpose in which the data is agreed and the purpose in which the data was collected are materially similar. The processors should ensure that individuals’ privacy is considered at the outset of each new processing, product, service, or application, and only minimum amounts of data are processed for the specific purposes collected and processed.

3) Data Pseudonymization

The GDPR defines pseudonymization as “the processing of personal data in such a way that the data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information.” To pseudonymize data, the “additional information” must be “kept separately and subject to technical and organizational measures to ensure non-attribution to an identified or identifiable person.” In other words, it is a strategy designed to enhance protection and privacy for applicable identifying data.

Although similar, anonymization and pseudonymization are two distinct techniques that permit data controllers and processors to use de-identified data. The difference between the two techniques rests on whether the data can be re-identified.

4) Fair Processing of Personal Data

This requires the processing of personal data to be fair and lawful. Generally, only the level and type of data collected should be limited to the minimum amount of data necessary (see data minimization above). There are a number of methods in which the data may be processed, including: express consent (which may be withdrawn at any time), legitimate interest basis (the subject of which legitimacy may be challenged by the data subject), honoring obligations under the agreement with the data subject, or any other legal basis that may apply.

What We Can Do to Help

We know this information can be overwhelming, but taking the proper steps now will save you headaches later. SolarWinds provides products that can help you with getting ready. Our Risk Intelligence software is one of them, providing you with hard data on:

• A business’ quantified financial risk
• Personally identifiable information (PII)
• Protected health information
• Payment information located in storage
• Access permissions for sensitive data

Search your ‘data at rest’ for risk areas and start the data mapping you need to get ready for GDPR.

New features make Office and OneDrive the best place to work on iPad and iPhone

More and more, people around the world are working on the go, changing locations and devices as they create and collaborate with others throughout their day. As they work across their PCs, Macs and mobile devices, they expect an uncompromising experience that is familiar yet optimized for the device they are using.

Microsoft is committed to providing best in class experiences on all devices, and today, we are proud to share with you a set of new Office capabilities across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive on iOS that will delight and make iPad and iPhone users more productive than ever before.

Real-time co-authoring in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on iOS – We live in a world where we’re often collaborating with multiple people in different locations and Office 365 provides the broadest and deepest toolkit for collaboration between individuals, teams, and entire organizations. Using real-time co-authoring, colleagues, friends, and family can contribute to and edit documents simultaneously in the Word, Excel and PowerPoint iOS apps. This allows you to know who else is working with you in a document, see where they’re working, and view changes automatically within seconds. The co-authoring experiences are also available in Office Online and the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the PC and Mac, all made possible by storing your documents in OneDrive or SharePoint.

Drag and drop files anywhere with OneDrive – Sometimes your files can get scattered between different folders or even services and applications. Now it’s easier than ever to organize and rearrange your files. You can drag files in between folders in OneDrive and, if your teammates use SharePoint to work together, you can even drag OneDrive files to a SharePoint site giving them immediate access. On iPad, you can also drag files from other apps, such as iMessage, into your OneDrive and drag files out of your OneDrive to other apps.

Drag and drop content between Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive on iPad – One of the most common and powerful tasks when creating content is pulling in text, photos, graphs, and other objects from different sources. Now you can pull in content with ease on your iPad with drag and drop support in Office and OneDrive. Easily drag and drop objects from OneDrive or from one Office app to another.

OneDrive Files app support – Today we’re also announcing native support for the Files app in iOS 11. OneDrive integration with the Files app allows you to access, upload, edit, and save your content to OneDrive or SharePoint from apps that support Files app integration. You can also tag and favorite your OneDrive and SharePoint files from within the Files app.

OneDrive redesigned to find the files that matter – The OneDrive iOS app has been redesigned from the ground up with a new layout that uses your screen space more efficiently allowing you to find your files faster. It’s easier to scan across file names, see the information that matters to you, and sort files how you want. New metadata is visible in the list view, so you can easily identify new files and files that have been shared.

Universal link support for shared files – Being able to seamlessly share and securely access files is essential for teamwork. Previously when you received a link to a shared file, you would be directed to a browser and prompted to re-authenticate. Today, we are announcing universal link support, which will open the document directly in the Word, Excel, or PowerPoint iOS apps. Further, if you don’t have a supporting application for the file, you’ll be directed to the OneDrive app to preview the file.

Preview 130+ file types in your OneDrive app – You and the people you work with use a variety of different file formats, but when you’re on your mobile device you might not have access to the native applications for those files. Now, the OneDrive iOS app creates crisp thumbnails and supports large previews of over 130 file types, including Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, RAW, 3D objects, and high-precision DICOM images. OneDrive lets you open, view, and share all of your files without leaving the app.

New accessibility features for Word, Excel and PowerPoint on iOS 11
The VoiceOver rotor in iOS improves navigation and the accessibility of content. For example, you can use the built-in rotor on iOS to navigate line-by-line or word-by-word and change the speed at which VoiceOver speaks. The new Office-specific rotors also let people with vision impairments navigate more efficiently in Word across tables and links, slides in PowerPoint, and sheets in Excel.

Users can also leverage larger text options in accessibility settings to modify the text size in the core Office apps. Visit the support pages for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint to learn more.

You can use take advantage of these new capabilities in the coming days by updating the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive apps in the Apple App Store.

Admins can send simulated phishing and attack emails to find security and training weaknesses.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft released a public preview for Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence. On April 17th Microsoft announced that Attack Simulator is now generally available. Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence is available to all Office 365 E5 or Office 365 Threat Intelligence customers.

With Attack Simulator, customers can launch simulated attacks on their end users, determine how end users behave in the event of an attack, and update policies and ensure that appropriate security tools are in place to protect the organization from threats.  The GA of Attack Simulator adds a new HTML editor so realistic looking HTML emails can be sent in simulations of spear-phishing.  Also, two spear-phishing templates are available for immediate use in the spear phishing simulation.

Attack Simulator includes the three attack scenarios from our public preview.

Display Name Spear Phishing Attack: Phishing is the generic term for socially engineered attacks designed to harvest credentials or personally identifiable information (PII). Spear phishing is a subset of this phishing and is more targeted, often aimed at a specific group, individual, or organization.  These attacks are customized and tend to leverage a sender name that generates trust with the recipient.

Password Spray Attack: To prevent bad actors from constantly guessing the passwords of user accounts, often there are account lockout policies.  For example, an account will lockout after a certain number of bad passwords are guessed for a user.  However, if you were to take a single password and try it against every single account in an organization, it would not trigger any lockouts.  The password spray attack leverages commonly used passwords and targets many accounts in an organization with the hope that one of the account holder uses a common password that allows a hacker to enter the account and take control of it.  From this compromised account, a hacker can launch more attacks by assuming the identity of account holder.

Brute Force Password Attack: This type of attack consists of a hacker trying many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker systematically checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found.

This video demonstrates how Attack Simulator can help organizations educate users to become more secure from cyber threats.  With Attack Simulator, admins can train all their end users, and especially those who are attacked most often.  This proactive training is a powerful way to ensure that your organization can prevent the impact from advanced threats.  Over the coming months, more threat simulations will be added to Attack Simulator so organizations can simulate the most prevalent threat types from the modern threat landscape.

Experience the benefits of Attack Simulator for Office 365 Threat Intelligence by beginning an Office 365 E5 trial today.  Also, learn more about how Microsoft leverages threat intelligence and the value of threat intelligence.

The company also ended support for 1607 to users of Windows 10 Home and Pro.

Microsoft finally retired a 2015 version of Windows 10, marking 29 months of support for the untitled feature upgrade, nearly as long a stretch as the time between the releases of Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Windows 10 1511 – Microsoft labels its feature upgrades in a yymm format – received a final set of security patches on April 10.

The retirement date had originally been slated for Oct. 10, 2017, but last November Microsoft extended it an additional six months, albeit only for commercial customers. “To help some early enterprise adopters that are still finishing their transition to Windows as a service, we will be providing a supplemental servicing package for Windows 10, version 1511, for an additional six months, until April 2018,” Michael Niehaus, at the time a director of product marketing for Windows, said in a 2017 post to a company blog.

Customers running Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education were given the support reprieve; those operating lesser SKUs (stock-keeping units), including Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro, had their support curtailed last October.

Earlier this year, Microsoft added six months of support to all versions of Enterprise and Education, raising the support roof from 18 months to 24 for not only 1511, but also for 1607, 1703 and 1709. The less expensive, less expansive, Home and Pro, however, retained the 18-month support timeline.

Also destined for an April 10 retirement party was Windows 10 1607, the mid-2016 feature upgrade that received its last security patches that day on Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. Meanwhile, version 1607 on Enterprise and Education will continue receiving fixes until Oct. 9.

Windows 10’s bifurcated support timelines – 18 months for some SKUs, 24 months for others – complicate what had been an easy-to-understand practice of patching versions for a year and a half. Period.

Microsoft has tried to inform customers of the support due them by reminding them in January’s and February’s cumulative updates that patches end for Enterprise and Education, version 1511. “The additional servicing offer for Windows 10, version 1511 ends on April 10, 2018, and doesn’t extend beyond this date. To continue receiving security and quality updates, Microsoft recommends updating to the latest version of Windows 10,” the March documentation said.

The company has extended the lifespan of other software previously, including the original version of Windows 10, tagged as 1507. In February 2017, it added six weeks to the timetable. Generally, however, Microsoft has been hard-nosed about support deadlines, and for good reason.

“The danger is that customers won’t believe Microsoft will end support when they say [they will],” said Gartner analyst Michael Silver in a 2017 interview. “It would set a bad precedent if organizations think that they can rely on Microsoft to constantly extend [support].”

By hewing to the once-revised deadline for 1511, Microsoft had drawn a line in the sand, showing commercial customers that while it may bend to their demands, it will not break with critical policies, like these, which are foundation to its Windows-as-a-service concept.

Ring Central allows your employees to communicate anywhere, anytime on any device. In the past, Ring Central has not been enforcing licenses for employees that are using the system on mobile devices without a digital line. That is about to change. 

RingCentral Mobile Users FAQ

Why are you now charging for Mobile Users without a digital line?
Mobile Users without a digital line can make and receive calls and have access to many of the same capabilities as users with digital lines. These include RingCentral Glip, RingCentral Meetings, integrations and more. With this advanced functionality, these users have begun using the product the same way they would a digital line.

Consequently, Mobile Users using the system without a digital line will now be considered part of the total licensed users and will be charged based on their account’s current cost per digital line.

Will I be charged for using the Mobile App?
No. Mobile Users with a digital line are not affected, and can continue to use the Mobile App for no additional charge. This change only affects Mobile Only Users without a digital line.

When does this take effect?
Please refer to the email notification for the timing of this change for your account.

What will be the cost?
The cost for each Mobile User without a digital line will be the same as users who have a digital line. If you want to add digital lines for your Mobile Users at no additional cost (excluding taxes and fees), please contact your RingCentral account manager.

What are the benefits to Mobile Users of adding a digital line?
By adding a digital line, the Mobile User will get full access to RingCentral’s softphone (inbound and outbound) and the ability to use a desk phone if needed. If you are interested, please contact your account manager by calling  800-591-7973.

How do I know which Mobile Users without a digital line will be billed at any given time?
System administrators can log into their RingCentral account and see this information under the billing tab. See more details here. If a mobile user without a digital line is inactive or is only used for internal company calls, within a given month, there will be no charge.

Cost $250-$300, if it ever materializes

Now it just needs an E.T. game.

The 10 best features you won’t be able to live without