Microsoft’s latest OS is proving more attractive to firms than Windows 8 – particularly among larger businesses.

Businesses are proving far more willing to experiment with Windows 10 than they were with Windows 8.

Six months after Windows 10’s launch nearly one in five firms, 18 percent, appear to be testing the OS, research by professional IT network Spiceworks found. In contrast, at the same point after Windows 8’s release, the OS was only being trialled by just over nine percent of businesses.

The anonymised data on what proportion of firms are using at least one Windows 10 machine was gathered from the millions of IT pros that use its software. Spiceworks says businesses of all sizes use the software to inventory devices connected to their networks.

This faster pace of enterprise adoption is backed up by figures from IT asset management company Samanage, told that 62.4 percent of its enterprise customers have at least one managed PC running Windows 10. These are sizeable businesses, with each of Samanage’s enterprise customers having an average of more than 1,000 seats. Microsoft also claims that 76 percent of its enterprise customers are piloting its new OS.

“Our data shows that IT pros were most excited about the return of the familiar start button experience in Windows 10, which reduces the need for end-user training required for Windows 8,” said Peter Tsai, IT analyst at Spiceworks in his assessment of why the new OS is proving more popular than Windows 8.

“Many IT pros also liked the free upgrade offer via Windows Update, which makes it easy for many to test the new OS. And lastly, they were looking forward to new security features that promise to make Windows 10 a more secure operating system than previous versions.”

Windows 10 is benefiting from a comparison to an unpopular OS, demand for Windows 8 was so weak that analyst firm Canalys warned in 2014 that “Microsoft risks losing momentum unless it does something drastic to turn its Windows business around”.

And while a significant proportion of businesses may be experimenting with Windows 10, it is likely to be some time before a large number move to the OS, as business typically lag behind consumers due to the complexity of managing such upgrades at scale. Of those firms testing Windows 10, about 40 percent have three or more devices running the OS, according to Spiceworks’ data.

Medium and large businesses were the most likely to have at least one Windows 10 machine Spiceworks found – with 31 percent of firms with more than 500 people trialling the OS, compared to 10 percent of companies with 50 employees or fewer.

“We also know from many conversations with IT pros that smaller companies tend to have fewer resources for OS migration, so many SMBs could be holding off on Windows 10 until they have the time and manpower to adequately test the OS for hardware and application compatibility,” said Tsai.

Last year, half of the 500 IT pros surveyed by Spiceworks expressed an interest in adopting Windows 10 inside their business.

Microsoft’s decision to phase out support for Windows 7 and 8 on new PC hardware will also put pressure on businesses not to downgrade new Windows 10 machines to an earlier OS, as has been common in the past in order to standardize corporate hardware.

Microsoft is also reporting rapid adoption of Windows 10 by home users, with more than 200 million devices worldwide running the OS.

The popularity of the OS may, in part, be a result of Microsoft’s tactics to get consumers to upgrade. This aggressive approach includes recently implementing changes that will trigger the free upgrade to Windows 10 to begin automatically installing on many Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs used in homes. Microsoft is making this push as part of its drive to get one billion devices running Windows 10 by 2018.

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A strange bug is affecting many Safari users today, causing crashes on iPhone, iPad and Mac. For many users, simply tapping in the URL bar will cause the browser app to crash completely.  The exact issue causing the crashing has not been locked down, but it appears to be related to Apple’s Safari Suggestions service. It’s a very annoying bug that is affecting a lot of people all of sudden today.

When you type a URL, Apple sends what you type to its servers, returning a response with autocomplete search queries, Top Sites and other info. There appears to be a bug in this server request that is causing Safari to randomly crash. Users are discovering some potential workarounds until Apple fixes the problem properly …

Disabling Safari Suggestions seems to be helping resolve the bug for many people on iOS. On your iPhone or iPad, go into Settings, tap Safari, and toggle off the ‘Safari Suggestions’ switch. This will fix the crashing, obviously its only a temporary fix until Apple sorts its servers out as it will disable the Safari Suggestions functionality.

Another option is to enter Private Browsing mode. In private browsing, by design Safari does not contact the suggestions server for intelligent completion options, so the server is never contacted and the crash never arises.

The bug is affecting users in many countries, but not all. It also depends on the state of your Safari, whether it has certain data cached already. The crash has been seen on iOS 8, iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. The bug could be even more widespread beyond these platforms however. It is pretty crazy flaw that is affecting so many people this morning, with many reports across European iOS customers.

We have contacted Apple about the issue for clarification, but it’s such a serious functional flaw that we expect a fix very shortly. Please note: this is an unrelated incident to the prank site CrashSafari.com.

Update: The Safari crash bug has now been fixed, according to Apple.

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In a change to its longstanding support policy, Microsoft says PCs based on new CPU architectures, including Intel’s Skylake chips, will require Windows 10. A list of preferred systems will support older Windows versions on new hardware, but only for 18 months.

Enterprise customers are still the bulwark of Microsoft’s Windows business, in both the client and server segments.

Historically, those customers have also been among the most conservative, lagging years behind the latest releases of an operating system release. Those practices have been encouraged by Microsoft’s support lifecycle, which offers a generous ten years of support for each Windows release.

Effective today, that policy is changing in a subtle but significant way, with the addition of new hardware requirements for support of pre-Windows 10 releases. The company’s also publishing a preferred list of systems that will receive special attention for updates and support.

Yes, Windows 7 (currently in the Extended support phase) will continue to receive updates until January 14, 2020, and Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 10, 2023. But in a series of “clarifications” to its support policy today, the company announced that support for those older Windows versions will be available only for “previous generations of silicon.”

Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support… Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming “8996” silicon, and AMD’s upcoming “Bristol Ridge” silicon.

The policy will be phased in beginning with systems based on Intel’s new 6th-generation CPUs (code-named Skylake), which debuted a few months ago. New consumer-based Skylake devices must run Windows 10 to be supported.

For enterprise customers that want to buy “future proof” new hardware based on Skylake processors running older Windows versions, Microsoft will publish “a list of specific new Skylake devices we will support to run Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.” That support will run for a period 18 months, until July 17, 2017, after which those enterprise customers will be expected to upgrade to Windows 10.

Examples of systems that will be on the initial release of the list include Dell’s Latitude 12, Latitude 13 7000 Ultrabook, and XPS 13; HP’s EliteBook Folio, EliteBook 1040 G3; and Lenovo’s ThinkPad T460s, X1 Carbon, and P70 models.

The list will continue to be updated, Microsoft says.

Any machine that earns a place on the elite enterprise support list will get very special treatment indeed, with the idea being to reassure corporate customers that these models are especially likely to perform well on Windows 10 in the new era of continuous updates:

For the listed systems, along with our OEM partners, we will perform special testing to help future proof customers’ investments, ensure regular validation of Windows Updates with the intent of reducing potential regressions including security concerns, and ensure all drivers will be on Windows Update with published BIOS/UEFI upgrading tools, which will help unlock the security and power management benefits of Windows 10 once the systems are upgraded.

These models also get special treatment for enterprises that are still planning their Windows 10 migration, with an 18-month grace period where the older OS versions are fully supported.

Through July 17, 2017, Skylake devices on the supported list will also be supported with Windows 7 and 8.1. During the 18-month support period, these systems should be upgraded to Windows 10 to continue receiving support after the period ends. After July 2017, the most critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for these configurations, and will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7/8.1 platform on other devices.

Of course, enterprise customers who want to stick with earlier Windows versions beyond that mid-2017 deadline have lots and lots of options, based on current generations of Intel processors such as the Broadwell and Haswell lines. Those systems, which are based on what Microsoft calls “downlevel silicon,” will continue to be fully supported for pre-Windows 10 operating systems.

In today’s blog post, Microsoft says it’s seeing “unprecedented demand from our enterprise customers” in Windows 10. Enterprise customers are especially interested in new Windows 10 security features like Credential Guard, which uses hardware virtualization to safeguard credentials from attack.

Windows 8-era enhancements like Secure Boot, which protects systems from being compromised by rootkits and bootkits, also require new hardware.

Not surprisingly, today’s announcement contains the usual cheery statements from Microsoft’s three biggest hardware partners: Dell, HP, and Lenovo. All three companies compete aggressively in the low-margin consumer market, where virtually all new systems will run Windows 10. But enterprises will pay premium prices for the improvements in battery life and security in Skylake-based mobile systems, making this the most attractive segment to target.

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Manual Setup

Step 3

Then proceed to “VPN“. You may need to scroll down to find it.

Step 4

Tap on “Add VPN Configuration…“.

Step 5

Tap on “Type“.

Step 6

Select “PPTP” by tapping on it.

Step 7

“Description” is the name of the connection, can be any as you like, we recommend StrongVPN.
Fill the “Server“, “Account” and “Password” fields.
“Server” is your server address. It is not remote.sjtechies.com, that is just an example.
“Account” and “Password”. Account is neither Test\jsmith nor your email.
“Encryption Level” option must be set to “Auto“. “Send All Traffic” should be “ON“.
When the fields are filled up correctly, tap “Done“.

Step 8

It will give you the warning about using the PPTP connection, which has some downsides.
Tap Save button. (Hint: If you want stronger encryption just use L2TP.)

Step 9

Now connect by tapping the switch button to the right of VPN Status.
(If you have more than one VPN configuration listed, the one with a check next to it will be connected. You can tap on a vpn configuration name to select it, or tap on the ‘i’ to the right of the name if you need to update the settings.)

Step 10

It will show you “Connecting…” status, wait while it connects.
When the VPN connection is established the status will be “Connected“. Also notice the “VPN” badge on the top bar.

Step 11

To check if your IP address is changed successfully open the Safari browser and proceed to http://strongvpn.com/.

Have questions?

Get help from IT Experts/Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner
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South Jersey Techies, LLC is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

To read this article in its entirety click here.

Microsoft is rolling out a host of new email security features for Office 365 later this quarter, as it looks to thwart hackers and criminals.

‘Insider spoofing’ or faking the CEO’s email address to trick the CFO into transferring millions to criminal bank accounts is big business. Now Microsoft is using big data and reputation filters to try and squish the threat.

According to the FBI, between October 2013 and August 2015, 7,066 US businesses have fallen prey to ‘business email compromise’, netting criminals an estimated $747m.

Non-US victims lost a further $51m over the period, with the FBI estimating a 270 percent increase in identified victims since January 2015, when it first released figures about the threat category.

As Microsoft notes, when a corporate email domain is spoofed, it makes it hard for existing filters to identify the bogus email as malicious.

However, Microsoft reckons it has achieved a 500 percent improvement in counterfeit detection using a blend of big data, strong authentication checks, and reputation filters in Exchange Online Protection for Office 365.

It’s also rolling out new phishing and trust notifications to indicate whether an email is from a known sender or if a message is from an untrusted source, and therefore could be a phishing email.

The company is also promising a faster email experience as it vets attachments for malware and new tools to auto-correct messages that are mis-classified as spam. The aim is to boost defences without impairing end-user productivity.

Malicious email attachments remain a popular way for attackers to gain a foothold in an organization and, as RSA’s disastrous SecurID breach in 2011 showed, a little social engineering can go a long way to ensuring someone opens it.

Microsoft’s new attachment scanner, called Dynamic Delivery of Safe Attachments, looks to reduce delays as it checks attachments for potential threats.

Currently it captures suspicious looking attachments in a sandbox with a ‘detonation chamber’ where it analyses it for malware in a process takes five to seven minutes.

Microsoft hasn’t figured out a faster way to analyse the attachment, but instead of holding up the email as it conducts the scan, it will send the body of the email with a placeholder attachment. If the attachment is deemed safe, it will replace the placeholder and if not, the admin can filter out the attachment.

The feature is part of Microsoft’s Office 365 Exchange Online Protection and Advanced Threat Protection services.

The company is also tackling false-positive spam, or legitimate messages that are mis-identified as spam, and vice versa, with a new feature called Zero-hour Auto Purge, which allows admins to “change that verdict”.

“If a message is delivered to your inbox and later found to be spam, Zero-hour Auto Purge moves that message from the inbox to the spam folder; the reverse is true for messages misclassified as spam,” Microsoft notes.

Microsoft is testing this approach with 50 customers and says it will be rolled out for all Exchange Online Protection global clients in the first quarter of 2016.

Have questions?

Get help from IT Experts/Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner
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South Jersey Techies, LLC is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.

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