Azure Active Directory

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Can Entra ID Custom Security Attributes Replace Exchange Custom Attributes? 10 Comments

Can Entra ID Custom Security Attributes Replace Exchange Custom Attributes?

Microsoft launched the preview of Azure AD custom security attributes on December 1. Custom attributes are well known to Exchange administrators. In this article, we look at how to create and add Azure AD custom security attributes, how to transfer data from Exchange to Azure AD, and how to retrieve information from the attributes. Azure AD custom security attributes have some advantages, but they also have some downsides.

January 4, 2022
Set up Microsoft Sentinel as a single pane of glass for Microsoft 365 alerts
Microsoft Sentinel

Set up Microsoft Sentinel as a single pane of glass for Microsoft 365 alerts

Microsoft Sentinel helps organizations protect their Microsoft 365 tenants by providing insight into activity that might require investigation. This article shows how to set up Microsoft Sentinel with a basic configuration that delivers a great deal of value by enhancing your security posture. In just four simple steps, you can connect Microsoft Sentinel to other Microsoft Cloud Security products to get a single pane of glass for incidents and automate security response through playbooks.

January 3, 2022
Improve MFA Effectiveness in Your Microsoft 365 Tenant in 30 Minutes 15 Comments

Improve MFA Effectiveness in Your Microsoft 365 Tenant in 30 Minutes

Microsoft has released two new features to help Multi-factor authentication for Azure AD accounts work smarter and better. It's possible to implement number matching and additional context for MFA challenges in 30 minutes, and the two increase the security of MFA. It's something that every Microsoft 365 tenant administrator should consider, as we explain here.

November 22, 2021
Using Adaptive Scopes with Microsoft 365 Retention Policies for Users and Groups 34 Comments

Using Adaptive Scopes with Microsoft 365 Retention Policies for Users and Groups

Adaptive scopes are a new way to dynamically target sets of locations (sites, users, and groups) for Microsoft 365 retention policies. In this article, we discuss the basics of adaptive scopes and how to build the filters used in the scopes, and then how to use adaptive scopes in retention policies. Adaptive scopes are well suited to the kind of processing needed by large enterprises, which is good because they required Office 365 E5 licenses.

November 11, 2021
Using the Microsoft SDK for PowerShell to Report Azure AD Account Sign-ins 9 Comments

Using the Microsoft SDK for PowerShell to Report Azure AD Account Sign-ins

The Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell can be used for many purposes, among which is access to Azure AD account sign-in data. In this article, we explain how to use the SDK cmdlets to retrieve sign-in data for both tenant and guest accounts and report what we find. You can use the report to identify potentially unused accounts which might not need some expensive licenses, or guest accounts that are no longer used.

October 26, 2021
How to Create a Microsoft 365 Licensing Report Using the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell 129 Comments

How to Create a Microsoft 365 Licensing Report Using the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell

After figuring out how to convert a script from using Azure AD licensing cmdlets (due to stop working in June 2022), we move on to create a licensing report for a tenant using cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell. The code is pretty straightforward, but you need to do some up-front work to extract and prepare some input files containing product and service plan codes. Given that Microsoft is increasing its license fees, it's a good time to report this information...

October 14, 2021
Azure Bootcamp – Learn From Global Experts

Azure Bootcamp – Learn From Global Experts

On September 30, 2021, IT pros and developers from South Africa are coming together once again to host the first online Azure Bootcamp event! User Group Leads will bring you the latest information and features about Azure and Cloud Computing. The online event is free and hosted live on Twitch.

September 29, 2021
Connecting to the Microsoft Graph Using the PowerShell SDK 49 Comments

Connecting to the Microsoft Graph Using the PowerShell SDK

The Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell exists to help developers use Graph API calls from PowerShell. It works, but like anything in life, there's a right way to connect and use the SDK and a wrong way. In this article we explore topics like how to connect to the right tenant, how permissions are managed (or not), and why running Graph SDK cmdlets interactively isn't something you should do in production. Good as the SDK is, Microsoft has some big issues to solve to address some obvious security issues.

September 23, 2021