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Ignite 2021 is Next Week. Here’s What I Anticipate for Microsoft 365 4 Comments

Ignite 2021 is Next Week. Here’s What I Anticipate for Microsoft 365

Microsoft Ignite 2021 happens (virtually) on Nov 2-4. There are tons of sessions scheduled and in this post we consider some important Microsoft 365 topics that we hope Microsoft will cover to help technologists plan tenant development over the coming year. Above all, we're looking forward to being able to attend conferences like Ignite in person so that we can learn from experts from inside and outside Microsoft.

October 26, 2021
Send Exchange Online Email Using the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell 16 Comments

Send Exchange Online Email Using the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell

Many people use the PowerShell Send-MailMessage cmdlet to send email from Exchange Online. In this article, we explain how to use cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell to do the same job. The reason why this is important is that Microsoft will eventually deprecate the Send-MailMessage cmdlet as part of its campaign to eliminate basic authentication from Exchange Online. A replacement will be needed for all those PowerShell scripts which uses Send-MailMessage. This is one solution.

October 18, 2021
Time to Move Off Exchange Online DLP Policies 8 Comments

Time to Move Off Exchange Online DLP Policies

Microsoft plans to remove the management of Exchange transport-rule based policies from the classic EAC in mid-2022. Given that Microsoft 365 DLP policies offer the same if not better functionality for Exchange Online and can process other workloads as well, it's a good time to consider transitioning away from the older technology. Microsoft is obviously not putting any engineering effort into Exchange-based DLP, so there's no good reason not to move over and use the technology they are investing in, The transition will take time and effort, but it will be worth it.

October 8, 2021
Microsoft Caps Exchange Online’s “Unlimited Archive” at 1.5 TB 19 Comments

Microsoft Caps Exchange Online’s “Unlimited Archive” at 1.5 TB

On November 1, Microsoft will limit auto-expanding archives to 1.5 TB and bring the era of "bottomless archiving" to an end. The new limit might not affect many Exchange Online tenants, but it's a wake-up call for administrators to check how archiving is used in their tenants. To help the process, we've written a PowerShell script to report the current set of user and shared mailboxes with archives.

September 29, 2021
Why a Potential Autodiscover Flaw is Just the Tip of an Iceberg

Why a Potential Autodiscover Flaw is Just the Tip of an Iceberg

It's often helpful when security researchers like Guardicore shed light on flaws in Microsoft Exchange - however, the Autodiscover protocol isn't flawed in the way they describe. Even though the issue is hard to replicate, it shouldn't distract from the work you need to do to protect your organization from the underlying reason why people want your credentials.

September 28, 2021
Hot Air and Publicity for Purported Autodiscover Security Flaw 13 Comments

Hot Air and Publicity for Purported Autodiscover Security Flaw

Lots of excitement was generated when Guardicore revealed a purported vulnerability with the Exchange Autodiscover service. However, the almost total lack of detail about the configuration used for testing and to generate the reported results makes it impossible for Exchange administrators to check the theory against their own deployment. I don't think a problem exists with Exchange Online, but it's possible that poor DNS practice or flawed third-party clients could cause an issue with on-premises servers. The case remains to be proved.

September 23, 2021
Old Versions of Outlook for Windows Stop Connecting to Exchange Online November 1

Old Versions of Outlook for Windows Stop Connecting to Exchange Online November 1

From November 1, 2021, Microsoft requires Outlook 2013 Service Pack 1 (with fixes) as the minimum client version to connect to Exchange Online. Given all the publicity about attacks against the on-premises version of Exchange earlier this year, it's a wonder why organizations continue to allow people to use outdated client software to connect to Exchange Online. In any case, the drop-dead date is November 1. If you have any old Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010, or Outlook 2013 (before SP1) clients, it's time to start upgrading.

September 20, 2021
Microsoft to Retire Old Exchange Admin Center in Office 365 Next Year 3 Comments

Microsoft to Retire Old Exchange Admin Center in Office 365 Next Year

Microsoft plans to retire the now-decrepit and very old EAC on September 1, 2022. The old console has hung on too long, perhaps because Microsoft hasn't progressed the development of its replacement as quickly as they could have since its 2019 debut. Although Microsoft claims that the new EAC reached feature parity with the old some time ago, any examination of the two consoles proves that this is not the case. With that in mind, it seems like Microsoft has some work to do to make everything ready for the big retirement date in 2022.

September 14, 2021
Why Microsoft’s Workload-Agnostic Retention Strategy Sometimes Comes Up Short for Email 7 Comments

Why Microsoft’s Workload-Agnostic Retention Strategy Sometimes Comes Up Short for Email

Microsoft would like Office 365 tenants to use Microsoft 365 retention policies instead of Exchange Online mailbox retention policies. Their stance is reasonable because Microsoft's engineering effort is focused on workload-agnostic retention across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. However, mailbox retention policies continue to offer some advantages that aren't available in the Microsoft 365 equivalent. And they're cheaper too because they don't need Office 365 E3 or E5 licenses.

September 7, 2021