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Russell Smith walks us through Microsoft Azure’s new Enterprise State Roaming (ESR) feature, which was made available as a preview in early February for customers with an Azure Active Directory Premium subscription.

MC709267 – Microsoft renamed Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to Microsoft Entra ID for the following reasons: As a result, the name will be updated within Microsoft Secure Score. When this will happen:Standard Release: Microsoft will begin rolling out by mid-January 2024 and expect to complete by late January 2024. What you need to do…

MC678069 – On September 30th, 2025 Microsoft will be retiring the ability to manage authentication methods in the legacy Multifactor Authentication (MFA) and Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) policies in Entra ID. Organizations should migrate their methods to the converged authentication methods policy where methods can be managed centrally for all authentication scenarios including passwordless, multi-factor authentication and self-service password reset.  When…

MC650420 – Updated September 18, 2023: Deployment will begin September 25th and will run to October 20th. These dates replace the dates mentioned in the email “We’re enabling a stronger form of multifactor authentication beginning September 15, 2023” that you might have received. We apologize for the inconvenience. Publicly switched telephone networks (PSTN) such as…

For any modern enterprise that uses Microsoft Entra ID (previously Azure Active Directory) to manage user and service access to cloud resources, it’s hard to escape the term Zero Trust (ZT), which implies that your organization must have a layered approach to security. In this article, you’ll learn about five Microsoft Zero Trust tactics for…

Last week, Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu 23.04. The latest version of its Linux distribution includes improved Azure Active Directory support, a new desktop installer, and other enterprise-focused features. Codenamed Lunar Lobster, Ubuntu Desktop 23.04 provides native user authentication with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). This release enables Microsoft 365 enterprise customers to authenticate…

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to provide access to Windows 10 and Windows 11 desktops and applications virtually anywhere. It’s a solution hosted by Microsoft, which makes it secure by design, even though there is a lot of responsibility on the customer to ensure services are secure. In this article, I will…

After the successful SolarWinds attack in 2020 where attackers gained access to Microsoft’s systems, Microsoft changed its approach and aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) zero trust architecture. In this article, we’re going to detail how Microsoft’s zero trust approach leverages Azure Active Directory and Identity and Access Management to enable cloud…

MC384784 — Updated February 9, 2023: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience. Update the Azure AD and Microsoft 365 login experience with new Company Branding capabilities. You can apply your company’s brand guidance to authentication experiences with pre-defined templates. This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 93320 When…

Microsoft has announced that it’s bringing Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support to its Azure Active Directory services. The company plans to roll out IPv6 support to all enterprise customers in a staggered manner on March 31. With this release, users will be able to access Azure Active Directory (AD) services through IPv6, IPv4, or…

MC466201 – Updated December 27, 2022: Microsoft is providing additional guidance for your information:  Microsoft now offers the ability to link an Azure Active Directory (AAD) work account and a personal Microsoft account (MSA). With this change, AAD users with a linked MSA account can now earn Microsoft Rewards points for Microsoft Bing searches done in their…

Microsoft’s Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) is a legacy Windows tool that IT admins can use to manage account passwords of domain-joined computers. The company has finally updated LAPS this year and plans to bring it natively into Windows in 2023. In this article, I’ll explain how this new native version of LAPS works and…