Day one has already passed, and I am looking forward for day two… My second day on the Ignite stated from the session view a bit later. That means, I had time to meet people and visit Quadrotech and other exibitors to have nice speach with them…
1st session today
My first session today was about Azure Active Directory: New features and roadmap. In this session they showed us what Azure Active Directory is at the moment. How many millions are using Azure AD and how many billions of authentications they are having daily. It is interesting to imagen the dimension that all has but, that’s ok so far. However, Melanie and Alex also showed us, how many 3rd party applications are using Azure Active Directory for authentication. To show it in numbers, it is more than 653310 Applications right now.
Alex also showed us a bulk of new App available for Azure like from Adobe, Bluemail, SAP, etc.
However, Alex also spoke about Azure AD single sign-on for on-premises applications, how it was working in the past and how it is working from now and will in the future.
It was interesting to know, that soon SAML token customization “RegexReplace” will be announced, and as well there will be a new SAML token encryption. If you are more interested in these themes, you can follow this Link below:
Alex made us understand clear, that Microsoft “loves” open standards. However, they have started to work with these standards that huge bulk of cloud apps can be authorized using Azure AD. The big goal – or how they said – Moon rocked (if I got it right) is that Microsoft is working for the goal, that every human being worldwide must have the control about all of his online identities. Microsoft also have started working with Google, which means, we can now merge our Google Accounts with our Microsoft Profile and access everything we want by using our MS identity.
Another point they spoke about was that using passwords only is not the future. There are many ways out there how we really need to secure our accounts. One of the most common ways is to use an Authenticator App or, classical, a Hardware token. Melanie was presenting how MFA works now by using a Smartwatch, so there even no need anymore to take the phone out from the Pocket or Bag.
Other way they showed was Microsoft Hello, this is the Biometrical way of face identification. All of these ways are more secure than the most of the standard passwords out there.
They have also announced a new Azure Portal where it should be easier and faster to make the configurations for the cloud apps. Here is the Link of it if you are interested more in it: https://aka.ms/identityPlatformPortal
At the end of the session they have repeated what we have heard last Monday on the keynote about the Mission of Microsoft about our own identity. Here is the Link to it: https://www.microsoft.com/ownyouridentity.
Looking for a micro scooter…
Walking around the Area here by near 30000 people, I am still thinking about getting myself in a sport’s store a micro scooter… There is an Outlet shopping centre in the south of the Convention centre and one in the north of it. However, I am still not sure if this will be allowed to use or if I should go for some of the Sessions simply to the hangout Area. No, that doesn’t mean I want to hang out there an take my legs up, it is an area where you have took up to 12 screens and where you can follow the sessions around the Ignite… So, will see… to be continued…
🙂
Second session
As I just wrote about the hangout zone, I have decided to make my 2nd session today from there. It was the Session about Securing Exchange Online from modern threats. However, what started good, end up in a mess. Not because the session by itself (I guess) the streaming quality was just horrible, it started with despairing sound, time by time, and then the video signal. It ended up like I show in the picture below:
So, what can I write about this session aside that I will have to watch it again later this week. The session by itself was made by Brandon Koeller, which is known by being a real geek in hacking and security. He was presenting possible issues and traps we users and admins can step in to be hacked, he also showed how it can be done by using kali Linux and how the most common attacks are working.
The goal of this session was to show how easy it is with Exchange online to prevent this kind of attacks in our own environment. I will for sure come back later to this theme and write an article about that.
Session three
The 3rd session today was about Securing your Office 365 environment from advanced phishing campaigns with Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection. Honestly saying, for me it was a hard decision, and I was thinking about that already some days before the Igninte started. There are so many good sessions, but they are mostly going parallel with each other.
This session was about securing the end users from phishing in E-mails, Teams and other ways.
The team speaker Debraj, Sumit, Jason and Josh where talking about combating phishing and social engineering related attacks, the native protection built into Office 365, and protection that extends collaboration scenarios across desktop, web/online and mobile clients.
They also showed demos around the protection status using Office 365 Security Compliance centre. However, unfortunately most of the cool tools are only available with the E5 plan.
Socialising
The last session for me on this day has end at 15.30. After that I had to start writing this article in the exhibition centre. After finishing around half of the article, there where more and more people which started with socialising and enjoying the Expo around. I have decided then to stop this writing to and finish it later in the evening in my Hotel room.
However, I straight away I have met some people I knew, and one college from the company in Switzerland I am working for.
We also looked around the Expo. Short time later I had to go to the Microsoft Learning area where I had luck to finally meet Steve Goodman from all about 365, and now also from Practical 365.
I had a short but very nice speech with Steve and Jay as well. People, I can tell you, these two guys are cool and nice. I absolutely enjoyed talking a bit with them and I am looking forward to see them this week again.
This was 2nd day on the Ignite in Orlando, many things to see, even more to learn. However, for sure a fantastic place to meet people in real, with whom you are in contact during the year online only.
For me it is time now for a sleep, I am looking forward for the next day tomorrow with a bulk of new sessions…
😊