Microsoft 365 - Priasoft

Shhh…It’s a Secret: How Office 365 Secret Cloud Provides Top-Level Security

Microsoft 365, News, Security, Technical

Microsoft Office 365 is now available for US National Security Missions.

The Office 365 Secret Cloud provides a secure and compliant cloud environment for classified communications and collaboration. This capability is critical for national security agencies that need to protect sensitive information from cyber threats and foreign adversaries.

The Office 365 Secret Cloud is built on Microsoft’s Government Community Cloud (GCC) High infrastructure, which has been authorized by the Department of Defense (DoD) for Impact Level 5 (IL5) workloads. The IL5 designation means that the cloud environment is suitable for the most sensitive unclassified and classified information, including national security data.

One of the key benefits of the Office 365 Secret Cloud is that it enables collaboration and communication between different national security agencies. With traditional communication methods, it can be difficult to share information between agencies due to security concerns and restrictions. The Office 365 Secret Cloud allows authorized personnel from different agencies to securely collaborate and communicate in real-time, making it easier to share information and coordinate efforts.

The Office 365 Secret Cloud also provides a range of security features to protect classified information. These include multi-factor authentication, encryption at rest and in transit, and threat detection and response capabilities. In addition, Microsoft employs a dedicated team of security experts who monitor the environment 24/7 and respond to any security incidents that may occur.

The availability of the Office 365 Secret Cloud for US National Security Missions is a significant milestone for Microsoft and for the national security community. It demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to providing secure and compliant cloud solutions for the most sensitive workloads, and it enables national security agencies to work more efficiently and effectively by providing a secure environment for collaboration and communication.

In conclusion, the Office 365 Secret Cloud is a game-changer for US National Security Missions. It provides a secure and compliant cloud environment for classified communications and collaboration, enabling national security agencies to work more efficiently and effectively. With the Office 365 Secret Cloud, authorized personnel from different agencies can securely collaborate and communicate in real-time, making it easier to share information and coordinate efforts. This capability is critical for protecting national security data from cyber threats and foreign adversaries.

To learn more or to start a project discussion – Request to speak to an Engineer.

April 4, 2023

Stay Ahead of the Game: Protecting Yourself from the Latest Outlook Security Threat

Microsoft 365, News, Security, Technical

Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular email clients used by millions of individuals and businesses worldwide and is the target of the latest Outlook Security Threat. It provides a user-friendly interface and advanced features for managing emails, calendars, tasks, and contacts. However, like any other software, Outlook is not immune to security vulnerabilities, and cybercriminals often target it to exploit such vulnerabilities for their nefarious activities.

Recently, Microsoft released a security advisory about a critical vulnerability that affects various versions of Microsoft Outlook on Windows and Mac operating systems. This vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-28482, is a remote code execution flaw that can enable an attacker to execute malicious code on the victim’s system by sending a specially crafted email to their Outlook account.

The vulnerability can be exploited when the user opens an email containing a specially crafted file that triggers the execution of the malicious code. Once executed, the attacker can take over the victim’s system, steal sensitive data, install malware, and carry out other cyber attacks.

To protect yourself from this vulnerability, it is essential to take the following steps:

Update your Outlook software immediately: Microsoft has released security patches for all affected versions of Outlook. Users should install the latest updates as soon as possible to prevent exploitation of the vulnerability. If you have enabled automatic updates, you may already have received the update. If not, check for updates and install them immediately.
Be cautious when opening emails from unknown senders or suspicious emails: To prevent exploitation of the vulnerability, it is crucial to be wary of any unsolicited emails or emails from unknown senders. If you receive an email from an unknown sender, do not open it and delete it immediately. If you receive an email with suspicious attachments, do not open the attachments or click on any links within the email.
Use antivirus software: Antivirus software can help prevent malicious code from executing on your system. It can detect and block malware and other cyber threats, including those that exploit vulnerabilities in Outlook.
Keep your operating system and other software up-to-date: Outdated software, including your operating system and other applications, can create security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by cybercriminals. Make sure to install updates regularly to keep your system secure.

In conclusion, the latest critical vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook highlights the importance of taking proactive steps to secure your system. By updating your software, being cautious when opening emails, using antivirus software, and keeping your operating system and other software up-to-date, you can help protect yourself and your data from cyber threats.

March 28, 2023

Revolutionize Your Productivity with AI-Powered Updates to Microsoft Teams Premium

Microsoft 365, News, Technical

Windows 10 20H2 Support Ending: Don’t Get Left Behind

Microsoft 365

Microsoft to End Support for Office 2013 in 2023: What next?

Microsoft 365, Technical

On April 11th, 2023 support for Office and Exchange 2013 will no longer be available.

Microsoft products have a support lifecycle, also known as the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. During a products lifecycle, they provide bug and security fixes. At the end of this lifecycle, the product reaches what is known as the end of support, and Microsoft no longer provides the following:

Technical support
Bug fixes
Security fixes

So What’s Next?

Depending on your situation, you can look in to the following options:

Upgrade your Outlook clients and / or servers to a newer version that is under current support from Microsoft – i.e. Office 2019.
If upgrading and you are not subscribed to O365 you can look in to licensing Office 2021 as a stand alone license.
If you need to migrate to Office 365 or consolidate Exchange server On-Premises, Priasoft offers the following solutions that will help you automate and speed up your migration process.

January 25, 2023

Outlook and Office Products may fail connecting to Office 365 in October 2020

Microsoft 365, Technical

Something we have seen that may have been missed by many customers and admins is a quietly published article about Microsoft support for the Office Suite in 2020 (a little more than a year from now!).

This article was found by reviewing the Office 365 Message Center articles back in 2017. Unfortunately, the default view provided by this feature only shows the last few months of articles and the one from 2017 no longer appears.

The article that was posted seems harmless at the time and had a simple statement about Office 365 support in 2020. Most people in our experience never saw this article.

The article indicated that in 2020, Office products that would be used to connect to Office 365 would only be supported and usable by the then current version of Office that was installed from your Office 365 tenant. Our reading interprets this to mean that possibly the retail versions of the Office product will not be usable against Office 365, even if it were the most recent version (Office 2019 as of today).

We suggest all customers of Office 365 to continually review the “Message Center” messages that are posted as well as the “Service Health” advisories. Many changes to Office 365 are announced thru the Message Center, but many changes that can have considerable impact on the enterprise are not announced with any loud or attention-grabbing fanfare. In addition, given that Microsoft may announce changes that are many years in advance of the actual change, such announcements will fall out of view in a few months.

Here are some of the specific details regarding the changes that are scheduled for the latter half of 2020:

April 22, 2019

How to Test if Office 365 Tenant Maintenance is Causing Outlook Logon or MAPI_E_FAILONEPROVIDER Errors

Microsoft 365, Technical

Exchange Online, part of Office 365, is essentially a really large implementation of the same components that customers would run on-premises. In the case of Exchange Online, Microsoft runs thousands of Active Director Forests to support its implementation of Exchange. In some cases, Microsoft may need to migrate or ‘shift’ Active Directory objects supporting Exchange Online between forests to rebalance the number of AD objects per forest. In most cases, this normal background maintenance goes unnoticed by customers.

Recently, we had a customer in the middle of a migration to Office 365 using our solutions while this type of background maintenance was being performed. The customer was reporting logon failures to Office 365 during the customers migration effort and we needed to investigate. During troubleshooting we realized that Exchange Online background maintenance was the root cause in this specific case. During our troubleshooting we learned from Microsoft how to determine when your Office 365 tenant was actually in the middle of such an event using PowerShell.

If you are experiencing logon failures to Exchange Online and would like to test if maintenance or ‘shifting’ may be the root cause, you can run the following PowerShell command. For information on connecting to Office 365 PowerShell – please see the following Microsoft article.

Get-OrganizationConfig | fl *region*

The output from the above command – example shown below – according to Microsoft should return with no values. Empty values, as in our example, means your tenant is not currently being ‘shifted’. If you do show values, this could indicate your tenant is being ‘shifted’ and you can either wait or contact Microsoft for further assistance.

Output:

AllowedMailboxRegions : {}
DefaultMailboxRegion :
DefaultMailboxRegionLastUpdateTime :

Note: At the time of this posting, the information provided is believed to be accurate and useful. As Microsoft reserves the right to change its internal processes or procedures at any time we provide this information “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information as outlined in our terms of use. If you are unsure or suspect you may be affected by internal maintenance, we encourage you to contact Microsoft support for further assistance and guidance.

February 27, 2019

Office 365 vs. Microsoft 365 – Explained

Microsoft 365, Technical

What’s The Difference Between O365 And Microsoft 365?

Simply put, Office 365 is a cloud platform that offers Exchange online, OneDrive, Word, Excel, Outlook, as well as other services and applications via a subscription plan whereas Microsoft 365 offers the same services and applications as Office 365 but also includes Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise, Mobility + Security for a complete Enterprise offering under a single subscription plan.

Microsoft 365 offers customers, which have not made the transition to Office 365, is an out of the box solution with all the features of Office 365 plus Windows 10, including security and device management right from the start. Additionally, Microsoft 365 is the beginning of a future where desktops and devices are primarily joined to your Office 365 Azure Active Directory subscription taking over the traditional on-premises role of Active Directory running on servers in your datacenter. With this new paradigm, you would generally only need to maintain a backup Active Directory Domain Controller on-premises for redundancy in the event of a temporary loss on network connectivity.

If you are already on Office 365 you still have the option to deploy Windows 10 Pro and subscribe to a security service, however, this approach is not as simple as subscribing to Microsoft 365 from the beginning.

If you would like to learn more about Office 365 and Microsoft 365 we have provided some resources to get you started. If you would like to speak to one of our cloud migration specialists you can contact us here.