Azure AD Security: One Simple but Very Important Setting
With GDPR just around the corner, protecting a company against data loss is finally getting more serious. Office 365 is a great help in this, but only if it is configured correctly. Office 365 and an Azure subscription both come with Azure Active Directory preinstalled (??? 🤨). However, the default configuration is, ehm, interesting to say the least. Let me highlight what I think is the most often overlooked, yet most important switch you should flip immediately. Users can consent to apps accessing company data on their behalf 🤨 Sooo what does this mean? I'll rephrase it: All user...
Finally! A Better Portal for Office 365: SharePoint Hub Sites
One of the biggest problems I have with Office 365 is the user experience journey: navigating through Office 365 is difficult. For a cloud based company using Office 365, there are a few entry portals of end users: Office 365 Portal SharePoint Portal ("sharepoint.aspx") SharePoint Root Site Departemental teamsite (tip, use LiveTiles) A third party portal Each of these portals have their own advantages and quirks. For example, the Office 365 Portal allows no customization, the SharePoint Portal has no easy url, the SharePoint Root Site was too static, the user's teamsite contains...
Azure File Sync: failing StorageSync MiniFilter Driver when using iSCSI Disks
Although it is fairly expensive, Azure Files in combination with Azure File Sync is a perfect solution for a home NAS. It offers scalable and reliable cloudbased storage with instant on-premises access by caching the most recent files on a traditional fileserver through a process called cloud tiering. This means it can use most of the Windows Fileserver features, such as DFS, ACL and other FSRM services. Evidently, it is not quite meant for home use, but instead suits the needs in particular for midmarket businesses. These companies tend to have a few hundred gigabytes to a handful of t...
Do I need Office 365 Backup?
I suppose that the most popular question I get when introducing Exchange Online or SharePoint Online to a company, is: do I need a backup solution? Let me start off by saying: applications don't need backup, the data in it does. Many might at first think that Office 365 saves the IT department from the backup burden. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Actually, it makes it slightly worse. Not so much from the technical point of view, but rather from the architect's view. Backups are implemented because of a combination of these three elements: Technical requirements; Functional need; Organiza...