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Daymark IT Insights

Enterprise IT, cloud, security, and AI guidance from Daymark’s technology experts.

Microsoft Fabric Item Recovery (Soft Delete): What You Need to Know

Overview

As Microsoft Fabric environments mature and become more collaborative, the risk of accidental deletion increases. A data engineer cleaning up a workspace, an analyst removing unused assets, or a contributor misunderstanding dependencies can easily delete the wrong item. Until recently, that deletion was permanent.

Microsoft Fabric now introduces item-level recovery through soft delete, providing a critical safety net for supported Fabric items. This capability complements existing workspace retention and adds fine-grained protection at the item level.

Item recovery allows deleted items to be retained for a configurable period, during which authorized users can restore them or permanently delete them. This feature is currently available in preview and must be explicitly enabled at the tenant level.

Prerequisites and Configuration

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Mon, Apr 06, 2026
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Microsoft Fabric Database Hub: A Major Step Forward in Database Management

Overview

At FabCon 2026, Microsoft took another important step toward reshaping how organizations manage databases by announcing the Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric. While the Database Hub is still in early access and not yet generally available, it represents a meaningful shift in how Microsoft is thinking about database management at scale.

For years, database teams have operated across fragmented tools, portals, and management experiences depending on whether the database lived on‑premises, in Azure PaaS, or in a SaaS environment. As data estates grow and AI workloads place greater pressure on operational data, that fragmentation becomes a real problem. The Database Hub is Microsoft’s answer to this challenge, providing a unified control plane for managing databases across the enterprise from within Fabric.

Anyone running SQL Server today, whether on‑premises or in Azure, should be paying close attention. This is not just another management experience. It is a signal of where Microsoft is taking databases as part of a single, converged data platform.

What the Database Hub Is

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Mon, Mar 30, 2026
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Fabric Security: Control Plane vs Data Plane

Overview

Microsoft Fabric security is built on two distinct layers that are often confused but serve very different purposes:

    • Control plane access determines what you can do in Fabric, such as creating items, managing workspaces, and sharing content.
    • Data plane access determines what data you can actually see or interact with inside OneLake.

For much of Fabric’s early life, workspace roles were used as the primary security boundary. That works for collaboration, but it becomes problematic as platforms scale and data products need stronger governance.

This is where OneLake security comes in. It introduces native, fine-grained security directly at the storage layer, allowing organizations to separate operational permissions from data access. At FabCon, Microsoft announced that OneLake security is going GA in April 2026, signaling that this model is ready to become the standard for enterprise Fabric deployments.

Control Plane Access: Workspace Roles

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Mon, Mar 23, 2026
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Fabric Notebooks vs Stored Procedures in Microsoft Fabric

Overview

Microsoft Fabric provides multiple ways to implement transformation logic and operationalize it within Fabric Data Factory pipelines. Two of the most common approaches are Fabric notebooks and SQL stored procedures.

Both are first class tools in Fabric and both can be orchestrated through Data Factory pipelines. The difference is not about which one is better. It is about how the processing is executed, where the logic lives, and what development style best fits the workload.

Notebooks are built on Apache Spark and are designed for distributed, code driven data engineering and analytics workflows. Stored procedures run directly in the SQL engine and are optimized for relational, database centric operations. In real world Fabric architectures, it is common and often recommended to use both together.

Understanding the strengths of each helps teams design pipelines that are scalable, maintainable, and aligned with how their data is structured and governed.

Fabric Notebooks

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Mon, Mar 09, 2026
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GCC High Tenant vs. Secure Enclave

Comparing Common Approaches to GCC High Migration

Introduction

Organizations that work with U.S. government contracts or handle sensitive regulated data often face tough decisions about their cloud strategy. Two common approaches for meeting requirements are migrating all users to a dedicated Microsoft GCC High tenant or creating a secure enclave and migrating only select users. This blog post explores the differences between these two strategies, highlighting the pros and cons of each so you can make an informed decision for your organization.

What Is GCC High?

Microsoft GCC High (Government Community Cloud High) is a dedicated cloud environment designed specifically for U.S. government agencies and contractors that must comply with strict regulatory standards, such as FedRAMP High, ITAR, and DFARS when handling controlled unclassified information (CUI). GCC High provides enhanced controls, data residency in the continental United States, and a dedicated infrastructure that separates government data from commercial environments.

What Is a Secure Enclave?

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Thu, Jan 15, 2026
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5 Reasons to Leverage a M365 Backup Solution

Why Relying on Native Microsoft 365 Protection Isn’t Enough 

As more organizations transition to Microsoft 365 (M365) for email, collaboration, and file storage, it’s easy to assume that your data is fully protected in the cloud. However, relying solely on Microsoft’s native capabilities could leave your business vulnerable to data loss, human error, and cyber threats. In this blog post, we’ll explore five compelling reasons why investing in a dedicated M365 backup solution is essential for safeguarding your business-critical information.

1. Microsoft Does Not Natively Back Up Your Data

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Thu, Jan 08, 2026
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Mission Purview: Navigating E3 vs. E5 in the CMMC Battlefield


As organizations continue to prioritize data governance, compliance, and information protection, Microsoft Purview has emerged as a powerful suite of tools to meet these needs. But not all Purview capabilities are created equal.

In this article, we’ll break down the primary differences between Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5 Purview features, helping you understand what’s available out-of-the-box with E3 and what additional value E5 brings to the table.

Baseline Capabilities with E3

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Thu, Dec 11, 2025
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Microsoft Intune Workshop - Take Control of Mobile Security

Is your organization struggling to balance mobile security with employee productivity? Are you confident that only secure, compliant devices can access your business applications? You are not alone. In today’s hybrid and mobile-first work environment, organizations face the challenge of securing corporate data while ensuring employees can work efficiently from anywhere. Without a comprehensive mobile device management (MDM) solution, companies risk data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance violations.

Daymark’s Microsoft Intune Workshop

Daymark is here to help. With our Microsoft Intune Workshop, your organization can learn how to gain complete control over mobile security, streamline IT operations, and empower your workforce with seamless and secure access to business applications—no matter where they work.

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Wed, Apr 02, 2025
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5 Ways to Increase Your Ransomware Resilience

 

The risk of a ransomware attack continues to increase at a frightening triple-digit annual growth rate. How bad is it? Bad, really bad. Businesses based in the U.S. face an 80% chance of an attack, compared to 31% chance in EMEA and 9% in the Asia-Pack region. As the attackers’ sophistication increases and cybergangs are forming, it is important to understand what the attackers are going after and how to increase your ransomware resilience.

 

Ransomware Demand and Payment Trends

  •  In 2022, companies with $10 million in revenue or less had an average payout of $690,9961
  • Large enterprises (revenue of $5 billion plus) took a bigger hit, with an average $2,464,3392 ransom payout
  • Recent ransom demands have been as high as $30 million with payouts that have exceeded $8 million
  • Threat actors are increasingly focused on extortion techniques—often layering them on top of each other
  • Harassment is another extortion tactic being used in more ransomware cases. Ransomware threat actor groups will target specific individuals in the organization, often in the C-suite, with threats and unwanted communications3
  • Cybercriminals threatened to leak stolen data in about 70% of ransomware cases involving negotiation in late 20224
  • The United States is still the most severely impacted, accounting for 42% of the observed leaks in 20225
  • As of late 2022, threat actors engaged in data theft in about 70% of cases compared to 40% in mid-20216 

Don’t Count on the Government for Help

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Thu, Oct 26, 2023
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Demystifying Cyber Insurance

A CISO Primer on Navigating Cyber Insurance

After 10+ years of working with clients to negotiate and place cyber insurance, I’ve noticed that one of the most frequent challenges has always been getting the underwriters and my client’s information security stakeholder (like a CISO or CIO) to understand each other. It’s no surprise that insurance is *gasp* slow to evolve – but in their defense, underwriters have come a long way over the last three years. It’s also no secret that being a CISO is one of the most important leadership roles within a company these days. So why are there massive communications disconnects? Why are CISO’s often ill equipped (through no fault of their own) to navigate the cyber insurance ecosystem? How are brokers and their underwriting partners not ensuring that their clients understand the coverages within cyber policies and how the insurance contracts work? How can we bring all the stakeholders in the process together to make our clients more resilient and create a sustainable cyber insurance marketplace? This blog aspires to demystify cyber insurance for all the information security stakeholders in the room so that they are best equipped to dovetail their strategy with what the insurance marketplace is looking for.

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Tue, Aug 15, 2023
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