Information Technology Navigator

Impossible travel. Is it sending a human to Saturn or Venus? Well maybe, but in the context of Microsoft Office 365, Impossible Travel is a security feature that is a great indicator of potential hacking attempts. The concept is straightforward. If you login to Office 365 from your office in Boston and then 20 minutes later you try to login from Dallas, or you login from home in Chicago and five hours later from Beijing, Office 365 basically says “wait a minute, that’s impossible” and it denies login from Dallas and immediately sends an IT security alert. Get tips to optimize Impossible Travel here.

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Microsoft recently held its annual Ignite Conference where they announced over 100 updates to its suite of cloud services and products. Daymark was on the ground at the Convention Center in Seattle to explore the innovations and engage with Microsoft on the latest changes. 100 updates is a lot to digest! Here are our thoughts on 5 important ones worth paying attention to.

 

1. Microsoft Teams Premium

What is it?

Microsoft Teams Premium is an add-on scheduled for release in December of this year, and will provide exciting new features around security, artificial intelligence, and personalization

 

Why is it important?

The AI will provide intelligent meeting summaries and will automatically assign tasks based on its review/recap of the meeting. In addition, it will provide personalized insights in meeting recordings that will call out important moments in the meeting, such as when a user’s name was mentioned, a screen was shared and when people have joined or left.

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The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Framework is used by the DoD to verify that sensitive data being handled by defense industrial base (DIB) contractors is properly protected on the contractors’ systems to avoid risk of a compromise from a cybersecurity attack. CMMC uses third-party assessment organizations to verify contractors’ safeguarding of controlled unclassified information (CUI) including International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) data, federal contract information (FCI), and compliance with certain mandatory practices, procedures and capabilities that can adapt to evolving cyber threats.

What’s New in CMMC 2.0

In November 2021, the DoD announced CMMC 2.0. It’s important to understand key changes and timelines associated with CMMC 2.0, how it compares to CMMC 1.0, and what you need to do to prepare. 

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Microsoft 365 GCC vs. GCC High

How do you know which level of GCC is right for you? Here’s key criteria to help you distinguish GCC and GCC High so that your organization makes the move to the right cloud.

Government Community Cloud (GCC)

You can think of GCC as a government version of the Microsoft 365 commercial environment. It resides on the Azure Commercial infrastructure and has many of the same features, but servers must be located in the continental United States (CONUS) as mandated by FedRAMP Moderate. Although the servers are only in CONUS, access to data is available on a global basis. In general, non-defense-related government agencies and contractors can deploy GCC. 

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The CMMC 2.0 model consists of 14 domains that assess the previously established NIST 800-171 controls. Here’s what each one is and what it covers.

Access Control: This domain requires your organization to establish who has access to your systems and what their requirements are to operate effectively. As well as who has remote access, internal system access, and the limitations of their roles in system.

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I haven’t met an organization yet that isn’t interested in saving money and optimizing their cloud spend. That’s where Azure Reserved Instances (RIs) come in. Properly leveraged, Reserved Instances, particularly Virtual Machine Reserved Instances can result in some significant savings. In fact, it was the topic of discussion at one of our recent Daymark Cloud Clinics where our technical cloud consultants offer free technical training and tips on a wide range of Azure and Office 365 features.

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It’s a crazy time out there. Businesses have been mandated by state governments to enable employees to work from home. Literally overnight, there have been massive shifts to connect people remotely. Suddenly even your grandparents know what Zoom is!

Microsoft Teams is playing an integral part in facilitating remote communication and collaboration. Most companies with Office 365 subscriptions already have licenses for this product, but just now are really rushed to enable Teams for the massive increase of remote workers.  

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The CDC recently requested all businesses to dust off their pandemic preparedness plans amid the spread of the Coronavirus also known as (COVID-19). The global threat has already had a major economic impact in a very short time, as is evidenced in the recent stock market plunges, worldwide flight cancellations and travel bans, and the clothing manufacturing sector to name a few.

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Microsoft Teams is the cloud-based collaboration solution in the Office 365 suite that integrates business messaging, calling, video meetings and file sharing. It is Microsoft’s replacement for Skype for Business.

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As usual, VMworld was a whirlwind of announcements, presentations, demos, meetups and networking opportunities. It’s a week of non-stop activities and it’s hard (actually impossible) to soak up everything. But I did manage to glean quite a bit and wanted to share my thoughts on some of the highlights and key takeaways.

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