Office 365 Endpoint Management

Microsoft Office 365 just released a preview new capability that publishes end points using a new set of web services.  This will make it significantly easier for organizations to evaluate, configure and stay up to date with changes to Office 365 endpoints.  Today customers have had to watch a public webpage and sign-up for a RSS feed; which is not always the most efficient.

With this new solution customers will have the ability to automate endpoint changes with their environment.

Reference - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Announcing-Office-365-endpoint-categories-and-Office-365-IP/ba-p/177638

Azure Information Protection Scanner

I just learned about a really neat solution called Azure Information Protection Scanner.  This is a solution that has the ability to scan on-premises file shares and SharePoint.  This solution will discover, classify, label and protect files that are out there based on criteria you set.  For instance, it can go out there and put protection policies against confidential data.

Azure Information Protection Scanner is an on-premises solution.  There is a counterpart solution in the Office 365 service under Data Governance (E5) and Information Protection Plan 2 that will do the same for the cloud.

Preview Announcement - here

Tech Guide - here

General Availability Announcement - here

Office 365 Customer Key

There have been many questions over the years many organizations have asked, is it possible for customers to apply their own encryption keys to data at rest stored in Office 365.  Office 365 already utilizes several encryption at rest solutions for all data in Office 365, but sometimes customers have compliance regulations that they must support so that they can have control of an encryption key to their data in Office 365.  Customer Key for Office 365 can be used to satisfy those requirements.

There are several considerations you should think about before using this solution.  Read the FAQs on this solution.  Key management becomes critical and there is a recovery key process.

Finally, this solution will provide encryption at the root and its intended purpose is for customers to use this key as a way to protect data if the customer ever intends to leave the Office 365 service.  Customer keys can be destroyed when leaving the Office 365 service ensuring that no one has access to data will the data is going through it final deletion stages.  This solution is not intended to change the dynamics of Online Service Terms for third-party data requests to Microsoft nor does it change access rules for customer data for Microsoft personnel who are supporting the service.  There are other capabilities like Customer Lockbox which can mitigate a customer’s concern for how Microsoft personnel access customer data.

To get this solution, you must purchase Office 365 Advanced Compliance which is part of the E5 Suite, plus customers must purchase Azure Key Vault licenses.

Please read all these references.
Customer Key General Availability Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Security-Privacy-and-Compliance/GA-of-Customer-Key-in-Office-365-at-Ignite/ba-p/115134

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Security-Privacy-and-Compliance/Bringing-deeper-integration-and-new-capabilities-to-Office-365/ba-p/109409
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Security-Privacy-and-Compliance/Bringing-deeper-integration-and-new-capabilities-to-Office-365/ba-p/109409

Presentation from Ignite - https://myignite.microsoft.com/sessions/53748?source=sessions

Video of How it works with SPO - https://youtu.be/y-BSmEhdk7c?t=8m18s

Customer Key FAQs (highly recommend reading) - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Customer-Key-for-Office-365-FAQ-41ae293a-bd5c-4083-acd8-e1a2b4329da6

Overview and Configuration Instructions - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Controlling-your-data-in-Office-365-using-Customer-Key-f2cd475a-e592-46cf-80a3-1bfb0fa17697

Azure Key Vault Reference - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/key-vault/

Office 365 Threat Intelligence Attack Simulator

Here is an interesting feature that I just learned about.  Office 365 Threat Intelligence has new feature being introduced called Attack Simulator.  This solution will allow administrators the ability to simulate different threat scenarios to assess how their end users would behave when a real attack would occur.  This could result in the admins of the Office 365 tenant to do some additional configurations to the service. 

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Security-Privacy-and-Compliance/Bringing-deeper-integration-and-new-capabilities-to-Office-365/ba-p/109409

What is Office 365 Threat Intelligence - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-365-Threat-Intelligence-32405da5-bee1-4a4b-82e5-8399df94c512

As of the time of this writing, this feature is marked as under development in the Office 365 roadmap - https://products.office.com/en-US/business/office-365-roadmap

Advanced eDiscovery for Non-Office 365 Data

I have been asked a few times, is it possible to use the Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery service to analyze data that is not in Office 365.

The answer is yes; it is possible.

In many cases, organizations have legacy file shares, archives, other cloud services that have relevant data that needs to be made part of an eDiscovery case.  With this solution you have the ability to import data for your case into an Azure container and then have Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery analyze this data.  To use this feature, you must have the Advanced eDiscovery licenses, plus it will require additional Azure storage purchase for storing all the additional non-Office 365 data that is imported.

One side note – This feature does not work with PST files.

Here is the article on how to do this - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Import-non-Office-365-content-for-Advanced-eDiscovery-analysis-0ee60763-a30b-495b-8543-971c3384a801

Announcement about this feature was in Sept 2017 - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Security-Privacy-and-Compliance/Bringing-deeper-integration-and-new-capabilities-to-Office-365/ba-p/109409

Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run Preview

There was an interesting product release that has gone into preview that I felt was worth sharing.  For years, Office 365 ProPlus administrators had to use XML to write the configuration.xml file which is used with the Office Deployment tool to deploy Office 365 ProPlus client.

Microsoft has a new solution in Preview called the Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run.  This tool provides a nice GUI that will generate your configuration.xml file for the Office Deployment Tool.  You can also input existing configuration.xml files to the tool to modify them.

Sometimes it is the small things that count, and doing this does not require you to memorize the configurations, and make mistakes within the XML file itself.

References
Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Customizing-Office-365-ProPlus-using-the-Office-Customization/bc-p/143275#M334

Office 365 Deployment Tool Reference - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/overview-of-the-office-2016-deployment-tool

Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run (Preview) - https://config.office.com/

Microsoft Graph Reporting APIs are now Generally Available

Microsoft Graph Reporting APIs are now Generally Available.  These reporting APIs allow organizations to get the data feeds that are used to populate reports in the Office 365 Admin Center, and use that data to create custom usage reports.

Note this new capability replaces the old Office 365 Reporting Web Service feeds; these old APIs will go out of support on January 29, 2018.  There is a reference in the announcement for where the feeds for the old reporting web service are now located within the Microsoft Graph.

Public Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Announcing-the-General-Availability-of-Microsoft-Graph-reporting/ba-p/137838

Technical Reference for Graph Usage Reports - https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/docs/api-reference/beta/resources/report