Microsoft 365 Lighthouse Public Preview

I am very excited to see the new Public Preview of Microsoft 365 Lighthouse.  Organizations and managed service providers have numerous tenants they manage with the goal of driving consistent cyber security posture across those tenants.  Azure Lighthouse has been in market for awhile now, and organizations can use Microsoft 365 Lighthouse to achieve similar outcomes.  Right now this solution is only available for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) Market.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/small-and-medium-business-blog/microsoft-365-lighthouse-is-now-in-public-preview/ba-p/2540515

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/07/14/from-collaborative-apps-in-microsoft-teams-to-cloud-pc-heres-whats-new-in-microsoft-365-at-inspire/?ocid=usoc_LINKEDIN_M365_spl100002353594927

Microsoft 365 Privacy Management (Preview)

There is a new solution called Microsoft 365 Privacy Management that has been released in preview which enables tenant administrators to safeguard personal data. You have the ability to identify privacy risk and mitigate it through automated policies. Policies can monitor data transfers, data overexposure and data minimization (identified unused data). Plus M365 Privacy Management also provides you capabilities to support subject rights requests which helps you to search for and produce reports about data stored in Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OnDrive and Teams.

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/privacy-management?view=o365-worldwide

New Microsoft Information Protection features being released

There are many organizations that put a high emphasis on control of their critical business data.  These organizations should be considering how to leverage Microsoft Information Protection to its fullest potential.  There are several new features that are now Generally Available (GA) or being released in Public Preview.

• Mandatory Labeling is now GA.  This is a pretty big deal.  It requires labels to always be applied to all data in Office 365.  The labels can be used to enforce policy on files.
• New improvements for Exchange Online Auto-Labeling.
• Public Preview for Co-Authoring files with Information Protection encryption on it.  I am extremely happy to see this because I always have felt this was a limitation for collaboration.
• Public Preview of new AIP audit log explorer.  
• DLP Alert Dashboard is now GA.  Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, etc. all have different DLP configurations and this single dashboard shows you a consolidated view of all DLP alerts.
• Track and Revoke is now GA.  I really like see this.  This allows you to revoke access to sensitive documents.  There are tons of scenarios (good and bad reasons), why you may need to revoke access to a file immediately.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/what-s-new-in-information-protection/ba-p/2483154 

Microsoft 365 Defender GA

 Microsoft over the past year has been consolidating all their Defender brands.  For instance Office 365 ATP was rebranded as Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (MDO).  Azure ATP was rebranded as Microsoft Defender for Identity (MDI).  Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) did not change.

Now the both MDE and MDO are delivered a converged user experience under what will be called Microsoft 365 Defender.  Now administrators will be able to do endpoint, mail and collaboration protection activities from a single dashboard.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-defender-for-endpoint/welcome-to-microsoft-365-defender/ba-p/2436618 

Teams Customer Key GA

I have had many customers leverage Customer Key with Office 365.  Up till now, Customer Key was only supported for both Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.  Microsoft Teams has now made Customer Key Generally Available for Microsoft Teams.

If you are not too familiar with Customer Key, it provides the customer an additional layer of protection with a root level key over their data in their tenant.  

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/customer-key-support-for-microsoft-teams-now-generally-available/ba-p/2349855

Azure Sentinel Solutions

I have become a huge fan of Azure Sentinel lately as I have had many Office 365 customers start using it to send all of their Office 365 and AAD logs to.  Azure Sentinel just announced that Azure Sentinel Solutions is now public preview.  This provides a gallery of solutions that customers can snap into their Sentinel environment that will enable a richer experience when working with log data from other major systems in the ecosystem.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sentinel/introducing-azure-sentinel-solutions/ba-p/2347312

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sentinel/sentinel-solutions-deploy

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-sentinel/rsa-conference-2021-new-innovations-for-azure-sentinel/ba-p/2346834

Microsoft Teams and Exchange Server On-Prem Calendars

This is actually a really interesting three part blog series on how to configure Microsoft Teams (in the cloud), with Exchange Server on-prem.  Microsoft Teams can only be delivered in the cloud and draws huge dependencies on Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.  However there are still organizations that for various reasons still have Exchange Server on-premises.  This article focuses specifically on how you can integrate your Exchange Server on-prem Calendar with Microsoft Teams.

Part 1 - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/microsoft-teams-and-on-premises-mailboxes-part-1-how-do-teams/ba-p/2229851 

Part 2 - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/microsoft-teams-and-on-premises-mailboxes-part-2-teams-calendar/ba-p/2232602

Part 3 - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/microsoft-teams-and-on-premises-mailboxes-part-3-calendar-based/ba-p/2235211