Microsoft Support & Discussions

In this guest blog post, Ravit Aviv, Director of Technology Alliances at Transmit Security, offers ways businesses can launch a formidable defense against AI-based cyber activity and threat actors and build long-term digital resilience with the help of Transmit Security and Microsoft. The 2023 Digital Defense Report reveals that Microsoft detected and blocked over 3 million identity attacks and account takeover (ATO) attempts every day. The report also found: The volume of password attacks increased more than tenfold in 2023, rising from 3 billion per month to over 30 billion, averaging 4,000 password attacks per second. Cybercriminals rely heavily on one-…

Surface products are built with customer trust at the forefront. Maintaining this trust requires ensuring the security of our physical, logistics, and software supply chains. By applying rigorous security controls across the entire Surface lifecycle, Microsoft and our suppliers ensure that the software powering Surface devices is secure, reliable, and meets customer expectations. [HEADING=1]Born secure: A holistic security approach[/HEADING] Surface products are designed to be ‘Born Secure’. This involves applying Microsoft security principles in cyber, physical and logistics security. Surface applies these security controls across all areas of product making, i…

Generative AI solutions are very transformational for businesses nowadays. Organisations have access to tools and AI capabilities that will enable them to generate immense value for the business. At the same time though, some businesses are struggling to identify the areas they should invest in AI. Most of the AI engagements fail because there isn’t really a business value that the AI solution is delivering. At times we find ourselves in a situation whereby we have an AI solution looking for a problem. This is what leads to failure. In order to make sure a Generative AI or AI solution is successful, we need to make sure it’s clear the business value it will deliver be…

Have you ever wanted to create your own website or web service, but felt overwhelmed about how to get started with web development? Or have you already built a web app with Python, but wondered how you can deploy it online? If so, you might be interested in watching this video by and Pamela Fox and Renee Noble, two Python Cloud Advocates at Microsoft with a passion for web development and education! They’ll show you how to create a web app with Python Flask (or it’s async-sibling Quart) and show you how you can deploy you can take your web app live by deploying it on Azure. This is the first episode in this live stream series (which you can also !) by Pamela and …

Bring your own Container Network Interface (BYOCNI) plugin with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) What is BYOCNI? BYOCNI stands for Bring Your Own Container Network Interface. It allows advanced AKS users to deploy an AKS cluster with no CNI plugin preinstalled. Instead, you can install any third-party CNI plugin that works in Azure. This flexibility enables you to use the same CNI plugin used in on-premises Kubernetes environments or leverage advanced functionalities available in other CNI plugins. Before diving into BYOCNI, ensure the following prerequisites are met: - Use at least template version 2022-01-02-preview or 2022-06-01 for Azure Resource M…

Welcome to this month's Azure Container Apps newsletter! We'll share the latest news and community highlights for Container Apps every month here on the Apps on Azure blog. [HEADING=1]Azure Container Apps monthly community live stream[/HEADING] Our next is June 12, 2024 at 11:00AM PDT (18:00 UTC). Join us and our special guests to learn all about running untrusted code in sandboxes with dynamic sessions on Azure Container Apps. Subscribe to the Azure Developers YouTube channel! [HEADING=1]Community highlights[/HEADING] Some great content created by our amazing community: Blogs What Azure Container Apps Is Not: Clearing the C…

Now that you are familiar with moving from a POC to MVP, the next key transition is moving from MVP to production rollout. This is where the focus must be put on the requirements and setup involved in a production deployment with considerations for the requirements of the end user. Before a single line of code is deployed, start a collaboration across technical and business stakeholders. Ask these critical questions: MVP outcome: Did the user feedback regarding the MVP and its results meet the desired expectations? Did the rollout of the MVP successfully fulfill and support the business objectives and achieve the intended outcome? LLM Model outcomes:…

Earlier this year at Enterprise Connect, we announced new silicon and OEM partnerships for meeting room devices built on the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP). Since then, we have collaborated closely with our partners to make MDEP more widely available. Today, we are excited to announce that MDEP now provides native support for Microsoft Teams Desk Phones and Microsoft Teams Panels. This expansion, achieved through close collaboration with Microsoft Teams, enables our device partners to rapidly adopt MDEP across the breadth of Teams' Android-based devices. "We are thrilled to bring the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform to Teams Phones and Teams Panel…

Join us for our next community call on June 25, 2024, where we'll showcase how you can maximize your AI transformation with Copilot investments and enable your admins, adoption managers, and senior leaders to drive user enablement, satisfaction, and impact. We will be starting the call at 5 minutes past the hour for both of our sessions (at 8:05 AM and 5:05 PM PT), and it will still end at the top of the hour (9:00 AM and 6:00 PM PT, respectively). If you have not yet joined our Champion community, sign up here to get access to the calendar invites, program assets, and previous call recordings. Continue reading...

We’re updating our billing for fine tuning with the Azure OpenAI Service to bill based on the number of tokens in your training file – instead of the total elapsed training time. Model Previous Price New Price Babbage-002 $34 / hour $0.0004/1K tokens Davinci-002 $40 / hour $0.006/1K tokens GPT-35-Turbo (4k) $45 / hour $0.008/1K tokens GPT-35-Turbo (16K) $68 / hour $0.008/1K tokens GPT-4 $102 / hour $0.080/1K tokens Why make this change? If you’ve fine-tuned before – or thought about it and decided against it – you may have strug…

Azure Sphere OS version 24.06 is now available for evaluation in the Retail Eval feed. The retail evaluation period for this release provides 14 days (about 2 weeks) of testing. During this time, please verify that your applications and devices operate properly with this release before it is deployed broadly to devices in the Retail feed. The 24.06 OS Retail Eval release includes a security update. For more information on Azure Sphere OS feeds and setting up an evaluation device group, see Azure Sphere OS feeds and Set up devices for OS evaluation. For self-help inquiries or technical support, review the Azure Sphere support options. Continue readi…

Let’s discuss the myths around the move to cloud-native management, with Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra ID, and Windows 11. In this post, we will address some common questions and misconceptions by sharing insights and perspectives gathered from the conversations we’ve had with organizations of all sizes from around the globe this past year. We understand that as an IT pro a big part of your role is to help manage change, and to mitigate risks when implementing those changes. So, when considering a joint move to cloud-native management and keeping up to date with Windows 11, why does the task seem so daunting? Is it a singular, monolithic project—or two distinct,…

[HEADING=2]Using Microsoft Azure to serve the data needs of the energy industry[/HEADING] Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with offices in Singapore, the Philippines, Denmark, Norway, and the United States, Iraya Energies employs a talented mix of data scientists, geoscientists, and engineers. The tech startup became a Microsoft partner in December 2018 and has utilized Microsoft Azure for a few years. ElasticDocs Intuitive Knowledge Container, the company’s flagship product, is a cloud-enabled web solution that organizes, structures, and accesses unstructured data for the energy industry. It’s available in a Software-as-a-Service model through the Microsoft Az…

You're in the middle of a cyber incident, and you know certain accounts have been compromised, but you are not certain of the full extent of the Threat Actor’s impact. What do you do? Oftentimes, Microsoft Incident Response will recommend a mass password reset. This helps you regain control of your identity plane, deny other avenues of access, and disrupt any persistence the attacker may have established in your environment. However, and especially for larger organizations, navigating mass password resets can be a complex task. In this blog post, we'll discuss the practical challenges of performing a mass password reset, how to prepare to carry one out, and best practices…

We are excited to announce that Microsoft 365 and its associated data residency offerings – Advanced Data Residency (ADR) and Multi-Geo capabilities – are now available for commercial customers in our new cloud region in Madrid, Spain. With the availability of Microsoft 365 will now offer Multi-Geo and ADR add-ons to provide customers provisioned in Spain with greater control over the location of their cloud data. Multi-Geo allows customers to configure in which geographies their Microsoft 365 user data is stored at rest, on a per-user basis and within a single tenant. Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams are available for Multi-Geo con…

Today, we are launching the general availability of Bot Manager1.1 ruleset in Azure WAF integrated with Azure Front Door. Bot Manager1.1 extends all the rules in the existing Bot Manager1.0 ruleset and adds multiple new rules to provide comprehensive bot management capabilities to web applications. The new capabilities introduced in this ruleset include new Goodbots rules and a new Badbots rule. The main value prop of the new ruleset is to reduce false positives in good bot detections and increase true positives in malicious bot detections. Benefits of the new rules in the Goodbots rule group: Improving SEO rankings due to good bots crawling webs…

The transformation to AI-based automation is a new reality for businesses worldwide. By 2025, it's expected that 95% of all new digital workloads will deploy to the cloud and 90% of enterprise apps will use AI technology. As a Microsoft partner, you can leverage three customizable ready-to-use marketing campaigns to drive demand and convert leads. The Era of AI campaign allows you to market your Azure AI solutions to help your customers quickly adopt and deploy Microsoft Copilot, solidify their technology foundation, leverage AI-infused SaaS apps and services, learn to use AI securely and responsibly, and much, much more. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a r…

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] This is part 6 on our series on Azure Data Factory CI/CD. This section will cover how to incorporate Azure Deployment Stacks into your Azure DevOps Pipelines. Part 1 Architecture and Scenario Creating resources in Azure Create Azure Storage Containers Create Azure Key Vaults Create Azure Data Factory: With Key Vault Access Part 2 Configure Azure Data Factory Source Control Construct Azure Data Factory Data Pipeline Publishing Concept for Azure Data Factory Configure Deployed Azure Resources. Part 3 The YAML Pipeline Structure The Publish Process ARM Template Parameterization ADF ARM Template Deployme…

At Microsoft, our aim is to provide a modern and secure email experience for our users, leveraging the latest technologies to enhance functionality and ease of use. When it comes to Outlook, we want to ensure our customers' emails, documents, calendar, and contacts are safeguarded from unauthorized access, tampering or loss. Today, we're announcing changes to Outlook for personal use to enhance the security of our consumer customers. These changes are aligned to the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative (SFI). They are: The deprecation of Basic Authentication for Outlook personal email accounts effective September 16, 2024 A reminder of end of support for the Mail &…

We can't wait to meet you in person at ISTELive 24 in Denver, June 23-26, 2024! Join us for an exciting week of live demos, theater sessions, PD workshops, and so much more. Educators at the Microsoft booth at ISTE, titled: ISTELive 24 in Denver, June 23-26, 2024, Booth #1300. Live demos, theater sessions, PD workshops. As you think about the next school year, ISTELive is a great opportunity to dive into our Learning Accelerators, a new category of AI-enhanced learning tools included in Microsoft 365 at no cost for Education. These tools help streamline the creation, review, and analysis of practice assignments while providing students real-time coaching to …

Microsoft partners like Boxfusion and Skypoint deliver transact-capable offers, which allow you to purchase directly from Azure Marketplace. Learn about these offers below: [attachment=54230:name] Botsa: Botsa works with Microsoft Teams to provide a simple, familiar, and user-friendly interface for your employees to improve internal communications and processes. By handling routine queries, Botsa frees up your staff to focus on more complex tasks, increasing overall productivity and transforming your workplace experience. Reduce operational costs by automating common queries and processes. [attachment=54231:name] Skypoint AI Platform for Senior Livin…

SQL injections are one of the most common and popular application attack vectors used with the goal of retrieving sensitive data from companies. When you hear about stolen financial information, defaced web sites or even systems takeover, they often happen through complex hacking attempt, which in many cases starts with common SQL injection vulnerabilities being exploited. Fortunately, you can follow some very easy techniques to prevent SQL injection affecting your system with PostgreSQL backend. [HEADING=2]What is SQL Injection?[/HEADING] SQL injection (SQLi) is a common cybersecurity exploit that targets commercial and open-source relational data…

[HEADING=1]Introduction[/HEADING] If you are using Azure for your cloud applications, you might be wondering how to manage your costs effectively. You might have heard of Microsoft Cost Management, a service that helps you monitor, analyze, and optimize your cloud spending[1]. But did you know that Microsoft Cost Management also offers a powerful feature called Budgets? Budgets are a way to set spending limits and track your costs against them. They help you avoid surprises in your bill, align your spending with your business goals, and empower your teams to make informed decisions[2]. In this article, you will learn the benefits of having a budget in Microsoft …

We are excited to announce the general availability of the Copilot Deployment Kit in Viva Amplify. Transform your organization to a new way of working with the power of AI in Copilot for Microsoft 365! Leveraging Microsoft’s internal Copilot deployment learnings and best practices, this Copilot Deployment Kit will help you drive awareness and adoption of Copilot by enabling employees to learn how to get ready for Copilot, what Copilot can do for them in their Microsoft 365 apps, and where to learn more. Pre-built Copilot Deployment Kit available on campaign home page in Viva Amplify. Includes 8 pre-drafted communications and campaign brief with obje…

The Global DevOps Bootcamp, an annual event series that has captured the attention of the DevOps community worldwide by hosting local events to share the latest DevOps and relevant technologies as well as case studies, is being rebranded as the "Global DevOps Experience" (GDEX). This exciting event will take place on Saturday, June 15, 2024. This event series will feature insights on DevOps, Platform Engineering, and Developer Experience (DevEx), leveraging technologies such as Azure, AI, and GitHub. DevOps communities from around the globe will come together to share their knowledge and experience. Microsoft MVPs and Regional Directors are planning various loc…