In the beginning, there were no backup solutions for Office 365.  I mean, there were some limited recovery options.  Microsoft now has a retention and recovery function that is good for up to 30 days for Exchange Online.  SharePoint fairs a little better with a 93-day retention period after deletion (exc hard deletes), and the ability to request a point-in-time recovery by submitting a ticket to Microsoft.  But this is not what us IT folks expect for backup.  Then came the 3rd party backup services.  We used Skykick, and then Veeam for Microsoft 365.  The latter gave us the choice of backup location - in an Azure storage blob in the client’s tenant, or in AWS - and was cost effective ($1USD per account per month + storage and hosting costs).

Now there is Office 365 Backup and Archive - new services hot off the press from Microsoft.  Released in public preview on 19 Jan and 17 Jan respectively, both offer a cost-effective alternative for backing up Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive that’s super easy to setup.  Backup is at 15c per Gb, and archive is 5c per Gb (with a 6c per Gb recovery charge).  For smaller clients of around 20 to 30 seats, we estimate backup charges of around $150 per month.  You can setup backup and retention policies to suit your needs and it’s all accessible through the Office 365 Admin Centre.  Worth a look if your 3rd party backup solution is not cutting the mustard

And from all of us here at Charlie Mac, happy New Year!  We wish you a healthy, joyous and prosperous 2024.  We hope you find this newsletter informative and thought provoking.

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

My first job out of uni was as an Electronic Systems Engineer in the RAAF designing solid state replacements for SURAD, the ATC radar of the day.  One of the hardest things to recreate was Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) tags.  In a target rich environment, IFF tags help air defence officers filter good aircraft from bad.

In the old days, web filtering was done centrally - usually by a firewall or web filtering proxy.  The technology required all corporate traffic at all sites to be funnelled through such a service, and this in-turn drove a rise in MPLS networks - dedicated networks commonly connecting corporate sites to a central data centre.  In a zero-trust environment the network gets simpler. MPLS networks and web filter proxies become redundant and web filtering is done at the device - closer to the user is better.  This approach is used by Microsoft as part of their Intune and Windows Defender for Endpoint solutions - sophisticated web filtering that’s difficult to bypass. 

If you have Defender for Endpoint licencing, you can enable web filtering by:

1) Logging into the Microsoft 365 Defender portal

2) Scrolling to the bottom of the left blade and select Settings | Endpoints | Web content filtering (under Rules).

3) Adding a policy that includes the categories you want to block, specify the scope, and click Save.

And you are done!

You can also block specific IPs, URLs, or types of traffic (like peer-to-peer) and monitor if someone is attempting access through Reports | Web protection.

Zero trust is not a new term.  The concept is based on three pillars - verify explicitly, use least accessed privileges, and assume breach.  For example, the corporate network only provides access to applications that contain data you have authority to use.  Good security dictates zero trust, in that access to corporate data should not be assumed.  And I predict your IT infrastructure will get simpler as a result. 

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

Stalling an aircraft, intentionally, was never fun - but necessary to feel the effects of when you lose control.  The procedure was to 1) ascend to 4000ft AGL over farmland, 2) jam the throttle control in to idle, 3) as airspeed decreases, keep pulling the stick back to raise the nose and maintain altitude, 4) keep doing this until you feel buffeting, 5) keep going further a bit more and in a few seconds you and your aircraft are in freefall.  To return to controlled flight, you do what is counterintuitive - release the stick.  This is one reason why nearly 50% of all private pilot accidents involve stalls and half of these result in fatalities.  The deadliest times are at take-off and landing, where you are close to the terrain and at low airspeed.

You may know Sentinel as Microsoft’s SIEM.  We like it, but there are many other SIEMs out there if Microsoft is not your thing.  Anyhow, for under a $100 per month our clients get more sophistication that they can use.  It covers controls for the much of the MITRE ATT&CK framework and provides ASD Essential 8 reporting OOTB.  Best of all, it provides you with all the ability to run mock incidents to ensure you know what it feels like when a serious security incident is at play.  It also gives you the tools to contain and eliminate that attack - and return to straight and level flight.  It’s impressive!

Don’t end up like Bernie, washed up on the beach.  Get ready now and improve your security posture with tools that help you soar.

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

We all have customers in some form or another and identifying them can be tricky.  Mid last year ACMA brought in regulation to make it mandatory for telcos to use a second factor in verifying a customer attempting to perform a high risk transaction (for example, adding an account holder).  Many telcos adopted this second factor as a One Time PIN (OTP) sent from their CRM. 

Recently, this topic came up in a review we are doing on IT Service Desk operations for a LGA.  Identity spoofing is a real threat for support teams whether they be internally or externally facing. 

As put by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, there are three factors in verifying identity - something you know (like password or email address), something you have (a card, token, or known mobile phone) or something you are (fingerprint, voiceprint or other biometric).  Your job - particularly in any high risk transactions initiated by your customer - is to verify two of these three factors. 

Modern service desk and CRM solutions make this easier with built-in multi-factor verification functions or integrations.  Into PowerApps?  Create something like this to send a random PIN to a known email address (or modify to send an SMS via a gateway to a known phone number). Remember, Microsoft consider logging into a trusted device (eg enrolled in Intune) as a second factor. 

Advancements in this space continue, with Microsoft recently announcing integration between Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Nuance Gatekeeper for voiceprint identification.  

As The Who said in their ‘78 anthem of customer identify verification: “Come on, tell me, who are you?, 'Cause I really wanna know”.  The rest of the song’s not that relevant, but hey its hard finding a pop-culture reference sometimes.

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

Effective
security is a priority for many organisations, but its implementation
can be obstructed by uncertainty and a lack of reliable resources. As
reported data breaches from malicious attacks are increasing,
security is becoming a priority for many - but it can be difficult to
know where to begin when protecting your organisation, employees, and
clients.

Implementing the Essential 8 is a good starting point. Recommended by Victoria’s auditor-general,
the Essential 8 are essential mitigation strategies which aid in
protecting organisations from cyber security incidents, including cyber
attacks from external parties, ransomware, and data breaches. The
Essential 8 can also be enacted in stages, allowing for customisable
levels of security depending on your organisation’s specific needs.

Maintaining healthy IT systems is like maintaining any other kind of health - prevention is better than cure. Begin today with the ACSC’s guidance.

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

Building
a customer portal can be tricky. In the heat of the dot com bubble, I
was a consultant working on the telstra.com team - Telstra’s first shot
at a one-stop-shop for customers. I was working for Accenture at the time as a Manager in the UAT team. It was a goliath of a project, with SSO being a major part of that.

Power Pages has been in general release since Oct 22,
and provides simple way of providing portal experience, and is the
revamped version of the old Power Portals. It’s a low-code way of
opening up your organisation to the world in a really secure way.
Pricing starts at $5 an authenticated user (based on unique Dataverse
contact IDs) and $0.40 per anonymous user (based on cookie ID) per month
- colume discounts apply. Spin up a free trial (up to 60 days with an
extension) here. Most impressive is the Building Permit application template - a fully fledged application portal complete with workflow that ready to go OOTB. And its data is saved in the Dataverse ready to be consumed by other apps!

I was a big fan of Dr Who when I was a kid, and I guess I am still now - worlds of possibility visited via the TARDIS. That’s what a portal is supposed to be I think - a window into another world. Tom Baker was the best Doctor - feel free to debate me on that one.

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

That’s all for this week! Send any topics you would like included in next week’s newsletter to olivia@charlie-mac.com or forward this email to a friend.

Learning in my uni years was fun and not because of the lecturers or the material, but more so of the antics we got up to. Engineers with too much idle time and all that. In an auditorium full of people, a group from up the back launched a massive paper plane (I reckon 5ft or more in wingspan) when the lecturer had his back turned. It hung in the air and made it to the second row before hitting a guy in the back of the head - ouch! Then, some bright spark put sheets of paper in an overhead projector to block the light from the bulb. The lecturer turned on the projector and wondered why it wasn’t lighting up. Then a fire broke out.

Sleeping on desks, cramming, getting electrocuted, and social experiments at the Student Union were all part of the learning process.

Learning should be fun, and eLearning should be no exception.

In a previous newsletter, I mentioned Learning Pathways and Viva Learning and how they are low cost eLearning options with heaps of features. I wanted to provide more details on how this could work for you.

All learning material we create (from internal how-to guides, to policy) is stored as Markdown in a git repo within Azure DevOps. This means that all learning material we create becomes code. It can be forked (we do this for sharing custom material with our clients), version controlled, and programmatically morphed into other formats (eg HTML for consumption by SharePoint and our Dynamics 365 knowledge base).

For our clients, we deploy a Learning Pathways instance and upload the fork we created for them in the git repo. Then, we integrate this repository of learning material with Viva Learning, and voila - another fully functional LMS is born.

We are deploying this eLearning architecture for NFP clients in Gippsland and LGAs in other corners of the state. Sing out if you would like to know more…

And just like the advice given to John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop (the original): “You Know, Kindergarten [your learning community] Is Like The Ocean. You Don't Want To Turn Your Back On It.”

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

Do
you remember the grungy dens that were public payphones? Before the
days of mobile phones, I’d have to push my way past McDonalds wrappers
so I could call Mum to let her know I was going to be late for dinner.
My uni friends talked of all sorts of scams to get free phone calls - from playing DTMF tones from your Walkman to tricky key sequences. Looking back, these payphones gave us a kind of freedom we never knew we had.

Phones
come in many shapes and forms these days. I am fascinated by the
seemingly complex array of guff in the telephony space. All you need is
a handset and a way of connecting that handset to the PSTN. In addition, a phone system must increase your options for the future. Teams Phone
has potential, especially if you are looking at Microsoft Teams as
being the central place for all work. Microsoft offer a few options for
connecting Teams to the PSTN: Calling Plans (not available for Aus
numbers), Carrier Connect and Direct Routing. In my simple world,
Carrier Connect is easier to setup (not necessarily faster) and manage.
Direct Routing requires some PowerShell
but gives you more flexibility and choice (eg to choose your own
carrier). All require Teams Phone licensing (about $11 retail or $4.40
charity per person per month).

We’ve
gone the Direct Routing path for ourselves and our clients, mainly so
we can start with basic Teams Phone functions (call queues, auto
attendants, etc). and move to more complex PBX and Call Centre functions
later (we use 3CX for
this, but there are plenty of others). If old skool handsets are your
thing, then a solution like 3CX gives you a greater range to choose
from, along with advanced call / skill based routing, call recording,
detailed reporting, and web based chat (sites built on WordPress, Drupal
and others are supported).

Getting
stuck in time can be fun - for a while. And then the horror sets in.
Like Marty McFly at the Diner trying to call the Doc to find a way home.
No answer. Choosing the right path in your Teams Phone journey will
get you Back to the Future!

Across the Industry

Microsoft News

Coming to the end of another year means reflecting on what has been achieved, and what could be improved or changed. Our newsletter has now been running for just over six months – that’s 26 newsletters in total!

Our most popular topics this year included securityemployee training and learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). Unsurprisingly, this has reflected the industry news, with issues surrounding protecting sensitive data, improving processes, and engaging with faster ways of creating and sharing information at the forefront of many people’s minds.

Thanks to all of you who have engaged with our content this year. We hope it’s been enjoyable and useful to you and your organisation. As always, feel free to submit feedback or suggestions to olivia@charlie-mac.com.

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News

My
first brush with AI was in my final year at Uni. The cool kids had
snatched all of the interesting thesis topics. My friend Paul was
capturing 3D data from a 2D image, similar to this
- very cool. I approached one of my computer science lecturers and he
said, “read this, and base your thesis on it”. The book was Vehicles by Valenteno Braitenberg - an exploration into a form of AI called synthetic psychology that started my fascination in AI and, in particular, neural networks.

Fast forward to just over a week ago (November 30 to be exact). ChatGPT was
released by OpenAI for public research, and uses neural networks and
language models to give a deeply engaging experience. It can create
content - like “write a biblical verse in the style of the King James Bible explaining how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR.”
It can answer follow up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge
incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. But most
importantly for us IT geniuses, ChatGPT can create executable code from a
simple natural language command.

We are using it now to write PowerShell
configuration scripts to push out to Surface Pros via Endpoint Manager.
It provides a good starting point for the script, inserts intelligible
comments, and explains the code for you. I can see many other uses.

Can’t
remember how to write an SQL query to unload the first 1000 rows from a
table? Ask ChatGPT and you’ll have syntactically correct code that’s
ready to execute in seconds. Have code that is throwing an error? Give
it to ChatGPT and it will give possible ways to fix it. Can’t remember
how to write a particular function expression in Power Automate?
Again, ChatGPT is surprisingly good in giving a ready to run answer. It
can even pretend to be a Linux box.

The gap between people and machines is closing.

If you remember seeing Dark Star in
the 70s or 80s, you’ll remember the conversations between crew and
computers - coaxing bombs back into the ship after the bombs decided
they needed to deploy. I guess you had to be there. Anyhow, the point
I am trying to make is that AI is useful and fallible all at the same
time. Use it wisely!

Across the Industry

Recent Government Tenders

Microsoft News