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2024/09

Microsoft Entra ID Protection

Microsoft Entra offers a comprehensive set of security features to protect your organization's data and resources. One of these features is ID Protection, which helps you secure your users' identities and prevent unauthorized access to your organization's data. Here are some key benefits of using ID Protection in Microsoft Entra:

  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA): ID Protection enables you to enforce multi-factor authentication for all users in your organization. This adds an extra layer of security to your users' accounts and helps prevent unauthorized access.

  • Conditional access policies: With ID Protection, you can create conditional access policies that define the conditions under which users can access your organization's resources. For example, you can require users to use multi-factor authentication when accessing sensitive data or restrict access to certain applications based on the user's location.

  • Risk-based policies: ID Protection uses advanced machine learning algorithms to detect suspicious activities and risky sign-in attempts. You can create risk-based policies that automatically block or allow access based on the risk level associated with the sign-in attempt.

  • Identity protection reports: ID Protection provides detailed reports and insights into your organization's identity security posture. You can use these reports to identify security risks, monitor user activity, and take proactive measures to protect your organization's data.

By using ID Protection in Microsoft Entra, you can enhance the security of your organization's data and resources and protect your users' identities from cyber threats. If you want to learn more about ID Protection and other security features in Microsoft Entra, contact us today!

I hope this helps!

Microsoft Entra Attribute Duplicate Attribute Resiliency

Microsoft Entra Attribute Duplicate Attribute Resiliency feature is also being rolled out as the default behavior of Microsoft Entra ID. This will reduce the number of synchronization errors seen by Microsoft Entra Connect (as well as other sync clients) by making Microsoft Entra ID more resilient in the way it handles duplicated ProxyAddresses and UserPrincipalName attributes present in on premises AD environments. This feature does not fix the duplication errors. So the data still needs to be fixed. But it allows provisioning of new objects which are otherwise blocked from being provisioned due to duplicated values in Microsoft Entra ID. This will also reduce the number of synchronization errors returned to the synchronization client. If this feature is enabled for your Tenant, you will not see the InvalidSoftMatch synchronization errors seen during provisioning of new objects.

Behavior with Duplicate Attribute Resiliency

graph TD
    A[Start] --> B[Provision or Update Object]
    B --> C{Duplicate Attribute?}
    C -- Yes --> D[Quarantine Duplicate Attribute]
    D --> E{Is Attribute Required?}
    E -- Yes --> F[Assign Placeholder Value]
    F --> G[Send Error Report Email]
    E -- No --> H[Proceed with Object Creation/Update]
    H --> G
    G --> I[Export Succeeds]
    I --> J[Sync Client Does Not Log Error]
    J --> K[Sync Client Does Not Retry Operation]
    K --> L[Background Timer Task Every Hour]
    L --> M[Check for Resolved Conflicts]
    M --> N[Remove Attributes from Quarantine]
    C -- No --> H

Differences between B2B Direct Connect and B2B Collaboration in English

Microsoft Entra offers two ways to collaborate with external users: B2B Direct Connect and B2B Collaboration. Both features allow organizations to share resources with external users while maintaining control over access and security. However, they differ in functionality, access, and integration. Here is a comparison between B2B Direct Connect and B2B Collaboration:

Feature B2B Direct Connect B2B Collaboration
Definition Mutual trust relationship between two Microsoft Entra organizations Invite external users to access resources using their own credentials
Functionality Seamless collaboration using origin credentials and shared channels in Teams External users receive an invitation and access resources after authentication
Applications Shared channels in Microsoft Teams Wide range of applications and services within the Microsoft ecosystem
Access Single sign-on (SSO) with origin credentials Authentication each time resources are accessed, unless direct federation is set up
Integration Deep and continuous integration between two organizations Flexible way to invite and manage external users

I hope this helps!

Microsoft Defender for Storage

Microsoft Defender for Storage is part of the Microsoft Defender for Cloud suite of security solutions.

Introduction

Microsoft Defender for Storage is a cloud-native security solution that provides advanced threat protection for your Azure Storage accounts.

Microsoft Defender for Storage provides comprehensive security by analyzing the data plane and control plane telemetry generated by Azure Blob Storage, Azure Files, and Azure Data Lake Storage services. It uses advanced threat detection capabilities powered by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Microsoft Defender Antivirus, and Sensitive Data Discovery to help you discover and mitigate potential threats.

Defender for Storage includes:

  • Activity Monitoring
  • Sensitive data threat detection (new plan only)
  • Malware Scanning (new plan only)

How it works

Microsoft Defender for Storage uses advanced threat detection capabilities powered by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Microsoft Defender Antivirus, and Sensitive Data Discovery to help you discover and mitigate potential threats.

Activity Monitoring

Activity Monitoring provides insights into the operations performed on your storage accounts. It helps you understand the access patterns and operations performed on your storage accounts, and provides insights into the data plane and control plane activities.

Sensitive data threat detection

Sensitive data threat detection helps you discover and protect sensitive data stored in your storage accounts. It uses advanced machine learning models to detect sensitive data patterns and provides recommendations to help you protect your sensitive data.

Malware Scanning

Malware Scanning helps you detect and mitigate malware threats in your storage accounts. It uses advanced threat detection capabilities powered by Microsoft Defender Antivirus to scan your storage accounts for malware threats and provides recommendations to help you mitigate these threats.

Pricing

The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Storage is as follows:

Resource Type Resource Price
Storage Microsoft Defender for Storage €9 per storage account/month6
Storage Malware Scanning (add-on to Defender for Storage) €0.135/GB of data scanned

For more information about pricing, see the Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing.

Conclusion

Microsoft Defender for Storage is a cloud-native security solution that provides advanced threat protection for your Azure Storage accounts. It uses advanced threat detection capabilities powered by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, Microsoft Defender Antivirus, and Sensitive Data Discovery to help you discover and mitigate potential threats.

For more information about Microsoft Defender for Storage, see the Overview of Microsoft Defender for Storage

markmap

markmap is a visualisation tool that allows you to create mindmaps from markdown files. It is based on the mermaid library and can be used to create a visual representation of a markdown file.

Installation in mkdocs

To install markmap in mkdocs, you need install the plugin using pip:

pip install mkdocs-markmap

Then, you need to add the following lines to your mkdocs.yml file:

plugins:
  - markmap

Usage

To use markmap, you need to add the following code block to your markdown file:

```markmap  
# Root

## Branch 1

* Branchlet 1a
* Branchlet 1b

## Branch 2

* Branchlet 2a
* Branchlet 2b
```

And this will generate the following mindmap:

alt text

That is for the future, because in my mkdocs not work as expected:

# Root

## Branch 1

* Branchlet 1a
* Branchlet 1b

## Branch 2

* Branchlet 2a
* Branchlet 2b

Visual Studio Code Extension

There is also a Visual Studio Code extension that allows you to create mindmaps from markdown files. You can install it from the Visual Studio Code marketplace.

    Name: Markdown Preview Markmap Support
    Id: phoihos.markdown-markmap
    Description: Visualize Markdown as Mindmap (A.K.A Markmap) to VS Code's built-in markdown preview
    Version: 1.4.6
    Publisher: phoihos
    VS Marketplace Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=phoihos.markdown-markmap
VS Marketplace Link

Conclusion

I don't like too much this plugin because it not work as expected in my mkdocs but it's a good tool for documentation.

References