Guest: Diana Giles, President and Owner of Skyline IT Management
Skyline IT Management is an IT consulting services company that provides modern technology plans for businesses.

In this episode of "Uncle Marv's IT Business Podcast," we took a deep dive into the Microsoft 365 Journey to the Cloud. We covered everything from enhanced email protection to customizing conditional access policies for top-notch security.

But that's not all! We also discussed the benefits of utilizing Teams Channels for client communication and monitoring. And of course, we couldn't forget about the failed conditional access and password issues that can sometimes pop up.

Now, let's talk about the highlights of this episode:

  • Moving a client to Microsoft 365 Business Premium for enhanced email protection.
  • Importance of customizing conditional access policies for enhanced security.
  • Utilizing Teams Channels for client communication and monitoring.
  • Discussion on failed conditional access and password issues.

Timestamps:

  • 10:11 - Moving a client to Microsoft 365 Business Premium for enhanced email protection.
  • 19:26 - Importance of customizing conditional access policies for enhanced security.
  • 27:48 - Utilizing Teams Channels for client communication and monitoring.
  • 48:41 - Discussion on failed conditional access and password issues.

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Websites and Resources: 

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#ITBusinessPodcast #Microsoft365 #ITproviders #cloudmigration #BusinessStandard #BusinessPremium #AzureAD #Intune #conditionalaccess #securitypolicies #phishingpolicies #dynamicgroups 

Transcript

Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business podcast. This is the Wednesday live show presented by NetAlly. And this is the show where we try to help the IT professionals in our industry, do their jobs, run their businesses better smarter and faster. Tonight, we are doing a very special live Q and A or recap or whatever happens with our good friend Diana Giles from Skyline. It Management Giles. How are you? I'm great. How are you doing? Good, doing good. So we are doing a live show after we just put out three lovely M365 videos that you and I did uh just a while back. And uh did you get a chance to check yourself out on the videos?

Well, I don't really like watching or listening to myself, but I did uh you know, watch a little bit just so I could kind of make sure I remembered what we talked about and uh I was pleased with how they uh turned out. I hope that it provided information that uh people find valuable. Well, we will find out we've uh got some people here in the chat. I want to say hello to everybody there. And this is one of those shows where, you know, even as we do the recap, if you have questions or comments, be sure to put them in the chat and we will address them. We are streaming live on YouTube LinkedIn and the Facebook. So all three of those will get to us here and if they are good and appropriate, we'll throw them up on the screen here and answer them.

Uh, before we get started, let me do a couple of housekeeping things. One of the things that I want to do is, uh, tell everybody. Thank you. I know that it has been a whirlwind of podcasts that I have been putting out partially because of the visits to the conferences where I've done live shows on site and our summer commitment to the Connectwise Pitch it program folks. Those are almost done and we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming. We've got some MSPS coming up, we've got some product reviews, but I want to say thank you for, I don't want to say putting up because that's not a right word.

Some of them have been very well received. These are all emerging vendors in our space and some of them have some really good things that I think apply to one of us or some of us or all of us at a particular time. So that's why we do that to get you guys information and you never know where you might find out where that next stack item is going to come from.

So, uh let's see, uh Giles, I'm off for the summer. I'm not doing any conferences anymore until I see you in September at Tech Con. How's your summer going be? Uh, I've got one more in between uh, now and then I going to get a Channel Con. Oh Channel Con. The big Vegas trip.

Yes, I haven't been to one of the really big ones like that, so I thought I would check it out. Ok. Uh, it's been a couple of years since I was at Channel. They are good. But are you going because of Channel Con or are you going because it's Vegas, uh, both?

I mean, it's a location that's easy for me to get to, uh, and pretty inexpensive to get to from here. So it, it was a good place to go. All right. Yep. That works for you. Not so much for me. Although I did check flights, flights are actually pretty cheap, which I suspect is what they do in Vegas to get you there. But it's a five hour flight for me.

That's, uh, that's one of the reasons I don't go west to the Mississippi. It's just too long a flight, but I will be headed up north to visit you a and Rick at the upcoming Tech Con. Unplug this September 7th through the 10th. So that is going to be a fantastic event. Uh There are still tickets available folks. So if you head over to tech unplug dot com, you can still sign up and I don't know what the discount code situation is, but if they're out there, reach out to Rick and Paco and they'll get you a discount. Um Likewise Vegas accepts all takers. Yeah. Well, I have quite the uh longer flight scheduled to get to New Jersey for uh tech.

So, but I'm still not going for five hours. Is it uh it's two flights and it probably does total five or six hours. Oh, you're doing the connecting. Yeah. Yeah, I can't do that. I try not to; I try not to as well. Uh All right. So let's uh let's get started with first of all, for people that may just have joined tonight to listen to the show live or they may not have yet watched or listened to thE3 videos that we put out.

Let's just quickly remind everybody what we did. We did three uh episodes and they were videotaped. So if you head over to YouTube, you can find them there. And I titled them the Microsoft 365 Journey to the Cloud. Did you like the title? I did. Yeah, it, it is a journey that is for sure for uh MSPS and for their clients when they're especially, you know, they're doing it for the first time. Uh when clients, you know, it's new to them. And so it's, it's definitely a journey and our job is to try to make it as painless as possible for them right now.

I know that one of the big reasons that you wanted to do something like this is, it seemed as though there was a lot of confusion, resistance in moving customers to the cloud. Uh, have you found that to have changed in the last couple of weeks? Because they're changing names? Yes, they are. And not only did they, but they also actually officially changed the name in uh most of the admin portals now too. Um It was, you could see that it said Micro Microsoft or I'm not sure how to say it, but uh it actually has changed now on the menu so that it doesn't say uh as your active director anymore. So yeah. Uh but yeah, it's uh I mean, I, I really feel like there are some MSPS that, you know, have really, of course just gotten very heavy into it.

They're already way on their way with their, you know, clients. But then I, I get the feeling just from either the questions that I get uh conferences or just people that I'm talking to that uh they're just not quite uh you know, embracing it yet as far as really trying to take clients off of servers and that kind of thing. Um The other, the other thing that I run into is you know, sometimes I get a new client that's coming to me to help them, you know, uh, I mean, we've, we've won the client but we're also typically in the process of moving them to Microsoft or improving their circumstances, maybe they're already on Microsoft, maybe they've already been working with another uh it provider and, you know, I get in there and I find out that regular users are global admins and, and things like that. So I, I know that there are a lot of um people who really do know Microsoft 365 out there in our community and then there's a lot who probably don't or maybe who want to. Uh and, and are really excited about doing it, but they just don't know where to get started.

You know, I know you, you called me a Microsoft 365 guru. And I feel um there's so many other people that I look to for their knowledge of Microsoft 365 that I, I don't even feel worthy of that title. But I, I'd like to say Microsoft 365 champion because I really, I think it's such a great option for small business. And uh the more it providers that uh are kind of like us that we can encourage to go that way. I think the better, well, you can call yourself champion if you want.

I'm going to call you guru. All right. So, you know, if I live up to it. I may change my mind later. I mean, if something happens, we'll see. But, uh, that's where we are now.

So, one of the first things I know that you and I have had a conversation I took on a client not too long ago that it appears they're going to be staying with me and they've got a lot of accounts where they simply just did the absolute minimum to get started. They are on 365 basic and 365 standard. But yet they're getting ready to move into a project where they're going to be in the cloud. So we're in the discussion with them to move them to as your ad or whatever the new name is because I'm still going to call it ad until I can get it through my head. What it is. So we're talking about moving them there. We're talking about giving them more protection for their email, uh, because they're complaining about spam now and instead of just finding more things to add on, I'm in the discussion or trying to start the discussion of getting them to go to 365 business premium, which is probably the first place where you would tell a new client to go. Right. Right. Especially if they're not going to be on a server. Now. I know with that client I believe. Is that the one you, that still has a server? Yeah. So, um, definitely if they don't have a server but even if they do, uh there are just so many advantages to it.

Um, a lot of the controls that you uh can, you know, put on an end point. Yes, you can do it with group policy, but you can also do it with uh Azure active directory in tune and all of that. And I think it's a little bit more um robust and modern, you know, uh addressing the, the more modern technology uh without having to add on, you know, significant like E5, E3 licensing, you get compliance, uh you know, labeling things that you can do that, you know, like you can ask and it may or may not be that big a deal for that, that particular client. But there are some questions that you can ask to try to help when clients are, you know, that that price tag. And we talked about that in one of the other episodes is uh pretty hefty when all they're thinking of is Excel and Word and outlook, you know, uh and they don't really understand the, you know, data governance and the things that, that come with it.

So, you know, some of the things that you can ask are uh you know, would you like to be able to have your staff use their personal mobile phones to be able to access company data but still know that that data is protected. They can't copy it into uh you know, other apps that are not protected if they leave, you can wipe the company data from their phone, you know, instantaneously, that kind of thing. Um Would they want to know if somebody is sending out, you know, a list of social security numbers or credit card numbers in an email? Those are the kinds of controls that are really great that small businesses didn't have, you know, they used to can have those kinds of things. And now you can have that for a business as small as one entrepreneur and up to 300 with business premium.

The other thing that we're running into with that client is they now want to try to corral all of the things that their uh users have done such as creating their own one drive accounts and storing documents and different things, whether it's drop box or, or whatever. And the discussion now is they want to move to this cloud line of business app and I've asked them, well, how are we going to consolidate your data? So the discussion now is to bring all of that into SharePoint and have users use one drive and stuff and it's just so much easier to do that with a premium license than with business basic, right? Yeah, I mean, I feel really um like my hands are tied a lot of times if I am uh my computer wanted to reboot uh if um if I am, you know, in a business standard tenant, I'll go to try to do something and it's like, ah, I can't do that.

It's, it's not business premium, you know. So I always feel like my hands are tied if I don't have business premium. Ok. All right. So, premium. That was a big thing that we talked about in the first one along with uh final seeking and storage uh policies, compliance. And then in the second video, we actually got introduced to M365 Maps. Yes. Great little website. Yeah. So do you actually bring that up when you're pitching your clients on all of the benefits of, of changing licenses and getting the right ones?

I would, I haven't had to, but I would, if, if, if they were really balking at, you know, like, well, we've got office already, you know, it's $12.50 a month per user and that kind of thing. Um Yeah, I would for sure. Well, one of the things, uh let me see, let me pull something up here. I'm not going to share it, but I was looking at something earlier in trying to tell them all the things that they get in the premium as opposed to the basic stuff. And I mean, we're looking at um, so basic mobility security, Oak defender for office 365 plan one. That was another thing that came up with the client. Uh Monday, the owner asked me about what, what can we do to prevent the spam.

I think the, the uptick is up and, you know, he himself is on a 365 basic. And I said, well, I mean, there's really not much we can do unless we do an add on, we can upgrade your license or do the, uh Microsoft Defender for 365. It's going to cost him, you know, $2 more per mailbox. And it was funny because usually he's, you know, nickel and diming. But in this case, he said, all right. So let's clean up mailboxes and get rid of some old accounts and then add it to everybody. And it, it almost, it almost takes a pain point for them to just realize that, you know, it's not about the money, right? Because what you're going to, you know, you will spend the money and you would have spent the money with a lot of the other technology or if we're talking especially of taking somebody from a server. But um you know, servers are expensive and the maintenance and all of that, but also time and frustration and just having things run smoothly really, uh you know, taking those pain points away can, can really make that price tag, not seem as high.

Yeah, so here's something in here that we had on another list uh to talk about, but we didn't do it in any of thE3 video alert policies. Oh, yes. Um yeah, that I was just saying that I like to add custom alert policies to the ones that are already there. Uh Because, you know, you can, you can get, there are some that are built in and those are great, but there's others that, um you know, I like to add so that, that you can and I do it with a script and I add a whole bunch of them all at once um with a nice little script that's out there to do that. So it isn't hard. Um The most time consuming thing is making sure that you've got the email alerts set, right?

So, you know, you have to go in and add the different emails. I mean, the ones that they come with seem fine to me. So what would you be adding? Um Well, let me go look at my list so I can, so I know what to tell you um without um because a lot of them have to do with uh like email. Um people, you know, like a loin. Um uh that is not, you know, like too many login attempts that are not uh getting, you know, put through. Uh Let me see if I can find my I list, right? So if you don't have that in my demo tenant or I'd go, I don't have them on my demo tenant. So um I have them in my real tenants, all my clients. Um But I can't think of one right now.

That's that because there's just a list and I just all, I add them all in at once, but I do a whole bunch of them. Um, I'll try to find that and ok, well, I'll go ahead and say I just saw, uh our good friend Eric Anthony just popped up in the chat. Hey there. Uh Sorry, I'm late. But no, you're good. Listen, if you can make it, you can make it. But this is a video and of course you can download the podcast to catch up later. And we're just doing a quick recap of the journey of M365 to the cloud. And Giles is looking up some custom alert policies that would uh be added beyond the ones that are already in there.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something that I, I always do on every tenant. Um Like I said, I just, I don't have my own tenant up right now and I, I'm drawing a blank on like which an example of what's a custom one that I do versus one that is already built in there. I, because I, I don't really look at them individually very often. All right, and I'll just read a couple of things here that I put as bullet points. Uh One of the other things we talked about was setting up user groups and utilizing dynamic groups for easier management and you can set up dynamic membership rules for devices as well. So that seemed like a very good thing. And then of course, we talked about the, the ever popular conditional access.

Yes, that is, um, that's one of the best things that you can do for security, uh, is to really get those, um, conditional access policies. You know, you can, there's all the kinds of the standard ones that most everybody recommends. But then if you, uh, if you want to, you know, you can for different unique situations that your client has, you can, you can modify them and I mean, you can add new ones and, and get them really custom for their particular situation. Um, and then, uh, Eric asked, what do we think about the Azure ad renaming? Uh I know I saw a post earlier and it's probably 50 50.

I think a lot of people are just kind of used to Microsoft renaming things and, you know, and in the end it doesn't matter because they're going to rename it at some point anyway. And then of course, uh, some people are liking the change to be honest, you know, what was it? What was the name in, in? I mean, to be honest, that means nothing to me in terms of the change. It's not like it sounds better in a sense. What do you think?

Um, well, the thing, you know, they, they definitely have a reputation for changing all their names all the time. Um, but there is a big confusion with people about Azure and Azure and Azure really is its own animal. I mean, um, they're tied together, you know, for identity and, and things like that. But, uh, really, it's probably a good thing, I think in the long run, I don't know, some people think they're going to go ahead and do what they did with the, you know, in tune, went to in point manager and now it's back to in tune. So, well, it is kind of funny because in a way they were trying to consolidate, you know, where it used to be Microsoft 365 Mint Windows, office 365 Mint the, and now they're, everything is M365. So what's the point of bringing it together if you're going to break it apart? Right. But Azure is such a different piece, you know, just, I mean, that, I think, I don't know and they're not going to rename Azure, you know, and I don't see them doing that. So Azure ad that's more part of Microsoft 365.

Um, I don't know if they could have just, uh, still kept part of Azure, you know, who knows what goes through their head when they're making these, um, you know, decisions. But it's, uh, it's one of those things, I, we're just kind of used to it and it, it sure made it hard to pass the certification exams. I can tell you that because they had just done a bunch of changes. Right. As I was going through those and, um, they have changed to a lot of different names and it made it really hard because the study materials might have been on the old stuff and the tests might have been on a new one and it's, it's a way to get more money. Although Mike makes a great point, we couldn't agree how to pronounce Azure or Azure.

So, we're going to have the same issue with Entra. Yes, exactly. Same thing. Yeah, it's Jeff and Jeff, you know. All right. Did you uh did you find your policies there?

No, I'm looking, I'm still looking because I'm having to talk and I can't, I'm not very good at multitasking. Why don't I do this while you're doing that? I will take this time to say thank you to our sponsors. Of course, I mentioned at the top, we are presented by NetAlly, your number one Ally for network diagnostic tools. And I will say this rather than give a whole spiel about blah, blah, blah. So today I received my very first fully 10 G switch from ingenious and it was so nice to be able to take my ether scope plug it in and start to test it. And yes, it truly identified the ports as 10 G. Now, I wasn't able to do any real testing or anything like that, but that is one of the benefits of getting some of these tools when you get these higher end products and you can validate that they do what they say they do. Uh That is fantastic. So NetAlly uh deploy, manage and maintain today's complex network troubleshooting with NetAlly, our live show brought to you by computers done, right? Manage it. Services company providing support and management in Venice Florida and surrounding areas.

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Give you enough time. Yes, I found him. Yeah. All right. I just got in one of my tenants. Um ok. So one of the ones I should, I should have been able to think of this one.

Well, actually because the problem was I didn't know if it was custom or if it was built in. But um this one, I flagged quite a bit because it's conditional policy um added conditional access policy added. So you get an alert when a conditional access policy has been added uh or updated if consent has been given to the use of an application in the organization. Um One of the things that I always do is make it so that, you know, users have to request access to an application. So we want to know if a consent has been granted uh to, you know, some sort of application out there that's going to be accessing company data. Um If there's been some sort of partner relationship added to the organization, uh we want to know about that if a new member has gotten a new Azure ad role, if a conditional access policy has gotten deleted. So all of these things, you know, kind of have a lot to do with security. Um Now, some of this sounds like stuff that as the MSP or the IT department, we would do a lot of these things. So are these set up for companies where you've allowed management to do some of that stuff or if you're doing a co-manage situation?

Now these alerts come to us here. I know they come to you. But, but I mean, if somebody is giving consent for a program, isn't that usually the it department giving consent? It is and the way I have it set up, it is um it I or an admin um here has to approve an app. So therefore we want to know, you know, um what if they had, you know, was a rogue actor in the tenant and they were consenting to know.

So, it's, you know, it's, it's that kind of thing so it's not going to create a ton of noise if you've got an organization. These are not noisy. Um, like I said, the one I trip the most often is conditional access policies, changes or updates. Um, and virtually, other than that, they're mostly, you know, pretty quiet, at least the custom ones and the system ones. So, um, they, you know, typically, and you can turn some of them off. If, if you find that they're, they, if they're like information only, you don't have to have them send anything.

All right, I actually send them to a channel in teams. I have a, I have a Teams group set up for each of my clients and I have an alert channel so that it keeps me, the, I only do things that I would want to come to my PS A that are, you know, pretty significant. Uh, so some of them will go, you know, create a ticket. But if they're just kind of informational and not as, uh, dangerous sounding or, you know, critical, then they'll go to this alert channel team and who monitors that? Just you or do you like an admin or owner of their client also be in that team's channel.

No, just me the way things are set up. No, that's a lot of teams. Channels. Yes, it is. They're light there. There's not a, you know, there there's not a lot on the channel so teams can handle it. Ok. This is something I'm trying, I don't know, you know, it's free, it comes with my teams. Ok? I, I understand that free is sometimes good. All right. And if anybody out there, Eric, uh, Mike, any of you guys out there, uh have any thoughts on that, be sure to throw that in and let us know.

Oh, and I, I'm sorry, I do need to say that I also have Sass alerts on all my tenants. So it's not just me, I mean, Sass alerts are going to be monitoring for this serious, really serious with a alerts dot com. Uh Well, it's for me it's with solutions granted. Ok. Yeah. All right. Yep. Having alerts is good. All right. And then, let's see, we talked about the, that was all episode two, episodE3, more discussion on licenses and then we talked about customization and branding options and the security that goes along with that.

Yes, I think that's pretty significant. I don't know how many other providers are doing it. I know it's, you know, kind of a recommended best practice. So I'm guessing that a lot of them are, at least if they've gone through training um, or seminars like with pack and things like that because that's something that they always recommend. But I think it's a really good idea and it's, I mean, for security, but it's also something that really kind of sets you apart for your clients.

I think it, it really um shows that it, it's just pleasant, you know, it just gives them a nice look. And so I think they like it. Uh I'm sure with some organizations it is very nice to have company branding all over the place. And as you mentioned, when we talked about it, the fact of a, a user going to a portal, if they see their logo on it, then they know that's their portal. If it's not, don't go to it. Yes. Now I will say one thing that I do because you know, I know the bad guys can find people's logos too, right? So I incorporate graphics that are not just their logos, their logo is going to probably be there somewhere. Um But there's going to be some just unique graphics that may have to do with their industry or something like that, but it's not going to be anything that the bad guys could get to try to spoof it. So I just try to think, you know, think ahead here's a question and this is unrelated because I'm doing something with another product that I'm in trial and we're putting a combination of the company's local and my logo on it and we're trying to see which one the users will pay more attention to because we've got, we've got some users that will just kind of skip stuff if they see their own information. But if they see my name or my logo on it, then they're like, oh, better pay attention.

We're going to get in trouble. Uh So we're trying those out. Do you incorporate your own logo in your tenants at all? In any place? Any fashion? Um I, well, one thing that I do is I set up a SharePoint site that is just for Skyline it so that I can ever, you know, and all the staff has access to it.

It's, it's informational for them and, you know, like, um here's a video on how to use this in teams or, you know, uh here's a change we just made, please, you know, make sure you're aware of that just some basic information and we can add to it and that, that has our logo. But um other than that, it would just be like certain emails that they get about um you know, a quarantined email or something like that, that would have our logo. All right. So like a training site KB articles, that sort of thing. Mum. Yeah, I've put all kinds of things there.

Um, some of it is just what everyone gets like how to create a ticket, the proper ways to get support, not texting my cellphone being not appropriate way, you know, how to, so that, yeah, but to, you know, just give information that's kind of generic for all Skyline clients and then I can add things too that are unique to them and what's going on with their technology at the, at the time. Ok. Now, in all of these things, I'm going to go off track now. So be, be ready in all the stuff that you do when you're setting up tenants, when you're making these changes and you're doing all of that, what's the number one thing that users ask you about or complain about? Complain about? That's easy um In a new environment when they haven't been, uh either when they haven't been on 365 or they haven't been on managed 365 with, you know, business premium and, and good. Uh not only the advanced threat protection that comes with business premium because that's what I use, then I layer on a, on, on that because email is such a threat.

They will complain about quarantine emails. Um Now what I always tell them is it will get better. It's always, it's a learning, I mean, there's a lot of am I going on there and it has to learn their, you know, their users, their, the people they interact with and you know, that kind of thing and I, I, they don't believe me, but then they do because eventually it does get better pretty quickly. Uh I try to make it as painless as possible. But um yeah, that's the biggest complaint. Let me ask you this.

You mentioned Avion, why not stay within the Microsoft family and use the uh advanced online protection. And, well, I do, I use, I do both. I use the advanced start protection because with, you know, with that, I mean, it's built in the premium, um, and you get the, you know, safe links and safe attachments and, and all of that, but there are things that, I mean, none of these products, it doesn't matter which one you're using, none of them are 100%. And with email being, you know, the way that 90% of the cyber-attacks are carried out, uh, it just, I, I've been doing, you know, even before I was, um, focused more on small business. It and the, and security was what it was. I was, you know, protecting families at home trying to protect their kids online. And I said the same thing, you know, 15, however many years ago, 20 years ago, maybe I am on that and that's layer, you know, because one thing might fail because we can't, nothing is 100%. So let me rephrase that for you. So it sounds better before you were the 365 guru, you were protecting families.

Well, I mean, I was, yeah, uh comment in from the chat there. Two fa our old it guy didn't require this. Ah, yes. Well, that one I don't get as much complied. There are some but um, I would say with two fa it's more, it's not really complaining as people who just have trouble with it. Um, yeah. Yeah, I'm having some people that if they log into the web and they get, you know, you know, you got to receive a text or whatever, you know, they get a little frustrated but trying to explain to them, look, it's for your protection. Right. Right. And if they're Azure ad joined on an Azure ad joined device, they're not going to have to get that kind of thing as often.

Well, that's, that's, that's the other side of it. Having people understand that getting company owned devices is the way to go rather than just letting everybody, you know BYOD. Right. So that is the frustrating part of that. Uh one of the things that you also had on the list here that if somebody is watching the videos and somebody is just starting that one of the things they can do is build up a process or checklist in the beginning to save yourself some headache down the road. Now, of course, you know, even as a veteran, you got to go back and make sure you have that as well. But putting together a, a checklist for onboarding, for those scripts that you talked about for the customer alerts. I mean, how big is your process or checklist? Yes. Um, I actually had somebody contact me on Facebook today, uh, asking about the list and I've had some other people ask me about, um, getting my checklist on that and it's really not just one checklist. Uh I have actually seven right now. Um And, you know, they're kind of broken down into phases. Uh Some of them have to do with pre migration, um things that, you know, you can do ahead of time and then things that you don't want to do till after the migration uh then broken down by like just the general admin then Azure D exchange, you know, I kind of break them down by the, the different um major areas that we have to, you know, set up. So uh it's a growing and ever evolving list. Uh I was working, you know, on some tenants this week and changed a few things and moved something from one phase to another phase just because it made more sense. So it's always, I'm always updating it, you've just given those list away.

Well, I uh I told the person that I said it's not really share ready, but I'll try to put something together and right, so that I can work on that, have you uh that, you know, just so, you know, there's also some really, I mean, there's a lot of people who, that's, that's why I don't really feel like the guru because there are people that I look to as I think of as the gurus. But there's so much good information, even like my checklist, I built my checklist, but there are other people's checklists that I looked at to, you know, to kind of guide what I do and then I tweaked it, you know, to how I really want to do things. But, um the, the guy at it, pro mentor, um and then like, um Nick from T minus 365 he's got a lot of good information, Scott, um, Riley from cloud Nexus. There's just, you know, there's a lot of information out there. Amy Bache had done a lot of good things. So I just kind of pull from all that and come up with what works for me. All right. Well, maybe we'll have a uh, a process party one day.

We'll contact some of them and say, hey, let's, let's all get together and chat about processes and checklists. We'll see how that goes. All right. Or we'll find a way for you to monetize it. You can pack, you can package it and do a little series. I don't know. Mine's worth monetizing. I mean, you know, you never know, you never know. Uh there was a tip that you had mentioned. Uh not again, not during the videos, but when we were talking kind of in our debrief, adding the report message button in outlook. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that, yeah, that's just one of those little things in the main admin center. Um You go into where it says um under settings and then you go to integrated apps and then view more apps and then in there you can choose like what kind of app you're looking for and in this case, it would be, um, outlook. And then if you just type report message or report, it'll, because you have to search and it'll come up and then you just add that so that it shows up on everybody's, um, outlook. So if they get a message that is, you know, suspicious or anything like that, they can click that button and it gets reported. So it's a, it's a good thing to put there because that way, you know, if they do it, it maybe, you know, could save someone else's problems if, if it indeed is a dangerous message. Now, who's that? Who's that getting reported to you were Microsoft?

Um, both it gets, it gets reported to Microsoft and it also gets reported to me, um, through my alert policies, through your, through your team's messages. Now, I think that one would come to another, uh, an email. Ok. All right. Let's see here. Anything, uh, any questions from the chat.

We've got a few minutes here before. No questions. Uh, see you're so thorough. I don't know how many people are actually watching. So, uh, so I, so I can only see one channel. It looks like there's seven and then there's others, like I can't see how many are watching from the LinkedIn.

Um, and there's usually, there's usually a good number over there and we've got a few on the Facebook. I think, I think Mike was coming from the Facebook. Ok. All right. Um, we talked about the videos. I asked you; do you know what you thought about them?

I, I think they came out good. Was there anything that you thought? Oh, I should have put this in the video we should have talked about it. Was there anything that came up like that? Well, that was like the outlook button.

That was one of the things that I brought up um the uh consenting to apps. Um Did we talk about that? Oh, ok. Yeah, that was one then um consent um approval for apps. Um whether well, we kind of did when we were talking about the alert policies because there's an alert policy around that, but there is a place in the admin center in uh in whatever we want to call it um under the enterprise applications where you want to make sure you go in and set the admin consent uh that, you know, you, you have a lot of um a lot, you have several options there as far as what you would allow. If you're going to allow users to consent to applications, you know, they've actually tweaked it lately and you can let them now consent to some that are very light touch uh that, you know, maybe have read only on some very light um settings and things like that. And you can allow all those that is kind of new. Um But you definitely want to require consent and approval.

I think the majority of apps that are going to be accessing your Microsoft, you know, data in the tenant and connecting to the tenant like that. All right. So I went into my admin center and it does say Microsoft Entra admin Center. Yes. And then down below, it'll say um uh on the main page, it'll, it'll say instead of Azure ad like it used to Azure active directory, I think is what it said before. And now it says identity Entra ID and in parentheses Azure ad oh, that's what mine says. And then it has a separate box for ID protection ID. Governments verified ID. So they're, they're getting all in on that.

Yes, I'm talking about the main page, the main admin page. It, it used to say at the very bottom where you could click on all the admin centers, a directory and now it says identity. So you don't look for interest because you're not going to see it there. Oh, it's weird because OK, so that's in the list under admin centers. It says identity. But I, yeah, but I clicked the button where it says all admin centers and then when it brings up that list, it doesn't say identity there. It says Microsoft Entra. Yeah. So come on Microsoft the way it is and that, you know, there's more than one way to get a lot of places. Um And lately after they redid Entra, I find myself having to go to the search box because I'm used to, you know. So here's a question that did come in what options exist for conditional IP. Uh Traditional access IP address must be one. Now, if I remember correctly, what I would do conditional access for is basically, of course, blocking every other country besides the US if your customers are only in the US, right? Yes. Yes. And that's, that's definitely one of them um you know, location based on location or IP address, um enforcing Multifactor authentication, making sure that the device is compliant. Um You can enforce that uh making sure that the device if it's like a mobile device that it has uh um mobile application management policies on that device. And uh let me think what else uh enforcing certain types and strengths of M FA and you know, so you can have obviously these policies can be different for different groups of people. So you may be one way for regular users and you're going to do another thing for admin, uh you know, global admin accounts and you can do it based on, you can do M fa or I mean, a conditional access policies for the length of time that a session is allowed to stay um open. And that's really more for admin. But you know, you want to only allow them for a little bit of time, like an hour or whatever, however long you're going to be in there.

Um, on a global admin account you want to restrict that. So, it's, it's, it's not necessarily block or grant, although most of them, I mean, most of the ones we think of are, but they're also, you know, length of time. Now, do you do the named locations under conditional access for your clients?

I do because, you know, it's one of those things. Um it's just another layer. I mean, yes. Can they get around it with a VPN or, you know, some sort of apps and things like that? That'll let them pretend they're coming from another country. But you might as well just we, the idea is to make it as hard as possible. So I do, but you have to be a little careful with that um lesson in communication, you know, with your clients to let them know that you're doing that because if they go on their honeymoon and they are in a country that is not allowed and they're blocked.

They don't like that. Well, yeah, because I've actually not for conditional access, but just for firewall policies and multi factor with uh true grid. We can do the same thing, we can block it and they'll forget, you know, they'll let somebody go on vacation and then that Monday morning, hey, so and so is trying to log in from Rio, whatever. And I'm like, all right, you got to let me know. Yes. Um, and I tell you what, they're signing logs are nice.

They are, you can find, you can pinpoint exactly what's going on and why, um, you know, why somebody can't connect and, and that kind of thing most of the time. So, as I mentioned that there's a failure in my own tenant because somebody tried to log in from Dharma run college. Kaka Indiana. I don't know. Oil. That doesn't sound good.

Yeah, I don't know what that is. I wonder if it failed. Right. It failed. It failed. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of failures there. So, all right, if it's conditional access, is that because of a conditional access policy or because they had the wrong password? Well, I, I, so if that is, I don't know if, if is in Indiana that it wasn't? Oh, ok. Yeah. Right now it just says failed. You going to make me look up all this information?

No, I just was thinking, you know, there's a, it failed because they didn't have two fa, or they put the wrong password in versus they didn't even get a chance because they're coming from the wrong country. Now, this is sign was blocked because it came from an IP address with malicious activity. Oh, yeah, that's Microsoft doing its job. So, I wonder if this is because if this is Indiana then it wouldn't have been because I've only locked out, uh, countries. Yeah, this must be a known malicious actor.

I'm pulling up the map here. Oh, yeah, this is, well, this looks like South Africa. Nope, it's India. Oh, India, not Indiana. Ok. Yeah. So there we go. Who would have thought? Right. All right. Well, uh, Giles, thanks for hanging out and, uh, thank you for those that have come online and asked a couple of good questions here.

Of course, feel free to go back and listen to the podcast if you just like to listen or you can go watch the videos on the YouTube channel. But if you head over to it Business Podcast, you will see them all episodes, 530, 531 and 533 we snuck another podcast in between there. Everyone's probably sick of me by now. So they're sick of you. They're definitely sick of me. Although I do have to say one thing I probably should have done this at the very beginning of the show that I need to apologize to some listeners because apparently I have neglected my duties and for people that are a little behind on the show and we've had Florida Man stories on.

I haven't been putting all of the links to Florida man in the show notes and I apologize for that and I will make sure that going forward all the links will be in the show notes, including Florida man stories getting upset without their Florida man because they can't Google. I don't know it's, it's what it is, but they love their Florida man stories. So, speaking of Florida man, did you even prepare for Florida man versus the world? No, I didn't. I'm sorry, I did see that it was on the agenda, but it's always on the agenda so much else on there.

Well, that means you have to answer a random question then. Uh OK. So let's see. Let me pick a, so, so I found another site. So let's pick a category. So, would you like a, would you rather question a trivia question, an icebreaker question or a fun quiz question? Oh, wow. Uh I don't ever like icebreaker questions.

I think they're kind of weird usually. So, um, are the, would you rather ones clean? I don't know here. Let me just generate one and see. Oh, this is, this is good. This is a good one. Would you rather have a private jet or a yacht? Oh, a yacht. It really in Oklahoma?

Well, yeah, I mean, because it doesn't have to live in Oklahoma. Ok. But you have got to pay to transport it. Well, yeah. Are we going to pay not to transport it?

I would have it down somewhere near, you know, the Virgin Islands or something. It would live there and then, um, moorings or somebody would use it for people and then I could use it when I want to. Oh, so you'd rent it out like a, like an air yacht and yacht. Yeah. All right. Exactly. People do that. I know people who do that. Ok. Uh, I, myself, the private jet that just seems so much more accessible to go where I want to go and it's not restricted to water and I don't have to go to where it is because I've got an air executive airport, you know, less than two miles.

I'll just have it there and I can fly by private jet out to Vegas or tech or yes, I just think those, that my problem isn't. I mean, it would be convenient. Um, I was just thinking when you said private jet, I was thinking when there's little tiny planes and I don't like those. That was why private jets were like a G six. Ok. Well, I say, I say a little like what happened to Payne Stewart, you know. Well, that's because they were flying themselves on tiny little planes.

No, we're talking, this is going to be kind of like your yacht. It's going to be big; it's going to, this is going to be a big private jet. It's going to be like I can take, you know, 30 of my closest friends. Ok. Well, then I would, I might switch to private. You already said your piece there?

You can't take it back. All right. So yes, so here's what I'll do with Florida, man. I'm going to give you three selections and you pick which one you want to hear. So let me pull up the list. Do you want to hear?

Uh, it's all right. Do you want to hear a Florida man story involving a train, a dog or a barbecue grill? Can I ask a question? Well, the dog would upset me. Of course you will. It's Florida man. Oh, that was the third one.

Sorry, a barbecue grill, a barbecue grill. Let's see. Ok. All right. So the full title is Florida man hits cars with tire iron throws barbecue grill at deputies in road rage incident. So in my home county, my home city, Broward County, a Florida man was arrested after deputies said he hit cars with a tire iron and threw a barbecue grill at them in a rage incident.

They were called to the intersection of School Street and Bay Avenue in Cocoa. Witnesses reported that a gray Chevy Tahoe was parked in the middle of a road and then began ramming vehicles as drivers tried to go around him. The suspect later got out of his SUV and started to strike vehicles as they passed by with a tire iron even breaking the driver's side window of a passing truck. He was armed with a, he was, he was also armed with a nail gun and was threatening people at the scene. Uh, when deputies gave the command to drop the crowbar, see him just saying stuff.

Hoffman yelled; you will have to kill me. He then threw the crowbar and started to run away from the deputies. Oh, my goodness. So he was charged with resisting aggravated assault on a law officer and other charges related to his violent attacks on citizens. Wow. So, Cocoa Beach or Cocoa, actually, Cocoa, there's a difference.

Cocoa is inland and full of crazy people. Cocoa Beach is nicer and Ron Jon Surf Shop. Very nice. Ah, ok. Has she ever wanted to know? All right Giles? Well, I should, uh, I should probably have done this earlier too for people that are watching and, you know, learning from you about 365 and the journey to the cloud, I assume that you would like to offer assistance to people that need help.

I know that you do help other MSPS and other it providers that maybe don't want to or run into issues. So, if you would like to pimp out your services to other MSPS, I'm sure that they would like to know how to get a hold of you. I know I can throw up your website here. Uh, Skyline it management dot com. Uh, do you, uh, do you want to put, you know, a phone number in the chat or not in the chat in the show notes or something, or on your guest page for people to be able to contact you?

Yeah, that's fine too. Ok. So, um, yeah, and I do that. I've, uh, I've even done it for, uh, you know, an enterprise company here in Oklahoma City that had a merger and acquisition kind of situation, bringing in a little, little company that was on Google workspace and, um, you know, helping with migrations and tenant set up. And, uh, you know, I, the good thing I think, uh besides the fact that obviously I enjoy doing it and, and I, I'm good at doing it is I could also be customer facing if you needed me to be, if somebody needed me to be, you know, um I think that's important um when you're, you know, if somebody were to have you working with their clients? All right, very good. And uh speaking on behalf of my fans, somebody has just written Diana is an M365 guru. Thank you, Mike. All right, Giles. Thank you for hanging out folks. Thank you for joining us and uh downloading, subscribing to the IT Business podcast. And we're going to look forward to bringing you more with uh projects like this topics like this and finding the best ways that we can help each other grow and scale our business. So, on behalf of the M365 guru, Diana Giles and myself. Thank you all for listening and with that, we will be due good night and until next time. Holla!

Marvin BeeProfile Photo

Marvin Bee

Marvin Bee is the host of the IT Business Podcast and the owner of MB Systems of South Florida Inc, an IT business providing on-site network administration and support.

Marvin's podcast, the IT Business Podcast, is a show dedicated to helping Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and IT professionals run and grow their businesses. Each week, Marvin interviews business owners, technicians, and industry vendors to provide tips and strategies on topics like starting a business, perfecting your tech stack, and more.

As the owner of MB Systems of South Florida Inc, Marvin brings an entrepreneurial flair to the podcast, sharing his passion for the IT industry and the meticulous process behind running a successful IT business. He has been featured as a guest on other podcasts, where he has discussed the challenges and opportunities facing MSPs, as well as the importance of community building in the IT industry.

Diana GilesProfile Photo

Diana Giles

Owner

Diana Giles is the President and owner of Skyline IT Management, originally established as The Computer Monkey, LLC in 2004. She truly enjoys helping small businesses improve and secure their operations through the proper use of modern technology. Early on, Diana realized she enjoyed being the go-to tech person in the office more than her regular job, so she left to pursue an entry-level tech support position with Teleflora. She eventually traveled to some of the largest florists in the country doing installation and training. Requests for technology services continued after Diana left work to stay home with her kids, so The Computer Monkey began. Diana has a bachelor’s degree in business and master’s degree in Telecommunications Management from Oklahoma State University. She is also the founder of sensiblecyberparenting.com, a free resource website to help parents protect their children online.