Recent News – Page 196

Posted on January 30, 2019 by — Leave a comment

‘Inside Xbox’ returns Feb. 5 with new episode

Inside Xbox returns Tuesday, February 5 at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET with an all-new episode featuring exclusive news, content, reveals, interviews and footage you won’t see anywhere else!

With the February 15 release of Crackdown 3 available with Xbox Game Pass and on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, you can expect it to take center stage in the February episode of Inside Xbox. We’ll have Creative Director of Crackdown 3, Joseph Staten, on hand to divulge details on the game’s campaign mode and more.

And that’s just the start! We’ve got reveals and new info to share on Mortal Kombat 11, The Division 2, Sea of Thieves, Astroneer, Journey to the Savage Planet, Jump Force, Metro Exodus, and of course, Xbox Game Pass and bunch of news under lock and key so be sure to tune in on Tuesday, February 5.

You will find the show live on Mixer, Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. We want you to watch the show where you want to watch it, but we hope you’ll check us out on Mixer for some exclusive behind-the-scenes content and a super-top-secret MixPot that will give you free stuff just for logging in. We’ll have more details on these exciting (and did we mention free?!?) giveaways before the show airs, but if you don’t already have a Mixer account, now’s the perfect time to head over to our streaming service on your Xbox, PC or mobile device and get logged in with your Microsoft account so that you’re all set on show day.

Set your alarm for Tuesday, February 5 at 2 p.m PT / 5 p.m. ET. See you then!

Posted on January 30, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Creating a future for all: An interview with Saqib Shaikh, the force behind Seeing AI

Saqib Shaikh lost his sight at the age of seven, fell in love with computers as a schoolboy in Britain and grew up to become a top software engineer with an inspirational mission.

Standing at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and inclusive design, he believes we can create intelligent machines to empower millions of people around the world with disabilities to achieve more and live enhanced lives. The knowledge gained from targeting and solving the problems of those with special needs, he says, can only drive technological innovation that benefits everyone across society.

Saqib has had a lifelong relationship with advancing digital technology. At a school for children who are blind or with low vision, he learned self-reliance and developed a burning sense of curiosity. As a 10-year-old, he was given a rudimentary talking PC, and that led him to learn how to program. His intellectual romance with computer science blossomed at university where he doggedly overcame all sorts of day-to-day challenges on campus to graduate top his class with a master’s degree in AI.

A dozen or so years ago, Saqib joined Microsoft and quickly proved his prowess as an engineer by helping to create products, services, and apps that many of us use every day, like Bing and Cortana.

His quest nowadays is to create greater accessibility and inclusion – to level the playing field for everyone. As the driving force behind Microsoft’s Seeing AI project, he is exploring how AI can enable people who are blind or with low vision to achieve more with freedom and confidence.

His team launched the Seeing AI app in 2017, giving those who cannot see a new way to understand the world through the cameras on their smartphones. Since then, it has helped customers with more than 10 million tasks. A user merely points his or her phone, and the app vocally says what it sees. It might be in a room, on a street, in a mall, or an office – customers are using the app in all sorts of situations. With facial-recognition technology, the app can name friends and acquaintances, describe physical appearances of people and even predict their moods. It can read printed text in books, newspapers, menus, and signs aloud. It can even identify banknotes.

Saqib currently works and lives in London. We caught up with him on a recent visit to Singapore where he told audiences about how technology has helped him realize his potential and how it promises to improve the lives of everyone – and not just those disabilities.

“There are a lot of problems. But for every problem, there is a solution,” he says.

Posted on January 29, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Microsoft Power Platform: Empowering millions of people to achieve more

There has been a lot of energy surrounding Microsoft’s Power Platform lately.

A couple of weeks ago during a presentation he gave on campus, Satya Nadella talked about the importance of the Power Platform and how it serves as a core offering for our customers.

Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform on top of what we’re doing with Azure is the core of what we are doing as a company vis-à-vis I would say our commercial customers – businesses of all sizes, whether it’s small business, large business, whether it’s in an emerging market or in a developed market.

The Power Platform is today comprised of three services – Power BI, PowerApps and Flow. While each of these services is best-of-breed individually, their combination as the Power Platform is a game-changer without equal for our customers.

I wanted to spend some time today introducing you to our vision for this platform and, more importantly, to highlight some of the people and organizations leveraging it to bring that vision to life.

An introduction to the Power Platform

Now more than ever, organizations have embraced the value of using data to drive business outcomes. They’ve adopted the cloud to store mass quantities of data and have become more efficient at harnessing data and signals coming from a multitude of sources such as web traffic, social media and business systems such as CRM/ ERP applications. But once they’ve implemented the infrastructure for harnessing data, how can they make that data work for them most efficiently? They need a layer atop that data that lets all workers, regardless of technical ability, leverage it in a straightforward way to drive business impact.

That’s what the Power Platform does. It is a system that enables users to do three key actions on data that help them drive business: Analyze, Act, and Automate. We do this with Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow, all working together atop your data to help EVERYONE, from the CEO to the front-line workers, drive the business with data.

While we believed what we were doing would make a positive business impact for our customers, none of us fully anticipated the impact it would have on the lives of those it touched.

Empowering a community of millions (and growing daily)

Last year Satya said something about those who come to Microsoft that really resonated with me.

“You join here, not to be cool, but to make others cool.”

More than anything else, this is power of the Power Platform.

For several years now our teams have been quietly developing and working with a community that has swelled to millions of monthly active users globally. We’ve been guided by a belief that magical things are possible when technology is made approachable and accessible to those in the best position to identify transformative applications – those who work on the front lines of a business.

There is a growing community of people who have discovered the Power Platform, leveraged it to drive transformational change for their organizations and in the process completely changed the trajectory of their careers and lives.

I’ve been fortunate to meet and to get to know some of these amazing people:

Nick Gill, a training specialist at the American Red Cross, who with no formal IT background taught himself how to use Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow then used them to transform a process that over 650 First Aid and CPR instructors use to order training class supplies. Nick has since been promoted to Manager of Logistics for the Preparedness, Safety, and Services department for the entire country. You can learn more about Nick and his work on the PowerApps Blog.

Ashley Culmsee, a psychology student with no IT experience learned to use PowerApps and Flow. With her father she built “the universal audit app” – allowing people across many industries to perform inspections and audits. Ashley’s story about how she got into building these apps is pretty amazing and inspiring. Growing up she suffered from anxiety and social phobia and in the Power Platform found an outlet and built a passion for technology. Today she works with her dad Paul Culmsee running hackathons and building Power Platform-based solutions for mining and engineering companies worldwide. Here is a blog from her dad that speaks to the impact the Power Platform has had on his daughter.

Martin Lee, was a dispatcher at AutoGlass, and built his first app to automate the process field technicians use to update their job status while out repairing chipped and broken glass on autos. As a dispatcher, Martin saw firsthand the inefficiency of their old process. In the summer of 2017, he taught himself PowerApps, built and deployed his first app into production within one month. By October 2017 he had singlehandedly deployed eight apps used by more than 1,500 technicians. Martin has since moved from his role as dispatcher to a dedicated technology role. He has since built 50 more apps and deployed them across the business to more than 3,000 employees. You can learn more on Martin by watching this video.

Brian Dang, was a third-grade teacher in Southern California who discovered PowerApps and used it to build some pretty stunning applications for his students, other teachers and for the school district. When I first met Brian we were preparing for an upcoming PowerApps technical review with Bill Gates. Knowing Bill’s passion for technology and education I invited Brian to join us in the meeting to show off his great work. My colleague Sameer Bhangar interviewed Brian when he came up for that meeting. A couple weeks after this video was produced Brian moved to Redmond and joined the team at Microsoft! Over the last year he’s helped thousands of others across the globe discover and master the Power Platform.

Each of these individuals is deeply engaged in the Power Platform community, helping others succeed as they have. To celebrate and recognize these champs, our Power Platform “Customer Success Team” created a set of trading cards. My growing collection hangs just inside my office door and helps me start each day focused on what really matters – the people we’re empowering to achieve more.

My growing collection of Power Platform champs trading cards as of January 2019.

Meeting up with some of our Power Platform champs in July 2018.

The “Triple-A Loop”: Analyze, act, automate

Our vision for the Power Platform started from the recognition that data is increasingly flowing from everything, and a belief that organizations that harness their data – to gain insights then used to drive intelligent business processes – will outperform those that don’t.

We also recognize there aren’t enough programmers, data scientists and tech professionals to go around. So our goal was to build a platform not targeting these technology experts but for people like Nick, Ashlee, Martin and Brian – and the millions of other frontline workers who see opportunities every day to create something better than the status quo, but who’ve never been empowered to do anything about it.

Our guiding vision was a framework we called the “Triple-A Loop” – a closed-loop system allowing users to gain insights from data (Analyze) used to drive intelligent business processes via apps they build (Act) and processes they automate (Automate).

The Microsoft Power Platform implements this vision via three cloud-based services: Power BI, PowerApps and Flow.

Let’s look at each component:

Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is a self-service business intelligence solution that makes it easy to connect, analyze and gain insight from the data that runs your business – wherever that data may be: in the cloud, or in your own data center; in an Excel spreadsheet or SharePoint list, an Oracle database or in an SAP or Salesforce application; or in any of the hundreds of other systems with built-in support by the Power Platform. Power BI was the first Power Platform service delivered, entering preview in January 2015.

In just four short years, Power BI has been adopted by tens of thousands of companies and millions of users. Every single month the service has been updated and improved.

Some of the service metrics today are just stunning: Power BI is available in 43 languages and used across 18,000 cities spanning the globe. Nearly 10 petabytes of data are uploaded to the service each month with more than 10 million report and dashboard queries executed against that data every hour (!) on behalf of users.

But insights without action are little more than idle chatter, so, while we were busy pushing toward general availability with Power BI we were simultaneously creating the services that would make Power BI’s insights actionable: PowerApps and Flow.

Microsoft PowerApps

Selection of PowerApps built by London Heathrow Airport

PowerApps is a “citizen application development platform” – allowing anyone to build web and mobile applications without writing code. The natural connection between Power BI and PowerApps makes it effortless to put insights in the hands of maintenance workers, teachers, miners and others on the frontline, in tailored and often task-specific applications that supercharge their productivity and make their work perhaps a little less tedious.

Like Power BI, PowerApps connects to hundreds of business systems and databases, making it easy to connect workers with the existing processes and data that makes the business tick. And all the data captured in PowerApps can make its way right back to those very systems for further analysis in Power BI creating a closed-loop process for continuous improvement. Additionally, PowerApps comes with a built-in, fully-managed, enterprise-grade datastore called the Common Data Service (CDS) for those applications that generate data not destined for a legacy system – and Power BI and Flow have deep connections to CDS making it that much easier to get even more value from data stored there.

I can remember like it was yesterday a meeting that really cemented for me that PowerApps was going to be a game-changer for our customers. In the Spring of 2016 I met with Integrated Power Services – a company that traces its roots to 1904. Sitting in a conference room in building 44 on our main campus IPS told me how they’d built a PowerApp that transformed their core business process – inspecting and repairing large electric motors and generators from a variety of manufacturers. Turns out there’s not “an app for that” and before PowerApps the technical hurdles to build such a solution put it far beyond their reach.

I’ve never had a customer so completely energized and excited by one of my products. For them PowerApps was like magic – they’d transformed an error-prone collection of manual processes into a tablet-based app their repair professionals could use to fix motors faster, with fewer errors and while keeping their customers informed of the process in a way never before possible. And they built the app right on the shop floor at one of their depots, with the repair personnel who now use the app.

Microsoft Flow

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is garnering a lot of interest and attention in the market – with pure-play vendors raising enormous sums of money at astronomical valuations. By automating simple tasks, RPA solutions promise to lower costs while reducing errors. Microsoft Flow is an intelligent process automation service that goes beyond simple task automation, allowing non-technical users to automate complex business processes and workflows without a complex IT deployment.

Through a simple and intuitive interface, users can create automated workflows that can be triggered by insights from Power BI, leveraged via apps built with PowerApps (e.g. a user action in a PowerApp might kick off an approval process) and integrated with events from any of the hundreds of systems the Power Platform natively supports. The workflows run completely in the cloud and are fully managed and secured by Microsoft.

The power of three = The Power Platform

Power BI, PowerApps and Flow each represents best-of-breed solutions in their individual categories, but their combination as the Power Platform is a game-changer without equal for our customers.

Power BI unlocks insights and intelligence, PowerApps converts that intelligence into action through transformative applications built in record time, and Flow makes business process orchestration an easy point and click exercise … with further feedback to Power BI creating a powerful system of continuous improvement.

Putting this power to “analyze, act and automate” in the hands of individuals who know their business best, with built-in connectors to all the systems and sources of data in an organization, creates previously unimaginable transformation opportunities for our customers.

SNCF operates France’s national rail service and is a global leader in passenger and freight transport services. With 270,000 employees spread across 120 countries, it aims to become the benchmark for mobility and logistics solutions in France and worldwide. SNCF is a great example of a customer that has gone “all in” with the Power Platform. As with many customers, initial adoption was grassroots in nature – starting in some places with Power BI and others with PowerApps. They quickly realized the potential the platform represented for their business and has built a company-wide center of excellence to educate, train and support the thousands of employees now using the platform to help shape the future of SNCF.

Here is a short video that highlights the great work they’re doing at SNCF.

What’s Next?

It has been an exciting journey for all of us on the team. In so many ways we are just getting started.

As we look forward to the year ahead, we are planning to deliver some really special product developments. These will come together across all of our offerings – from Dynamics 365 to the Power Platform – as part of our April 2019 release. You can get ready for that now by checking out the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, April 2019 release notes.

I would also welcome you to join us for our Virtual Launch Event in April, where we may have a few added surprises.

And lastly, to our community of makers and creators – thank you for being on this journey with us. Your dedication, energy, and ingenuity inspire me. Your passion literally has me running up the stairs every day when I come to work. Thank you. Hope to see you all soon!

James.

Posted on January 29, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Microsoft 365 January updates boost productivity, aid compliance

More organizations are embracing a modern workplace, and new features for Microsoft 365 help you meet compliance obligations, empower Firstline Workers, and enrich your Office app experience.

Here’s a look at what’s new in January.

New capabilities to help organizations address compliance-related challenges

Today, we announced new information protection and compliance solutions to help organizations meet their privacy and compliance commitments in a simple, integrated, and intelligent way.

Access your compliance and privacy tools in a specialized workspace—The Microsoft 365 compliance center is now available, providing your privacy and compliance teams a specialized workspace with easy access to features including Compliance Manager, sensitivity and retention labels, and tools to help respond to regulatory requirements like GDPR, to deliver a unified experience with actionable insights.

Simplify the eDiscovery process with new integrated capabilities—New capabilities in Advanced eDiscovery help you efficiently manage discovery workflows with new features to notify custodians or employees related to a case or investigation, isolate case-related contents for processing, and use the new built-in review and redact capability to modify sensitive portions of documents before exporting them as part of a legal matter.

Meet communications monitoring compliance obligations for regulated industries—The Office 365 Supervision feature for communications monitoring requirements now includes Microsoft Teams content as well as expanded policy configuration, data classifications, and integrated review to simplify the employee communications review process.

These new capabilities will be available to all Microsoft 365 E5 or Information Protection and Compliance SKU subscribers.

Empowering Firstline Workers to achieve more

This month, we announced new capabilities in Teams to empower Firstline Workers, including the ability to securely communicate while on the go, provide peer recognition, and have visibility into shift scheduling.

Enable Firstline Workers to communicate securely—A new, customizable Teams mobile experience lets Firstline Workers securely communicate and effectively collaborate from anywhere. This new mobile experience is a simple and secure, with several new mobile-only features that specifically benefit Firstline Workers, including location sharing and smart camera. Additionally, IT admins can now apply a prepackaged policy or create a custom policy to give employees role-based access to the Teams modules they need. The customizable mobile experience is now available for all Office 365 subscribers.

Manage schedules directly in Teams with Shifts—Managers can create shift schedules and team members can update their availability, review schedules, and request time off directly in Teams. You can now integrate Shifts with your existing workforce management system through the Graph API for Shifts, available in public preview later this quarter.

Boost motivation and team morale with new Praise tool—The new Praise tool, rolling out this quarter, gives managers and employees a simple way to recognize coworkers, right in the Teams app where the whole team can see it.

Updates to help you easily access Office 365 and your files on Mac and deliver better content

New, integrated features bring more ways on Mac to improve productivity, deliver engaging content, and enhance learning.

Download the Office 365 suite with just one click on the Mac App Store—This month, we announced that that Office 365 is now available on the newly redesigned Mac App Store. With one click, Mac users can download the cloud-connected, always-up-to-date version of the Office suite—including full installs of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive.

Free up space and easily access your files with OneDrive Files On-Demand for Mac—Files On-Demand is now also available for Mac, making it easier to access all of your files in Office 365 directly in Finder without taking up valuable storage space on your device. You can take files offline for when you’re without an internet connection and free up storage space when you no longer need a local copy of the file. Files On-Demand is now available to all customers running MacOS Mojave.

Engage employees with new interactive visuals and features—Microsoft Photos now makes it easy to create videos with music and narration, text and filters, and even add 3D effects. In February, customers will be able to enhance PowerPoint content by adding Microsoft Stream videos into presentations. And coming soon, teams will have a new way to seamlessly add Microsoft Forms quizzes and polling directly into Microsoft Stream videos.

Other updates

The Office Cloud Policy Service is now in public preview to help administrators manage policies for all Office 365 ProPlus users in their organization.
New improvements to the no-cost SharePoint Migration Tool will help you accelerate your migration to SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Teams.
Office 365 now saves new documents to OneDrive or SharePoint Online by default, helping provide users access to their files from anywhere and start collaborating with ease.
Integrate conversations from any Yammer group, topic, user, or home feed into any SharePoint page, news article, or site with the new Yammer conversations web part.
Microsoft Forms is now available to Office 365 U.S. Government GCC and GCC High environments.

Posted on January 29, 2019 by — Leave a comment

New features in Microsoft 365 help prepare for the next wave of privacy regulations

Since the enactment of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we’re seeing two fundamental changes in the world that require organizations to think about privacy. First, GDPR started a global wave of countries and regions implementing their own privacy laws—starting with California, Brazil, and more to follow. Second, we’ve seen a shift in consumer attitude towards privacy and protecting personal data. For example, according to a recent survey published by Forrester, 43 percent of U.S. consumers are likely to cancel an online transaction if they read something in the privacy policy that they don’t like.

Today, we’re sharing details of several new Microsoft 365 features to help you get ahead of these trends and deliver on privacy and compliance commitments in a simple, integrated, and intelligent way.

Simplify compliance and privacy management with the new specialized workspace

For compliance professionals, who need to protect and manage their organization’s data privacy risk, we’re announcing a dedicated workspace called the Microsoft 365 compliance center.

In the Microsoft 365 compliance center, you can easily access solutions to help you assess your compliance risk through Compliance Manager, protect data through features like Data Governance, and respond to regulatory obligations like Data Subject Requests. Along with the new Microsoft 365 security center, these specialized workspaces are designed for security and compliance professionals to centrally manage Microsoft 365 services with a unified experience and insights powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft 365 compliance center shows actionable insights to help improve your GDPR and ISO compliance.

We’ll gradually roll out the new experience starting today. Read the Tech Community blog to learn more.

Safeguard sensitive data consistently across Mac, iOS, and Android

To help protect sensitive data consistently across various platforms, we’re announcing new Microsoft Information Protection capabilities that enable users to classify content and apply labels to documents and emails directly from Office apps on Mac (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook) and Office mobile apps (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel on iOS and Android). For example, a user working on a Mac can assign a “Highly Confidential” label while working on an important Word document. This results in the application of the appropriate protection policy, such as adding encryption and access restrictions or adding visual markings. Learn more about new labeling capabilities in Office apps that help you protect sensitive information.

Classify content and apply labels to add encryption, access restrictions, or visual markings to documents and emails directly from Office apps on Mac, iOS, and Android.

Manage data governance processes with insights and granular controls

We’re also releasing expanded label analytics capabilities that enable customers to analyze and validate how sensitivity and retention labels are being used across both Office 365 data and non-Office 365 data. The new label analytics capabilities in the Microsoft 365 compliance center are currently in preview.

View Office 365 and non-Office 365 data classification and policies together from the new label analytics dashboard in the Microsoft 365 compliance center.

Other enhancements in Advanced Data Governance include the file plan manager, which helps customers migrate governance policy configurations. With the file plan manager, you can map complex retention schedules from your existing records management solution or on-premises repository into Office 365.

Read more about all these new updates in Advanced Data Governance.

Reduce risks with built-in eDiscovery capabilities

During litigation- and investigation-related tasks and workflows, keeping more content in place can help reduce costs and risks associated with handling sensitive data. New capabilities in Advanced eDiscovery can help you communicate with custodians (for example: employees related to a case or investigation), isolate case-related contents for processing within a static set, and use the new review and redact capability to modify sensitive portions of documents before exporting them as part of a legal matter. Watch our video and read more about these updates to Advanced eDiscovery.

Streamline compliance requirements for regulated customers in Microsoft Teams

Regulated industries, such as financial services, need the ability to monitor and audit communications for specific roles in their organization. Now, Supervision includes Microsoft Teams content and additional capabilities to flag sensitive data types and offensive language classifiers. Learn more about these updates in the Tech Community blog.

Monitor Teams content in the new integrated supervisory review experience.

To help regulated customers meet specific immutability and retention requirements, we’re also announcing the availability of a new SEC 17a-4 regulation compliance assessment completed by Cohasset for Exchange-based storage, including email, groups, chats, and other communication types. Learn more about updates to Advanced Data Governance in the Tech Community blog.

Learn more about the Microsoft cloud

Privacy and compliance are deeply ingrained in the culture at Microsoft and embedded in the practices that are at the core of how we build and deliver our products and services.

Watch Microsoft executive leadership and a leading privacy analyst from Forrester Research share their insights on how organizations are investing in privacy as a differentiator with their customers.
Read our online e-book on how Microsoft runs on trust.
Learn more about the new Information Protection and Compliance offering in Microsoft 365 today.

Posted on January 29, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Data loss prevention: Human error, insider threats and the in-between

Do you remember the first or last time you found a user had shared sensitive information with the wrong people?

Companies dedicate large amounts of resources and money towards establishing an air tight DLP policy to detect and protect company data and prevent it from getting into the wrong hands, whether deliberately or by mistake. But no matter how good the technology, or how vigilant the security team, there is always a wildcard – end users.

“A company can often detect or control when an outsider (non-employee) tries to access company data either physically or electronically, and can mitigate the threat of an outsider stealing company property. However, the thief who is harder to detect and who could cause the most damage is the insider—the employee with legitimate access. That insider may steal solely for personal gain, or that insider may be a “spy”—someone who is stealing company information or products in order to benefit another organization or country.”

–Introductory guide to identifying malicious insiders, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Figure 1: Statistics from the Insider Threat 2018 Report

From the above data we can see that insider threats are becoming a real concern for most organizations, and that active steps are taken to mitigate the risk inherent to these threats.

In this post we’ll discuss how regular users can expose sensitive data by wrongly classifying documents, how malicious users can take advantage of the encryption to exfiltrate data, and how Microsoft Cloud App Security’s new capability of scanning content in encrypted files, as well as the wider Microsoft Information Protection offering, can help organizations mitigate these risks.

The innocent mistake

While employees in the modern workplace are getting increasingly technologically savvy, and are finding new tools to improve their productivity, they aren’t always aware of the security implications of their actions.

Many of our customers are leveraging Microsoft Information Protection solutions to classify, label and protect their data. To minimize the impact on end users and their ability to be productive, these organizations often choose to empower their users to label documents themselves, by providing automatic suggestions but not auto-labeling or -protecting documents.

A user can inadvertently label a document containing highly confidential information with a low sensitivity label that applies minimal access restrictions. Since the file is already encrypted, it will not be scanned by the DLP solution, but might still be accessible to unauthorized people.

The malicious insider

A bigger threat with a much higher potential for damage, is the malicious insider. A malicious insider who is actively working on exfiltrating sensitive information from the organization, whether for personal gain, corporate espionage or other reasons.

This malicious user might exploit the ability to encrypt files to purposefully classify a file as low sensitivity while inserting highly sensitive data and then sharing it externally. As in the “mistake” scenario this will allow the file to pass the scanning of the DLP solution.

How does Microsoft Cloud App Security handle these risks?

Microsoft Cloud App Security has a wide set of tools targeted at handling insider threats. These include user behavior anomaly detections, cloud discovery anomaly detections, and the newly released ability to scan content of encrypted documents.

User anomaly detection

Microsoft Cloud App Security comes with a wide set of out-of-the-box anomaly detection policies that are activated by default as soon as the product is enabled. These detections look at the activities performed by users in sanctioned apps and define a usage baseline, leveraging UEBA capabilities to automatically identify any anomalous behaviors going forward.

An example of these types of detections, aimed at insider threats, is “Unusual file download activity by user”. This detection will create an alert whenever a user performs file downloads that differ from their usual pattern – a potential indicator of a data exfiltration attempt.

Cloud anomaly detection

In addition to the user anomaly detections for sanctioned apps, Cloud App Security also offers detections aimed at identifying suspicious behavior of users in unsanctioned applications. These detections are based on the data we get and analyze as part of our Cloud Discovery capabilities.

An example for such a detection is “Data exfiltration to unsanctioned apps”, which looks at the amount of data being uploaded by users to unsanctioned applications – one of the most common scenarios of insider threat data exfiltration.

Content inspection of encrypted files

We have recently released the ability for an admin to allow MCAS to scan the content of files that are protected by Azure Information Protection. After enabling this functionality, the admin can define MCAS file policies to inspect the content of encrypted files, and generate an alert, or take an action based on the match.

This functionality ensures that files are handled according to their actual content, even if they are labeled incorrectly; thus, preventing sensitive data from leaving the organization – both by mistake and by design.

Figure 2: Policy setting to allow Microsoft Cloud App Security to scan files protected with AIP

Human error and malicious intent will forever be a part of organizational lifecycles. While we cannot eliminate them completely, it’s our goal to enable IT and Security admins to minimize this risk. With our advanced capabilities and unique set of insights, Microsoft Cloud App Security and the wider Microsoft Information Protection offering help organizations to protect their sensitive information – wherever it lives or travels.

More info and feedback

Learn how to get started with Microsoft Cloud App Security with our detailed technical documentation. Don’t have Microsoft Cloud App Security? Start a free trial today!

As always, we want to hear from you! If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments, please visit us on our Tech Community page.

Learn more about Microsoft Information Protection.

Posted on January 28, 2019 by — Leave a comment

See how our customers and partners spark innovation across every industry

Judson Althoff visits Kroger’s QFC store in Redmond, WA, one of two pilot locations featuring connected customer experiences powered by Microsoft Azure and AI. Also pictured, Wesley Rhodes, Vice President of Technology Transformation at Kroger.

Computing is embedded all around us. Devices are increasingly more connected, and the availability of data and information is greater now than it has ever been. To grow, compete and respond to customer demands, all companies are becoming digital. In this new reality, enterprise technology choices play an outsized role in how businesses operate, influencing how employees collaborate, how organizations ensure data security and privacy, and how they deliver compelling customer experiences.

This is what we mean when we talk about digital transformation. As our CEO Satya Nadella described it recently, it is how organizations with tech intensity adopt faster, best-in-class technology and simultaneously build their own unique digital capabilities. I see this trend in every industry where customers are choosing Microsoft’s intelligent cloud and intelligent edge to power their transformation.

Over just the past two months, customers as varied as Walmart, Gap Inc., Nielsen, Mastercard, BP, BlackRock, Fruit of the Loom and Brooks Running have shared how technology is reshaping all aspects of our lives — from the way we shop to how we manage money and save for retirement. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month, Microsoft customers and partners highlighted how the Microsoft cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) play an ever-expanding role in driving consumer experiences, from LGE’s autonomous vehicle and infotainment systems, to Visteon’s use of Azure to develop autonomous driving development environments, to ZF’s fleet management and predictive maintenance solutions. More recently, at the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference, Microsoft teamed up with retail industry leaders like Starbucks that are reimagining customer and employee experiences with technology.

In fact, there is no shortage of customer examples of tech intensity. They span all industries, including retail, healthcare, automotive manufacturing, maritime research, education and government. Here are just a few of my favorite examples:

Together with Microsoft, Kroger – America’s biggest supermarket chain – opened two pilot stores offering new connected experiences with Microsoft Azure and AI and announced a Retail as a Service (RaaS) solution on Azure. This partnership with Kroger resonates strongly with me because I first met with the company’s CEO in 2013 soon after joining Microsoft. Since then, I have witnessed the Kroger-Microsoft relationship grow and mature beyond measure. The pilot stores feature “digital shelves” which can show ads and change prices on the fly, along with a network of sensors that keep track of products and help speed shoppers through the aisles. Kroger may eventually roll out the Microsoft cloud-powered system in all its 2,780 supermarkets.

In the healthcare industry, earlier this month, we announced a seven-year strategic cloud partnership with Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). Through the partnership, WBA will harness the power of Microsoft Azure cloud and AI technology, Microsoft 365, health industry investments and new retail solutions with WBA’s customer reach, convenient locations, outpatient health care services and industry expertise to make health care delivery more personal, affordable and accessible for people around the world.

Walgreens Boots Alliance will harness the power of Microsoft Azure cloud and AI technology and Microsoft 365 to help improve health outcomes and lower overall costs.

Customers tell us that one of the biggest advantages of working with Microsoft is our partner ecosystem. That ecosystem has brought together BevMo!, a wine and liquor store, and Fellow Inc., a Microsoft partner. Today, BevMo! is using Fellow Robots to connect supply chain efficiency with customer delight. Power BI, Microsoft Azure and AI enable the Fellow Robots to provide perfect product location using image recognition to offer customers different types of products by integrating point of sale interactions. BevMo! is also using Microsoft’s intelligent cloud solutions to empower its store associates to deliver better customer service.

Fellow Robots from partner Fellow, Inc. are helping BevMo! connect supply chain efficiency and better customer service. The robots are powered by Microsoft Azure, AI and Machine Learning.

In automotive, companies like Toyota are breaking new ground in mixed reality. With its HoloLens solution, Toyota can now project existing 3D CAD data used in the vehicle design process directly onto the vehicle for measurements, optimizing existing processes and minimizing errors. In addition, Toyota is trialing Dynamics 365 Layout to improve machinery layout within its facilities and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to provide workers with expert support from off-site designers and engineers. Also, Toyota has deployed Surface devices, enabling designers and engineers to fluidly connect in real time as part of a company-wide investment to accelerate innovation through collaboration.

A Toyota engineer uses Microsoft HoloLens to perform a process called “film coating thickness inspection” to manage the thickness of the paint for consistent coating quality on every vehicle.

Digital transformation is also changing the way we learn. For example, in the education space, Law School Admission Council (LSAC), a non-profit organization devoted to law and education worldwide, announced its selection of the Windows platform on Surface Go devices to digitize the Law School Admission test (LSAT) for more than 130,000 LSAT test takers each year. In addition to the Digital LSAT, Microsoft is working with LSAC on several initiatives to improve and expand access to legal education.

One of the thousands of Microsoft Surface Go devices running Windows 10 and proprietary software to facilitate a the modern and efficient Digital LSAT starting in July 2019.

Beyond manufacturing and retail, organizations are adopting the cloud and AI to reimagine environmental conservation. Fish may not be top of mind when thinking about innovation, but Australia’s Northern Territory is building its own technology to ensure the sustainable management of fisheries resources for future generations. For marine biologists, a seemingly straightforward task like counting fish becomes significantly more challenging or even dangerous when visibility in marine environments is low and when large predators (think: saltwater crocodiles) live in those environments. That is where AI comes in. Scientists use the technology to automatically identify and count fish photographed by underwater cameras. Over time, the AI solution becomes more accurate with each new fish analyzed. Greater availability of this technology may soon help other areas of the world improve their understanding of aquatic resources.

Shane Penny, Fisheries Research Scientist and his team using baited underwater cameras as part of Australia’s Northern Territory Fisheries artificial intelligence project with Microsoft to fuel insights in marine science.

With almost 13,000 post offices and more than 134,000 employees, Poste Italiane is Italy’s largest distribution network. The organization delivers traditional mail and parcels but also operates at the digital frontier through innovation in financial and insurance services as well as mobile and digital payments solutions. Poste Italiane selected Dynamics 365 for its CRM, creating the largest online deployment in Italy. The firm sees the deployment as a critical part of its strategy to support growth, contain costs and deliver a better, richer customer experience.

Poste Italiane’s selection of Microsoft is part of their digital transformation program that aims to reshape the retail sales approach and increase cross-selling revenues and profitability of its subsidiaries BancoPosta and PosteVita.

These examples only scratch the surface of how digital transformation and digital capabilities are bringing together people, data and processes in a way that generates value, competitive advantage and powers innovation across every industry. I am incredibly humbled that our customers and partners have chosen Microsoft to support their digital journey.

Posted on January 28, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Gaming fans: Gears Pro Circuit descends on Mexico City Feb. 1-3

Get ready for the Gears Pro Circuit Mexico City Open on February 1-3 at the World Trade Center in Mexico City, where top Gears Pro Circuit teams from around the world will compete for a $200,000 prize pool. Tickets are still available for fans to watch 70+ teams like OpTic Gaming, Denial and Ghost Gaming (the #1 LATAM team). There will also be a 2v2 Gnashers tournament on February 2 – registration begins on Saturday and is available to the first 100 spectators/pro players that sign-up.

Tune in to live.gearsofwar.com throughout the weekend to claim exclusive free in-game items including the new Glow and Mexico City weapons skins. If you want to fully immerse yourself in the Gears saga after the Gears Pro Circuit Mexico City Open, Xbox Game Pass members can now play every Gears of War game.

Have a great weekend Gears fans – we’ll see you from February 1-3 as teams battle it out in Mexico City! Be sure to visit www.gears.gg and follow @EsportsGears on Twitter to keep up-to-date with the latest information about Gears Esports.

Posted on January 25, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Fortune: Microsoft’s tech chief Kevin Scott talks artificial intelligence, mixed reality and sod farming

As Microsoft’s chief technology officer, Kevin Scott has the challenging job of keeping his company atop all of the tech trends.

Scott became Microsoft’s CTO two years ago after six years directing software engineering at LinkedIn, which Microsoft bought in 2016 for $26 billion. One of his first jobs at Microsoft was to identify all the technologies used by the company’s sprawling business units—to gauge their usefulness—and then make sure that the popular ones were available to every division.

The exercise reflects the philosophy of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Scott says. Nadella not only spends a lot of time thinking about what to do, but also “what are we not doing that we’re going to regret.”

Microsoft missed out on a few tech revolutions, in particular the rise of smartphones, which rivals Apple and Google ended up capitalizing on. Nadella wants Scott to make sure that nothing similar happens again.

In this edited interview with Fortune, Scott talks about artificial intelligence, Microsoft’s continued push into mixed reality [Microsoft lingo for both virtual and augmented reality tech], and the challenges of deep learning.

Fortune: How do you distinguish Microsoft’s AI from other companies?

Kevin Scott: We’re a platform company by DNA. If you listen to how Bill Gates has always defined what a platform company is, it’s one that builds technology that creates all of this opportunity in which you don’t have all of the economic value concentrated in one company. We’re increasing the overall size of the pie. The PC, for instance, created an enormous economic opportunity. We see AI as essentially the same thing.

When I think of platforms, I think of things like Windows, which other companies can build apps on top of. Is this how you see AI?

The thing that we’re pushing hard on is that a lot of AI right now is still unnecessarily difficult for many people to get up to speed on. There are maybe in the high tens of thousands of developers out there who are hardcore machine learning/data science folks. Almost every customer we interact with is thinking about using AI to help its business run better. And you can’t expect each and every one of them to hire a bunch of Ph.Ds and machine learning engineers. At the rate AI is unfolding, not enough of those people exist.

One of our challenges is to build technologies that lower the barriers to entry so a much larger pool of developers can use machine learning in their products and services. Microsoft itself is a microcosm for this because we have about 55,000 developers in the company and not all of them are machine learning/data science experts.

I imagine it’s a challenge for companies exploring the AI technique of deep learning to get used to the idea that a lot of their experiments will fail.

It’s incumbent upon us as platform providers to give people better tools—to guide you in better ways toward paths that get you to success.

I think you do have to expect some of this stuff not to work. You have to get into it with this experimental mindset. It’s not like you’re proving a theorem and you walk through the steps and it’s done and predictable. It’s more like lab science.

The most technologically-savvy companies are used to this trial-and-error process. We just know through our own efforts that the first thing is not going to work, and you have to push and push. When you get the win, it totally covers all of the costs of the experimentation.

What’s your background in AI?

I’m writing a book on AI right now. It’s about why we should be optimistic about a future that includes AI. The contrarian thing is that I think it’s net beneficial even to people in rural parts of the country.

I was a poor kid from rural central Virginia—Campbell County, a little town called Gladys. I went back there a year ago for the book. All the industry there evaporated years ago. Tobacco, textiles, furniture manufacturing all went poof. But some interesting things are emerging there now, some of which is powered by AI and advanced automation.

What’s going on in Gladys?

I went to school with people whose families’ have been tobacco farmers for five generations. Their business basically went sideways when the tobacco markets collapsed, and they had to figure out what to do. They were fairly entrepreneurial and they knew technology would play a role in what they were doing.

All the land that they used to plant tobacco on is sod now, and the unit economics is about as good as tobacco. Part of the reason is that they use a bunch of advanced automation—tractors, and fairly sophisticated technology to let them grow sod on these very large tracks of land. It’s more labor intensive than tobacco was, but with the technology they have about the same number of employees. So technology hasn’t reduced jobs.

On the horizon are things like drones that can fly over crops to do aerial inspections. It’s not that you don’t need a human being, but you can fly over it more frequently and get more data about what’s going on in your field so you can better adjust fertilizers and water.

Because of the technology, you don’t need a giant factory with thousands of people in order to just get your unit economics right. You can start a business and have 30 people working in this place and have that 30-person business in Campbell County, Va. be a global business. Some people believe you won’t have jobs coming back where there are 100 companies with 10,000 jobs a piece, but you’ll have 100,000 companies with 100 higher-skilled jobs each.

Will those jobs pay more?

Yeah. I know for sure.

Some people are concerned that while automation will make companies more efficient, only management will benefit and not the workers.

I think both can happen and I think we should be cautious. What I’ve seen working on this book and talking with customers the size of Walmart all the way down to small and medium sized businesses is that there’s lots of things to be hopeful about.

Virtual reality and augmented reality seemed really big three years ago, and now many venture capital investors aren’t as focused on it because they couldn’t get returns fast enough. How do you plan for and adjust when a technology hasn’t caught on as fast as hoped?

Part of my job is making sure that we maintain our focus and our commitment to some of these investments over long periods. The thing I can say is we have not reduced our investments in mixed reality [Microsoft makes the HoloLens augmented reality headset]. If anything, we increased things—not dramatically up, but it’s growing.

If you’re thinking of yourself as a platform company, you have to be thinking about what the future platforms are going to be. We have three things that we believe are going to be important platforms that are in different stages of development.

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One is quantum computing, which at some point is going to be very important. There’s mixed reality, which we think is probably in a shorter time horizon is going to be a very important platform. And on a shorter time horizon than that, this notion of an intelligent edge, which you can think of as a mashup of IOT [Internet-connected devices], sensors, and AI.

We believe all three of those will be extremely important platforms in the future. And to make a global scale platform work, you have to invest and believe it’s real. It’s a question of when and not if.

Posted on January 25, 2019 by — Leave a comment

A faster and easier way to stay on top of your tasks – Cortana with Microsoft To-Do

Now, with Microsoft To-Do and Cortana integration, you can save time and stay organized — Cortana helps by adding your reminders and tasks to your lists in Microsoft To-Do, so you can stay on top of what matters most. With Cortana, you can use your voice on your PC or your phone — your choice.

Streamline your tasks — your lists and reminders from across Microsoft To-Do, Cortana and tasks in Outlook can now become one — centrally located in your Microsoft To-Do app. Use Microsoft To-Do anywhere: on your Android or iPhone, with Cortana, or on your Windows 10 PC. You can also access Microsoft To-Do from the web. It’s automatically synced so you never miss a beat. Get started using Microsoft To-Do with Cortana.

Check it out in action:

For more details, visit the Tech Community blog post.

Please note: The Cortana/To-Do integration is only available in English and in the following regions: Australia, India, U.S., and U.K. If you want to access from a different region, change your language and region settings.

Updated January 25, 2019 9:16 am