Here’s my weekly picks on the subjectively best blog posts from TechCommunity:

Released: January 2022 Exchange Server Security Updates

Security updates for Exchange 2013, 2016 and 2019 are out, and as always, there’s exploits these mitigate. Note that https://aka.ms/ExchangeUpdateWizard will ask what you’re upgrading from and to, and talk you through the process – although it does expect you’ve done this before with some high level ‘Update your AD schema with this switch’ instructions that require you to go work out how to do that – which does involve downloading the latest ISO for Exchange, mounting it, then running the setup.exe with some switches. It also notes that these patches don’t fix the January 2022 transport queue buildup issue (Y2K22). Get patching!

Create a resume website – no coding experience required!

This one’s a really neat idea – use GitHub Pages for free, to have a static online resume. No fees, no special hosting stuff – it’s what I run msportals.io off of. Good practise in doing something fairly simple on GitHub Pages. A workshop is available to work through it all.

SQl Injection: example of SQL Injections and Recommendations to avoid it

I’m not someone who dabbles in SQL too often, but this is a nice clear post demonstrating simply how SQL Injection can work by searching with the string ‘ or 1=1 or 1=’ – then how to avoid it in code, and how Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and notify on those sort of attacks.

New to Microsoft Certification exams? We have something you need to try

Really good idea from Microsoft here – an exam sandbox so you can get a feel for how the exams work (without actual exam questions) which can help people be prepared for what they’ll experience doing their first real Microsoft exam. I’ve added this to https://msportals.io too :)

Continuous Access Evaluation in Azure AD is now generally available!

This is a great addition to the security Azure AD provides. Instead of just assessing risk at the time of login, Azure AD will now continually assess risk, and force re-auth if something changes that it decides has increased the risk of the account such as location change or password change. It’s auto-enabled so you don’t have to do anything, but good to be aware of.

Getting Started with a Windows 365 POC

I personally haven’t even looked at Windows 365 yet – so if I was going to get started, this is the perfect sort of blog post to get things going. It looks pretty easy without too many steps, so check this out if you want to have a play.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 Now Included in M365 E3/A3 Licenses

Defender for Endpoint P1 is now in M365 E3/A3 licenses. If you’re wondering what P1 is, the article has a comparison table. That means if you have Defender for Endpoint already, it’s probably now P2. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P1 is looking pretty cheap at $3US per user per month if you don’t already have E3/A3. This still goes to show that Microsoft licensing is hard and confusing, with so many factors to consider.

That’s it for this week, as always you can see the entire feed of TechCommunity posts at https://twitter.com/MSITTechNews