Classic Exchange Admin Center is set to retire with services moving out starting October 15 of this year, and the portal going dark September 1, 2022. This shouldn't result in a big change for users, but I've found the behaviors to be very different between the two versions. Bear in mind this timeline overlaps the deprecation of the Azure AD Graph (and therefore also ADAL), so admins will want to spend the next few months really familiarizing themselves with new methods of connecting and managing Microsoft 365 services (and find & update those ADAL apps!).
If you were offline yesterday, you may have missed that Apple had a rough day. The company was on it, though, and emergency-released iOS 14.8. Why does that matter? Because you can absolutely protect your assets with a conditional launch app protection policy that warns or blocks access for any OS version below that number. I'll wait while you take care of that.
Oh hey since we're talking security, there's a new Security Baseline for Edge v93 in Endpoint Manager. Not a lot of change, but baselines make it a whole lot easier to stay on top of CIS benchmark settings. And while you can't impose it with Endpoint Manager, there is also a security baseline for Windows Server 2022. You'll need to use the Security Compliance Toolkit (free download) for this one.
Ever wanted to tune and optimize Defender Antivirus? There's a new tool for helping assess how best to do that, including determining which files and paths are causing slowdowns on individual endpoints. It's pure PowerShell and writes to .etl files, so the super savvy might yoink that data straight to Azure Monitor or Sentinel and build some powerful views around it, but be wary of the data footprint if you go that way.
And as long as we're optimizing stuff, maybe we take a few minutes to start thinking about optimizing Windows 11? We want users to hit the ground running! We'll be testing all of this and more in the demo lab in the days and weeks to come, along with upgrading from Windows 10 to 11. Stay tuned!
Oh, final note: join us @ noon EDT on 9/23 for our 2nd Windows 365 webinar, covering deployment, management, and a bit of compare/contrast with other VDI models in the Microsoft suite.
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