We had a great time at Microsoft Ignite this year in Chicago, both at the conference and in the city. We managed to fit in both a NHL match and a NBA match! Go Blackhawks and Go Bulls, respectively.
My key points from Ignite
The key news from my point of view (security) are not very AI focused. I will let someone else on the internet cover that part.
The news that I found the most interesting are:
- Defender XDR integration of Purview
- Insider risk and DLP can now also contribute data to an XDR incident
- Highlights confidential data included in exfiltration activities
- Microsoft Security Exposure Management is now GA
- Real-time password spray detection
- Probably part of the “risk-based” CA rules for Entra ID P2?
- Entra Suite SSE solution
- Private DNS in “Private Access”
- TLS inspection in “Internet Access”
- Windows 11
- Administrator Protection
- UAC can soon use Windows Hello For Business as authentication, eliminating a lot of risk in the world of local admins.
- Personal Data Encryption
- Encryption of documents in folders tied to the user account
- Prevents scrapyard data-hunting for non-technical private persons
- Passkey authentication in Entra ID
- Passkeys in Windows Hello
- Supporting component for passwordless and phishing-resistant authentication
- Hotpatching with Windows Autopatch
- … and many more improvements to security!
- Administrator Protection
- Azure Local is the new name for Azure Stack HCI
For more, check out the Microsoft Ignite Book of News
Focus on Security
I must say i did not expect so much security focused functionality from Windows 11, which is a major improvement! I’ll be recommending customers to upgrade from Windows 10 before at the latest October 2025.
It should be noted that Passkeys are the big new thing in terms of identity security! Microsoft sold Passkeys in as easier than passwords and a faster login process by quite a lot. If i recall correctly passkey login took 8 seconds while a conventional password login took somewhere around 30 seconds.
Excited to see how companies implement this, and how the average user experiences this as a login procedure. Hopefully passkeys can be “sold in” as faster, easier and more secure!
I already have some projects lined up for both Passkeys and for Entra ID Private Access that i hope to be able to share here on my blog in 2025.
Picture from the flight over Greenland, pretty neat! Now to try and shake off the jet-lag…
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