Monthly Archives: October 2022

Microsoft have announced that they are rebranding their Office apps for the web (Office.com), Windows and mobile (iOS and Android) as the new Microsoft 365 app.

This new version of the productivity suite will feature a rebranded icon and look to reflect the fact that Microsoft 365 has become the company’s leading product. With this change, they aim to bring all the popular apps together into one intuitive platform. Users will be able to find all available content and apps from a single portal.

The new Microsoft 365 app will still include all the current Office favourites like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, but with the addition of new features such as custom tagging for an organisation, the Create module (which offers project templates across multiple apps), and a curated Feed (to help simplify and organise workflow).

Users of the Office web app (Office.com) will start to see changes in November 2022 as part of a phased roll-out to move all customers across to microsoft365.com. From mid-2023, office.com will automatically redirect to microsoft365.com.

Updates for the mobile apps for iOS and Android, and the Windows app will occur automatically in January 2023 — although customers will begin to see messages notifying them of the upcoming changes from November onwards. After the update occurs, the rebranded Microsoft 365 icon will appear on the home screen or desktop.

Because the updates will all occur automatically, there will be no impact to users’ accounts, profiles, subscriptions, or files. However, organisations should make sure that they allow safe access to the new microsoft365.com domain to ensure there are no issues with the rebranded app being blocked.

Most of us will have had to solve challenge-response tests – such as selecting all images containing a certain object – known as CAPTCHAs, to prove that we are human. This technology has been used to block bots for decades and is implemented on some of the world’s most popular websites. However, a rise in bugs in some CAPTCHA systems, as well as cheap workarounds which can solve and circumnavigate them, means that platforms are seeking new ways to verify their users.

As a result, Cloudflare – one of the world’s largest content delivery networks and infrastructure platforms – have announced a new project which aims to replace the old CAPTCHA system: Turnstile.

Turnstile will be available to website owners for free, whether or not they are already a Cloudflare customer. Their new technology will seek to address the inherent problems, which the company has previously noted with CATCHPAs, including poor accessibility for visually impaired users, cultural bias, high data usage on mobile devices, and fees for website owners.

Turnstile will work by choosing from a rotating list of “browser challenges” to verify online visitors and block bot traffic. Rather than requiring users to solve a puzzle, the new technology will determine what type of challenge to issue, using previous visits and behaviour to aid it. This is similar to how Google’s latest version of CAPTCHAs work, called reCAPTCHA Version 3. It will be interesting to see the uptake of Cloudflare’s solution when Google’s is already strongly embedded in the web.

Cloudflare has been successfully using Turnstile instead of CATCHPAs itself for several months – and now they’re ready to give other companies the chance to use it too.

Microsoft have announced that they have turned off Basic Authentication in Exchange in Microsoft 365 for all users from 1 October 2022.

Security was a key focus in Microsoft’s annual conference, Inspire, in July 2022 and they have taken this step to ensure that Exchange users are better protected from the risks posed by sophisticated cyber criminals to hybrid and remote workers.

To improve security, moving away from outdated and less secure tools, such as Basic Authentication, is an important step. With password attacks and email compromises both on the rise, securing your email is essential for keeping your organisation and communications secure. This is especially important for small and medium-sized businesses who may not have a separate dedicated online security team.

As a long-standing Microsoft Partner, we have been working with our clients to implement the more effective and secure Modern Authentication (OAuth 2.0 token-based authentication). This enables stronger protection through the use of more advanced technical security protocols and multi-factor authentication (MFA) – the best way to make your accounts more secure against threats.