All posts by Sam Linley

In the realm of cybersecurity, the inevitability of facing a cyber incident demands a strategic and swift response. When faced with such an event, knowing how to navigate the storm is crucial to mitigate its impact on your orginisation. Let’s delve into the step-by-step actions that can be taken to effectively manage a cyber incident.

Isolation: Halting the Spread

The first critical step upon discovering a cyber incident is isolation. Swiftly identify impacted systems and isolate them from the network. Disconnect affected devices or networks from the main infrastructure to prevent further spread. Only power down devices if there’s no other feasible way to isolate them, keeping in mind that this might compromise potential forensic evidence.

Lockdown: Reinforcing Defenses

After isolating the network, the focus shifts to fortifying your defenses. Review and adjust firewall rules, disable unnecessary rules, and implement stringent access controls. Disconnect all site-to-site and end-user VPNs to prevent unauthorized access. It is also important to block all logins to services such as Microsoft 365 and any other platforms you work on until the investigation has started.

Restoration: Gradual Recovery

Once the network is secured, the process of restoration begins. Prioritize services to bring back online, initiate a backup restore into an isolated environment before the attack, and meticulously review and reset permissions, passwords, and accounts. This includes reviewing and securing elements like email rules, user logins, domain controllers, and antivirus solutions.

Ensure thorough security checks on all restored systems and services. Collaborate closely with the security investigation team to reinstate operations cautiously, verifying every step to ensure a return to normalcy.

Remember, a phased approach to restoration ensures meticulous attention to detail and minimizes the risk of recurrence.

Conclusion: A Strategic Response

Facing a cyber incident is a formidable challenge, but a well-prepared and systematic response can mitigate its impact significantly. It’s about isolating, fortifying, and gradually restoring operations while maintaining a vigilant eye on security measures.

Greetings, fellow IT Professionals,

In the realm of cybersecurity, the significance of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) stands as a pillar of defence against potential breaches. Yet, it’s surprising to note that despite its crucial importance, many companies are only halfway there in implementing MFA across their systems.

Picture this: MFA applied to Office 365 but not extended to other existing services within your organization. This partial implementation leaves gaping vulnerabilities, exposing your network to potential threats.

Let’s delve into the critical reasons why comprehensive MFA deployment is indispensable for safeguarding your business infrastructure.

Comprehensive Protection: Beyond Office 365

It’s not just about securing Office 365. Implementing MFA on VPN connections and ensuring updated firmware on your firewall are pivotal steps. An attacker breaching your VPN could navigate your network, accessing sensitive files and seeking out further vulnerabilities to exploit, potentially leading to data breaches or ransomware attacks.

Business Impact: The Cost of Vulnerability

The repercussions of a cyber threat can be financially staggering. From costly forensic investigations to rebuilding infrastructure from scratch, the aftermath of a breach can cost upwards of £50k for a specialized incident response investigation alone. Factor in emergency project work and potential data exploitation, and the expenses soar. Business downtime, a minimum of five full days, disrupts operations significantly.

Key Strategies for Cyber Resilience

Ensuring MFA across all systems, patching vulnerabilities, avoiding End-of-Life (EOL) devices or firmware, and having robust Cyber Insurance are critical strategies. Preparation is key; it’s not a matter of ‘if’ an attack occurs, but ‘when.’

Remember, readiness is the armour that shields your business against the unpredictable landscape of cyber threats.

The current features at our disposal encompass Copilot integration within Windows, Bing Chat Enterprise, and Microsoft 365 Copilot tailored for enterprise agreement customers. Furthermore, there are other remarkable AI functionalities accessible, including the AI meeting re-cap, exclusively designed for Microsoft Teams Premium users. This feature alone transforms the meeting experience by enabling users to:

• My approach to collaboration has undergone a revolution with the integration of AI notes. With detailed and precise summaries readily available, I can seamlessly re-engage in discussions without the hassle of sifting through pages of notes. This effortless access ensures our conversations remain focused and impactful.

• The introduction of AI-generated notes has significantly deepened my understanding of meeting insights. Freed from the distraction of note-taking, I actively participate in discussions, gaining a profound grasp of essential points and fostering a collaborative atmosphere.

• Time, in our bustling work environment, is incredibly precious. AI notes save me valuable minutes, allowing me to dedicate more time to strategic planning, brainstorming, and problem-solving. This newfound efficiency drives innovation and propels my projects forward.

• Enhanced collaboration has become our standard, all thanks to immediate access to accurate meeting summaries. It empowers us to build on one another’s ideas, address concerns promptly, and collectively drive projects forward, cultivating a culture of teamwork and synergy.

Microsoft has ensured that we are well-informed about their capabilities. However, in case you missed any updates, I’ve highlighted some key features that I personally find incredibly useful.

Copilot in Outlook helps you stay on top of your inbox and create impactful communication in a fraction of the time. 

• Ask Copilot to summarize an email thread to get key information with annotations that help you quickly jump to the source of the summarized content, and suggested action items, replies, and follow-up meetings. 
• Choose “Sound like me” to match your unique writing style and voice when you’re using Copilot to draft an email.
• Follow a Teams meeting that you could not attend live, directly from Outlook on your own time. When the meeting starts, Teams notifies participants to record it. When the recording is ready, Copilot notifies you in Outlook. 

Copilot in Word transforms every part of the writing process to make you more creative and efficient.

• Ask Copilot for a summary of any document to share as a recap or quickly get up to speed, and Copilot will now deliver a more in-depth bulleted summation with all the information you need.
• Ask Copilot to “rewrite” a paragraph, then scroll through a series of options to see what fits best. You can then adjust the rewrite tone to make it more neutral, casual, or professional.
• Refine a prompt by asking Copilot to do things like “make answer more concise” or “add a column in the table for the project owner.” 
• Save time on formatting by asking Copilot to generate a table from your copy.

Copilot in Excel enables anyone to analyse and visualize data like a data analyst. 

• Work with Copilot in Excel to help analyse, format, and edit your data to gain deeper understanding and insights.
• Quickly add a formula column, highlight key data with a prompt like “make all cells red where the value is under 1000,” filter and sort your data, and ask questions to instantly uncover key insights.
• Use Copilot to access advanced analytics; create powerful, professional visualizations, generate forecasts, and save time sorting through data with Python in Excel.

Copilot in Loop unlocks the power of shared thinking, helping teams cocreate, stay up to date, and pick up where others left off. 

• Iterate with Copilot collaboratively as a team, cocreating prompts and reviewing earlier interactions to edit and improve on work together. 
• Ask Copilot to generate a quick table on the page to help organize team projects. You can easily turn the table into a Loop component to share with teammates wherever they’re working—in Teams, Outlook, Microsoft Whiteboard, and Word on the web.
• Quickly catch up where your teammates left off by asking Copilot for a summary of a page or asking open-ended questions like “What key assignments were made since I was last on this page?” 
• Generate a recap for a teammate that you’re handing work off to, so they can get up to speed on any updates or changes. 
• Save time writing code with Copilot-suggested Code blocks that pop up automatically using the context of your work.

Copilot in OneNote helps you stay organized, prepared, and ready to take action. 

• Gain deeper insights on your notes by asking comprehensive questions like: “What are the pros and cons of this process?”  
• Quickly generate summaries of your OneNote content.
• Type just a few sentences and get a Copilot-generated paragraph, bulleted list, or organized section.
• Make your writing clearer and more effective with a quick Copilot edit.

Copilot in Stream helps you find the insights and information you need from a video—in the Microsoft Stream web app or anywhere Stream videos work across Microsoft 365 apps—in seconds. 

• Get a quick summary of the video with a transcript of the relevant spots you need to review. 
• Ask Copilot open-ended questions—“What was the discussion outcome?” “How did the site walkthrough go?”—to quickly understand outcomes and key points.
• Ask Copilot to identify when people, teams, or topics are discussed, then jump right to that point in the video.
• Ask Copilot for suggested follow-ups or actions from a video you missed. 

Copilot in OneDrive helps you find all the insights and information you need—without ever opening a file.

• Ask Copilot open-ended questions related to an individual file or get a summary of the content.

With Microsoft’s strong marketing push for Microsoft Copilot, many IT professionals are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to provide innovative solutions to customers at a moment’s notice. As of November 1st, 2023, Microsoft Copilot has been officially launched, but currently, it’s accessible only to enterprise agreement customers. Unfortunately, for SMEs, the release timeline remains uncertain, and we are patiently waiting for Microsoft’s announcement in this regard.

What is it going to cost?

The Copilot license is priced at £30 per user per month, requiring users to have either a Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or a Microsoft Business Premium/Standard license assigned to them. While some might consider this cost a bit steep, the published case studies by Microsoft underscore the tool’s effectiveness. It significantly reduces administrative workload, allowing users to redirect their time towards proactive and productive endeavors.