Group Policy

Troubleshoot Hyper-V guarded fabrics and shielded VMs

Administration / By / Published / Updated 10/16/2026 / 52 minutes of reading

Use this FAQ when a guarded fabric can’t be deployed, a host can’t attest, a shielded virtual machine (VM) can’t be provisioned or started, or an operation such as migration, servicing, or recovery fails. It accompanies the Microsoft Learn module: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/guarded-fabric-shielded-virtual-machines/ Warning Don’t use TPM clearing, an unrelated new or local KP, disabled Secure Boot […]

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Active Directory Domain Services modules on Microsoft Learn

Administration / By / Published / Updated 09/28/2026 / 8 minutes of reading

The following is a list of Active Directory Domain Services modules on Microsoft Learn sorted from introductory to advanced. Is there an Active Directory topic that isn’t listed here that you’d like to see covered? (AD CS modules are coming). If you know all this, remember we have the free 45 minute practical Active Directory

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Advanced Windows Firewall

Administration / By / Published / Updated 09/28/2026 / 4 minutes of reading

If you administer Windows, you’re already aware of Windows Firewall. You might use it to allow an application, open a port, or block unwanted inbound traffic. But those familiar tasks only scratch the surface of what it can do. The Microsoft Learn module Understand advanced Windows Firewall takes you beyond basic rules and introduces Windows

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Some tools and techniques for hardening Windows Server

Administration / By / Published / Updated 09/28/2026 / 27 minutes of reading

In this post I go over some tools and techniques exist for hardening Windows Server. As always, apply controls according to the server’s role, test them against representative workloads before production rollout, document approved exceptions, and maintain tested console and recovery access in case a security control affects management or application compatibility. Apply the role-specific

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Storing FSLogix Profile Containers on Azure Files with Microsoft Entra Kerberos — Cloud-Only / External Identities

Azure / By / Published / Updated 07/12/2026 / 5 minutes of reading

If your AVD environment is built entirely on cloud-only or external Entra ID identities — no on-prem AD, no Entra Domain Services — you can still give users FSLogix roaming profiles on Azure Files. Microsoft Entra Kerberos handles the ticket issuance, so the storage account can authenticate users over SMB without any line-of-sight to a

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Azure Virtual Desktop Identity Scenarios: A Practitioner’s Guide

Azure / By / Published / Updated 07/05/2026 / 5 minutes of reading

If you’ve ever sat in a design workshop and had someone ask “so which identity model should we use for AVD?”, you know it’s rarely a one-line answer. Identity is the foundation every other AVD decision sits on top of — FSLogix profile containers, MFA policy, Conditional Access, session host domain join, even how Single

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Windows Server vNext Insider Preview Build 29602 and QMR

Administration / By / Published / Updated 06/19/2026 / 3 minutes of reading

Installing Windows Server Insider vNext Build 29602 Quick Machine Recovery in Windows Server Insider Preview Build 29602: A Deep Dive In-to Microsoft’s New Resiliency Engine Windows Server vNext continues to push forward with features that strengthen reliability and reduce operational overhead. In Insider Preview Build 29602, the standout innovation is unquestionably Quick Machine Recovery (QMR)

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Microsoft Entra Private Access vs Global Secure Access

Azure / By / Published / Updated 05/22/2026 / 13 minutes of reading

If you have been researching Microsoft’s zero trust network access offering and found yourself confused by “Global Secure Access,” “Entra Private Access,” and “Internet Access” all appearing in the same sentence, you are not alone. The naming is genuinely confusing, even for architects who work in the Microsoft ecosystem daily. This article cuts through the

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Case study: How predictive shielding in Defender stopped GPO-based ransomware before it started

Security / By / Published / Updated 03/23/2026 / 8 minutes of reading

Summary Microsoft Defender disrupted a human operated ransomware incident targeting a large educational institution with more than a couple of thousand devices. The attacker attempted to weaponize Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to tamper with security controls and distribute ransomware via scheduled tasks. Defender’s predictive shielding detected the attack before ransomware was deployed and proactively hardened against

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Solving Network Connectivity for MDE and MDI

Security / By / Published / Updated 10/30/2025 / 5 minutes of reading

Hi, I’m Will Sykes, a Senior Security Researcher in Microsoft IR. My colleagues and I specialize in helping customers with incident response and compromise recovery. In our work with customers who’ve been the victim of cyberattack, we often must solve connectivity issues to support tools in a hybrid cloud configuration.  In today’s IT world we’re now implementing and integrating services that leverage cloud computing components.

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