The Tech Beat

Thoughts on technology from Chris Beattie, Consultant in K-12 education.

NPS RADIUS with AADJ – Part 2

Updating the old ghost computer account sync script to get NPS working with Azure AD / Entra-joined devices again, but it’s a last gasp.

November 8, 2023 · 6 min · 1070 words · Chris Beattie

A zero-disruption path to better MFA

Presenting some ideas about how we can enforce more secure authentication methods without locking out users that don’t have them yet. Featured in Entra News!

October 17, 2023 · 5 min · 995 words · Chris Beattie

Testing Exchange Online via manual SMTP submission

Resurrecting a bit of troubleshooting technique from the golden age of email.

June 20, 2023 · 4 min · 649 words · Chris Beattie

Exchange Online mailbox defaults to Pacific Time

A maddening bug in Exchange that will probably never be fixed, but at least I’ll show a workaround.

May 16, 2023 · 4 min · 737 words · Chris Beattie

FIDO? Schmido!

A lack of mobile support for FIDO2 auth and Passkeys from Microsoft is hampering widespread adoption but some limited use cases can bring immediate benefit to securing high-risk activities.

April 5, 2023 · 7 min · 1409 words · Chris Beattie

Dropping the ball on MFA

We’re not doing well enough at communicating the need for better authentication or providing simple means for its widespread adoption.

March 2, 2023 · 10 min · 1944 words · Chris Beattie

Microsoft Connected Cache (standalone) private preview

I’ve put this post together as an update for a number of schools who have asked me how we’re going on our Private Preview of MCC and will try to keep it generally updated on our progress. I’ll start with a bit of background though, for anyone new to this. You had me at DOINC The best product acronym Microsoft ever devised was DOINC, for the Delivery Optimisation In-Network Cache. This was a service that would store local copies of Windows and Office apps and updates so that client devices could access a fast, consistently-connected local copy rather than downloading from peers or over the Internet....

February 2, 2023 · 7 min · 1403 words · Chris Beattie

SC-200 Notes

I’ve been tacking in the direction of cybersecurity in recent years and specifically within the Microsoft 365 suite. I took the Security Administrator track on my Enterprise Admin certification and didn’t find that too difficult as it was grounded in my day-to-day. This one was pushing the boat out as it’s more Azure-based and honestly I wasn’t expecting to pass first time, but it fairly soaked up these dull days between Christmas and New Year!...

December 30, 2022 · 4 min · 682 words · Chris Beattie

The end of an era

In a couple of weeks I’m leaving this vast, beautiful island and my home for the last decade to return to the substantially smaller, wetter and greener one of my birth. This is for family reasons (lots of missed time over the covid years) and is thankfully not goodbye; my role has changed to accommodate remote work until next year and I’ll hopefully retain a stake thereafter pending my eventual return down the track....

September 15, 2022 · 3 min · 625 words · Chris Beattie

Code debt and custom sandboxes

Schools can hardly be the only organisations with legacy applications in regular use for vital ’line-of-business’ functions. Hopefully for the most part these are visible to IT, securely contained and have an end-of-life date with a succession plan rather than being adopted through choice into a modern desktop environment. A while ago I encountered a nasty and unavoidable case of the latter and had to figure out a solution. The application I was tasked to deploy was for processing sensitive financial data on our most heavily-secured devices and relied on Internet Explorer and Java....

September 2, 2022 · 6 min · 1160 words · Chris Beattie