Zero-Touch BitLocker with PowerShell

7th of January, 2020 / / No Comments

The majority of IT engineers and architects traverse various forms of security on a daily basis ranging from our complex alphanumeric corporate logon passwords to the increasingly common MFA prompts on our mobiles. You could say that we have become experts in navigating modern security measures required to stay protected. But perhaps you’re not familiar in planning and rolling out that same security, at scale, to your organisation’s Windows laptops in the form of disk encryption.… [Keep reading] “Zero-Touch BitLocker with PowerShell”

Azure AD Log Analytics KQL queries via API with PowerShell

21st of May, 2019 / / No Comments

Log Analytics is a fantastic tool in the Azure Portal that provides the ability to query Azure Monitor events. It provides the ability to quickly create queries using KQL (Kusto Query Language). Once you’ve created the query however you may want to run that query through automation negating the need to use the Azure Portal every time you want to get the associated report data.

In this post I detail;

  • creating a Log Analytic Workspace
  • enabling API Access
  • querying Log Analytics using the REST API with PowerShell
  • outputting data to CSV

Create a Workspace

We want to create a Workspace for our logs and queries.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD Log Analytics KQL queries via API with PowerShell”

AD FS 2016 and InvalidNameIDPolicy using SAML Authentication to SailPoint IdentityNow

4th of April, 2019 / / 2 Comments

I recently had a seemingly simple task for a customer to setup a AD FS 2016 relying party trust for their SailPoint IdentityNow deployment. Sounds easy right?

In this scenario AD FS 2016 was to be the Identity Provider (IdP) and IdentityNow the Service Provider (SP). Our end-goal of the solution was to allow the customer’s users to authenticate via SAML into IdentityNow using their corporate AD DS email address and password. Great outcome from a user experience perspective and for corporate governance too!… [Keep reading] “AD FS 2016 and InvalidNameIDPolicy using SAML Authentication to SailPoint IdentityNow”

Plugging the Gaps in Azure Policy – Part Two

18th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

Introduction

Welcome to the second and final part of my blogs on how to plug some gaps in Azure Policy. If you missed part one, this second part isn’t going to be a lot of use without the context from that, so maybe head on back and read part one before you continue.

In part one, I gave an overview of Azure Policy, a basic idea of how it works, what the gap in the product is in terms of resource evaluation, and a high-level view of how we plug that gap.… [Keep reading] “Plugging the Gaps in Azure Policy – Part Two”

Plugging the Gaps in Azure Policy – Part One

14th of March, 2019 / / 2 Comments

Introduction

Welcome to the first part of a two part blog on Azure Policy. Multi-part blogs are not my usual style, but the nature of blogging whilst also being a full time Consultant is that you slip some words in when you find time, and I was starting to feel if I wrote this in a single part, it would just never see the light of day. Part one of this blog deals with the high-level overview of what the problem is, and how we solved it at a high level, part two will include the icky sticky granular detail, including some scripts which you can shamelessly plagiarise.… [Keep reading] “Plugging the Gaps in Azure Policy – Part One”

Azure AD/Active Directory User Security Evaluation Reporter

28th of February, 2019 / / 1 Comment

During December 2018 – February 2019 Microsoft have run an online Microsoft Graph Security Hackathon on Devpost.

The criteria of the hackathon was;

  • Build or update a functioning Microsoft Graph-powered solution that leverages the Microsoft Graph Security API

Following the announcement of the Hackathon I was encouraged by Kloud management to enter. During the busy month of December I started to formulate a concept for entry in the Hackathon taking learnings from the hackathon I entered in 2018.… [Keep reading] “Azure AD/Active Directory User Security Evaluation Reporter”

CyberArk PAM- Eliminate Hard Coded Credentials using Java REST API Calls

16th of January, 2019 / / No Comments

Still in many Organization hard coded credentials are stored in Application config files for making application-to-application connection, in scripts (ex: scheduled tasks) and config files. Generally, these are high privileged service accounts and its passwords are set to be never changed.
Keeping hard coded credentials always risk to the organizations security posture. CyberArk provides a solution called Application Identity Manager using which, the passwords of Privileged Service Accounts can be stored centrally in Password Vault, logged, rotated and retrieved in many different ways.… [Keep reading] “CyberArk PAM- Eliminate Hard Coded Credentials using Java REST API Calls”

Automatic Key Rotation for Azure Services

19th of September, 2018 / / 1 Comment

Securely managing keys for services that we use is an important, and sometimes difficult, part of building and running a cloud-based application. In general I prefer not to handle keys at all, and instead rely on approaches like managed service identities with role-based access control, which allow for applications to authenticate and authorise themselves without any keys being explicitly exchanged. However, there are a number of situations where do we need to use and manage keys, such as when we use services that don’t support role-based access control.… [Keep reading] “Automatic Key Rotation for Azure Services”

SharePoint Integration for Health Care eLearning – Moving LMS to the Cloud

21st of August, 2018 / / No Comments

Health care systems often face challenges in the way of being unkept and unmaintained or managed by too many without consistency in content and harbouring outdated resources. A lot of these legacy training and development systems also wear the pain of constant record churning without a supportable record management system. With the accrual of these records over time forming a ‘Big Data concern’, modernising these eLearning platforms may be the right call to action for medical professionals and researchers.… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Integration for Health Care eLearning – Moving LMS to the Cloud”

Psychodynamics Revisited: Data Privacy

27th of July, 2018 / / 1 Comment

business camera coffee connection
How many of you, between waking up and your first cup of hot, caffeinated beverage, told the world something about yourselves online? Whether it be a social media status update, an Instagram photo or story post or even a tweak to your personal profile on LinkedIn. Maybe, yes, maybe no, although I would hedge my bets that you’ve at least checked your notifications, emails or had a scroll through the newsfeed.
Another way to view this question would be: how many of you interacted with the internet in some way since waking up?… [Keep reading] “Psychodynamics Revisited: Data Privacy”