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Cloud advice Service announcements

Microsoft Entra ID Authentication Methods Migration Guidance

 Overview Microsoft is retiring the legacy MFA and SSPR policies by 30th September 2025 as part of its modernisation path. Migrating to the new Authentication Methods policy offers more precision, central control, and futureproof cloud environment.  The new Microsoft Entra ID authentication method policy offers a unified, modern way to manage your organisation’s authentication methods, […]

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Cloud advice Cloud Security

Securing Break Glass Accounts in Microsoft 365

Introduction Break glass accounts are your emergency lifeline, providing privileged access when the identity system fails and no one can sign in to access organisation resources due to outages, breaches, lockouts, or misconfiguration. These accounts are critical for maintaining control and continuity but must be tightly secured, rarely used, and continuously monitored. ⚠️ Why They […]

Categories
Cloud advice Cloud Security

Securing Your Microsoft 365 Environment

Security Best Practices Using Only the Org Settings Portal Microsoft 365 provides robust tools for businesses of all sizes, but with this power comes responsibility. Securing your tenant doesn’t always require premium licenses or access to multiple admin portals. You can significantly improve your organisation’s security posture using only the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre’s “Org […]

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Service announcements

Microsoft Teams Phone System with Jisc SBC

With Jisc’s Session Border Controller service now being in full production lets talk about how using Jisc’s SBC and Teams Phone System can provide cost savings and increased productivity. As the usage of Microsoft Teams increases in educational establishments we here at Jisc Cloud are seeing more and more demand for moving telephone systems into […]

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Cloud advice

Dynamic Groups + Group Based Licensing

Automate automate automate, that should be part of my job title. In this post I’m going to talk about a lesser known feature of Azure AD, which is now available to anyone with A3/E3 or above, group based licensing. With Microsoft’s retirement of the AzureAD and MSOL modules (replaced with MSGraph) you will need to […]

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News

Jisc Cloud partner news and events

AWS News On Demand Webinars Getting Started with the AWS Cloud Essentials I On Demand (70 minutes) Securing Your AWS Cloud I On Demand (90 minutes) Machine Learning Basics I On-Demand (90 minutes) How Amazon SageMaker Can Help I On Demand (60 minutes) Strategies and Tools to Perform Large-Scale Migrations I On Demand (90 minutes) […]

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Cloud advice

Azure Virtual Desktop has a new scaling solution

Microsoft have recently announced the Preview of Autoscale for Azure Virtual Desktop and at first blush it looks like native scaling has had some much-needed improvements. The previous incarnation was a little clumsy, requiring you to independently create an automation account, an Azure function and optionally, a Log Analytics Workspace. In addition, any parameters then […]

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Case studies

OCRE reassures senior managers about moving to public cloud

The University of Bath has had an on-site high-performance computing (HPC) facility for a long time, but they believed public cloud could offer HPC users more flexibility. To verify this, they tested key software applications used in HPC to see if they could work as well in a pre-production Microsoft Azure public cloud environment and […]

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Cloud advice

Microsoft 365, information governance & retention

In our discussions with our customers, one of the most common questions that arise is “Do I need to back up my Office 365 data?”. While this blog is not written to answer that question, my next post might attempt to, one of the key services in the Microsoft 365 platform to reduce or remove […]

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Cloud advice

Azure Active Directory – Issues with User Consent

This blog has been written in collaboration with the Jisc Trust & Identity and Cyber Security teams. Jisc has recently become aware of a potential security risk associated with the default Azure Active Directory (AAD) security settings that are commonly in place across our membership. If your organisation uses AAD (or plans to use it), […]