Microsoft Infrastructure to add Preferred Name data: 3/1/2017

The Microsoft Infrastructure service will add the Preferred Name data source to its existing identity data.

What and When

On Wednesday March 1 2017, Microsoft Infrastructure will replace its existing identity data agent with a new one. The new system will add the Preferred Name data source to the existing name algorithm, giving Preferred Name preference over other data sources. We will also drop our specialized character casing for non-personal UW NetIDs like Shared UW NetIDs. These changes will result in display name changes on a broad set of user accounts in the NETID Active Directory and the uw.edu Azure Active Directory tenant. Because there are many applications leveraging those user accounts, this will also result in name changes in a large set of applications.

There should be no noticeable interruption to implement this change—we have staged the replacement system so it can immediately take over for the old one.

What This Means For You

Your Microsoft Infrastructure user account’s display name value may change if you have set a Preferred Name via the https://identity.uw.edu portal. If you do not like the resulting display name value for your personal UW NetID, you can use that portal to set or update a Preferred Name.

If you want a change to a non-personal UW NetID name, you can use https://uwnetid.washington.edu/manage and the Name field exposed there to change the value yourself. You do not need to contact the UW-IT service desk for those changes.

In the past, we applied an algorithm to only upper case the first character of “words” from that data source. This would often result in a display name like “Uw Pottery Department” instead of “UW Pottery Department”. This has been a source of frustration for some customers, so we are removing the case adjustments and using the value as input by the UW-IT Service Desk (which is based on your input). If the display name changes to non-personal UW NetIDs are undesired, you can contact the UW-IT Service Desk to make changes.

**NOTE: Exchange, Sharepoint, Skype for Business, and other applications in the Office 365 suite leverage the display name on the Microsoft Infrastructure user account, so this change affects your name in all of those applications. There are many other applications which do their UW NetID identity integration via Microsoft Infrastructure user accounts, and those applications will also be affected.**

More Info

The approach to name data at the UW is complicated because there are many different user populations with a different data source for each population. And of course, each of those data sources has different methods to make changes to the data. This means that any given application (and infrastructure like ours), must make a number of complex decisions about which name data to use, which can be especially complicated when a given identity has multiple affiliations. In contrast, the Preferred Name data source is unique in that it is a single central authority for name data for UW identities, and provides a self-service mechanism for changes.

Because of this complex background, Microsoft Infrastructure has always documented the algorithm behind our naming logic, so everyone can understand what we are doing and how they might change what they see. This documentation continues to be at https://it.uw.edu/wares/msinf/design/arch/id-data-mapping/#name, and has been updated to reflect this change with deeper details than noted here. Up until this change, there have been a number of scenarios where there was literally nothing you could do to change the display name on an identity. I’m happy to report that is no longer the case.

Via a customer survey 8 years ago, you indicated this was your top desired change for this service, and we have been advocating for this type of solution for that entire time, so we are very pleased to be able to implement this.

If you have questions about this change, please send an email to help@uw.edu with “Microsoft Infrastructure Preferred Name change” in the subject.

Brian Arkills

Microsoft Infrastructure service manager

UW-IT

Entra ID application identities: risk mitigation

What is happening and when:

This notice is to make you aware that UW-IT’s Entra ID service design is changing fundamentally, providing risk mitigation processes as well as new capabilities.

On Wednesday, February 15, UW-IT will change its approach to Entra ID application identities to make them easier for users to obtain and use, while addressing potential risk to UW confidential data. The UW-IT Microsoft Infrastructure service will:

Monitor for risks of integration with UW confidential data
Disable any Entra ID application identity that presents risk to UW confidential data

Note that if you choose to add or consent to an Entra ID application provided by a third party, there is a risk that UW confidential data may intentionally or unintentionally be accessed, collected, or used by the third party. UW organizations are responsible for evaluating the risk and implementing controls for their unique technical deployments.

If you’ve evaluated the risk and decided to use a third party application, then it should meet the UW data security and privacy goals for contracting with vendors. This may include the need for a Data Security and Privacy Agreement or a Business Associate Agreement. Additional responsibilities may be required by UW Medicine for use of Entra ID applications with protected health information.

If you’d like help analyzing third party applications, adding an Entra ID application, or understanding the Entra ID change, please contact UW-IT at help@uw.edu.

Monitoring and mitigation by UW-IT: We will monitor for applications that require tenant admin permissions to approve. Tenant admin permissions generally correspond to those permissions that cross a single user resource boundary, e.g., the ability to read all Skype user contacts and groups. More examples of these kinds of permissions are described under More Details on our Risky Entra ID application permissions page. We will disable any application identity discovered to have admin permissions that have not otherwise been explicitly approved via a risk evaluation or acceptance by the appropriate data steward.

We will not provide automatic mitigations for permissions that individual users grant to applications, but you can find out what permissions have been granted by a given user.

New capabilities for Entra ID application identities:

Users can self-integrate some third party cloud-based apps, resulting in UW NetID based authentication.

Users can consent to allow or deny an Entra ID application to access their data in other Entra ID based applications.
Developers can self-provision identities for their application, so that it is integrated with UW NetID based authentication. Developers also can ask users to consent to access other Entra ID based applications.
Business stakeholders can request that UW-IT monitor for and block applications that require a specific set of permissions because of concerns about confidential data related to those permissions.
Business stakeholders can find which application permissions a given user has consented to, in order to meet regulatory or audit needs. Business stakeholders may consider actions taken by individuals risky, and this capability provides the ability to find out what permissions have been granted by a given user.

Details on IT Connect:

If you have questions about this change, please contact UW-IT via help@uw.edu.

Brian Arkills

Microsoft Infrastructure Service Manager

UW-IT

Windows 10 upgrades coming next week

We will start upgrading all computers running Windows 10 to the latest version, 1607 – also known as Anniversary Edition, starting next week (2/6/2017).

What and when

As we recently announced, all computers running Windows 10 will be upgraded to version 1607, which is also known as the Anniversary Edition. This upgrade is mandatory as Microsoft will stop supporting versions of Windows 10 older than 1607 in March.

The upgrade will be done automatically in the evenings, requires no user interaction, and will not impact any user settings or files. We will start the process on 2/6/2017, and upgrade 50-100 computers each night. Each computer will take approximately 1-2 hours to complete.

While we cannot provide a specific date of when any given computer will be upgraded, individual users can choose to start the process any time using the ‘Software Center’ or via the shortcut on their desktop..

We will also be sending a separate notice to the primary user of each computer

What you need to do

This message is for your info only; there is no action required.

If you have any questions or concerns, send an email to help@uw.edu and in the subject line reference ‘MWS – Upgrades coming to Windows 10 computers’.

Brown bag lunch January 30th 2017

Join us January 30, 2017 from 12:00pm – 1:00pm for an awesome open discussion on the Windows 10 Anniversary Edition upgrade. Grab your lunch and join us in the Visitors Dining Room on the 4th floor in the UW Tower.

Agenda

Newsletter highlights – Brian Arkills
Nebula to NetID Domain migration – Brian Arkills
Windows 10 Anniversary Edition upgrade – Brian Smith
New features (start menu, dark theme, Edge, Search/Cortana, etc.
Better Security (how vulnerable is Windows 10 compared to older versions, How to get your system infected (what NOT to do), how to protect your data).
Your privacy and Windows 10
Upgrading from Windows 7, 8.1, or older versions of Windows 10.
What’s coming in 2017

Azure Active Directory application identity availability

This change is being rescheduled to allow for further review and testing. The new release date is planned for February 15th, and a reminder will be sent before the change is made.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this change, Azure Active Directory, or managing confidential data in any of your systems, please let us know by contacting help@uw.edu. Thank you.

Brian

Entra ID application identity availability

What and when

On Wednesday, January 11, UW-IT will change its approach to Entra ID application identities to make them significantly easier for users to obtain and use. This change also provides:

Mitigation where there may be risks due to integration with UW confidential data
New capabilities you may wish to leverage

What you need to do

Nothing—this notice is to make you aware that UW-IT’s Entra ID service design is changing fundamentally, and that it provides new capabilities that may interest you.

More information on the changes

Monitoring and mitigation by UW-IT: Initially, we will monitor for applications that require tenant admin permissions to approve. Examples of these kinds of permissions are described under Admin permissions for Microsoft Graph API in our Entra ID Application Identities wiki page. We will disable any application identity discovered to have “risky permissions” that hasn’t otherwise been explicitly approved via a risk evaluation or acceptance by the appropriate data steward.

New capabilities for Entra ID application identities:

Users can self-integrate some third party cloud-based apps, resulting in UW NetID-based authentication.

Users can consent to allow or deny an Entra ID application to access their data in other Entra ID applications.
Developers can self-provision identities for their application, so that it is integrated with UW NetID-based authentication; developers also can ask users to consent to access other Entra ID applications.

New capabilities to be available in the future:

Business stakeholders can request that UW-IT monitor for and block applications that require a specific set of permissions because of concerns about confidential data related to those permissions.
Business stakeholders can find which application permissions a given user has consented to, in order to meet regulatory or audit needs.

We will let you know when you can take advantage of these forthcoming capabilities.

Details on IT Connect:

Questions about this change or Azure Active Directory can be directed to help@uw.edu.

Brian Arkills

Microsoft Infrastructure Service Manager

UW-IT

Entra ID user and group info sync outage

What and When

Today through Monday morning, January 9^th, UW-IT is replacing the infrastructure which provisions user and group information to Azure Active Directory, which Exchange, Sharepoint, Skype for Business, and some other applications leverage.

The primary expected customer impacts are:

-delayed user name changes or user creations,

-delayed group membership changes or group creations.

To be clear, existing users and groups already present in Azure Active Directory will remain fully operational. Changes to existing objects or new objects will be delayed until Monday.

What you need to do

There is no action you can take. This message is informational to let you know that delayed changes are expected through the weekend.

More info

This change is required because the existing infrastructure will not be supported by Microsoft soon. Because of the large number of users and groups at the UW, replacement requires a 2-3 day period. No user or group changes will be lost–they are just delayed. We expect the replacement provisioning component to be operational on Sunday sometime, but are advising customers to not expect full operations until Monday morning, January 9. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes.

Behind the scenes, the infrastructure we’re replacing is Entra ID DirSync with Entra ID Connect. This will open up some interesting new capabilities in the future, which we’ll share separately.

Brian Arkills

Microsoft Infrastructure Service Manager

UW-IT

Disabling all remaining NEBULA2 accounts

We will begin disabling all remaining NEBULA2 user accounts the week of 11/28.

What and when:

Starting the week of 11/28, we will begin disabling the remaining 221 NEBULA2 accounts that are still in use.

What you need to do:

If you are still using your NEBULA2 user account, you need to migrate to your NETID account. See https://it.uw.edu/wares/nebula/adding-users/nebula2-user-disables/ for information on how to do so.

More info:

For the last few years we have been encouraging users to use their NETID accounts rather than their NEBULA2 accounts as part of a migration of Managed Workstations services to use the NETID domain. This past April, we announced that we would be decommissioning the NEBULA2 domain on April 3, 2017 and would be working to get all users switched to using their NETID accounts. For reference, the announcement and additional info is also posted at https://it.uw.edu/wares/nebula/contact-us/news/20160425-nebula2-domain-end-of-life-april-3-2017/.

While most users are already using only their NETID account, not all users have made the switch. To complete the user account migration, we will be disabling the remaining NEBULA2 user accounts starting the week of 11/28, and will be retiring the process that allowed users to keep their NEBULA2 account enabled. We will be sending a message, later today, to department contacts with a list of users still using their NEBULA2 account. The week of 11/28, we will send an email to those users still using their NEBULA2 account advising them that we will soon disable their NEBULA2 account, and asking them to let us know if they need assistance in migrating to their NETID account. The first 30 minutes of such assistance is available at no cost.

Nebula2 Account Disables

We will begin disabling all remaining NEBULA2 user accounts the week of 11/28.

What and when:

The week of 11/28, we will begin disabling the remaining 221 NEBULA2 accounts that are still in use.

What you need to do:

If you are still using your NEBULA2 user account, you need to migrate to your NETID account. See https://it.uw.edu/wares/nebula/adding-users/nebula2-user-disables/ for information on how to do so.

More info:

2016 September

Here’s our newsletter update on recent happenings with the Microsoft Infrastructure. This is usually semi-annual, but we’re late by 3 months this time around. Sorry!

==== New Capabilities and Improvements ====

* Entra ID application approval process. There is now a way to request Entra ID application identities. To find out more, we suggest you start at: https://it.uw.edu/wares/msinf/aad/apps/.

* Service rename. We’ve changed our name from UW Windows Infrastructure (UWWI) to Microsoft Infrastructure (MI) to better reflect what is provided. Most everything that had the old name has now been updated.

* Our customer documentation has moved into IT Connect.

* The ‘Per OU Computers’ group feature we’ve provided since 2008 has changed so that all of these groups are in the Group service. This allows these groups to be referenced as members of other groups in the Group service.

* Significant addition of Entra ID documentation:

–When should a new Entra ID tenant be created?

–Entra ID Apps

–FAQ: Entra ID terminology (e.g. you find out what that tenant term used above means)

–MI Architecture Guide: Entra ID Architecture

–MI Architecture Guide: Entra ID Sync

* Addition of additional UW-IT service catalog entries provided by the Microsoft Infrastructure service offering:

–Delegated OUs

–Entra ID

* In 2016Q1, we worked with Microsoft to turn off the ability for UW users to create new Microsoft Accounts in the accepted domains of our Entra ID tenant (lots of terms here you can look up in the above FAQ link). Last week, Microsoft applied this change comprehensively to affect everyone, not just our domains: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2016/09/15/cleaning-up-the-azure-ad-and-microsoft-account-overlap/. That link does a good job of explaining the poor user experience issues that this change helps address.

====Spotlights====

* We’ve done some proof of concept work around the Entra ID Application Proxy capability, but haven’t found a customer in need of this solution. This enables on-premises applications to use Entra ID based authentication without making any changes to their existing Integrated Windows Authentication configuration. They gain a hardened cloud-based endpoint (i.e. customers don’t need to VPN), the possibility of leveraging conditional access capabilities such as Azure MFA, and might leverage the logging and security anomaly analysis investments Microsoft is building. Let us know if you are interested in this.

* We’ve recently discovered that the latest Windows 10 build, 1607—the ‘anniversary edition’—has made a change to how Active Directory integrated Bitlocker works. Microsoft hasn’t documented this change well, so there is still some confusion about it. Keep in mind that this information is specific to a domain-joined computer which has enabled Bitlocker and is configured to save its bitlocker recovery key to AD.

When Bitlocker was initially introduced (vista), the TPM owner and recovery key data could be saved in AD as information on the computer object and a child object of the computer. With Windows 8, Microsoft made a change (which was not well documented) to support the ability to bitlocker non-system drives (i.e. drives that aren’t necessarily associated with a single computer). This change meant that TPM owner info was saved on a new object separate from the recovery key.

With this latest change (win10, build 1607), the TPM owner information is not saved to AD at all, but the recovery key continues to be saved to AD.

This change has been alarming to some, but the TPM owner information is not needed to recover bitlocker—only the recovery key is needed.

Relevant to this space, we have a new capability almost ready: MBAM (MS Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring). Earlier this year, we leveraged some Microsoft Windows 10 grant money for a contractor led MBAM deployment in the NETID domain. We intend to provide that MBAM deployment to all delegated OU customers, however many technical details and a scalable support model still need work.

* We’ve added some additional members to our service team: Bruce Edwards, Kevin Lee, and Patrick Lavielle. This addition provide some additional depth, and return us to 2014 overall staffing levels. We’ve been doing some training and swapping around roles and responsibilities to strengthen our skills across the team, with new ideas and perspectives already having a positive influence on the quality of what we provide.

==== Trends ====

* Since January, MI has sustained growth: +17 delegated OUs (129 total), -4 trusts (51 total), +~2700 computers (15113 total), +65k users (837k total), +8k groups (104k total).

* MI support requests are up 30%. 292 MI support records resolved between 1/15/16 and 7/15/2016 (vs. 224 in prior period). Note: the period from 7/15 through now will be covered in the January 2017 newsletter.

You can see metrics about MI at http://www.netid.washington.edu/dirinfo/stats. [Yes, this page on the “old” website still works]

==== What’s Next ====

Our objectives for the 6 months from July through Jan. 2017 include:

* Explore how to deliver MBAM capability, primarily working to develop scalable support model

* Explore local administrator password management solutions. We plan to release an analysis paper of the options & associated risks, and add the best option to our planned new capabilities.

* Replace our existing 5 wiki-based forms with UW Connect forms to help ensure accurate routing

* Continue to build Entra ID discovery/monitoring tools to enable better management and oversight

* Replace Entra ID DirSync with Entra ID Connect, as Entra ID DirSync moves to end of life in Feb 2017

* Deploy Azure Rights Management infrastructure to support RMS pilot exploration for customers with confidential data

* Partner with Managed Workstation to transition their existing Windows Imaging and Software Deployment capabilities to Microsoft Infrastructure via a SCCM deployment in NETID. This would mean delegated OU customers could have a SCCM client agent and get and share software packages.

* Support Managed Workstation migration into the NETID domain

* Release a ‘UW network’ Windows firewall GPO for re-use by delegated OU customers. This reference GPO will be maintained by us, and you’d be able to make a copy (and refresh your copy), without doing any of the work of building it or keeping current on what the existing definition of the UW network space is.

* Make a major change to our Entra ID App stance, re-enabling self-service Entra ID App approval for user-consent apps

* Begin long-term effort to build a redesigned identity data agent, incorporating a less brittle design, real-time data updates, and the preferred name data source

* Explore short-term fixes to our existing identity data agent (FIM), including possibly adding the preferred name data source

* Explore Entra ID Audit API to support inactive user design & regulatory business needs

Of the 15 forecasted objectives we listed in the last MI News, here’s a review of how they turned out:

2 were successfully completed: AD-CS, Entra ID app approval
8 were started and continue: LAPS, Entra ID-AP, RMS inf, Migration, inactive user design, UW firewall, Preferred name, Monitoring
4 were started by dependent service, but hasn’t yet reached the point where we can start: MFA, hi-sec file svc, SCCM, basic managed desktop, MIM PAM
0 were not started

==== Your Feedback ====

Supporting your needs for MI capabilities offered via the Basic Services Bundle is our priority, so we welcome feedback on how we can make the MI service more valuable to you.

The MI service has a capability map publicly visible at https://it.uw.edu/wares/msinf/design/capability-map/. This capability map includes a high-level summary of our roadmap. We also plan to publish a ‘strategy on a page’ based on the emerging UW enterprise architecture practice soon. We can also provide more detailed information about our backlog if you have questions. For broad discussion about the Microsoft Infrastructure, the mi-discuss@uw.edu mailing list is a great option.

You can voice your support for future objectives to help us rank priorities by voting in customer surveys when we have them, ask for things that aren’t yet on our radar, or simply contact us via help@uw.edu.

Brian Arkills

UW-IT, MI Service Manager