Excluding specific files from being uploaded to OneDrive

This week is another relatively short blog post, again somewhat related to Microsoft Edge. This week, however, is about configuring some specific OneDrive configurations. More specifically, the focus will be on excluding specific files from being uploaded to OneDrive. Not something really new, but the importance became clear again this week. There can be many reasons why organizations might want to exclude specific files from being uploaded to OneDrive, but there are also some generic reasons that are applicable to most organizations. An often heard reason is related to desktop shortcuts. Synchronizing desktop shortcuts (or even shortcuts in general) often results in either duplicate shortcuts or shortcuts to missing applications. Another reason is related to organizational branding in Microsoft Edge. Customizing organizational branding relies on …

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Protecting against typosquatting with website typo protection in Microsoft Edge

This week is a short post about website typo protection in Microsoft Edge. That subject was briefly mentioned earlier when discussing Enhanced Security Mode in this blog post about tightening browser security in Microsoft Edge. This week is mainly focused on awareness for website typo protection. Website typo protection is aimed at protecting users against typosquatting. Typosquatting is intended to hijack traffic of users that meant to visit well-known sites, but that made a spelling mistake. That hijacking is achieved by using addresses with common misspellings or typographical errors of those well-known sites. Often that is used as prank, ad, or (friendly) competition, but more and more often that is also being used for phishing and malware. In the latter cases, users will get to …

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Getting started with Quick Machine Recovery

This week is all about a relatively new recovery functionality in Windows. And that functionality is Quick Machine Recovery, which is also known as Cloud Remediation. Quick Machine Recovery is focused on the recovery of Windows devices when encountering critical errors that prevent the device from booting. A huge strength of Quick Machine Recovery is that it can automatically search for remediations online and use that to recover from widespread boot failures. In practice that means that Quick Machine Recovery helps with addressing the most severe failures within the environment. The type of system failures that gets devices stuck in the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). The type of system failures that require significant troubleshooting time. And that’s especially challenging when it’s a widespread outage. Quick …

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Blocking Bluetooth on Android devices

This week is all about a new configuration option for corporate-owned Android Enterprise devices. That new configuration option is the ability to block the usage of Bluetooth. There can be many different reasons why organizations might want to block the usage of Bluetooth on (some) Android devices within the environment. That could be simply from a functional perspective to preserve battery and to extend the usage time, but that could also be more from a security perspective to prevent the device from being exploited. For the latter think about unauthorized access, data interception, malware distribution, or even something like bluejacking (sending messages to nearby devices). All pretty good reasons to think about the default availability of Bluetooth on Android devices within the environment. Especially on …

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