My information Resource (blog.mir.net)

The latest volume of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report is now available. This volume of the report focuses on the threat landscape in the second half of 2014 when there were some dramatic changes.

The vulnerability disclosure data published in the report suggests that there was a 56.3% increase in vulnerability disclosures between the third and fourth quarters of 2014. After many periods of relatively small changes in disclosure totals, the 4,512 vulnerabilities disclosed during the second half of 2014 is the largest number of vulnerabilities disclosed in any half-year period since the CVE system was launched in 1999. Disclosures of vulnerabilities in applications other than web browsers and operating system applications increased 98.3% in the second half of 2014 and accounted for 76.5% of total disclosures for the period.

Figure 1. Industry wide vulnerability disclosures between the first half of 2012 (1H12) and the second half of 2014 (2H14)

Figure 2. Industry wide operating system, browser, and application vulnerabilities between the first half of 2012 (1H12) and the second half of 2014 (2H14)
Overall, encounters with Java exploits continued to decrease significantly in the second half of 2014, while Flash Player exploit attempts increased.

Figure 3. Trends for the top Java exploits detected and blocked by Microsoft real-time antimalware products in 2014

Figure 4. Adobe Flash Player exploits detected and blocked by Microsoft real-time antimalware products in 2014
Regional threat assessments are available for over 100 countries as well as an online tool that enables you to quickly compare two locations.

Figure 5. Infection and Encounter Rate Trends tool available at www.microsoft.com/security/sir/threat

This post is a copy of the Microsoft June 2015’s Security Newsletter and is copied here to share info with you….

This Document is a must read for Any Security or IT professional

With Windows 10 being released on July 29, 2015 I have agreed to do some end user talks on what new with Windows 10

I will be covering;

• Upgrade paths
• New Interfaces
• New browser Edge
• New way to logion (Microsoft Hello)
• Changes to security
• Different Versions of Windows
• Universal Apps
• And other topics

The dates for the first few talk and locations are

Aug. 4,  DACS – Danbury Area Computer Society   7pm at

Danbury Hospital Creasy Auditorium, Danbury, CT  Website 

Aug 6  WPCUG – Westchester PC User Group  7pm at

120 Bloomingdale Rd 1^st floor,  White Plains NY 10605  Website

Aug 27  TPCUG PC Users Group of Connecticut  7pm at

Trumbull Public Library on Quality Street in Trumbull, CT  Website

I have been volunteering in Haiti with NetHope working on helping the IT community by doing some training. The people who I work with are very happy when people care and I challenge you to get involved. I taught 2 classes on on Security + and one on ethical hacking. here are some pictures of the class

I challenge to you get involved and help volunteer either locally or international…

to learn more about  NetHope Academy Program – in Haiti go Here

Introduction
Azure Web Apps is a fully managed platform that you can use to build mission-critical web applications that are highly available, secure, and scalable to global proportions. Combined with first-class tooling from Visual Studio and the Microsoft Azure Tools, the Azure Web Apps service is the fastest way to get your web application to production. Azure Web Apps is part of the Azure App Service that is designed to empower developers to build web and mobile applications for any device.

. The topics explored in this book include the following:

• Chapter 1, “Microsoft Azure Web Apps”: This chapter starts with an introduction to Azure Resource Groups and App Service Plans and progresses into essential tasks such as creating and configuring a web app. Learn best practices for storing and retrieving app settings and connection strings. Configure deployment slots and set up continuous deployment using Visual Studio Online. Wrap up with a discussion about Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and how you can use it to manage access to your Azure resources.
• Chapter 2, “Azure WebJobs”: Learn everything you need to know to build and deploy background processing tasks using Azure WebJobs. You will learn the basics of the WebJobs feature and proceed into a deeper discussion on how to use the WebJobs SDK. You will learn about the Azure WebJobs Dashboard and how the WebJobs SDK enhances the dashboard experience.
• Chapter 3, “Scaling Azure Web Apps”: Learn how to scale up and scale out your Azure web app and web jobs. You will learn how to configure Autoscale to scale your web app dynamically based on performance metrics and schedules. See how you can use Azure Traffic Manager to achieve global scale for your web apps.
• Chapter 4, “Monitoring and diagnostics”: Learn about the many logging features built into the Azure Web Apps platform and how to configure logging to get the diagnostics data you need to troubleshoot issues. You will learn how to configure storage locations and retention policies for logs, how to view logs in real time using the log streaming service, and even how to debug your web app remotely while it is running in Azure. You will get an introduction to some powerful site extensions you can use to view logs and perform analysis directly from your browser. Finally, you will learn how you can monitor your resource group down to individual resources and how you can use Application Insights to deliver a complete 360-degree view into your application code for monitoring and diagnostic purposes.

Download the PDF (4.89 MB)

Introduction

If you are responsible for architecting and designing the backup strategy for your organization, especially if you’re looking for ways to incorporate cloud backup into your business continuity scenarios, this book is for you. With the increasing trends in virtualization as well as the move to the pubic cloud, IT organizations are headed toward a world where data and applications run in on-premises private clouds as well as in the public cloud. This has key implications for data protection strategy, and it is important to choose the solution that provides the same level of data protection you have afforded so far while allowing you to harness the power of the public cloud.

Download at  Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Register for this event in the time zone that suits you best:
June 2-3, 9am–1pm PDT (The Americas)
June 3-4, 9am–1pm CEST (Europe)
Do IT security concerns keep you up at night? You’re not alone! Many IT Pros want to extend their organization’s infrastructure but need reassurance about security. Whether you are researching a hybrid or a public cloud model with Microsoft Azure, the question remains the same: Does the solution meet your own personal and your organization’s bar for security, including industry standards, attestations, and ISO certifications?

In this two-part, demo-filled course, explore these and other hot topics, as a team of security experts and Azure engineers takes you beyond the basic certifications and explores what’s possible inside Azure. See how to design and use various technologies to ensure that you have the security and architecture you need to successfully launch your projects in the cloud. Dive into datacenter operations, virtual machine (VM) configuration, network architecture, and storage infrastructure. Get the information and the confidence you need, from the pros who know, as they demystify security in the cloud.

Post from Microsoft I thought would be of interest to you all

Register Here

This report is more that just Microsoft issues, it is a great read for any security Professional

Latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Now Available

Here are a few blogs based on the new data as well:

Mass vulnerabilities in Android applications spike industry vulnerability disclosures in 4th Quarter 2014

The life and times of an exploit

 Microsoft announces Free PC virus removal

No matter where you bought your PC, bring it into your local store for free virus and malware removal.

Learn more about Answer Desk Click Here

Azure Machine Learning  is a service that a developer can use to build predictive analytics models (using training datasets from a variety of data sources) and then easily deploy those models for consumption as cloud web services.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (ML) is a service that a developer can use to build predictive analytics models (using training datasets from a variety of data sources) and then easily deploy those models for consumption as cloud web services. Azure ML Studio provides rich functionality to support many end-to-end workflow scenarios for constructing predictive models, from easy access to common data sources, rich data exploration and visualization tools, application of popular ML algorithms, and powerful model evaluation, experimentation, and web publication tooling.

This ebook will present an overview of modern data science theory and principles, the associated workflow, and then cover some of the more common machine learning algorithms in use today. We will build a variety of predictive analytics models using real world data, evaluate several different machine learning algorithms and modeling strategies, and then deploy the finished models as machine learning web service on Azure within a matter of minutes. The book will also expand on a working Azure Machine Learning predictive model example to explore the types of client and server applications you can create to consume Azure Machine Learning web services.

The scenarios and end-to-end examples in this book are intended to provide sufficient information for you to quickly begin leveraging the capabilities of Azure ML Studio and then easily extend the sample scenarios to create your own powerful predictive analytic experiments. The book wraps up by providing details on how to apply “continuous learning” techniques to programmatically “retrain” Azure ML predictive models without any human intervention.

You can get the e-book here