Session: WIN-B323 Deploying Windows 8.1 in the Enterprise This was a high level session by two Dell employees covering some tips about deploying Windows 8.1 in the enterprise. OSD Planning and Reference Build Application compatibility: Antivirus, third party encryption, Office (32-bit or 64-bit), IE enterprise mode Enterprise Mode in IE...
This was a highly technical session going into the depths of a few new Windows 8.1 security features. The session focused on passwords, and how bad they are, and establishing trusted identity with BYOD. Virtual smart cards were also on the agenda, which are really cool. The speaker was very...
This session covered the process of building a Windows 8 image. There are a variety of ways to build your image, which could range from custom built scripts to using MS provided tools. The big takeaway from this session was to use MDT 2012 Update 1 (or later) to create...
This session was by Mark Minasi, who is one of the must hear TechEd speakers. Highly entertaining and highly informative. If you ever come to TechEd, you must attend one of his sessions. This session was focused on Windows 8, and going beyond the arguably ugly skin and going under...
This session covered new security features in Windows 8, and at the end, some of the new features in Windows 8.1. It was an excellent session, with a very well organized presenter. It was a firehose of information, but clearly laid out and easy to take notes from. The bottom...
One of the absolute best tools for managing security group policy settings in a Microsoft environment is their Security Compliance Manager. Hot off the presses is version 3.0, which is a major step forward in both functionality and OS/product support. The full product announcement from Microsoft is here. The most...
When deploying Group Policies in a Windows environment, often you may have different GPOs for different versions of the operating systems. With the recent release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, it's likely you will have new GPOs just for these operating systems. You could build out new OUs...
Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 have a number of brand new boot-time security features to help combat malware. While this article is not going to discuss them in depth, I will briefly describe them so you understand what they are and how to configure one feature, Secure Boot. Microsoft...
This was a REALLY great session on the significant advances Microsoft has made in Windows 8 to increase its security posture. They claim whole classes of attacks have been mitigated by a combination of Windows 8 and hardware features such as UEFI and TPM. There are other security features that...
Wow this is pretty darn cool..in the latest leaked build of Windows 8 x64, a blogger found Hyper-V 3.0 is baked in and is sporting a number of new features. This is the first time MS has baked in a hypervisor to a client operating system. While some of the...