Blog

Arcible Supporting True Heroes Racing in 2021

For those unfamiliar, the British Superbike Championships are the domestic motorbike racing series in the UK with riders and teams in a host of different classes, at circuits around the UK. True Heroes Racing are one of these teams but with a great purpose and missions and that’s why Arcible will be supporting True Heroes Racing in 2021 for the time.

Read more…

Skype for Business Online End of Life

Skype for Business Online has been with us for many years but it’s time for the Skype for Business Online End of Life. Let’s set one thing straight from the offset and that is that Skype for Business Server on-premises is not affected by this milestone and we’ll go on to clarify that point here.

If you are using Skype for Business Online then you will be impacted by the changes unless you move to Microsoft Teams before the end of life date. In this article, we’ll cover in summary what’s changing, the broad impact, and what you need to consider along the way.

Read more…

Arcible is Now Cyber Essentials Certified

What is Cyber Essentials certification you may ask? It’s a scheme started by the UK Government and managed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), for organisations to show that they take security seriously.

Certification is proof that we take our values seriously. Cybersecurity is such a huge issue today with companies routinely in the news relating to data breaches, ransomware attacks, and more. Being Cyber Essentials certified is by no means a golden ticket or a way to eradicate the threat of cyber attack but for us, it’s a step to showing customers that we take what we do seriously.

For Arcible to become Cyber Essentials certified, we didn’t just throw some security controls on top of what we do. Security always has and always will be part of what we do from the ground up. Our Arcible Vision service is a key example of this using secure management processes to help you manage your Microsoft Azure estates or the work we do with customers implementing Microsoft 365 security features such as Microsoft Defender, Cloud App Security, and more.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how Arcible can help your business be more secure while staying productive, contact us for more information.

If you’re interested in your business becoming Cyber Essentials certified and need assistance to get your technical controls in place to meet the programme requirements, our Arcible Assist service could benefit you with ad-hoc support and assistance.

Azure App Service Lets Encrypt Renewal Failures and Resolution

Paying for certificates isn’t the done thing when you can get free certificates from Lets Encrypt. Free certificates from Lets Encrypt come at a different price and that is lifetime as the certificates are only ever valid for 90 days. If you’re still manually buying and installing certificates annually then you don’t want that four times a year so we automate the process end-to-end. This has been working perfectly since about 2018 for us, however, a recent alert about a certificate expiring made us sit up and look at this case of Azure App Service Lets Encrypt renewal failures and the resolution.

Read more…

One to One Call Recording in Microsoft Teams

Recording meetings of online meetings is a common occurrence to allow people to refer back to them later or to allow people unable to join catch up. A less common requirement is the ability to do one to one call recording in Microsoft Teams. Until now, the ability to perform the recording of one-on-one calls was governed by the same Meeting Policy as the ability to record multi-participant calls, however, this is changing and breaking out to a new, separate setting.

Read more…

Running a Static Website for Less than a Latte

Yes, you read that right. If all you need is a way to show a couple of static web pages you could run a static website for less than the cost of a coffee for the entire year. Although the focus here is a small, simple, and static website, you can apply the same logic to larger sites or even if you need a way to serve up static content over HTTP, not just a website.

Read more…

Arcible and the SolarWinds Solorigate SUNBURST Threat

At Arcible, we take monitoring our services seriously and we take security seriously too. We use multiple products for the monitoring of our services; we consider security at all times and factor it into multiple layers of our operations. We’re releasing this article both as reassurance for our customers and for your information about Arcible and the Solorigate SUNBURST threat.

Arcible does not use the SolarWinds Orion product or any SolarWinds products to conduct our business either internally or externally with customers. Based on our current understanding and knowledge of the issues, Arcible does not believe that it is impacted by the SolarWinds threat, however, we continue to remain vigilant and review our security tools.

Read more…

Use OneDrive and SharePoint for Microsoft Teams Meeting Recordings

Microsoft Stream is an odd service. It’s fantastic in its own right but limitations built within it and it’s positioning as a Microsoft 365 outsider has always been problematic. For Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Stream as the location for meeting records brought its own set of challenges. With change approaching, let’s explore how this is moving to use OneDirve and SharePoint for Microsoft Teams meeting recordings.

Microsoft Stream sure has a time and place. We think, for example, that it’s a fantastic platform for sharing videos internally such as corporate messaging, training, and more. But that is also it’s Achilles Heel. It is limited to internal use only and you cannot share recordings [directly] from Microsoft Stream with external users.

When you participate in a meeting with people from multiple organisations and the meeting is recorded, that goes to Microsoft Stream for the organisation of the meeting organiser. If you’re outside that organisation, the only way you can access that is if someone downloads the recording video file and shares it with you by manually copying the file to their OneDrive or SharePoint or worse, emails you the file.

Read more…

Block Incoming Calls with Microsoft Teams

Last week, a customer contacted us about an issue they were receiving persistent, unsolicited calls in Microsoft Teams from a phone number. The customer needed a way to block incoming calls from that number and we figured that this was one worth sharing for all to see.

Block incoming calls features in Microsoft Teams

One of the more hidden features in Microsoft Teams is the ability to block incoming calls from a number or a range of numbers at the organisation level. This isn’t something that’s visible or available in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center and requires the use of PowerShell.

Read more…

Measuring Client Performance with Endpoint Analytics

Whether it be a laptop that takes so long to boot you can make a coffee and drink it or whether it’s a logon process that is so slow it’s time for the user to take their next break already, we’ve all seen and heard of performance issues before. As IT or as someone making financial decisions about hardware purchases for end-users, knowing that what you have or what you buy is good is important and for that you need data and we can use Endpoint Analytics in Microsoft Intune exactly for this purpose.

Read more…