Month: September 2018

Enlarge / A VT100 remote terminal, which is basically the same thing as Windows Remote Desktop. (credit: Wolfgang Stief)

A new Windows version for multiple users was spotted last month, and now we know what it's for: Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is a new service providing multi-user remote desktop and VDI in the Azure cloud.

WVD combines three things. Using the new Windows 10 version, WVD can be used to provide remote desktop sessions with multiple users remotely logged in to the same Windows 10 virtual machine (or, alternatively, a Windows Server virtual machine). This can provide both remoting of a full desktop session and of individual applications, serving as a replacement for the RemoteApp service that Microsoft cancelled last year. The service also supports full VDI, with remote users each having their own single-user virtual machine while both persistent and non-persistent VMs are supported. This is supported both with Windows 10 and with Windows 7.

Licenses for WVD will be an integrated, no-additional-cost part of Windows Enterprise E3 licenses. This will enable, for example, a local Windows 10 installation that uses WVD for remote access to a couple of legacy applications running on Windows 7 on Azure with no additional Windows licensing requirements.

Microsoft's unveiling of the Surface Hub 2 in May this year provoked a very positive reaction. So much so that the company says it's going to shake up its plans with a staggered launch.

The Surface Hub 2 as originally envisaged is a 50.5-inch 4K display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, a webcam, and a touchscreen. It builds on the existing Surface Hub in a couple of key areas: the whole screen can rotate to be used in either orientation; multiple devices can be tiled together to build a giant screen that operates as one; and its software will support multiple user accounts.

That's still ultimately the plan, but the way it's going to be delivered is a little more complicated. In the second quarter of 2019, Microsoft will release the Surface Hub 2S. That offers the new display and form factor but running the current Surface Hub software—meaning no rotation, no tiling, and no multiuser. It's essentially a sleeker, faster version of the current Surface Hub system.

Applications using Azure Active Directory (AD) to authenticate—a category that includes Office 365, among other things—will soon be able to stop using passwords entirely.

Azure AD accounts can already use the Microsoft Authenticator app for two factor authentication, combining a password with a one-time code. With the new passwordless support, authentication is handled entirely by the app; the app itself represents "something you have," and this is combined with either biometric authentication or a PIN. Passwords have a long, problematic history; while they can be very strong, if suitably long and suitably random, human passwords are often short, non-random, and reused across multiple sites. App-based authentication avoids this long-standing weakness.

Enabling two-factor authentication is just one of the things that organizations can do to improve their security. To that end, Microsoft has extended "Microsoft Security Score," a tool used to assess organizational policy and provide guidance on measures that can be taken to harden an organization against attack. Secure Score already spans Office 365 and Windows security features; to these, Microsoft has added Azure AD, Azure Security Center, and Enterprise Mobility Suite, covering a wider range of settings and options.

Roku

Roku announced two new streaming devices today that sit in the middle of its device lineup. The Roku Premiere and Premiere+ set-top boxes are barely "boxes" at all; instead, they resemble the company's streaming sticks more than any of its other devices.

If you took the Roku Ultra, the company's top-tier device, and slashed it in half and shrank it a bit, you'd get the Roku Premiere and Premiere+. The streaming devices are about the length of your index finger and the width of two fingers, making them lightweight and nearly invisible when sitting on an entertainment console while connected to a TV. The front side is a glossy black while the flat back side holds an HDMI port and the power port.