Tag Archives: Office 365

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

New Features Have Been Added to Office 365

If you’re an Office 365 user, you’ll be pleased to know that that Word for the web now has two cool new features: Transcribe and support for voice commands.

Currently, the transcription capabilities are somewhat limited, but are still robust enough to be genuinely useful. At present, it only supports transcribing audio into US English.

In order to make use of that feature, you need to be using Microsoft Edge, Chrome, or some other Chrome-based browser. The best part about the new feature is that the actual transcription takes place on the web, so there’s no need to download and install a third-party app to handle audio files.

In addition to that, the new transcription feature automatically detects different speakers in recorded conversations and transcribes them accordingly, which makes it easier to follow the flow of conversation in a transcript generated in Word.

Dan Parish, the company’s Manager of Natural User Interface and Incubation, had this to say about the new feature:

“Your transcript will appear alongside the Word document, along with the recording, which enables you to leverage your transcript to create great content in the way that works best for you.”

Although these may change at any time, currently, Microsoft has placed the following parameters on use of the new feature:

  • Users are limited to five hours of transcription time per month
  • Uploaded audio files must be in one of the following formats:
    •  .mp3
    • .wav
    • .mp4
    • .m4a
  • Uploaded files may not exceed 200 mb in size.

Even given these restrictions, this is an awesome new addition.

The second enhancement to talk about here are the voice commands.

Dan Parish had a few words to say on that topic as well:

“We’ve been adding voice commands to Dictate so that you can break away from the keyboard. Whether on the desktop or mobile (or transitioning between devices), you can stay in the flow and focus on your message by using dictation with voice commands to add, format, edit, and organize your text.”

Microsoft has a full list of Dictate commands the software will accept, and the system even understands a variety of symbols, which is super convenient.

Kudos to Microsoft for the amazing addition. It’s absolutely fantastic and will make your life easier.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Don’t Fall For Office 365 Zoom Notification Phishing Email

Do you use Microsoft Office 365? Do you also use Zoom? If so, be advised that there’s a new phishing campaign designed with you specifically in mind, the goal of which is to ultimately make off with your Office 365 login credentials. Since the start of the global pandemic, Zoom and other video conferencing solutions have seen an explosion in the size of their user base, given that COVID-19 forced tens of millions to work from home.

In a nutshell, here’s now the new campaign works:

The hackers controlling the campaign kick things off by sending out what appear to be automated Zoom account suspension alerts. These are convincingly crafted and make it appear that your account has been compromised. The message is invariably either a carbon copy or a slight variant of the following:

“We’ve temporarily suspended your Zoom because your email failed to sync with our server within the past 24 hours. At this time, you will not be able to invite or join any call/meeting. Please verify your email:”

And then, just below the ‘Please verify your email’ bit in the body of the message, the hackers have included a button labeled ‘Activate Account,’ which a fair percentage of this message’s recipients are clicking on.

Clicking on the button opens a browser tab and takes the email recipient to a well-designed spoof of a Microsoft Login page which asks for the user’s credentials.

Naturally, if the user enters their login information here, nothing will happen except that the information will be stored in a database belonging to the hackers, who will no doubt use it later.

Not long ago, the US FBI issued a warning about BEC scammers targeting users of popular cloud-based email services like Google’s G-Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 to steal credentials for use in attacks down the road. This latest campaign certainly seems to add an exclamation point to the end of that warning. Stay on your guard and make sure your employees are aware.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Microsoft Will Add Plagiarism Checker To Word Program

Recently, Microsoft announced a small but important improvement to one of its signature products, Microsoft Word.

The company is planning to roll out a plagiarism checking tool bundled with a virtual writing assistant powered by the company’s increasingly powerful AI/Machine Learning code.

If you’re interested in trying it out, it’s currently available to customers using Microsoft 365 EDU A3 and A5. The plan is to make it available to all Microsoft 365 customers beginning in July 2020 for Education customers, and to Consumer and Enterprise users by the fall of 2020.

Initially, the new feature will support English only, but later in the year, additional language support will be added.

Mike Tholfsen, the Principal Product Manager for Microsoft, had this to say about the new addition:

“Powered by Bing Search, the Similarity checker can identify and help writers with originality in their writing and learn more about appropriate attribution through tools that facilitate the easy insertion of relevant citations. This can aid writers in focusing less on the mechanics of writing and more on the content.”

Where adding citations is concerned, once the feature is available, users will be able to select from MLA, APA, or Chicago-style citations. Word will automatically add them as appropriate, based on the selection made. Cited text will also automatically be surrounded by quotation marks, though users will have the option to delete those as desired.

If a text block longer than 40 words is found to be an exact match for something else online, the text will be formatted as a block quote, automatically.

Note that in order to make use of the new feature, users will need to install or enable Microsoft Editor, which will enable its use inside Office 365 and Outlook. Microsoft Editor is also available as a standalone browser extension for both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Office 365 Making Changes To Accommodate Millions Working From Home

Recently, Netflix announced that it was scaling back its streaming speeds to better handle the increased load brought on by millions of people around the world sitting at home due to the threat of the Corona Virus. Netflix isn’t the only company making such moves.

Recently, Microsoft announced a raft of new and temporary changes to various Office 365 services designed to adjust to the growing legions of new Office 365 signups the company has seen as millions of people work from home. The changes impact OneNote, SharePoint and Stream.

The changes are as follows:

Where OneNote is concerned, OneNote in Teams will be read-only for commercial tenants, excluding EDU. Users can go to OneNote for the web to edit their notes.

For SharePoint, the company is rescheduling specific back-end operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image. Video playback resolution is also being reduced for the time being.

Finally, where Stream is concerned, the People timeline has been disabled for newly uploaded videos. Pre-existing videos are not impacted by this change. Also note that Meeting recording video resolution has been adjusted to 720p.

In tandem with the recent announcement, a Microsoft spokesman had this to say:

“Microsoft is actively monitoring performance and usage trends to ensure we’re optimizing service for our customers worldwide, and accommodating new growth and demand. At the same time, these are unprecedented times and we’re also looking at what steps we can take to proactively prepare for these high-usage periods.”

Although there may be a bit of grumbling about the changes, the general sense is that the company is taking a responsible, measured approach here. This approach ensures that these services remain viable for everyone in the weeks and months ahead. Just be aware of them so you’re not taken by surprise.

0
Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Paradise Ransomware Using Internet Query Files To Deliver Payload

The Paradise ransomware is like a bad penny; it just keeps turning up.

The strain first appeared back in 2017, when it was spread far and wide via phishing emails. Then it seemed to fall out of favor for a while, and now, it’s back again. Even worse, it’s back with a new trick up its virtual sleeves. In its latest incarnation, it’s still being spread via phishing emails.

Now, its controllers are leveraging interest in IQY (Query) files, which are text files read by Microsoft Excel to grab data from the internet. Given that fact, IQY is a completely legitimate file extension, so most organizations don’t even think to block it.

The researchers at Lastline who discovered the latest campaign had this to say about it:

“We’re seeing attacks using IQY files because many commodity security products and automated systems do not, or cannot, parse these file types. Attackers realize they have a very good chance of making it past rudimentary defenses.”

The approach seems to be working as Paradise’s phishing emails are being opened by unsuspecting users at an alarming rate. Of interest, the researchers found evidence in the code that this strain is still a work in progress. Consider this latest campaign to be a beta test for the redesigned code.

Lastline’s researchers had something to say about that as well:

“Malware authors will often deploy malware that isn’t quite ready for prime time yet – they want to see how successful early versions of a new campaign are and how detectable their malware is against security products.”

As is the case with most ransomware, this one is designed to sniff out high value files, exfiltrate them to a command and control center, then encrypt everything and demand a ransom. As such, it has to be regarded as a genuine threat and is certainly one to keep a watchful eye out for.

0
1 … 3 4 5 6 7 8