Deploying Virtual Smart Cards

I am going to cover how to deploy Virtual Smart Cards. In this section I am going to perform a simplified deployment using Active Directory Certificate Services and tpmvscmgr.exe. In a complex environment you may wish to use additional tools such as scripts and Forefront Identity Manager to assist in your deployment. Later on I will be discussing how to implement FIM CM and use that to manage Virtual Smart Cards. Although, you can deploy Virtual Smart Cards without FIM CM, I wouldn’t recommend it because much of the management including unblocking a smart card cannot be done easily without a tool such as FIM CM.

Given the recent breaches on companies both large and small, there has been an increased focus on security and secure authentication. This combined with the adoption of mobile devices to increase the productivity of the mobile worker has left many organizations looking for a way to secure authentication for mobile devices. For mobile devices such as Surface, Windows Phone, Windows Laptops and Windows Tablets there is already a solution that was first introduced in Windows 8, called Virtual Smart Card.

In Windows, we have a number of ways that users can logon to Windows. These enterprise type options available are Password, Fingerprint, Smart Card, and Virtual Smart Card. Most mobile devices such as tablets and phones do not possess a Smart Card reader or a Fingerprint reader, so those options are not typically available. Of course, the user can long in with their domain password, but if you want to increase the security of the authentication, you can use Virtual Smart Card.

Wow!!!  It’s pretty awesome to see the continued evolution of Windows Phone!

I have posted in the past about some really cool features such as NFC and DataSense. But recently there have been a lot of interesting applications released for Windows Phone.

GDR3

This morning when I woke up and checked my Windows Phone (HTC8X on Verizon) the so called GDR3 update was ready for installation. 

Office Remote

First, we have Office Remote:  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/officeremote/

I was able to use Office Remote a couple times last week for some presentations.  Office Remote can work with PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.  My primary use case is PowerPoint. 

First, there is an add-in for Office 2013 that needs to be installed as well as a Windows Phone App.  The download links for both locations are available here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/officeremote/

In PowerPoint for example you then start Office Remote.

Then you have to pair your phone over Bluetooth.  Once your phone is paired you can start the Office Remote App and connect to your phone.

Then you can advance slides using your phone, read presentation notes, and even use a virtual “laser pointer” on your presentation.

Instagram

I personally am not an Instagram user, but I know this is one of those “gotta have” apps for a lot of folks.  Well Instagram Beta is now available here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/instagram-beta/3222a126-7f20-4273-ab4a-161120b21aea

Vine

Vine is a very interesting app that lets you create and share Vine videos, which are of course 6 second videos.  Vine has been available for a couple weeks now on Windows Phone and is available here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/vine/f9e6f07e-e47e-47f5-806d-55d4f79f2b60

Waze

Waze is a navigational app that uses social to provide updates on traffic, congestion, and other information related to one’s commute.  Waze is available here:http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/waze/f07f83eb-a8a4-49fd-8946-c67a9349e062

Nokia Lumia 1520

And last but not least Nokia released the Lumia 1520 on AT&T.  the phone is a 6 inch “Phablet” with an amazing 20 megapixel camera.

What a great time to be a Windows Phone owner!

-Chris

Now, that we have created our first VM we want to get familiar with the Management Tools.  For the purpose of this blog posting, I will be covering the Management Tools presented by the Web Interface.  Specifically, I will be covering the management tools for Virtual Machines. 

Once you login to Windows Azure (https://manage.windowsazure.com) you will be presented with the management website.  This website has tools for managing both Windows Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).  I will be focusing on tools used to manage Windows Azure VMs in other words Windows Azure IaaS.

So, in my previous blog posting I covered how to create your first Virtual Machine in Windows Azure IaaS.  In that blog posting we used the QUICK CREATE method.  In this blog posting, we will be performing similar steps using the Virtual Machine from the Gallery wizard.  Creating a VM “From Gallery” is pretty straightforward, however, I wanted to cover it for the sake of completeness.