🔒 When Identity Security Becomes a Wall — Not a Shield

After a breach that forced a reset of my digital identity, I hit a roadblock I never anticipated: multi-factor authentication (2FA) locked me out of critical Microsoft services with no reliable way to prove who I was.

Despite years of interaction, billing history, and documented correspondence, access couldn’t be restored. Support channels were opaque. Recovery methods? Virtually nonexistent.

🧩 The Fallout

This isn’t just a tale of frustration — it’s a wake-up call for anyone who depends on digital platforms for professional continuity. Here's what made this situation particularly troubling:

• 2FA mechanisms ignored reset conditions and created a closed loop
• Microsoft’s support structure lacked escalation flexibility for identity restoration
• Existing billing relationships didn’t help validate re-entry
• Submission of supporting materials was not possible due to access barriers
• Communication was throttled by the very safeguards meant to protect users

📁 Appendix Overview (Bullet Format)

Though I’ve withheld raw screenshots for privacy, the underlying evidence includes:

• Email chains across multiple support tiers
• Billing confirmation across service subscriptions
• Failed attempts to upload documents for verification
• Timeline logs of authentication attempts
• Chat transcripts documenting escalation effort
• Account alerts post-identity reset
• Case numbers and references from support tools
• License access history and dashboard exclusions
• Anomalies in MFA re-enrollment
• Failed access attempts after password and device reset
• Time-based snapshot of support delays and breakdowns

🔄 What’s Next?

This blog isn’t about placing blame — it’s about demanding resilience. If identity protection policies don’t account for edge-case scenarios, platform continuity suffers.

Lesson learned: Security tools should protect users with them, not from them.

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Let me know if you'd like this formatted for Blogspot publishing or split into header sections that can match your existing blog templates. I’m here to get this across the finish line for you.

Identity theft and two-Factor authentication (or Two-factor HELL)

 My Internet Identity was stolen in early June. 

This is my advice to those whose identity might have been stolen. The first thing to do is not to change your passwords etc. Immediately log into your account and note down any suspicious transaction, especially where money or resources are involved. Make sure your login access to the institution is easy and that you have alternate ways of getting verified. In my case, this was a circular reference and there was no way out of the loop. Only after making sure, you can access all accounts for which you have turned on two-factor verification (two-factor verification turned off), you should take other measures such as changing passwords, reporting to credit agencies, FBI, etc.

T-Mobile, my communication provider, strongly recommended that I should change the telephone number as the phone(s) were compromised. I immediately changed my phone number which landed me in this two-factor hell.

Although at the back of my mind, I had the feeling that I may face other problems while updating it at other contact addresses, I opted to change immediately. Ever since that date, my Office 365 has not allowed me to log in. It allows me to change provided my "Old phone numbers" can receive text messages or phone calls. This is impossible as the phone(s) have changed. There is no other option in the two-factor authentication which was never modified. 

This also created a problem with my back accounts which had two-factor authentication with only a phone for verification. Bank of America was the worst. It left me with no means to correct this issue. Finally, I had to write to them twice as the first one addressed to the bank branch manager did not respond despite my writing to him being delivered by the next morning mail. I am waiting for the other mail from BOA.

Microsoft HELP/ Support is useless as it does not address this issue. A simple recipe according to Microsoft is to log in to the app and update your telephone number. Little does it care whether a client can log in with two-factor authentication where the phone might have changed. Phone support (1-800-642-7676) is also useless as it advises you to try logging in again. There is no "human" support.

This is displayed while logging in. There is but one option, but it refers to phones that are changed. There is more information on an Akamai site which is useless.

I have tried numerous ways to find some sort of support from Microsoft and I have been unsuccessful. 

I am planning to get some help from the Microsoft Community and will have to wait it out. The company gets big, and help gets reduced as it does not care about a few pissed-off users.

Hard to figure this one out in Excel

There is such a thing called a rogue!

It did once in all these years (30 yrs) I have used EXCEL. I simply cannot figure it out. I include a screenshot of what I observed.

As a workaround, I deleted the line and recreated it. Everything OK.

Problems with Office 365 EXCEL

This application is not working and I am not sure if this is a new Microsoft Feature.

• You try to do a vertical scroll, the sheet scrolls horizontally. 

• You cannot type into certain cells as the mouse refuses to enter. I have to go to the top where you find cell reference to get to the cell and make entry across fx.

• If you need to enter into the cells, you have to enter into two cells ahead of where you want to enter.

Is this the new standard?

IFTTT and the IoT - 2

IFTTT and the IoT - 2

In my previous post I wrote about IFTTT as it is a cool interface whiich you can use without too much of a sweat or equivalently without any coding.

IFTTT stands for the conditional statement "If this then that'. It is a web based service with a simple workflow. Flow of work (action, that) is created by a trigger based on a condition(this), like say,'If it rains take the umbrella'. This service was provided in some cases, such as the various financial services that you could get an email if your chosen stock price reached a new high, etc. They were called alerts and they are also used by banks and credit card companies.


As most of our actions and those of the 'Internet of Things' are condition-based, IFTTT is expected to grow and expand deep into IOT.


What IFTTT has done to simplify this process is by offering a web interface to set up triggers and take appropriate actions. Both the trigger and the actions that follow the trigger have their own channel and every IFTTT recipe is tied into these channels.

Since my first post on this (http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/06/ifttt-and-iot.html), I wrote a few more posts to elaborate and since it is already a year or more ago after my first post, I revisited and was quite thrilled that lot more has been added to the list of things you can do.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/07/hey-ifttt-now-has-office-365-channels.html

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/06/azure-logic-apps-and-ifttt-azure-app.html

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/10/one-easy-way-to-get-started-with.html

In my recent visit to IFTTT site, I see a lot more IoT and Skype related recipes.

Here is a piece from Connected Homes

IoT/IFTTT_2016_00

Amazon's Alexa is Number 1 TopChef when it comes to creating IFTTT recipes and here are few from Amazon.

IoT/IFTTT_2016_01

Microsoft's Office Integration with IFTTT was described in an earlier post. Here are few of the many recipes using Skype.

IoT/IFTTT_2016_02

You are motivated as to its utility, go visit the page. http://ifttt.com

IFTTT or (Microsoft) took notice of my rant in my previous post and added a bunch of OneDrive related recipes.

After Office 365 comes Dynamics 365

Microsoft's new formula for Dynamics includes this formula,

Dynamics 365= AzureCloud(Customer Relations Management + Enterprise Resource Planning).
Dynamics 365 will come along during this fall.

There was already both CRM and ERP cloud services but this new formula brings them all together while integrating tight with Office 365. With PowerBI and Cortana support this really gets interesting from the point of bottom line and both of these will be native to Dynamics 365.

Read this July blog post for more:

This is what Dynamics 365 is about according to Microsoft, excerpted from the above link:

"The combination of these things gives customers a comprehensive solution for business process innovation that lets them:

    Start with what they need by offering apps that fit roles, industries, businesses – and grow at their pace to run their entire business in the cloud. 

    Enable greater productivity where they need it by connecting structured workflow of business applications (Dynamics 365) and processes with the unstructured work of collaboration and productivity (Office 365) so employees are empowered with productivity tools surfaced in the context of their business processes, and vice versa.
    Gain built-in, actionable, intelligence with business applications that infuse big data, advanced analytics and IoT into processes which proactively guide employees and customers to optimal outcomes. With Dynamics 365, data and insights are transformed into intelligent action right where it’s needed, and without requiring an army of rocket scientists to make it happen.
    Be ready for growth through nimble, adaptable applications, that allow them to compose, modify and extend processes in real-time. Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow empower business users to change and adapt their processes without requiring IT support. And organizations can reimagine their business model with a consistent, flexible, extensible platform"

Must see video for Azure Watchers

Scott Guthrie's keynote presentation "Journey to the intelligent cloud" is a must view video. This is from AzureCon 2015, September 29, 2015

I have reproduced some screen shots in case you are unable to view this long  video for one reason or another. One of the highlights is 3 datacenters coming on line in India.

Looks like you may be able to get some training free:

 

Three data centers in India

 

 Everything here.

 

 

 

 Part of the picture

More developed one here

Momentum is there to see.

 

 SQL Data Warehouse:  All of data, structured and unstructured

Internet of Things and Azure

 Azure IOT Suite

 Security, Security!

New deal.

Now the video:



Looks like well set to challenge Amazon very effectively including cost.

Get Office 2016 now! Which one?

Office has been evolving for quite a long time and perhaps it has reached a state of perfection after the debut of Windows 10. Office 2016 brings the best of Office products with the best of Microsoft Windows operating systems.
This email alert prodded me to look up what is new in this offering.

Office2016_01

I have been subscribing to Office 365 from the beginning of this year but I am not using it as much, except for some real simple stuff. I am the only one using it for now. Also the feature I wanted to use in Excel was not supported in the Office 365 Business ($10/month) which somehow I did not notice it.   I have been writing about Microsoft Products for good many years but missed some information about this feature. The feature is only available in the Enterprise edition. I must cancel my subscription asap.

There are a number of Office products and, you have to be real careful what you are asking and getting. Actually I am not the only one confused (https://mcpmag.com/articles/2015/10/05/office-2016-confusion.aspx).In the next couple of images, I have tried to line them up. You can see the number of products is quite large and if you consider the features you are looking for, the search would require a stout heart.

Microsoft Office 365 caters to a variety of customers as shown.

Office2016_01a

Enterprise:
Enterprise Productivity Tools:
https://products.office.com/en-us/business/enterprise-productivity-tools

 

Empower your mobile workforce
Innovate with connected collaboration
Trusted cloud for productivity
Maximize sales productivity

Office2016_04
Looks like there is one more item missing in this list!

Office2016_05

Education:
Office 365 Education is a collection of services that allows you to collaborate and share your schoolwork. It’s available for free to students who are currently attending an academic institution. Office 365 Education includes Office Online (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote), 1TB of OneDrive storage, Yammer, and SharePoint sites. Some schools allow students to install the full Office applications on up to 5 PCs or Macs for free. If your school provides this additional benefit, you'll see the Install Office button on your Office 365 home page after you complete sign-up.

 

Office2016_09

Government:
The best choice for government organizations with advanced IT requirements that want the flexibility to move to the cloud at their own pace

Office2016_06

 

Non-Profit:
Try Office 365 for free and see how it can help your organization. Qualified nonprofits can receive Office 365 Nonprofit E1 or Office 365 Nonprofit Business Essentials as a donation or they can upgrade to the advanced features in Office 365 Nonprofit E3 or Office 365 Nonprofit Business Premium at a significant discount.
Office2016_07

There are also two more 'Office xxxxx'

• Office Home products

Office 2016_02.png

• Office for IT

I suppose this is for IT professionals in companies to make a case for rolling out Office 2016.

 

 

Office 2016_10.png

I wanted this to be brief and already it is too long but if want to dig in more go here:
https://products.office.com/en-us/home
Note: Some of the descriptions in this article have come directly from the above site. I have only arranged them as i tried to understand.
Now, What are you going to subscribe to?

Doing BI in the cloud using PowerBI for Office 365

Early last year Microsoft announced the general availability (GA) of PowerBI for Office 365. Office is the most used office program and PowerBI brings in great value by providing a self-service means to discover, analyze and visualize data leading to deep insights.

Using PowerBI for Office 365 one can easily deploy a cloud-based BI application for sharing insights; colloborating and accessing reports from practically anywhere.

Power BI for Office includes the following Microsoft
'Power' tools:

• Power Query, enabling customers to easily search and access public data and their organization’s data, all within Excel (formerly known as “Data Explorer“).
• Power Map, a 3D data visualization tool for mapping, exploring and interacting with geographic and temporal data (formerly known as product codename “Geoflow“).
• Power Pivot for creating and customizing flexible data models within Excel.
• Power View for creating interactive charts, graphs and other visual representations of data.

What are the main capabilities?

PowerBI allows the companies to include the cloud as an arena in which they can share and colloborate. The DataCatalog; Q & A with natural language support; mobile connectivity are unbeatable capabilities.

• Quickly create collaborative BI sites – enable anyone to quickly create a collaborative BI site to share workbooks containing data and insights.
• Keep reports up to date with scheduled data refresh – reports that have been saved to the cloud can now connect back to on-premises data sources to refresh the data and stay up to date.
• Manage data queries for the team – share not only workbooks but also the data queries created in Power Query for Excel. Team members can now build and manage data queries for others to use when creating their own reports.
• Maintain a Data Catalog of searchable data – IT departments can now use the Data Catalog feature to make it easier for everyone to find and connect to corporate data by searching for it from within Excel.
• Ask questions of your data in natural language – with the Q&A features people can type questions they have of the data in natural language and the system will interpret the question and present answers in the form of interactive visualizations.
• Stay connected with mobile access to your reports – stay connected from anywhere with new HTML5 support and the Power BI windows app.

How much does it cost?

First of all you should be Office 365 Enterprise E3 or E4 customers and it was promotional $20 per month per user for the existing customers. Access this link here for reduced new prices.

However you could sign-up for a free-trial of PowerBi for Office 365 here and you will also get a 30day trial of Office 365 Pro-plus.

I do not have the Enterprise edition but just a $10 month subscription and I get only 'Power Map' add-in in my Office 365's Excel application.I have not figured it out how I may be able to use this without the other tools.

Note: Text in italic taken directly from Microsoft sites.

Hey! IFTTT now has Office 365 Channels

I posted recently regarding IFTTT. I did consider looking at Azure APP and IFTTT as a pair.  I created a few IFTTT items that worked well;  like as soon as I post to the blogger, a tweet is generated. That's good service, don't you think?

Did you see the big list of channels I posted?

You might have noticed the absence of Office 365 or Azure or anything of Microsoft. Now Microsoft's Office 365 has joined the IFTTT channels. Review this link here: It has a number of recipes and you can find anbout all of them here:
https://ifttt.com/p/microsoft/shared



Here are the Microsoft related channels on IFTTT.

 

 

I would like to see MSFT's Health and Fitness app in the Fitness and Wearables category of channels.

A few more hookups to Mass Commerce sites

Microsoft should go all the way and link up with IFTTT in more ways like offering the DO buttons from the Microsoft Store. I have schematically shown what I have in my mind:

 

I insist, I don't work for MSFT.

 

I think if they change their slogan from "Mobile First, Cloud First" to "Investor First, Cloud First and Mobile First", then only you will see Apple and Google will take notice.

 

Summing up: This is a good thing. I tried to include OneDrive channel in my recipe to day and it could not find OneDrive. Perhaps they are still working on it.

 

 

 

 

 



 

Nigerian Non-banking Company goes to Azure Cloud

Meristem Securities Limited and the subsidiaries from its group, the Meristem Group has taken most of their services to Microsoft Azure. They have saved considerably dollar-wise and operational-wise by moving into the cloud and adopting Microsoft Azure SQL Database and Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Their move was motivated, besides getting into the modern way of doing business, by the problems they encountered with custom software and the inconsistency in electrical power availability which required running diesel-generator sets.

By adopting Microsoft Azure they could better attend to the five subsidiaries geographically separated in Lagos as well as at other locations.

Recently they have also gotten on to Office 365 which integrates with other components besides providing the access and use of OneDrive.

Read the full story here:

http://worldstagegroup.com/index.php?active=news&newscid=22488&catid=31

Event Info 2015_3: Microsoft Ignite

May4-8, 2015
Chicago, IL
McCormick Place Convention Center

Make sure you attend this event in Chicago if you are curious about where technology is heading.
It is the technology conference of the year and do not miss it.

An earlier posting here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/12/microsoft-ignite-2015-is-announced.html

Review the sessions list here, 365 in all:
http://ignite.microsoft.com/Sessions#fbid=xLhDyuK-AHn

One of the interesting topics is about Skype. How is it going to evolve? How is it going to work with Office 265 and Lync? Understand diffeerent topologies for Skype. For this and other interesting topics ther arre some 24 sessions.

If you are focused on Internet of Things, I am afaid there are only 3 sessions. Could they ignite you???

Bulk of the sessions, some 123 of them focus on Office 365 and SharePoint. With SharePoint Server 2016 docking in 2016 it looks like SharePoint is here to stay. There is going to be a demo of an early version according to Redmond Magazine.
http://redmondmag.com/articles/2015/02/19/sharepoint-server-2016-ignite.aspx

Watch this promo video from Microsoft:

br />

 

Microsoft Azure Government at TechNet Asia-Pacific 2014

Government is big business and of course vendors are after government money. Microsoft Azure Government had a 'briefing' room at the recent  concluded TechNet Asia-Pacific event in Honolulu.

Microsoft recently announed the launch of Microsoft Azure Govrnment. A complete cloud for any goverment organization to pursue the goals of more efficient and agile operation in the mobile-centric world of today.

The Microsoft Azure Government has all the key ingredients, Azure, Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics CRM (early next year). It goes without saying that all these operate under federal government's tight security standards.

More story here:
http://www.eweek.com/cloud/microsoft-launches-azure-government-cloud-in-the-u.s..html

As recent as last year Microsoft's Azue was granted the FedRAMP JAB-P-ATO, a distinction that gets the blessings of the government. Read more details here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/07/windows-azure-cloud-services-get.html

The Dynamics CRM online with SLA of 99.9 should greatly improve the effieciency and productivity.
Microsoft is not alone in trying to woo the government, IBM is moving to open its new Softlayered govenment focused data centers (Texas and Virginia) which are designed for greater control and security.
More details here:
http://www.eweek.com/cloud/ibm-opening-federal-government-focused-cloud-data-centers.html

Microsoft confirms purchase of Acompl, Email Client app for iPhone and Android

This fits into the larger plan of Microsoft to cover not only Windows Phone which is still trying to get up and run, but to stay in tune with the fast runners, Google and Apple. It will be Outlook for desktop but Acompl for the mobile and supports Microsoft's Exchange. Exchange is Ok but Microsoft will definitely integrate this somehow with Office 365.

This is going to make Outlook a lot richer and even without Acompl, Outlook is a damn good email client. Well $200 million may be a little pricey but for what it does the price is OK.

Read more here:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/Microsoft-acquires-iPhone-email-app-Acompli/ar-BBgcyP0?ocid=ansVerge11

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/1/7298679/microsoft-acquires-acompli

How long will it take to recover $200 mil?

OneDrive goes overdrive to provide 15GB free storage

Smart Phone cameras, videos, documents and apps have created an unprecedented appetite for storage more than ever before. Both free and paid storage options have surfaced. Besides storing the stuff the companies like Microsoft and Google have other stuff from which they want to make money. Ideally they want all your stuff in one place and you use the other services to work with your content assets. They all provide syncronization; upload/download features and sharing.

Beginning July 2014 Microsoft increases free storage from 7G to 15GB, an equalizer-move to match Googles 15 GB. The paid storage of Office 365 users can now look forward to 1TB instead of the 20GB, that's a big jump. The paid storage limits of non-Office users is also increased.:
Read the full story here of this post,"Massive increase to OneDrive storage plans: 15 GB free for everyone, 1 TB for Office 365 subscribers"
https://blog.onedrive.com/new-onedrive-storage-plans/

Apps that work with OneDrive:
https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/apps-that-work-with-onedrive/

As of 13 March 2014, storage plans offered by Google are as follows(source: Wikipedia)
Storage
Price
15 GB Free
100 GB         US$ 1.99 per month
1 TB              US$ 9.99 per month
10 TB            US$ 99.99 per month
20 TB            US$ 199.99 per month
30 TB            US$ 299.99 per month
Free storage may come with some restrictions as to image resolution, video size, document type etc.Of course if you are paying you will certainly read the fine details.
 

Microsoft Vision: Project Portfolio Management

This is a brief summary from the Project 2014 Conference in Anaheim, CA Feb 2014. This is really about consolidating Microsoft assets: Project online, Office 365, SQL Servers, Azure, Project Apps and so on and how they are going to play out in the future.

Details of Project Online here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/

                
There is a 1 hour long marathon video on the following site detailing the road map for project portfolio management:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Project/2014/KEY002
Here are some screen shots:

 

 

 

 

 

No project without reporting!

 

Also watch this SSRS Report Enabler for Project Online by Project Hosts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10tDxtla3NI
 

Easy to follow no-nonsense books on Reporting Services:

 

 

http://www.packtpub.com/learning-sql-server-2008-reporting-services/book

 

 

http://www.packtpub.com/learning-sql-server-reporting-services-2012/book