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Hi, and welcome to another episode of the cloud architects
podcast my name is Nicolas Blank and I'm here with my co host.
Christopher Goosen.
Chris Goosen: Hello.
Nicolas Blank: Today we have a guest which we featured on the
show before Michael Van Horenbeeck
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Hi, everyone.
Nicolas Blank: Welcome to the show. And thank you so much for
appearing again. We are excited that there's something that you
are launching fairly soon, and it's a book. So without wanting
to spoil too much, why don't you tell us what your book is about
and why you've decided to write it?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Sure. So the book is called Microsoft 365
security for IT professionals. And some of you might recognize
that the title kind of resembles the office 365 for IT
professionals book, um, which is done on purpose. A couple of
years back Tony Paul Cunningham and I we started a venture
Adventure I should say of writing a book which is kept up
to date on a monthly basis, the office 365 for IT professionals
book. The reason why we started that journey a couple years back
is because the cloud is moving at lightning speed updating you
almost on a daily basis. So trying to create a book which
isn't outdated from the day that you publish. It was an
interesting challenge. And I believe I wrote for the Book
Three, four years after original work life got in the way so I
kind of dropped off as a as an author and an entire team took
over from Paul me. And, you know, there's a whole author
team out, but still you I like to write. In the meantime, I
also switched over to the security side of things where
over the past couple of years, all I've done is security,
security, security. And I noticed there wasn't really a
security book in the same space or following the same model kind
of keeping up to date on a monthly basis. And you know,
With the focus from Microsoft on everything, you know, security
and compliance, there's a ton of stuff that's changing really
like a lot of that. So I figured, you know, let's bring
on that challenge. Let's try and write a book and keep it up to
date at the same pace. But rather than focusing on the
productivity side of things, just focus on the entry 65. and,
by extension, a little bit of Azure Security as well. And
that's how we got to the book, which, by the way, we should be
releasing very shortly.
Chris Goosen: That's, that's super exciting, I think, for a
number of reasons. Right? I think, one, I think that most
people or at least a large part of the audience will understand
or know of the office 365 for IT pros venture and the work that
you and Tony and everyone have done on that because it really
is the standard as far as you know, a book of knowledge around
office 365 goes right and I it's something that I've given to
customers in the past when when I've worked with customers, and
they've said hey, where do I go for free? Knowledge, where do I
go to learn more about office 365? What training courses can I
go on? I've given them a copy of the book. And on here you go,
actually hijacked Tony once at Ignite and made him sign a whole
bunch of USB keys for me. He wasn't he wasn't pleased. So I
think that that same kind of methodology is is fantastic.
Because I think one of the things I've found over the last
little while since I've started doing a lot more security
focused work as well is sometimes the documentation is
not quite where the where the product is. And so all I can say
is, you know, hats off, and congratulations, but it seems
like a mammoth challenge to me to be kind of taking that on
keeping that publishing kind of cycle going on something that is
that bleeding edge.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yeah. So, I mean, you have no idea how
much effort it goes into the book. We started writing last
year. And you know, the initial effort of writing a chapter is
massive, right? But as you're writing the chapter, they keep
changing stuff, and you're like finding yourself writing a bit
of bits and pieces and then rewriting it and then writing
new bits and pieces and rewriting older stuff that
you've written a couple of weeks back. So to get to the point
where we're, you know, ready to release has been a massive
undertaking, but the real challenge starts now, updating
the book on a monthly basis. If there's one thing that I've
learned is, don't underestimate it. I did in the past a little
bit where, you know, sometimes I didn't account for the time to
write the chapters, right, which meant that I had to know doing
last minute, which added a lot of burden. So I learned a lot
from the earlier process. My respect for Tony for, you know,
keeping the book up to date for keeping everyone in line and for
doing the copy editing is just grown tremendously. Because now
I'm taking on that role and I'm like, Oh, god, what do you do,
you can start with, right? But at the same time role, so you
know, trying to get to the point where we want to be that book of
knowledge, right, where we want to centralize everything, get
that practical guidance. But it's a journey, right? Even
version one that we're releasing, we know their stuff
that we should get in there over time. Like, I'll give you a
practical example Office ATP, right due to some author
challenges, you know, people dropping off halfway, because
they, they figured out, hey, this is too much of a word for
us. We had to cut that chapter on version one. So we're going
to add that word as part of the release, you know, in a couple
of months time. But that's a massive chapter, right? Like our
Defender ATP chapter, even without practical deployment
guide information is 120 pages on that one, I'm not gonna call
it a little thing. It's just it's quickly becoming this huge
mess of stuff. And I think we'll learn as we go, but it is it is
it is interesting to see at the very least.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, and I think the thing is, and we've said it
on the show before it may even have been on the last episode
where we you know, we call Microsoft, the security vendor,
right? Because At the end of the day, that's kind of where they
are right now. And, and a lot of folks, and I'm seeing this
firsthand with my recent role change, people don't take
Microsoft seriously in the security space yet, or at least
a lot of folks don't. But when you're able to look at something
like this and go, Well, this is how it all ties together. And
the small thing that's just a, just a tiny little endpoint
thing is 100 and something pages worth of documentation. It's
really stunning to say something and I think it's gonna be a very
easy way to quantify the value that the platform brings. Right
when you when you when you tie all these services together.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yeah, I mean, and there is another
interesting tidbit, which you're just kind of you mentioned
Microsoft cybersecurity vendor, I'm entirely with you. There's
things they don't do, right. They don't build firewall. They
do build Azure firewalls, but don't build physical firewalls
and stuff. But they have a whole plethora of options and
solutions that somehow tie in together. They have a vast
ecosystem and it's uncovering value. system, which is the
interesting part and also the hard part. But at the same time,
you know, putting everything together as an author team, we
were already facing the, you know, where do we put this in
which chapter with this belong? Or like this feature, it belongs
to product x, but he really belongs more to this new
paradigm. So where do we put it into the book? So why expect
that will happen is over the course of the next couple of
months when, you know, feedback trickles in when Microsoft, you
know, releases new stuff, and God knows what they've got
planned for this year. You know, we'll be modifying and updating
the book and that's the beauty of dating monthly, right? If
something doesn't belong in one chapter, or we can take it off
next month and put it somewhere else where it belongs better or
where it feels more natural. But we see that today, like,
honestly, we've had discussions about you know, Windows
Information Protection. Well, you know, do we create a chapter
on Windows 10 security and if so, well, what about Defender
ATP or attack surface reduction resource protection? Do we keep
it in Defender ATP? Or do we put it into Windows? 10 per day?
Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, ongoing discussions the
entire time.
Chris Goosen: Yeah. And I think this is probably this probably
is a really good insight into how meetings within the
Microsoft marketing department go, right? Because they're
constantly, they're constantly like they changing the product
names, but also the product name doesn't always align 100% with
the rest of that, the platform, so I could definitely see how
that would be a slight, you know, slight challenge.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Well, and you know, it's not just that
Microsoft 365 security for IT professionals. So you know,
obviously even looks at the 65 side of things. But what we've
already committed to and we started writing is an Azure
Sentinel chapter now. Better Sentinel? No, it is and it isn't
entry 65 because it's Azure workload, but yet we put it
there in the book. So you know, you can see the cross the bleed
between the two worlds, your productivity and Azure, which is
typically infrastructure, kind of converging in becoming one so
you know, maybe we should rename The book from the get go to
Microsoft Security for IT professionals editor.
Chris Goosen: Now that makes sense. I mean, I think where
you're at now, I think it, it's definitely gonna resonate with
the way that it's named. And I think immediately, when I saw
news about the book it immediately I was able to put it
together and tie it to, you know, the other author team and
the work that Tony is doing. And I think that's really valuable,
because I think not only are is it going to be a natural
progression for folks who are in the IT pro space, who are now
possibly becoming more comfortable with Office 365, and
with the 365 workloads, and now starting to think a little bit
more security focused. So this is a natural progression for
them. But this is also a really good entry point for just pure
infosec folks who have not played in the micro space
before, right. And there are a lot of people like that there
are a lot of people who come out out of the Palo Alto, Cisco,
etc. World CrowdStrike world who have never really dipped their
toe into the Microsoft ecosystem. I think this is going
to be a really, really good entry point for them too. Gotta
get involved and see what's what's actually going on.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yeah, so and that's, that's really
important what you mentioned, because, as you said, there's a
whole audience that's familiar with Tony's book, The Office 365
book. And obviously, they, you know, after having read the
book, you understand the product really well, the product
platform, I should say, really well, I have certain insights.
So the jump into the entry 65 security is more natural, but
there is a whole, you know, a whole army of people out there
that you know, are less familiar with Microsoft products as a
whole, but they're now you know, faced with new implementations,
new features, you know, Microsoft everywhere these days.
So what we try and do is, you know, to keep it accessible,
right, not start up there, but you start slowly and then build
up gradually to the book, which is also one of the reasons why
the first chapter is not a really a technical chapter. It's
more you know, okay. So how to approach it security, because
people come from a security background, they have this
person in mind if this you know, thinking like their security It
and someone who's coming from the productivity side doesn't
necessarily have, you kind of have to blend them together to
kind of mix and match the both worlds which, in itself, we
didn't want to create a 300 page book about process because
that's though, everyone, you know, understands why it's
necessary, but it's still dull. So we kind of slimmed it down to
about 1520 pages to kind of get everyone in that same mindset,
and then take them on a journey with identity, Device Management
and support and so on. Okay, yeah,
Chris Goosen: that makes sense. I think that's a pretty, pretty
important way to kind of approach it right. And you kind
of have to have a mix of those various components. You can't
just be all technical or process because you end up losing out on
a bunch of, you know, folks lose out on a bunch of things that
they're looking to learn. But also, you're not hold at that
point. You're not you know, you can't be completing a job if you
don't understand, you know, a little bit of all of those
pieces.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Mm hmm. I agree. Yep.
Chris Goosen: Okay, well, look, Nick, I think Nick might have a
question here.
Nicolas Blank: Yeah. I wanted to ask Michael, who is the primary
audience for this book is Is this an operations person who
needs to add security to the landscape? Or is this for a
hardcore security person who needs to add Microsoft to their
landscape?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: That's a good question, Nick. I think
there's value for both right? This is for the none. Well, tech
savvy but non security savvy, IT professional that needs to do
something with with something and security in Microsoft 365. I
mean, we all know how to sale cycle work, right? Then the
Microsoft sales sales guys there and tell them hey, it was a
great discount on, you know, the interesting divide the five
security bundle, and the company says, Yeah, great, let's do
this. And then, you know, it rolls downhill to the security
teams or the operational teams or like lowers first time that
we touch X, Y, or Z. You know, what can we do with it? How do
we do it? What's the best practice? What are the caveats,
right? So some of them may have the actual office 365 experience
and some of them may be coming from a purely security
perspective, like looking In our company, and the projects that
we do is we've got exactly that happening. Like I've got one
project for customers migrating from McAfee to Defender ATP. And
we're dealing with people that have dealt with McAfee for
years, they know the product inside out, they have no
knowledge whatsoever of Defender ATP. But you know, just looking
at defender by itself, you can't because it's part of the holder,
your bigger ecosystem. So it kind of ties in together with
that whole entry. 65 steps are prevented, super valuable to
have secure resource. But the same is true. If you're coming
from the other side where, you know, we've come from exchange
like all of us, all three of us were hardcore old coal exchange,
guys, we turn a link to security, you know, a couple of
years back if a book like that would have existed, I would have
surely appreciate it that rather than going out and having to
figure out everything on my own,
Nicolas Blank: completely right, but just like so many other
things in the IT landscape, is there a process that I can
follow in so Yeah, I'm kind of picking on from an IT
professional point of view. I could be ITIL aligned from a
security professional, I could be mature aligned. How do I
align myself against the knowledge in the book?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I understand
what you mean, I'm so this is where the first chapter clinic
comes in. I mean, there's so many frameworks out there that
you could use to actually, you know, build a build a strategy
on what you're going to do. Personally, I am a NIST
cybersecurity framework fan, right? With the different
phases, but there's organizations that adhere to
whole other standards that have built their own standards, in my
opinion, and you know, maybe some people will be printed in
what I'm going to say, but, you know, I don't care which
framework you use, as long as you use a framework, you have a
plan that works for you. I'm happy, right? So that's also
what we try to explain that first chapter. I do mention
meter. And you mentioned ISO, or you mentioned a PCI DSS or you
mentioned Mississauga security framework. I explained to the
people in here, these are the frameworks look at these are the
highlights of these frameworks now go out and figure out what,
what's important to you. Obviously, if you're a financial
institution, PCI DSS will come up really quickly. And even
there, we try and give some practical examples. Like there's
this huge mapping sheet between all the different frameworks
that tells you you have the controls in this framework equal
the controls in that framework. So we refer to that to that
sheet to tell them you know, if you're already compliant with
this, but you want to look at the other one, just use that
cheat, do the mapping so that you don't do the work twice. But
at the same time, we don't want this to become a book on how to
use the frameworks. There's plenty of books out there that
explain these frameworks into details. You could go on
certification on once one framework itself. So we wanted
to explain why they're there and where it's important, but we
didn't want to go into the detail of, you know, this is how
each of them work.
Chris Goosen: I think that seems that sounds like a really,
really good approach. Honestly, and I, I, for one can't actually
wait to get my hands on this so that I could actually have a
have a look at that, because I think that's definitely
something that I've found particularly challenging kind of
entering into this this world is is the fact that everyone has a
framework that they look up to, and that is super important to
them. But the relationship between them, and then I think
it's that's a super important kind of introductory step for
sure.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: I agree. Yeah. facing the same
challenges, right for moving into ISO certification 28 27,001
for our own company. Oh, my gosh, it's like there's a whole
avalanche of stuff coming to you. And you're like, Really? So
yeah, no, it's getting trying to be practical. I think there's,
we could write 100 pages about one of the things but we
deliberately kept it, you know, short and sweet, I'd say.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, I think that it sounds like it. Right. And so
the question I had for you was, I mean, this so much as far as
security functionality goes within within the service,
right? But I think there's a lot of organizations that still have
this mentality that we've given out, we give Microsoft up
monthly subscription money, and we've put our data in their
service. Why do we have to worry about the security functionality
of this? Right? Shouldn't Microsoft be taking care of all
of the security functionality for us? Why are we having to
care about this? I mean, are you coming across that in Europe as
well? Is that something that you've seen?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yeah, I mean, less than less, to be
honest, because people are getting more and more used to
the cloud model where, you know, there was a segregation of
duties, where, you know, infrastructure, sure, that's
Microsoft Word, like physical security. Sure, let them take
care of that. But you know, the layer that you build on top of
that solutions that you build on top of that, you know, people
are starting to understand that that's your responsibility. Now,
there's still a whole long way to go. There are still a lot of
companies that try and get around why do we need x y, z.
But you know, the reality is is that whenever you see today,
These days in the news, there is breaches you're far and few in
between. Every day there is a breach. There's a leak or
something. I think, you know, gradually people will
understand. Alright, we need to do this. Like, you need to lock
your door a couple of hundred years back, no one locked your
doors. There were no locks. Right? The doors are open. Well,
today go out and find a house where there's no lock. Hmm.
Yeah, I think it's pretty much the same.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, I think that that makes sense. I think enable
multi factor everyone if you haven't done it MFA. It's just
my, my, my PSA for the day. I you know, we got to make sure to
pull that out in every episode, just because it's such an
important thing. You know, we see, I although I think the last
couple of weeks have been very much taken up by f5. And their
vulnerability that everyone seems to be bypassing or
whatever, but definitely a lot of the things that we're seeing
could easily be have been mitigated by just MFA, right?
But companies I think are just folks are not being educated and
and they're not kind of taking that active decision to, to go,
hey, let's see how we can continually improve this. This
is not the cloud is not set and forget, right? It doesn't matter
what any vendor tells you, you can't just go and throw your
data at a service, pay them and forget about it. Like there has
to be a continuous improvement model that, you know, you're
going to be looking at where the threats can come from, because
at the end of the day, the bad actors continue to evolve as
well. Right? And you can't, you can't just go Okay, well, this
is the assumed knowledge everyone has, and we're gonna
we're safe. Yeah, you might be safe today. That doesn't mean
you're safe tomorrow. Right? So I think that this whole thing
with f5 is really kind of shown. A lot of folks that are, you
know, a lot of organizations that are slower to move to the
cloud and stay or staying on prem, because security right are
now the ones that are targeted by this, you know, this thing in
their security, like their, their legacy infrastructure, if
you will, right. So this is a very, very interesting thing to
be kind of paying attention to
Michael Van Horenbeeck: We mentioned it in the book, a
little spoiler there, but it's about 68% of all breaches in the
cloud originate on premises like 68%. Yes, that's, that's a large
number. And again, you know, attackers are people with
intent. They'll always take the path of least resistance. If
it's easier to get into your cloud through your on prem
environment, they'll do that, right? And this is just true. I
mean, when a pen test happens, you should know, right? kudelski
does these tests, right? Whenever a pen test happens, I
rarely seen them go after Azure. At first, they're like, Okay,
let's try and get into the device. And we're into Active
Directory, then some letter Academy movement, and bam, we've
got your domain. And then from there, it's easy to get back
back up into the cloud. You know, that's where the
challenges lie. So the people that are full traditionally on
premises, they have a lot of work to be done there a lot more
than, you know, lowering your attack surface in the cloud, but
at the same time, it's very different, right, the things
that you have to deal with on premises No, they're not the
same as in the cloud, which is also one of the messages that
we're trying to get across is like, it is changing sure
devices device, that doesn't change. But you know, Cloud
Platform cloud applications, they operate in a very different
way. The your security is a very different way and therefore have
different security measures or how to approach that.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, and I mean, even getting down to managing
those that infrastructure, right, the way that you
typically would do that on premises versus the way that
you're possibly doing it today, it's very different in the way
you approach it. So it's kind of like I think the message really
is that you have to be able to adapt to the way that you know,
the new modern way of doing things and you can't be stuck in
the old world for too long, right. Otherwise, you're gonna
you're gonna lag behind. So yeah, that's so. So we've
talked, we've talked a lot about the book and honestly, I
personally can't wait to get my hands on a copy here. Can you
give us some information about where when how all of that?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Sure. So not sure when the podcast is
going to be released. But our target is to release July 13.
I've got a full weekend of copy editing, building the book and
you're getting the PDF ready. We've got the website up. So the
entry 65 security book comm where you can get to the book
files are actually to the government platform through
which we're selling the book, which is the same platform as
the office 365 for IT pros book. So money 13th the book will be
available, obviously, it will make a big splash on LinkedIn,
Twitter, the website itself, we'll make it known and then
hopefully people will find their way to the book itself as well.
Chris Goosen: Okay, and would you are you gonna be releasing
on Amazon as well? Oh,
Michael Van Horenbeeck: no, that's a deliberate choice we
we've made and actually I'm leaning on Tony's experience of
building the book for Amazon. There's a couple of things like
the the amount of effort going into building that book or the E
pub and making sure that In Amazon, that's one thing.
Secondly, Amazon doesn't support monthly updates. gumroad is
easy, because it's just changing the PDF like first one to
version two and off you go. Right, nothing else changes. And
because of that, I didn't want to take on more work. Plus, you
know, supporting the authors supporting the marketing, the
hosting everything for the book cost money. Amazon, you know,
takes a 70% cut on the book. Wow. Which, you know, it's great
because you reach a bigger audience. But at the end of the
day, I just think that the effort you put into it, and the
gains that you get from it, and the gains that people get from
it, are too liberal to justify using Amazon as a platform.
Chris Goosen: I think that makes sense. I mean, personally, I've,
I've always used the, the gumroad platform because I
prefer just having the PDF copy of the book, right. It's more
portable for me. I know others disagree with that, because I
want to use Kindle and whatnot. I you know, it's not my
preferred method of reading. So, you know, it is what it is. But
yeah, mix. I think that makes sense. And I think it's good
Good to get the message out there to folks like this one
platform. That's where you can go and get it. And that's also
where you get your your updates, right? Because that reminds me
how the subscription model works again. So you, you buy an
edition of the book and you get all updates that are part of
that edition, correct?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yes, Yes, correct. So there is a
yearly cycle. We're starting July of this year, which is
coincidentally called the 2026 or 20 2006 edition. But anyway,
so the 2020 edition runs up until June of next year, you buy
the book, you get all the updates that year and you know,
we are committing not just to updates of the chapters, but
this year we'll also committed to a practical guidance chapter
on the ATP on an Azure Sentinel chapter and Office ATP chapter.
So with the book, you know, you'll be getting that. And then
up until June, you'll get updates sometime next year,
March ish timeframe, will start thinking or building the new
book, which means new edition 2021 edition. We may you know,
do completely overhaul we may add more chapters into that
really depends on Oh, ever everything, you know, moves
along. I mean, we all know that Microsoft is doing shifting in
that space as well with the acquisition of cyber x in the OT
space. So we're closely monitoring that. And then based
on that, we'll build a new book, new edition, and from there on,
people who have bought the first book and can get the new one at
a discount, you know, kind of your appreciate their, your,
their loyalty to the book, and then they get updates for a year
as well. So there is no monthly fee, it's just a one off and
then you'll get the updates per year.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, fantastic. And I think what's what's great
about that, and certainly, you know, the way that I've
approached this with with the the other book is that the book
is so large now, it's gotten so big that it's it's a fantastic
reference. And realistically, I you know, I don't read through
the whole thing every time I get it. Now, I just like I read the
new chapters when I get the new chapters, but I know I have this
In a referenceable thing in my in my tool bag, if you will,
right where I can rip it out. And, you know, remember back in
the day when we had the exchange administrators pocket to get to
guide it's something like that.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: Yeah, well at the same time though I'm
really keen on making sure we don't bloat the book because
it's so easy to go over, you know a certain amount of pages.
Right now we're not it's five 600 pages, which is sizable by
itself. But once you go over that, like it becomes that huge
chunk and people start not reading certain chapters or they
start being selective which is which is fine, right, but I
really want to keep it you know, concise so that it is
digestible. You know, obviously some things just take like the
unwritten so many pages, we have them Defender ATP, it's just
because we need that much, right. We honestly we couldn't
have done it with less maybe we could have done 90 pages and you
know, cut some redundancy here and there but at the end of the
day, you need what you need. My goal is to keep it sizable, but
you will see, you know, talk to me in a year and maybe I'll be
six 700 pages.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, no. I mean, look, I fair enough. And I think
the thing is, given your experience in the industry, and
given your experience learning things, I think you have a
fairly good idea of what it takes to be able to get that
message out there in a way that is going to be useful to someone
without it being too bloated or to kind of, you know, too wordy,
but also, you know, where it's sometimes where it's just not
enough, right? Unfortunately, the internet is full of blog
posts that tackle a particular topic, but really just scratch
not even scratch the surface. Basically, they just kind of
give you a little bit of interest. You know, and you need
to like to everyone who has blogs credit, that's great. But
but sometimes sometimes you need to dig one level deeper. Right?
And I think the what's great about that your history with
with the other book, also you Your history as a, you know,
blog author and speaker and stuff is I think that you have
that balance, you know how to find that balance. And so yeah,
really looking forward to what you and the team have kind of
come up with here. I can't wait to get get my hands on a copy,
Michael Van Horenbeeck: you'll get a copy from me, but only as
you get feedback, because this is, you know, one of the
messages that we're going to push really hard. Um, that to
me, that book is a collaborative effort, right? Yes, the author
team has written something, but we can only improve, make it
better and make it you know, more suitable if people use the
feedback, right? If they email us and tell us we like it, or
Hey, you know, we're missing this piece, so that we know
maybe we haven't thought about it. Or maybe we didn't
prioritize it in the same way that people are asking for. Call
it a user voice. If 100 people email us and tell us we really
need this piece of information. And we as authors, we didn't
prioritize it as high, we might just shift it up in priority and
just add it into the book because there was too long for
it, right? So I'm really keen to see how that's gonna work. I
know that too. He's getting tons of feedback through his feedback
channels on the book, you know, even to correct things as wrong
because you never want to make mistakes. Because I'm like our
tech tech reviewer, he's done an amazing job. But you know, he's
going haywire through all the chapters, all the events that
we're firing at him all the things that he needs to test. I
mean, we're doing our best to make sure that it's you know,
without any spelling errors, grammar spelling, even me as a
copy editor. I'm not even native English speaker. So, you know,
things will slip but we'll, we're counting on that.
Chris Goosen: And I was actually just going to touch on that
point, right is I'm always amazed by the fact that and I've
read some of your works before where I've, you know, we've done
I've done you know, we've done work for the same vendor writing
vendor or whatever, and we've kind of reviewed each other's
stuff and I I'm always amazed that as someone who's not even
an English first language speaker, the level at which you
managed to crank out this this awesome work, right so you know,
Kudos to that. And I think this is something that everyone needs
to also understand is that the team and correct me if I'm
wrong, and I actually like you to introduce the team that you
know, that you're working with, because I actually don't know
everyone personally, like, I know you. But you guys are all
based in Europe, right?
Michael Van Horenbeeck: No, no, not really. So we've got a mic
on it, or both also, in VPS, do a lot of work in the security
space. They're based out of the United United Arab Emirates.
There are actually I think I'm our move to Dubai right now. So
they're based out of there. I've got a couple of folks in the
Netherlands. I've got as you can see, lovely works for me, as
well. And, you know, it just so happened that when I started
reaching out to folks that they were the first to respond and
said, Yeah, sure. We want to do that. But yeah, it's been it's
been helpful because, you know, less timezone issues. It's only
a couple of hours apart. But we'll we'll see. I mean,
reaching out to the For the Office ATP chapter, I think we
might actually cross jump over to to the US to onboard someone
else. But as far as the team goes, so we've got alarm on a
tour doing the NBA TV chapter, we've got Peter who's doing
Intune and identity. We've got Thomas was focusing on
information protection, which, you know, coincidentally you
could say it is more compliance feature rather than security
feature, but as you said, to kind of blogs to it. Next to
building the book in the the copy editing, I'm doing em Kaz
during the introduction, and also doing some work here and
there and the other chapters, and then task is doing the all
all up review.
Chris Goosen: Okay. And I think what's great about having, like
an international team like that is everyone has their
potentially slightly different market. So there's going to be
slightly different point of view and slightly different
experience coming into it and blending it all together. I
think that's really powerful too.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: It's incredibly useful, like in the
talks that we've had, that is questions that we've had. I've
learned so much like, insights from from Amar in certain things
and how to approach it even you marketing the book, but also
structuring the book. We've had another meeting last week, where
we were just talking, like brainstorming, all of a sudden
everyone was like, Yeah, wow, that's a great idea, just by
having that interaction. And that's, you know, it's a
learning process for each and every one of us. And, you know,
it's fun. So, yeah,
Chris Goosen: well, that's super exciting. Honestly, I think I
can't I can't wait. Like I said, and it's really the timing on
this is absolutely perfect. Like you couldn't have picked a
better you know, a better time for it. So I think with that, I
mean, just kind of keeping keeping an eye on the on the
clock here. I know. We've all got other things to get to.
Nick. I just wanted to just to check in that. You're still
breathing, buddy. I I'm sorry. I've taken over.
Nicolas Blank: If the questions weren't so good. I throw in some
more but you're doing great.
Chris Goosen: Michael before we let you go As we always kind of
do when we when we kind of, you know, tie off the end of the
show. How do you want to be found can obviously be great if
you want to develop the URL for the book again, how do people
find you on social media if you want to be found, but I know you
have a fairly fairly active social profile so go ahead,
Michael Van Horenbeeck: not as active as I used to be just
because I'm writing the book. So but you know, on Twitter I am
and then hybrid, I think that's the easiest way to get a hold of
me because my last name, you don't even try to pronounce it
in English. So advanta hybrid. From there, you've got the URL,
you'll have the book title, you'll see my blog post.
Obviously, I'm on LinkedIn as well but has my full back name
and Vanderbeek. But through Twitter, you'll easily find me
I've got my own blog at the vet hybrid calm so you can get to
there or the book of website m365securitybook.com as well,
but I'll share it with you so that you can post it with the
recording as well.
Chris Goosen: Yeah, thank you. I think we'll We'll definitely
make sure to put all of these in the in the show notes for the
for the episode as well so that we can kind of get that out
there. But thanks again for for taking the time to speak to us.
This is super exciting sort of announcement, I guess. And we're
really pleased that you came on to talk to us about that. And I
know it's afternoon time for you in Europe, but I'm sure you
still got a few things to get on with for the day. So
Michael Van Horenbeeck: unfortunately, yes. Like, you know, you've got
a whole day and so I'm halfway my well actually done with my
day, two more hours a year I can sign off. But yeah, anyway,
guys, I really appreciate you having me on the call inviting
me and talk about the book. Really appreciate that as well.
Chris Goosen: Hey, no problem. Thank you. We're always happy to
have you. So thanks for coming back.
Michael Van Horenbeeck: My pleasure. Cheers.
Chris Goosen: Go. Okay, guys. Bye!,
Warren du Toit: everyone. Before you go, we just wanted to say
thank you for listening. We really enjoyed putting this
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thearchitects.cloud. Alternatively, drop us a tweet.
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