Archive on Justin Verstijnen

Entra ID Custom CSS styling

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Info

This feature of Entra ID has been deprecated which I find very unfortunate, but security first. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/fundamentals/reference-company-branding-css-template

Everybody who is managing Entra ID tenants ever saw this Custom CSS option during the wizard:

With this option, you can style some options in your sign-in pages to your own likings, enabling you to virtually use any CSS control available. In this guide I will show you how I have leveraged this option to change the sign-in pages to my own style. After some hours of trying different options, my sign-in page looks like this:

Welcome to justinverstijnen.nl v2

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to justinverstijnen.nl v2

Welcome to my completely renewed website. The past month I’ve been busy rebuilding my old Wordpress website to a completely new website based on GitHub Pages. I wanted to enhance this website on the following areas:

Light/Dark mode
Better experience on mobile devices
Uniform pages and posts
Scalable and future-proof solution

Why this new update?

My old website was great, but with Wordpress and some specific requirements I had, it became obsolete to me. I couldn’t find a great skin other than I already had for the complete lifecycle of it which I still really like. It required me to have around 300 lines of extra CSS to get the website to my likings but still had an inconsistent experience across multiple devices. Also I needed around 28 plugins to make everything work, making it a mess sometimes.

CompTIA Security+ Course notes

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction to the study course

For this study I’ll follow the official book called: CompTIA Security+ Complete Study Guide. The book contains 6 different subjects with some categorizations.

The Exam Security+

The objectives are:

Assess the security posture of an enterprise environment and recommend and implement appropriate security solutions.
Monitor and secure hybrid environments, including cloud, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), and operational technology.
Operate with an awareness of applicable regulations and policies, including principles of governance, risk, and compliance.
Identify, analyze, and respond to security events and incidents

The scoring is:

Azure Key Vault

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Azure Key Vault is a type of vault used to store sensitive technical information, such as:

Certificates
Secrets
Keys

What sets Azure Key Vault apart from a traditional password manager is that it allows software to integrate with the vault. Instead of hardcoding a secret, the software can retrieve it from the vault. Additionally, it is possible to rotate a secret every month, enabling the application to use a different secret each month.

The MITRE ATTACK Framework

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The MITRE ATTACK (ATT&CK) Framework is a framework which describes all stages and methods cyberattacks attacks are launched on companies in the last 15 years. The main purpose of the framework is to help Red and Blue security teams to harden their systems and to provide a library of known attacks to help mitigate them.

MITRE is the organization who is in charge of this community-driven framework and is a non-profit organization. ATT&CK stands for:

The Zero Trust-model

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Zero Trust model is a security model to enhance your security posture by using 3 basic principles, and segmenting aspects of your IT environment into pillars.

The 3 primary principles are:

Verify Explicitly
Least privileged access
Assume Breach

At first, those terms seem very unclear to me. To further clarify the principles, I have added some practice examples to further understand what they mean:


Principle	Outcomes
Verify Explicity	Ensure people are really who they say they are Audit every login attempt from specific users Audit login attempts Block access from non-approved countries
Least privileged access	Assign users only the permissions they need, not more Assign only the roles when they need them using PIM Use custom roles when default roles expose too much permissions
Assume breach	At every level, think about possible breaches Segment your network Password-based authentication only is too weak

The model is the best illustrated like this:

Solved: August 2024 updates breaks GPO Item level targeting - user in group

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

If you are managing Windows Servers, Group Policies are a great way to distribute settings to your endpoints. However, a recent update of August 2024 in Windows Server 2022 and 2019 breaks user filtering in Group Policy (GPO) Item Level Targeting

The problem itself

When applying printers, registery settings or drive maps to users, we use Group Policy Item level targeting to filter users so only users with a group membership gets the policy applied.

Introduction to the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark (MCSB)

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To have a good overview of how secure your complete IT environment is, Microsoft released the Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark, which is an collection of high-impact security recommendations you can use to secure your cloud services, even when utilizing a hybrid environment. When using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, this MCSB is included in the recommendations.

Checking domains of the Cloud Security Benchmark

The Microsoft Cloud Security Benchmark checks your overall security and gives you recommendations about the following domains:

Introduction to the Azure Well-Architected Framework

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The 5 pillars of the Well-Architected Framework are:


Pillar	Target
Reliability	The ability to recover a system and/or contine to work
Security	Secure the environment in all spots
Cost Optimization	Maximize the value when minimizing the costs
Operational Excellence	The processes that keep a system running
Performance Efficiency	The ability to adapt to changes

Like it is shown in the image up here is that the Well-Architected Framework is the heart of all Cloud processes. Without this well done, all other processes can fail.

Cloud Adoption Framework Introduction (CAF)

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

More and more organizations are moving to the cloud. In order to do this succesful, we can use the Cloud Adoption Framework which is described by Microsoft.

The framework is a succesful order of processes and guidelines which companys can use to increase the success of adopting the cloud. The framework is described in the diagram below:

The CAF has the following steps:

Strategy: Define the project, define what you want to achieve and define the business outcomes.
Plan: Plan your migration, determine the plans and make sure the environment readiness is at a good level.
Ready (and migrate): Prepare your new cloud environment for planned changes and migrate your workloads to the cloud.
Optimize: After migrating to the cloud, optimize your environment by using the beste solutions possible and innovate at this level.
Secure: Improve the security of your workloads and plan your perodical security checks.
Manage: Manage operations for cloud and hybrid solutions.
Govern: Govern your environment and its workloads.

Intention of use

Increase the chance of your cloud success
Gives you a best practice of how to perform the migration by proven methodology
Ensures you don’t miss a crucial step

Intended users/audience

IT Decision makers
Company Management Teams
Companies who want to profit from cloud solutions
Companies that are planning to migrate to the cloud
Technicians and project managers for planning the migration

For more information, check out this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/scenarios/

AI-900 My learning journey

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What is AI and what does Azure offer?

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. It is a term for software that can make predictions, calculations, and estimates. It can act “smart” in a way that looks like human thinking.

Machine Learning (ML) is a type of AI. With ML, the system learns from the input data. More good data often means better results as the service has more data to base its decisions on.

MS-100 + MS-101 Course notes

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

These notes cover the main concepts I studied around the MS-100 and MS-101 era of Microsoft 365 administration. The course material focused heavily on identity, access, device management, information governance and security. Product names, portals and individual features have changed over time, but many of the underlying principles are still useful when thinking about how a Microsoft 365 environment should be designed and operated.

The common theme across almost every subject is that Microsoft 365 is not just a collection of applications. Identity connects users to services, device management determines how trusted endpoints are configured, governance controls how information is handled and security tools bring signals from different parts of the environment together.

MD-100 + MD-101 Course notes

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These notes cover the main subjects I studied for MD-100 and MD-101 during the Windows 10 and Microsoft Endpoint Manager era. The exams focused on deploying Windows, managing devices and user data, securing endpoints, applying policies and keeping a desktop environment healthy over time.

Some names and individual services belonged specifically to that period. The useful concepts are broader: understand how Windows works, choose an appropriate deployment method, separate user data from the operating system, manage configuration centrally, protect identities and devices, and introduce changes in controlled stages.

70-742 Course notes

Thu, 14 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These notes cover the main subjects from 70-742: Identity with Windows Server 2016. The course focused on Active Directory Domain Services, users and groups, service accounts, replication, Group Policy, certificates, federation and rights management.

Active Directory is easier to manage when it is treated as an identity system rather than a directory full of user accounts. Its database, DNS records, replication topology, sites, policies and certificate services all contribute to how users and computers authenticate and receive access.

70-741 Course notes

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These notes cover the main subjects from 70-741: Networking with Windows Server 2016. The course moved from IP addressing into DHCP, DNS, IP Address Management, routing, remote access, Network Policy Server, Distributed File System and BranchCache.

The individual server roles are easier to understand when they are treated as parts of one network service. DHCP gives a client its configuration, DNS helps it find services, routing moves traffic between networks and access policies determine which users and devices are allowed to connect.

70-740 Course notes

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These notes cover the main subjects from 70-740: Installation, Storage, and Compute with Windows Server 2016. The exam combined operating system deployment, storage, Hyper-V, containers, clustering, backup and monitoring into one large technical foundation.

Some technologies in this article belong specifically to the Windows Server 2016 period. Nano Server, the original Windows container tooling and several deployment workflows changed considerably afterwards. The architecture principles remain useful: keep the server installation as small as practical, separate workloads, design storage around performance and resilience, automate repeatable configuration and test every recovery path before it is needed.