Blog
Writing from the Cloud Kings team
Practical notes on Azure, Microsoft 365, security, and compliance — written when we have something worth saying rather than to a content calendar.
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Security
Fake IT support in Microsoft Teams: settings that stop it
Scammers message staff in Teams posing as the help desk. Which external access and remote-help settings to change, and what to tell your people.
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Compliance
Moving to GCC High: what changes for your staff
New sign-ins, new web addresses, phones and laptops set up again. What your staff will notice after a Microsoft 365 GCC High move, and how to prepare them.
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Compliance
Azure Government for Defense Contractors | Cloud Kings
Why defense contractors pair Azure Government with GCC High for file servers, AVD, databases and apps holding CUI or ITAR data, and how it differs from Azure.
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Compliance
GCC High Migration Cost: What Drives It | Cloud Kings
Why we won't publish a GCC High migration price, and the nine things that set yours: licensing, tenant build, data, apps, calling, Azure, users, upkeep.
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Compliance
GCC High Sharing and Teams with Partners | Cloud Kings
How partners in Commercial and GCC share files, chat, meet and call with a GCC High tenant, what each side has to set up, and how to keep CUI on your side.
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Compliance
GCC High Enclave or Full Migration? | Cloud Kings
Should only CUI users move to a GCC High enclave, or your whole company? Who each option suits, what changes for users, cost drivers and a decision list.
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Compliance
What CMMC Level 2 Actually Costs (and What Drives It)
The five things you are actually paying for, why scope moves the number more than anything else, and why we will not publish a figure.
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Compliance
SPRS Score Explained: Why Yours Is Negative
How the NIST SP 800-171 self-assessment score is calculated, why a negative number is normal rather than alarming, and who is actually reading it.
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Compliance
GCC vs GCC High vs Commercial: Which Do You Need?
For a defense contractor the real choice is between two Microsoft 365 environments. What decides it, and why GCC High is not automatically the safer answer.
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Compliance
What Counts as CUI? FCI vs CUI for Defense Contractors
The question that decides whether you owe 15 basic safeguarding requirements or all 110 controls — and why unmarked information is the trap that catches people.
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Compliance
CMMC Phase II is still paused. Your signature still counts.
Three months on: the pause is in contracting instructions, the task force report is unpublished, and nothing you owe under DFARS 252.204-7012 has moved.
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Compliance
CMMC Shared Responsibility Matrix: Controls Nobody Owns
Most contractors don't fail on the controls they got wrong. They fail on the ones both parties assumed the other had. Free matrix template inside.
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Compliance
How to Choose a CMMC Partner: Questions and Red Flags
The questions that actually produce different answers from different providers — plus the ones every provider passes, and the red flags worth walking away from.
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Azure Virtual Desktop
Ten reasons to use Azure Virtual Desktop, and three not to
Ten reasons Azure Virtual Desktop is worth deploying, with the caveat attached to each — and three situations where it is the wrong answer.
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Azure Virtual Desktop
What is Azure Virtual Desktop?
What Azure Virtual Desktop actually is, how it differs from a VPN and from Windows 365, when it is the right answer, and when it is not.