Russell Smith

This Week in IT, Microsoft announces Copilot Chat and pay-as-you go agents – Outlook and Teams is getting a unified contacts experience, and Patch Tuesday causes a problem for some Citrix users. Episode overview This Week in IT, we look at Microsoft’s new Copilot Chat feature, a unified contact experience for Teams and Outlook, and…

This Week in IT, Microsoft is set to layoff underperforming employees, website certificates could be set to expire much faster, and Microsoft urges orgs to patch AD domain controllers as a new vulnerability is identified. Episode overview This week’s IT news highlights Microsoft’s plans for layoffs, changes to website certificate expiration, and a new Active…

Newly provisioned devices should use Microsoft Entra Join directly rather than starting with on-premises Active Directory (AD) and syncing to Entra ID. This way, organizations can fully benefit from modern Windows features and streamlined management. But many organizations get stuck using Entra Hybrid Join without plans to move to cloud-native setups. One major blocker is…

This Week in IT, I look at the year in review with stories about new features that came to Microsoft Loop, the beginning of the end for WS Update Services, a new Microsoft app for hybrid teams, how Teams got a Slack-like makeover, and the timeline for phasing out the legacy Outlook client for the…

This Week in IT, Google asks US government to break apart Microsoft’s exclusive deal with Open AI, organizations are struggling to keep up with AI storage requirements, and some Windows news for enterprises and Copilot+ PC owners. Links and resources Episode overview This week’s IT news covers Google’s request to break apart Microsoft’s deal with…

This Week in IT, Microsoft talks Windows 11 hardware requirements as Windows 10 gets closer to end of life, a new search experience is coming to Windows, plus some important security updates. Links and resources Episode overview In this week’s episode, Russell discusses various updates and news related to Microsoft, including Windows 11 hardware requirements,…

This Week in IT, Microsoft isn’t collecting your data to train AI models and a rundown of the most important Copilot updates from Ignite 2024. Thanks to Semperis for sponsoring this episode of This Week in IT! Episode overview This Week in IT, there’s a rumor circulating about Microsoft using customer data to train AI…

Security firm ESET is warning that RomCom, a Russian Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group, is actively exploiting two zero-day security flaws to plant backdoors on systems. Firefox is being exploited through a use-after-free bug (CVE-2024-9680) in the animation timeline feature, which can lead to code being run in the restricted context of the browser. The…

CEOs are optimistic about the impact of AI and are increasing budgets for IT departments. Research from Salesforce finds that 84% think “AI will be as significant to businesses as the internet,”. The research also found that CIOs are having to serve as Chief AI Officers, with Deloitte research showing 63% of CIOs reporting directly…

Microsoft is taking legal action to disrupt 240 websites owned by a cybercrime group in Egypt. The sites are connected to Abanoub Nady (MRxC0DER), who develops and sells DIY phishing kits under the ONNX brand name. The ONNX name is being used fraudulently to sell the do-it-yourself phishing kits, which are used by many cybercriminals…

Microsoft has long been part of the FIDO Alliance, a consortium of technology companies championing a passwordless future. The company is taking another step to making passkeys the future by introducing API support in Windows 11 for third-party passkey providers. In a November 22 blog post, Microsoft said that it is releasing updates to WebAuthn…

Some European Microsoft 365 users started the week this morning without access to Microsoft 365 services. Microsoft said on X that was investigating an issue impacting users accessing Exchange Online and some functionality in Microsoft Teams calendar. The issue mostly appeared to affect users trying to access Outlook through the web browser. Although, some users…