Russell Smith

Qualcomm unveiled laptop chips with 18 cores and an 80‑TOPS AI engine, promising multi‑day battery life and remote device control. Meanwhile, Microsoft is quietly giving away AI chat in Office, and opening its Copilot platform to Anthropic’s Claude models. Thanks to Cayosoft for sponsoring this episode of This Week in IT. Links and resources Episode…

When Drift, acquired by Salesloft last year, suffered a breach in August 2025, the incident underscored a problem security teams have long underestimated: OAuth integrations. Attackers leveraged stolen tokens to move laterally, gaining access to Salesforce and Google Workspace environments across hundreds of organizations. The breach highlights how OAuth—a technology meant to simplify identity and…

In this episode of Petri Dish, CTO and Co-Founder of Nudge Security Jaime Blasco, provides an in-depth analysis of the recent Salesloft Drift breach, highlighting vulnerabilities in SaaS OAuth integrations and the sophisticated tactics used by threat actors. This discussion is a must-watch for IT professionals looking to understand the evolving landscape of cyberthreats and…

This Week in IT, a global phishing‑as‑a‑service empire goes down, the EU forces Microsoft to unbundle Teams, and even Microsoft admits Copilot might not pay for itself. Thanks to Cayosoft for sponsoring this episode of This Week in IT. Links and resources Episode overview This Week in IT, Russell covers recent developments in IT security,…

Active Directory (AD) has been around a long time, but it remains the primary target for attackers. Research shows that nine out of ten breaches involve AD or Entra ID. Many environments today are hybrid, which further complicates keeping organizations secure. While free tools give you a quick snapshot of risk, enterprise grade security requires deeper…

This week in IT, Microsoft fixes more than 80 bugs—eight critical and two zero‑days—while simultaneously rolling out a swath of new AI‑powered features. At the same time, IT admins will be able to block Office apps from saving files locally. And VBScript is headed for the dumpster truck. Links and resources Episode overview This Week…

Gartner says AI PCs are about to go from niche to standard—31 % of all PCs this year and virtually everything by 2029. At the same time, Microsoft and Cloudflare are quietly building a new web where pages answer your questions directly, potentially leaving Google’s search model in the dust. And just when Copilot promises…

Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, has been outspoken about the way artificial intelligence (AI) companies are harvesting content. His argument is simple but important: AI vendors are scraping websites, including those of small publishers like Petri, and using the content to train their models. That same content is then re-served to users in the form of…

Microsoft Active Directory (AD) sits at the heart of most enterprise IT environments. When it goes down, employees can’t log in, applications stop working, and business grinds to a halt. Built‑in tools, like Windows Server Backup, offer only basic system‑state backups. And the AD Recycle Bin can recover deleted objects for a limited time but…

Elon Musk isn’t just tweeting—he’s launching Macrohard, a multi‑agent AI venture designed to simulate Microsoft itself. ESET researchers have spotted PromptLock, the world’s first AI‑powered ransomware proof‑of‑concept, and Microsoft quietly made Windows Backup for Organizations generally available, giving you a way to preserve user settings and app lists ahead of the Windows 10 end‑of‑life. Links…

This Week in IT, malvertising is getting smarter. Attackers are hijacking Microsoft’s own login flow to steal your credentials via ADFS – and your end‑users might never know. Plus: Microsoft’s Project Ire promises AI‑powered malware detection without AV signatures, and a botched August update forces an OOB patch after ‘Reset this PC’ goes missing. Links…

At last year’s Ignite, Microsoft announced a set of Microsoft 365 companion apps for Windows 11. These apps—People, File Search, and Calendar—are designed to live in the taskbar and give business users quick access to their Microsoft 365 data. They’re rolling out this month, though IT administrators will need to enable them; they won’t simply…