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Microsoft has started testing a streamlined approach to enable the Administrator Protection feature in Windows 11. The latest Windows 11 Canary builds introduce a new setting that allows users to turn on this security feature without needing IT administrator approval. What is Administrator protection? Microsoft first introduced the Administrator protection feature in the Windows 11…

Microsoft announced this week that it will end support for Office apps on Windows 10 later this year, aligning with the operating system’s end-of-support date. The company strongly advises both consumers and businesses to upgrade to Windows 11 for continued updates and optimal performance. “Microsoft 365 apps will no longer be supported on Windows 10…

In this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott discuss how Microsoft is using Copilot to raise the price of its Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions just days after announcing new on-demand AI agents for the commercial version of the AI assistant.

In this post, I will demonstrate how to perform an in-place upgrade to Windows Server 2025 from one of your existing Windows Servers. Reminder: Microsoft fully supports in-place upgrades to Windows Server 2025 from Windows Server 2012 R2 and later versions. In this article, I’ll show you how to perform the upgrade from the command…

Microsoft has identified a compatibility issue between the January 2025 Patch Tuesday updates and specific Citrix software installations. The company confirmed on the Windows Release Health Dashboard that the latest updates may fail on devices running Citrix’s Session Recording software version 2411. Citrix Session Recording is a software solution that enables organizations to record and…

Last month, Microsoft announced plans to roll out a new feature that enables users to customize the location of notifications in Microsoft Teams. This new setting is currently available in public preview for the new Microsoft Teams desktop client for Windows. Typically, Microsoft Teams’ banner notifications appear at the bottom right corner of the screen….

Microsoft is introducing a new Threat classification feature in Defender for Office 365 to improve email security. This tool leverages AI and machine learning to help security teams identify and understand the intent behind email threats. The latest update allows administrators to incorporate Threat classification information into key features of the Defender portal, improving detection,…

In this article we’ll cover the essential SQL Server data types and discuss their common usage. Data is at the core of all relational database systems and SQL Server supports many different types of data and each data type represents a specific category of data. Each of the different data types have different uses and…

Microsoft introduced today a new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat experience for commercial customers. This service extends the existing free AI chat functionality with an option to use pay-as-you-go AI agents that will be accessible directly from the chat conversation. Microsoft 365 commercial customers will have access to a secure and reliable chat experience backed by…

Microsoft released yesterday the January 2025 Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 and Windows 10. This month’s Patch Tuesday updates include fixes for 159 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Hyper-V, SharePoint Server, Azure, and more. “This is the largest number of CVEs addressed in any single month since at least 2017 and is more than double…

In this guide about Active Directory (AD) security, we’re going to detail five steps that IT admins need to follow to secure Active Directory environments in an organization. There are many best practices you’ll need to be familiar with to ensure Active Directory security, including restricting the use of privileged accounts, monitoring Windows Event Log…

Microsoft has announced the general availability of the new unified contacts experience in Microsoft Teams and Outlook. This new feature is currently available to all Outlook users and will be gradually rolled out to Microsoft Teams users by April 30, 2025. The new unified contacts experience aims to improve collaboration by allowing Microsoft Entra ID…