Blog

Microsoft has teamed up with international law enforcement to dismantle RedVDS, a cybercrime platform tied to more than $40 million in reported U.S. losses. The takedown exposes how this global crime-as-a-service marketplace enabled criminals to rent cheap, disposable virtual machines for AI-driven scams and large-scale fraud. How did RedVDS operate as a cybercrime-as-a-service platform? Microsoft…

This post will explain what a mapped network drive is in Windows, how to map a network drive, how and why to unmap one, and some general troubleshooting tips to help retain your sanity in even the simplest of implementations. How to map a network drive in Windows 10 or Windows 11 Let me show…

Microsoft has officially announced the retirement of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), marking the formal end of its lifecycle as a supported Windows deployment solution. The legacy toolkit will no longer receive fixes, support, security patches, updates, or enhancements for newer versions of Windows. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) is a free solution that automates and…

Microsoft has released the January 2026 Patch Tuesday updates for all supported versions of Windows 11. This release brings fixes for 112 new vulnerabilities across Windows, Office, Azure, SharePoint Server, SQL Server, SMB Server, and other components. On the quality and experience updates front, this month’s Patch Tuesday updates introduce several notable changes across Windows…

In a world where digital threats evolve faster than defenses, the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 warns that AI-driven attacks, rising geopolitical tensions, and fragile supply chains are fundamentally reshaping cyber risk. The report warns that organizations that are slow to adapt risk triggering cascading disruptions across critical supply chains and the global economy. According to…

For small and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft Azure is one of the most pivotal and influential suites of services that can drive growth and efficiency like no other. Without requiring a substantial upfront investment in many cases, it’s easy to see why many enterprises are adopting Azure for public cloud, and for IT professionals and administrators…

Microsoft is simplifying security operations with the launch of a new UEBA Behaviors layer in Microsoft Sentinel. This new AI-powered feature is designed to help security teams quickly understand complex activity patterns to speed up the threat detection and investigation process. Security teams often struggle with the overwhelming volume and complexity of raw logs coming…

Microsoft is giving IT administrators more control over AI on corporate devices with a new policy that lets them automatically uninstall the Microsoft Copilot app under specific conditions. This policy, called RemoveMicrosoftCopilotApp, is currently available to Windows 11 Insiders on the Dev and Beta Channels. Up until now, Microsoft has allowed administrators to remove Microsoft…

When Microsoft retires a long-standing component like WINS, many organizations treat it as a footnote. Something to remove when convenient. But WINS retirement is more than an outdated feature being switched off. It’s a signal that the last remnants of legacy NT-era assumptions are finally being swept out of modern architectures. For IT leaders, this…

Virtual machines are supposed to be isolated by design, but a newly discovered ESXi exploit toolkit proves that assumption can be dangerously wrong. Security researchers disclosed how attackers are escaping guest VMs and taking full control of the hypervisor itself, turning the foundation of virtualized infrastructure into the primary attack surface. According to security researchers…

On this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott discuss the latest chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm that were announced at CES in Las Vegas this week.

Microsoft is strengthening security operations in Microsoft Defender with AI-powered incident prioritization that cuts through alert noise. The new feature utilizes machine learning–based incident scoring to identify the most critical risks and facilitate faster, more confident responses. According to Microsoft, security teams are often overwhelmed by a high volume of security incidents, many assigned the…