Blog

As organizations transition to hybrid and cloud-native environments, understanding the distinctions of Entra ID vs Active Directory becomes crucial. This article explores architecture, capability, integration models, and security, providing IT professionals with a clear comparison of the two solutions. Entra ID vs Active Directory – What are these platforms? Microsoft Active Directory, introduced in 1999…

Security researchers have identified a critical flaw in Microsoft Entra ID that could let attackers seize Global Administrator access by exploiting trusted first-party applications. This vulnerability poses a serious risk, especially for organizations using hybrid Active Directory environments. What is the exploitation technique? Last week, Datadog published a comprehensive report demonstrating a critical privilege escalation…

A trade group of European cloud providers has secured key concessions from Microsoft over its software licensing practices. Members of the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) can now offer pay-as-you-go plans, match Azure pricing, and privately host customer workloads. According to CISPE, this new agreement will allow members to offer Microsoft software to…

On this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott dive deep into the complexities Microsoft faces with its Copilot assistant against the competition.

Cybersecurity researchers have identified a new social engineering attack that builds on the previously known ClickFix technique. According to Check Point, attackers are already conducting dry runs of the new FileFix method to test malware delivery tactics in the wild. The FileFix attack manipulates users into running malicious commands by exploiting familiar Windows behavior. When…

The dsregcmd command is an important tool for troubleshooting device authentication and registration issues in Microsoft Entra ID. It helps admins figure out if a device is correctly joined to Microsoft Entra ID, hybrid-joined, or domain-joined Active Directory. Running dsregcmd By analyzing the output of dsregcmd /status, IT administrators can diagnose and resolve authentication, compliance, and…

Microsoft has announced the public preview of Deep Research in Azure AI Foundry, a powerful API and SDK-based service that integrates OpenAI’s advanced agentic research capabilities directly into the Azure ecosystem. This new offering allows developers to build intelligent research agents that can autonomously plan, analyze, and synthesize information at scale. Earlier this year, OpenAI…

Microsoft has announced plans to reduce the Delicensing Resiliency threshold from 10,000 to 5,000 non-trial Exchange Online licenses. This update gives mid-sized enterprises stronger safeguards against accidental mailbox disruptions. The Delicensing Resiliency feature in Exchange Online is designed to protect organizations from accidental or unintended removal of mailbox licenses, which can disrupt email access and…

Microsoft has announced an Extended Security Update program for Exchange 2016 and 2019, as well as Skype for Business 2015 and 2019. This program will let organizations that aren’t yet ready to upgrade to the Subscription Editions continue to receive security updates for these older products after they reach end of support on October 14,…

Microsoft is ending feature updates for Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 PCs starting next year. While security updates will still be provided through October 2028, accessing new features will require an upgrade to Windows 11. In an updated support document (via The Verge), Microsoft stated that users with a Microsoft 365 Personal and Family…

This guide covers syntax, practical examples, common use cases, and troubleshooting tips to assist with your daily duties with AD management tasks. What does Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership do? The Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership cmdlet gets the Active Directory (AD) groups that have a specified user, group, computer, or service account as a member. You will need to make sure a…

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Security Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Entra. This release helps organizations leverage intelligent automation to streamline operations, strengthen security, and make faster, smarter decisions. “Organizations using Security Copilot have seen a 54% reduction in time to resolve device policy conflicts, and a 22.8% drop in alerts…