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In this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad Sams and Paul Thurrott discuss organizational shakeups at Microsoft, including the recent departure of the company’s Executive Vice President of business development.

Microsoft has announced plans to retire the Search-MailboxAuditLog and New-MailboxAuditLogSearch cmdlets in Exchange Online. The company will deprecate both cmdlets in favor of the Search-UnifiedAuditLog cmdlet in March this year. The Search-MailboxAuditLog and New-MailboxAuditLogSearch cmdlets in Microsoft Exchange Online are used for searching mailbox audit logs. The Search-MailboxAuditLog cmdlet performs a synchronous search of mailbox…

Microsoft has added support for aggregated reporting in public preview within its Defender for Endpoint solution. This new feature aims to overcome limitations in event reporting and improve data analysis for endpoint security. What is the problem? Essentially, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint collects a lot of data from various points in enterprise networks to detect…

Microsoft will soon require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for accessing the Microsoft 365 admin center. Starting on February 3, the company will begin rolling out this new MFA requirement in phases at the tenant level. Microsoft 365 admin center is a web-based portal that allows administrators to manage their organization’s users, settings, licenses, subscriptions, and more….

Sophos has raised an alert about a wave of ransomware attacks where threat actors manipulated Microsoft Teams by impersonating tech support personnel. These attackers used this tactic to gain initial access to systems, steal sensitive data, and deploy ransomware. According to a report published on Tuesday, Sophos linked these attacks to two threat actors identified…

Microsoft Teams is getting a new update that will allow participants to edit their display names in real time during live meetings. This new personalization feature will begin rolling out to participants using the Microsoft Teams desktop and web apps on Windows and macOS. In Microsoft Teams, an “(edited)” label will appear next to a…

Microsoft has issued a fix to address a bug impacting Windows Server 2022 machines with two or more NUMA nodes. The company has acknowledged that this issue previously caused these systems to fail during startup. What is NUMA? Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) is a memory architecture used in multiprocessor systems where the time it takes…

Microsoft is working on several new features for its Intune service. The company will introduce a new integration of Enterprise App Catalog apps with Windows Autopilot for enhanced deployment and management. Microsoft Intune Enterprise App Management is a feature that helps administrators discover, deploy, and manage applications from the Enterprise App Catalog. It provides a…

Microsoft launched Microsoft Teams in March 2016 as a real-time team collaboration tool. Since then, it has seen substantial adoption inside Microsoft and outside. According to a recent Microsoft announcement, Teams has 270 million monthly active users, and 3 million organisations use it. With Teams sensitivity labels, managing sensitive data has become easier for administrators….

Microsoft is moving forward with the phased retirement of its Azure AD Graph API service, which began in September 2024. The company has confirmed that starting February 1, 2025, existing applications will no longer be able to send requests to the Azure AD Graph API. Azure AD Graph API was a service that allowed developers…

Microsoft has fixed a critical issue that had been causing Microsoft 365 apps and classic Outlook to crash on Windows Server 2019 and 2016. The company identified the root cause as a recent Microsoft Office update, which introduced the React Native framework integration to enhance functionality across its suite of apps. React Native is a…

The Biden administration issued a new cybersecurity executive order (EO) on January 16, 2025. This directive introduces stringent standards for software companies working with the US government and mandates greater transparency from providers to bolster national digital security. The 40-page executive order signed by the Biden administration on Thursday addresses multiple cybersecurity concerns. These include…