auditing

  1. Windows 11 September 2025 Patch: KB5065431 SSU+LCU for 22621/22631

    Microsoft released a cumulative security update today for Windows 11’s servicing branches 22621 and 22631 — published as KB5065431 (OS Builds 22621.5909 and 22631.5909) — that combines a Latest Cumulative Update (LCU) with a servicing‑stack update (SSU) and carries a set of security and quality...
  2. Copilot Studio Enables Inline Real-Time Enforcement via External Monitors

    Microsoft’s Copilot Studio has moved from built‑in guardrails to active, near‑real‑time intervention: organizations can now route an agent’s planned actions to external monitors that approve or block those actions while the agent is executing, enabling step‑level enforcement that ties existing...
  3. Near-Real-Time Runtime Security for Copilot Studio in Power Platform

    Microsoft has quietly but meaningfully shifted the balance of power between autonomous AI agents and enterprise defenders: Copilot Studio now supports near‑real‑time runtime security controls that let organizations route an agent’s planned actions through external monitors (Microsoft Defender...
  4. Nadella's GPT-5 Prompts: A Practical Copilot Blueprint for Enterprise Workflows

    Satya Nadella’s short thread on X showing five ChatGPT-5 prompts has done more than spark social-media conversation — it offers a practical blueprint for how Microsoft expects Copilot to reshape executive workflows, compress decision cycles, and push generative AI from “drafting tool” to a...
  5. XChat E2EE Promise Falls Short: EXIF and Key-Storage Risks

    X’s new XChat promises “end-to-end” privacy — but its current implementation leaves several simple, well-known privacy protections out in the open, and experts warn that the feature as shipped can expose users to avoidable risks ranging from leaked image metadata to a service operator or insider...
  6. NTLMv1SSO Audit to Enforce in Windows 11 24H2 & Server 2025

    Microsoft will audit and then begin enforcing a block on NTLMv1–derived credentials in Windows 11, version 24H2 and Windows Server 2025: the change is gated by a new registry key (BlockNtlmv1SSO), exposes two new NTLM event IDs for Audit vs Enforce behavior, and will be rolled out in phases...
  7. Agent Observability: The Foundation for Safe, Scalable Enterprise AI

    Microsoft’s Agent Factory guidance sharpens the focus on agent observability as the non-negotiable foundation for reliable, safe, and scalable agentic AI — and its recommendations are timely: as agents move from prototypes to workflows that touch business-critical data and systems, observability...
  8. Copilot Audit-Log Gap: Microsoft Patch Spurs Cloud Transparency Debate

    Microsoft’s recent quiet fix to an M365 Copilot logging gap has opened a new debate over cloud transparency, audit integrity, and how enterprise defenders should respond when a vendor patches a service-side flaw without issuing a public advisory. Security researchers say a trivial prompt...
  9. Microsoft Copilot Audit Gap: Prompts That Bypass Purview Logging

    Microsoft’s Copilot is delivering real productivity gains across Word, Teams, Outlook and other Microsoft 365 surfaces — but a recent disclosure shows those gains can come at the cost of auditability: under certain prompting patterns Copilot has produced user-visible summaries and actions...
  10. Copilot Audit-Log Gap: Prompts That Skip Purview Entries Revealed

    A security researcher’s routine Copilot query revealed a startling blind spot in Microsoft’s logging: under certain prompts, Copilot could return file summaries without leaving the expected Purview audit entry — and, according to the researcher, Microsoft quietly rolled out a fix without issuing...
  11. Metadata Matters in Local Sports Photos: IPTC/XMP, EXIF, and Verification

    A single frame published on a local page — a wire or staff photograph labeled “Panthers Texans Football” and paired with a terse, weather‑style line — crystallized a familiar but avoidable editorial tension: vivid visual storytelling versus the metadata and verification practices that protect...
  12. Copilot Audit Gaps in Microsoft 365: Forensics and Compliance Risks

    Microsoft’s Copilot may have closed an eye‑catching zero‑click hole, but a quieter — and arguably more dangerous — problem has been bubbling under the surface: Copilot and related AI components are not reliably creating the audit trails organizations depend on for compliance and forensics. That...
  13. COPILOT in Excel: In-Cell AI Prompts Power Formulas

    Microsoft has quietly moved one of the most consequential AI experiments of the last year from a sidebar into the very fabric of Excel: the new COPILOT function lets users write plain‑language prompts directly in a cell and receive AI‑generated results that behave like any other formula in the...
  14. COPILOT in Excel: AI insights with governance and licensing

    Excel’s new COPILOT function hands everyday spreadsheet users an AI-powered microscope and a blunt instrument at the same time: it can summarize, classify, extract, and generate structured outputs from free-text or tabular data with a single cell formula, but it also introduces new operational...
  15. Auditable Copilot Records: How Smarsh Enables Regulated AI Compliance

    Microsoft 365 Copilot is reshaping how knowledge workers draft emails, summarize meetings, and automate tasks—but for regulated industries the productivity upside comes with a non‑negotiable requirement: auditable, defensible recordkeeping and governance. Enterprise compliance teams now face a...
  16. UK to Trial Agentic AI in Public Services with Scan-Pilot-Scale by 2027

    The UK government has announced a national programme to trial agentic AI across public services, inviting frontier AI labs to work with Whitehall teams to build prototypes that could automate routine “life admin” — from filling forms and booking appointments to tailored careers and...
  17. GPT-5 and Copilot: Balancing Power, Safety, and UX for Windows IT

    The arrival of GPT‑5 and the public reaction to it have exposed a familiar but urgent truth: incremental technical progress can sharpen capability while exposing unresolved safety, UX and trust problems — and a single real‑world harm can erase otherwise tidy marketing narratives. The Northwest...
  18. Audit Finds GenAI Browsers Transmit Sensitive Data: Privacy Risks & Mitigations

    Popular generative‑AI browser assistants can and do sweep up deeply personal data from ordinary web sessions — including health records, bank details and even social‑security numbers — and forward that content to remote servers where it can be tracked, profiled and reused in ways most users...
  19. Generative AI for Permitting: Accelerating Clean-Energy Approvals

    A Microsoft Garage hackathon prototype has graduated into a commercial workstream that uses generative AI to attack permitting bottlenecks across nuclear, renewable, mining, and grid projects — a practical, high-stakes application of AI that could materially shorten the time and cost of getting...
  20. iManage AI for Law Firms: MCP, Insight+, and Ask iManage Drive Secure Governance

    iManage’s latest announcement tightens the scaffolding around AI for law firms: the company has added support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), upgraded its Insight+ search and knowledge-discovery engine, and expanded Ask iManage’s conversational and evidence features — all intended to let...