compliance

  1. Microsoft Azure under scrutiny: Israel data, external review and cloud ethics

    Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters from his office at the Redmond campus that the company will “investigate and get to the truth” after a Guardian-led investigation alleged that Israel’s Unit 8200 had used Microsoft Azure to store and process vast troves of intercepted Palestinian...
  2. AI Meeting Assistants: Pre-Meeting Intelligence for Enterprise Productivity

    The era when meeting prep meant skimming an inbox and scribbling a one-line agenda is ending — generative AI is now offering pre-meeting intelligence that reads past conversations, surfaces likely priorities, and hands executives five concise, context-aware talking points before they walk into a...
  3. Surveys Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI-powered survey workflow in Frontier

    Microsoft’s latest push to fold everyday feedback workflows into its AI assistant stack landed this week with the public preview of Surveys Agent, an AI-powered agent inside Microsoft 365 Copilot that promises to let teams design, launch, monitor, and analyze surveys from a single conversational...
  4. Korea Central Now Supports Windows 365 Cloud PC in South Korea

    Microsoft has quietly—yet materially—expanded Windows 365’s regional footprint in Asia by making the Korea Central Azure region available for Cloud PC provisioning, enabling organizations operating in South Korea to host Cloud PC storage and compute within the country and reduce latency for...
  5. Windows 10 End of Support 2025: ESU Bridge, Edge Updates, and Migration Playbook

    Microsoft has set a firm deadline: Windows 10 reaches end of support on October 14, 2025 — but the real story is less about a single sunset date and more about the layered, pragmatic exit Microsoft has built: a one‑year consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) bridge, continued security...
  6. Azure Update Manager: Centralized Patch Orchestration for Cloud, On-Prem, and Hybrid

    Microsoft's latest move to centralize and simplify enterprise patching — pushing Azure Update Manager as the recommended path for orchestrating Windows updates across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid fleets — promises to change how IT teams plan, schedule, and recover from update events while also...
  7. Claude for Chrome: Enterprise Browser AI Agents with Safe Automation

    Anthropic’s new Chrome extension quietly signals the next phase of enterprise AI: assistants that don’t just answer questions but act inside your browser — clicking, filling, and navigating like a human. The company has begun a controlled pilot of Claude for Chrome, inviting 1,000 paying...
  8. Word for Windows 2509+: New Documents Save to Cloud by Default with AutoSave

    Microsoft is quietly shifting a fundamental part of the Word for Windows experience: new documents created in Word will now default to being saved in the cloud (OneDrive or another configured cloud destination) with AutoSave enabled, and the change begins with Word for Windows version 2509 and...
  9. CIQ Rocky Linux Hardened (RLC-H) Now on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Marketplaces

    CIQ’s hardened variant of Rocky Linux has taken a decisive step into the hyperscaler world: Rocky Linux from CIQ – Hardened (RLC‑H) is now offered through the major cloud marketplaces, giving enterprises a pre‑configured, supply‑chain‑validated Enterprise Linux image designed to reduce manual...
  10. Windows Server 2019 EOL: ESU to 2029 and Migration Paths

    Windows Server 2019 has entered a new phase of its lifecycle: mainstream support ended on January 9, 2024, and Microsoft will provide security-only updates during the extended support period through January 9, 2029. After that date the product reaches full end of life (EOL) and will no longer...
  11. Windows Server 2016 EOL: Risks, Upgrades, and a Migration Playbook

    Windows Server 2016 has reached a pivotal point in its lifecycle: mainstream support ended years ago and extended support will stop on January 12, 2027, leaving systems that remain on the platform exposed to unpatched vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, and growing compatibility problems. This...
  12. Macrohard vs Azure: Can Elon Musk's AI-First Startup Displace Microsoft?

    Elon Musk’s cheeky “Macrohard” provocation is grabbing headlines, but the claim that it will meaningfully dent Microsoft’s Azure business is premature — and underestimates the practical, contractual, and engineering barriers any AI‑first upstart must clear to displace a multi‑product enterprise...
  13. GA of New Message Trace in Exchange Online: Migrate to V2 Cmdlets & Throttling

    Microsoft has pushed the refreshed Message Trace for Exchange Online out of preview and into general availability for worldwide (WW) tenants, triggering a hard look at automation, reporting integrations, and long-running scripts that rely on the legacy m-tracing stack; admins must plan now...
  14. Exchange Online GA: New Message Trace with Get-MessageTraceV2

    Microsoft has moved the revamped Message Trace experience in Exchange Online out of preview and into general availability, bringing a faster UI, new PowerShell cmdlets, extended query windows, and new operational constraints that will change how administrators automate and extract trace data...
  15. COPILOT in Excel: AI as a native formula for smarter spreadsheets

    Microsoft has quietly folded generative AI into Excel’s calculation engine with a native worksheet function — =COPILOT(...) — that accepts plain‑language prompts, reads cell ranges as context, and returns live, spillable outputs directly into the spreadsheet grid. Early previews show it can...
  16. Westcon-Comstor Summit Drives Africa Cloud, AI & Security Transformation

    Westcon‑Comstor’s new partner summit, staged with Microsoft and billed as a targeted accelerator for cloud, AI and security adoption, signals a deliberate push to convert channel capacity into continent‑scale transformation for African businesses. Background Westcon‑Comstor has deep roots as a...
  17. AI in HR: Boosting Productivity, Insights, and People Leadership

    Artificial intelligence is reshaping human resources into a faster, more data-driven function—freeing HR professionals from routine work while amplifying their capacity for strategy, people development, and culture stewardship. (microsoft.com) Background Since the early experiments with...
  18. Coinbase AI Mandate: A Windows IT Playbook for Safe Copilot Adoption

    In a recent podcast interview, Coinbase’s CEO said he fired a small number of engineers who repeatedly refused to use—or even try—AI tools the company had provisioned for its developers. The CEO described going “rogue” in a company Slack announcement to make the priority clear, then hosting open...
  19. Macrohard: Elon Musk's AI-First Push to Rival Microsoft

    Elon Musk says he wants to build a purely AI-run software company—cheekily named Macrohard—to take direct aim at Microsoft’s dominance, and he picked August 22, 2025 to make the promise public. The pitch is audacious even by Musk standards: assemble a swarm of specialized AI agents that can...
  20. Copilot Audit Gap in Microsoft 365: AI Prompt Logging and Compliance Risk

    Microsoft’s push to weave Copilot into the fabric of Microsoft 365 has hit a trust-defining snag: for months, under specific prompting conditions, the AI assistant’s access to source documents could be absent from Microsoft 365 audit logs, leaving security teams with empty entries where...