Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft Graph User Configuration API that enables you to manage custom settings and configuration data for user mailboxes in Exchange Online. This preview API provides full CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations for user configuration objects, allowing you to store application state, settings, and metadata associated with specific mail folders. This guide shows you how to access and use this API with PowerShell.

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Microsoft Purview Data Security Investigations became generally available in January, providing data security teams with AI-powered tools to identify, investigate, and mitigate sensitive data risks across Microsoft 365 environments. The solution addresses the challenge of managing 220 zettabytes of organizational data while facing over 12,000 confirmed breaches annually by streamlining investigations that previously took weeks or months into hours.

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Microsoft announced the general availability (GA) of centralized RDP Shortpath configuration using Intune and Group Policy (GPO). RDP Shortpath is a UDP-based direct transport protocol that establishes connections between Remote Desktop clients and session hosts, reducing latency and improving reliability for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 Cloud PCs. You can now centrally configure this feature using Group Policy and Microsoft Intune, eliminating the need for manual per-host configuration.

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Starting March 2026, Microsoft Entra ID will introduce passkey profiles and synced passkeys to general availability, enabling group-based authentication configurations with granular control over device-bound and synced passkeys. Microsoft will automatically enable passkey profiles for tenants that don't opt in during the initial rollout, with existing settings preserved to maintain their current security posture.

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Microsoft has introduced trust-based enhancements to the Teams Admin Center (TAC), designed to simplify app security and compliance management for IT administrators. These updates, known as Trust Through Certification, enable you to quickly identify trusted applications, enforce organizational standards, and streamline governance workflows through features such as "apps to consider allowing," security compliance filters, and Microsoft-certified app collections. The enhancements build on existing foundational features while adding dedicated trust indicators that consolidate security signals in a centralized dashboard. You can now evaluate apps based on industry-standard certifications without leaving the Teams Admin Center, reducing the time spent on manual reviews and cross-checking vendor documentation.

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Microsoft just announced the Security Baseline for Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise version 2512 ( (v2512, December 2025) as part of the Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit. This security configuration package aligns with Administrative Templates released in version 5516 and introduces updated policies designed to strengthen protections in Excel, PowerPoint, and core Microsoft 365 Apps components. You can deploy these Microsoft-recommended security configurations through multiple methods including Office cloud policies, Microsoft Intune, or Group Policy to reduce configuration drift and ensure consistent protection across enterprise environments.

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Microsoft introduced a new PowerShell parameter, ExcludeFromAllHolds, that simplifies removing multiple retention holds from inactive mailboxes in Exchange Online. This capability enables you to remove various retention holds from inactive mailboxes while preserving essential compliance protections such as eDiscovery holds and litigation holds.

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Microsoft announces the general availability of the Azure Test Run Hub, which delivers a new interface for managing test execution in Azure DevOps Test Plans.

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Microsoft will transition Microsoft Entra identity services from DigiCert Global Root G1 to G2 certificates on January 7, 2026. Organizations that do not prepare for this change risk authentication failures across their Microsoft 365 and Azure environments.

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The Azure Developer CLI (azd) December 2025 release delivers substantial improvements centered on extension capabilities and developer workflow enhancements. The update introduces a powerful extension framework with custom configuration properties, support for interactive mode via Text User Interfaces, and distributed tracing for improved observability. User experience improvements include an interactive environment selector, faster provisioning progress updates with polling reduced from 10 seconds to 3 seconds, and clearer error messages for configuration issues. The release also adds flexible configuration options, such as support for azure.yml as an alternative filename and integrated access to the template gallery within initialization commands. Additionally, the update includes comprehensive bug fixes for Container Apps, Azure Pipelines, and deployment workflows, along with Microsoft Foundry rebranding throughout the platform.

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Microsoft offers organizations two on-premises options for email and collaboration: Microsoft 365 Local and Exchange Server Subscription Edition (Exchange SE). While both solutions deliver on-premises productivity capabilities, they differ fundamentally in architecture, scope, and target use cases.

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Microsoft has clarified the key differences between its one-time purchase Office 2024 and the subscription-based Microsoft 365 suite in an official support document. The comparison helps users understand the trade-offs between a single upfront payment for static software and ongoing subscription fees for continuously updated services.

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Recent Microsoft Entra and Windows updates introduce multiple changes across authentication, identity management, and access control. The updates include an option to replace the legacy EdgeHTML WebView with the Chromium-based WebView2 for Entra ID authentication flows, improved identity constructs for AI agents, public preview support for synced passkeys, and expanded self-service account recovery. Additional changes cover jailbreak detection in Microsoft Authenticator, enforcement of a stricter Content Security Policy for browser-based sign-ins, updates to session revocation behavior, and new capabilities in Entra ID Governance, External ID, and Global Secure Access.

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Microsoft Entra PowerShell is a module that lets administrators manage and automate Microsoft Entra ID resources—such as users, groups, applications, and policies—via PowerShell, built on and interoperable with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. ​Microsoft released version 1.1.0 of the Entra PowerShell module, introducing compatibility improvements and new filtering parameters for device and service principal management. The update removes version restrictions for Microsoft Graph PowerShell and adds functionality for administrators managing identity resources.

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Microsoft launched the new Azure Network Security Hub, providing a centralized interface for managing Azure Firewall, Web Application Firewall, and DDoS Protection services. The hub expands and rebrands Azure Firewall Manager to reflect broader network security capabilities.

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A blog post by Matthew Prince, Cloudflare's CEO, suggests that Cloudflare repeated CrowdStrike's mistake: updating the entire infrastructure without first testing on a small group of hosts. As a result, large portions of the internet, including 4sysops, were inaccessible for several hours. Apologies for the latter. While most news sites reported that 20% of internet traffic was affected, the actual impact was much higher because the outage disproportionately affected high-traffic, top-ranking websites like X, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Spotify. While Cloudflare's CEO blames a manual database permissions change, the incident exposes a deeper design flaw: a single engineer can disrupt massive portions of global internet infrastructure. In contrast, blockchain networks like Ethereum demonstrate how truly decentralized systems can prevent such single points of failure.

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Microsoft Word for Windows has implemented automatic cloud saving for new documents starting with version 2509 (Build 19221.20000). This change affects how users save documents, with all new files defaulting to OneDrive or SharePoint locations. Organizations can control this behavior through Group Policy and Microsoft Intune configurations.

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Windows 365 Cloud Apps operate on Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PCs in shared mode and entered public preview in September 2025. They allow organizations to deliver individual applications from the cloud without provisioning full Cloud PC virtual desktops for each user.

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Microsoft Defender for Identity and Microsoft Secure Score work together to strengthen identity security across on-premises Active Directory and cloud-based Microsoft Entra ID environments by detecting threats and providing actionable recommendations. This article explains how both tools interact, their technical requirements, and what the new recommendations announced in September 2025 mean for organizations.

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