Every month, Microsoft quietly refreshes its Azure Leaderboard — a neat little Hall of Fame for people who spend their nights fixing strangers’ Azure problems before their own servers crash. It’s not a marketing stunt and it’s not a paid gig. It’s pure community obsession.And only non-Microsoft contributors qualify — the die-hard enthusiasts who keep…
Month: October 2025
Embedded HSMs in the Cloud? Yes, Microsoft Just Went There
TL;DR: Microsoft is moving from centralised HSM clusters to embedded hardware modules built straight into the host silicon. Lower latency, higher throughput, and a new level of “I actually own my keys” confidence. It’s a big shift — for engineers, not marketers. 1. Hook You thought your keys were safe in the cloud? Think again….
Outlook Auto-Archive: The Feature Everyone Ignores Until Their Inbox Explodes
A Love Letter to the Terminally Cluttered Ah, Outlook. Actually I’m not a big fun of Auto-Archiving. The place where good intentions go to die — buried under 12,000 unread emails, half of which are “RE: RE: RE: Lunch?”. And then one day, it hits you: Outlook takes five minutes to open, search results look…
Inside the Attack Chain: When Azure Blob Becomes Azure Blob-Up
The “Oops, Our Data Is Public” Classic There’s something poetic about cloud breaches — the elegance with which humans keep inventing new ways to leave their doors open.This week’s culprit: Azure Blob Storage.Yes, that humble blue box that quietly holds your AI datasets, backups, HR archives, and — apparently — the keys to your digital…
11 Days Left: The Sunset of Microsoft Entra Permissions Management
Intro: The Calm Before the Access Storm You know that quiet moment before the IT department realises a product’s gone dark?Yeah — that’s now. Microsoft Entra Permissions Management (the CIEM solution many of us quietly relied on to keep multicloud access sane) is going off support on 1 November 2025.No fanfare. No extensions. Just: it’s…
When Your PC Becomes Smarter Than You (Yes, It’s Happening)
Microsoft has just announced a bold new chapter for Windows — they want every Windows 11 PC to become an AI PC, with Microsoft Copilot at the heart of it. No more “AI if you’ve got a Copilot+ machine and an NPU” caveats. This time the deal is: your PC, your voice, your assistant. Here’s the breakdown…
Killing Passwords (Without Killing Productivity): A Practical Guide to Phishing-Resistant Authentication
Passwords are the flip phones of cybersecurity — nostalgic, yes, but utterly obsolete.In a Zero Trust world, passwords are no longer your friend; they’re your weakest link. Microsoft’s password scrambline initiative is not just another shiny idea. It’s a deliberate move towards a world where passwords simply don’t exist.Combine that with enforcing passwordless authentication for…
Leadership X-Ray: How to See a Manager’s Philosophy in 5 Minutes
After years of running IT teams — from chaotic startups to enterprise-scale products — I’ve learned a simple truth: a leader’s management philosophy is as transparent as an X-ray.You just need to ask the right questions and listen — not to what they say, but how they think. In tech, where speed, autonomy, and accountability…
Azure Update 499923: Retirement Is Coming — Are You Ready?
Microsoft just dropped Azure Update 499923 into its “Retirements / Roadmap” category. Under product categories Networking, Security. Translation: some Azure networking/security feature or capability is being sunsetted (or marked for retirement). It’s going on your “watch list.” 🔍 What We Know (From Public Data) It’s been added to Microsoft’s roadmap as of October 3, 2025….
The Great Migration: Why It’s Finally Time to Ditch Azure Functions V1
Still running Functions V1 on Azure Container Apps?That’s adorable. Like bringing a flip phone to a 5G conference. Microsoft has officially made it clear: the future is Functions V2 (kind=functionapp) — a cleaner, faster, smarter evolution that finally makes Functions feel native in the container world. Let’s unpack why this matters, what’s actually changed, and…