Microsoft Teams Gets Optimizations To Use Less Resources

Do you use Microsoft Teams and do you have an older PC that struggles with Teams video meetings?  If so there’s good news.  Microsoft has recently upgraded Teams and halved the power used by Teams video meetings to make life easier on people with older hardware. Of course, even if …

Last Year Microsoft Blocked More Than 25 Billion Hacker Attacks

Individual users often don’t have a good sense of the scope and scale of hacking attacks around the world.  The numbers may shock you. According to Microsoft, in 2021 the company blocked more than 25.6 billion brute force authentication attacks against Azure AD users. They also and intercepted a staggering …

New Remote Access Trojan Virus Hides In Windows Registry

There’s a new malware strain you should make sure your IT staff is aware of.  Called the Dark Watchman, it is a well-designed and highly capable RAT (Remote Access Trojan) paired with a keylogger written in C#. First discovered by researchers at Prevailion this piece of malware likes to lurk …

Microsoft Teams Gets End To End Encryption

Two months ago, Microsoft began rolling out support for end-to-end encryption for all Teams calls.  Given the pandemic and the increased demand for Teams and services like it, that was a very big deal. The good news is that Microsoft recently announced that the rollout is complete and all Teams …

Voice Commands Getting New Attention In Windows 11

For a few years now Microsoft has been experimenting with voice commands.  Their early experiments were limited to contexts that resided wholly inside specific applications however. For example, once you opened Word you could use voice commands to activate a few of the software’s features. Recently the company decided to …

New Emotet Malware Found A New Way To Distribute

Emotet is one of the most feared malware strains circulating right now. The team behind it has managed to infect a staggering array of targets all around the globe. To say that it is a major threat would be an understatement. Recently the group behind Emotet just upped the ante …

 Microsoft Paint Got A Makeover After Recent Update

Microsoft has had a long and interesting relationship with its venerable “Paint” app. Most people are familiar with Paint.  It’s been around since the earliest versions of Windows and let’s be honest it was never a great application. It allows users to do the basics but it was quickly eclipsed …

Microsoft Really Wants People To Use Their Edge Browser

It’s no real secret that Microsoft has never been a big fan of Chrome, FireFox, or any other web browser that it didn’t build.  The company clearly hasn’t gotten over the fact that it lost the browser wars and lost them handily. That’s why it keeps trying periodically to reinvent …

Update Microsoft Exchange Server For Important Security Patch

If you use Exchange Server to handle your company’s email then you’re probably already aware that a critical security flaw has been discovered that puts the server at risk. The issue is being tracked as CVE-2021-42321 and impacts both Exchange Server 2016 and 2019. Even worse is that Microsoft reports …