RunAs Radio
RunAs Radio is a weekly Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals working with Microsoft products.
Episodes
AI-Accelerated Supply Chain Attacks with Mackenzie Jackson
How are supply-chain attacks evolving? Richard chats with Mackenzie Jackson about his work helping companies protect their software supply chains from malware attacks. Mackenzie discusses the vulnerability of developers to attacks, since their accounts are often highly privileged and invariably contain access to exploitable secrets. The conversation digs into the challenges of securing various cod
Securing Developers with Tanya Janca
How can sysadmins help software developers work securely and make more secure applications? While at NDC in Toronto, Richard sat down with Tanya Janca of SheCodesPurple to discuss what admins can do to help address the security challenges software developers face. Tanya talks about securing development environment and pipelines - developers routinely work from high privilege accounts because their
47 Day Certificates with Todd Gardner
The 47-day certificate is coming! While at NDC in Toronto, Richard received an update from Todd Gardner about his show last year: certificate authorities are moving toward SSL certificates that last only 47 days! Todd talks about the first decrease in duration that has already passed - as of March 2026, the longest duration certificate you can buy from certificate authorities is 200 days. At the c
How Machine Learning Fails with Megan Robertson
What can go wrong with machine learning? While at NDC in Toronto, Richard chatted with Megan Robertson about her experience with machine learning projects, often using retail datasets, and where they can go wrong. Megan talks about getting clear expectations and metrics for projects, so you know when you succeed, but then digs into the specifics of problems in machine learning, such as overfitting
Data API Builder and SQL MCP with Jerry Nixon
How do you intelligently surface access to your database? While at NDC Toronto, Richard spoke with Jerry Nixon about Data API Builder, Microsoft's tool that enables data professionals using Microsoft databases, including SQL Server, Postgres, CosmosDB, and MySQL, to provide an API layer with security, schema extraction, and governance policies. You can expose the API as a REST interface, a GraphQL
Team Productivity using Loop with Karinne Bessette
How can Microsoft Loop make your team more productive? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about the role that Loop components can play in making meetings where the agenda is live, generating work items in Microsoft Planner, and keeping key information up to date. Karinne talks about how Loop components can be connected to any M365 document, including Outlook, Word, Excel, and OneNote, but only fo
UEFI Secure Boot with Richard Hicks
The original Secure Boot certificate expires in June 2026! Richard talks to Richard Hicks about how Secure Boot works and how the expiration of the master certificate can leave PCs vulnerable to boot-related malware, such as rootkits. Richard discusses recent Microsoft communications on SecureBoot and how to check which certificate your machines have. Workstations using managed updates are likely
Production LLMs with Vaishnavi Gudur
What does a production-grade large language model look like? While at NDC Sydney, Richard talked with Vaishnavi Gudur from Microsoft about her work scaling LLMs for Teams transcriptions, summaries, and more! Vaishnavi discusses the underlying complexities of operating the Teams LLM infrastructure for a large array of customers across different countries and regulatory regimes. Data sovereignty als
Securing Active Directory with Spencer Alessi
How secure is your Active Directory infrastructure? While at Zero Trust World in Orlando, Richard chatted with Spencer Alessi about his work helping companies secure Active Directory, making it more difficult for black hats to exploit it for lateral moves during a breach attempt. Spencer talks about the increasing speed of these exploits, making it much harder to block them after the fact, so it's
M365 Copilot vs Claude Cowork with Sharon Weaver
There's competition in the Office productivity space! Richard chats with Sharon Weaver about her experiences with M365 Copilot and Anthropic's Claude Cowork to improve information worker productivity. Sharon talks about the confusion around all the different copilots in the Microsoft space - including the chat tools, research agents, and more. But when it comes to helping with an Excel spreadsheet
The Life and Death of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit with Michael Niehaus
What does the world look like after Microsoft Deployment Toolkit? Richard talks to MDT creator Michael Niehaus about the life and death of MDT. Michael talks about his early days at Microsoft, when he created a better way to manage operating system images so you can build and rebuild Windows PCs for your organization. But MDT had been in maintenance since 2013, without specific support for Windows
Internal Corporate Communications in 2026 with Emily Mancini
How does your company communicate with its employees today? Richard chats with Emily Mancini about her work with companies that manage internal communications. Emily talks about the power of email, collaborative messaging like Teams, and the Microsoft Viva products Engage and Amplify. The conversation digs into knowing where your people look for info, how they communicate, and what they want to co
Securing AI Agents with Niall Merrigan
AI Agents can be powerful tools for an organization - but are they a security risk? Richard talks to Niall Merrigan about his experiences dealing with the various ways that LLMs can be attacked, starting with prompt injection. While some attacks are humorous, others can be very serious, especially in the context of agents, where the right prompt can cause an agent to use its capabilities to access
My Home Lab
Are you ready to take a look at Richard's home lab? Richard goes solo to share insights about the new infrastructure, hardware, and automation in his seaside home. He discusses the challenges posed by its remote location, including unreliable power and connectivity. You'll find plenty of details about networking, computing infrastructure, automation, telemetry, and experiments with AI technologies
Unified Tenant Management with Nik Charlebois-Laprade
Configuration drift is real - how do you control it in your Azure tenant? Richard talks to Nik Charlebois-Laprade about his ongoing work on desired state configuration DSC for Microsoft 365 tenants. Microsoft365DSC has been an open-source tool for managing configuration for some time, but today it has become a preview product called Unified Tenant Configuration in Microsoft Graph. Nik talks about
Sustainable AI with Darshna Shah
How does artificial intelligence become more sustainable? Richard chats with Darshna Shah about her experiences as Chief AI Officer at Elastic. Darshna discusses the resources required to run large language model experiments, the pressure this has put on the electrical grid, and more. The conversation turns to efficiency - and the idea that there is little incentive in the current land grab around
SQL Server in 2026 with Bob Ward
SQL Server 2025 is released - what's in it, and what happens next? Richard chats with Bob Ward about the huge array of announcements coming out of Ignite around SQL Server 2025, including AI-related features, new reliability and performance options, engine improvements, and more! The tooling for SQL Server also continues to evolve, including making Copilot available through SSMS and as part of the
Hiring in 2026 with Suzi Edwards-Alexander
How can you hire and get hired in 2026? While at NDC London, Richard chatted with Suzi Edwards-Alexander about her experiences recruiting technology folks into companies. Suzi talks about developing interview practices that actually reflect the job, rather than examining esoteric knowledge or certifications - it's possible to have an interviewing experience that is actually enjoyable! The conversa
SaaS on Multiple Clouds with Steve Buchanan
What does it take to get your SaaS offering on multiple cloud providers? Richard chats with Steve Buchanan about his new role at JAMF, which focuses on a mobile device management product for Apple devices. Originally built as a SaaS product on AWS, Steve is helping to build out the JAMF stack on Azure to support a broader range of customers. Steve talks about Kubernetes as the common ground among
Hacking using AI with Erica Burgess
How have large language models impacted hacking? Richard talks to Erica Burgess about her experiences using LLMs for red team hacking, collecting bug bounties, and identifying vulnerabilities in systems. Erica discusses the power of LLMs to generate a variety of viewpoints on a potential exploit and help the hacker think "out of the box." Coordinating multiple agents to attempt a variety of exploi
Securing Active Directory Certificate Services with Ron Arestia
You're using Active Directory Certificate Services - but is it configured securely? Richard talks to Ron Arestia about his work with organizations implementing their own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with ADCS. Ron explains how poorly configured ADCS enables lateral attacks within an organization once an initial breach occurs, allowing black hats to move throughout your network. A well-designed
Getting Started using Purview with Erica Toelle
Ready to get started with Purview? Richard chats with Erica Toelle about the first steps you can take to harness the power of Purview in your organization. Erica explains that Purview is an umbrella product that covers several infosec technologies, including information rights management, data loss prevention, structured data governance, and more. When preparing for M365 Copilot, you want to start
Business Process Automation in 2026 with Ian Cooper
Business Process Automation has been around a long time - what are the latest approaches? Richard talks to Ian Cooper about his work building BPA workflows in organizations - starting on paper or a whiteboard to make sense of the process before bringing tools into the equation. Ian talks about building repeatable workflows that are well-documented and source-controlled, typically through GitHub. A
Ideation to Implementation with Amber Vandenburg
How do you get an idea to implementation in your organization? Richard chats with Amber Vanderburg about the work she's done helping teams understand the process of getting projects started and finished. Amber talks about defining a clear starting line, ending line, and dead line. While many projects are important, prioritization is the challenge. This means often other priorities have to be resol
Azure in 2026 with Jeremy Winter
What's coming in 2026 for Azure? Richard chats with CVP and Chief Product Officer for Azure, Jeremy Winter, about the announcements at Ignite and what we can expect in Azure over the next year. Jeremy talks about new features for migrating workloads to Azure, creating more reliable application implementations, the vast array of AI-related technologies being released, and more! The conversation als
What AI can do for SysAdmins in 2026 with Cecilia Wirén
AI tools continue to evolve - what can we do with them today? Richard chats with Cecilia Wirén about her experiences using the latest AI tools to support DevOps workflows, diagnostics, and the crafting of new scripts. Cecilia focuses on tools that can help admins who occasionally work on scripts, including getting into a GitHub workflow to track prompts and results generated by LLMs, so you can al
The SysAdmin in 2026
A new year - and so much to do! To start 2026, Richard flies solo again to discuss the issues he's seen on sysadmins' minds as we head into the new year. Obviously, AI is eating up a lot of the conversation from many different angles: tools that can help us be more productive, security issues in our organizations due to misuse, and now, AI-driven hacking. Security still looms large, and not just f
What Windows Wants for Christmas with Paul Thurrott
So what does Windows want for Christmas? Paul Thurrott is back to talk about everything that happened to Windows in 2025, and what that might hold for 2026. Paul talks about Pavan Davuluri being promoted to President of Windows & Devices - and reunifying the Windows Client and Windows Core teams. That sets up an opportunity to make some significant moves from Windows, which, of course, will involv
Zero Trust in 2026 with Michele Bustamante
How is zero-trust security evolving? Michele Leroux Bustamante discusses the challenges CISOs face today in controlling access to infrastructure, authenticating and authorizing users, and managing the ongoing evolution of an organization's dependencies. The conversation digs into the variety of stacks available to address various elements of an organization's security requirements. Michele also ta
Incident Management and the Crowdstrike Event with Liam Westley
On July 19, 2024, a misconfigured file sent as part of an update to the Falcon Sensor suite by CrowdStrike caused service outages worldwide. Liam Westley talks about his experiences executing the incident management plan at his company that day—even though his company did not use the software! Liam talks about dealing with the regulatory requirements of a finance company as part of incident planni
The M365 Copilot Data Readiness Checklist with Nikki Chapple
What does it take to be ready to deploy M365 Copilot in your organization? Richard talks to Nikki Chapple about her latest incarnation of the M365 Copilot Readiness Checklist, working step-by-step to bring M365 Copilot into the organization without causing data leak issues. Nikki discusses utilizing existing tools to accurately identify sensitive data, archiving outdated information, and monitorin
Christmas Gifts for SysAdmins with Joey Snow and Rick Claus
The seasonal gift show is back - Joey Snow and Rick Claus bring their lists of great gifts for sysadmins. You know they're impossible to buy for, so we are making it easier for you with a range of prices and seriousness for your favorite sysadmin. Useful gadgets, upgrades to older devices, and some fun stuff that reminds the sysadmins in your life that you get their struggles. Share this show and
Azure SRE Agents with Deepthi Chelupati
How can Azure Site Reliability Engineering Agents help your Azure infrastructure? While at Techorama in Utrecht, Richard chatted with Deepthi Chelupati about the LLM service that helps you build and maintain more reliable applications and infrastructure in Azure. Deepthi talks about monitoring deployment problems, handling errors in production, and application telemetry in operation as areas where
Azure Resiliency with Chris Ayers
How resilient are your Azure deployments? Richard chats with Chris Ayers about his work on Azure reliability - not only for customers using Azure, but for Azure itself! Chris focuses on the Well-Architected Framework as a guideline for thinking through all the elements of resiliency in Azure. As with all things, there are trade-offs of cost and reliability - you'll want to build a spreadsheet to b
Managing Updates using Autopatch with Aria Hanson
The future of updating Windows is here! Richard talks to Aria Hanson about Windows Autopatch, the consolidation of Microsoft's various update mechanisms to keep your managed Windows devices current. Aria discusses the deprecation of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and the move to always-on cloud updates. The conversation turns to the various techniques for quickly rolling out updates to mach
AI for DBAs with Grant Fritchey
How can the new AI tools help DBAs? Richard chats with Grant Fritchey about his experiences using various types of LLMs to help with his work as a DBA. Grant discusses having an LLM open as a side window to pass questions by, such as ideas for tuning, query optimization, scripts, and so on. Not all LLMs are the same - it's worth experimenting with different tools! The conversation delves into the
Becoming a Cybersecurity Expert with Paula Januszkiewicz
How do you become a cybersecurity expert? While at Cybersecurity Intersection in Orlando, Richard chatted with Paula Januszkiewicz about her career in cybersecurity. Paula talks about insatiable curiosity to understand how things work the way they do - why an exploit happens and following the twists and turns that lead to root cause and permanent solutions. The conversation delves into the balance
The End of NTLM with Steve Syfuhs
It's time to retire NTLM - but how? Richard chats with Steve Syfuhs about the need and challenge of retiring an ubiquitous authentication protocol first used in the 1990s. While guidance to move away from NTLM has been available since 2010, it has only become feasible in the past couple of years, and Microsoft is now providing tooling to make the transition easier. Steve discusses enabling auditin
Managing for Failure with Amy Norris
How do you manage for failure? While at KCDC, Richard chatted with Amy Norris about building a culture that supports dealing with failure in a healthy way. Amy focuses on clear communication - about expectations, positive feedback, negative feedback, and more! The challenge is creating a safe place for people to ask questions and talk clearly about what they see happening in the environment. We ca
HaveIBeenPwned with Troy Hunt
How do you know if one of your accounts has been part of a security breach? Richard chats with Troy Hunt about HaveIBeenPwned, a free service that allows individuals to receive notifications when their accounts appear in a security breach. Troy discusses other services available alongside HaveIBeenPwned for sysadmins, including password checking, identifying accounts associated with a specific dom
Managing Vendor Incidents with Mandi Walls
You're down - is it your servers, or someone else's? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard sits down with Mandi Walls from Pager Duty about her experiences dealing with incidents involving vendor services. It might be your cloud provider, or some other SaaS element of a pipeline, or even an open-source library dependency in an important internal application that can cause a probl
Certificate Automation with Todd Gardner
The days of the one-year SSL certificate are coming to an end - are you ready? Richard chats with Todd Gardner about the upcoming requirement from the Certification Authority Browser Forum to limit SSL certs to 200 days starting March 2026 - and they keep getting shorter until by 2029, certificates will last no longer than 47 days! If you haven't already automated certificate renewal, it's time to
Training for AI with Stephanie Donahue
How do you get your organization trained up to use AI tools? Richard talks to Stephanie Donahue about her work implementing AI tools at Avanade and with Avanade's customers. Stephanie discusses how many workers are bringing their own AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to work and the risks that represent to the organization. Having an approved set of tools helps people work in the right direction, but the
Episode 1000!
Episode 1000! Richard Campbell invites Paul Thurrott to join him to celebrate the milestone episode and answer questions from listeners. From the creation of the podcast to the role of Windows in the modern world, the impact of ARM, Cloud, and many other technologies - all addressed in this super-sized episode. And yes, artificial intelligence is part of the conversation—and will be part of the wo
Common Azure Mistakes with Scott Sauber
What are common mistakes folks are making with their Azure tenant(s)? While at the Kansas City Developers Conference, Richard chatted with Scott Sauber to run down his top ten list of issues he checks on for all his customers using Azure. From tenant ownership to naming conventions, policies, identities, and cost controls - there are a lot of things you can do to make your Azure experience more re
Data Governance for AI with Martina Grom
How do you secure your organization's data to let AI technologies work safely? Richard chats with Martina Grom about her experiences helping sysadmins responsibly bring the power of Microsoft M365 Copilot into their organizations. Martina discusses setting up security and monitoring with tools like Microsoft Purview, enabling visibility into where copilots are working and who is using them. Once t
The Power of the Graph with Tony Redmond
Are you tapping the power of Microsoft Graph? Richard chats with Tony Redmond about his work teaching people to leverage Microsoft Graph and all the insights it can provide about their organization. Tony views Graph as one of the key skills a sysadmin needs to manage an M365 tenant, alongside Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Teams. Throw in some Entra ID skills with Graph and you're ready to take
Copilot Adoption in Financial Services with Christina Wheeler
What can the financial services sector teach us about adopting Copilot in our organizations? Richard chats with Christina Wheeler about her work at Microsoft, where she helps companies leverage large language model technologies. Christina discusses data security, which is crucial in the financial services industry due to its numerous regulations. The data security mindset of using tools like Purvi
From ClickOps to DevOps with Steven Bucher
How do you get from ClickOps to DevOps? While at Build, Richard chatted with Steven Bucher about using Copilot in Azure to help build PowerShell scripts with Azure CLI to get you moving down the path of repeatable deployment. Steven talks about interacting with Copilot in Azure through the Portal, Azure CLI, and PowerShell. Using tools like GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code can help you start m
Copilot Studio with April Dunnam
How do you bring AI agents to your organization? Richard chats with April Dunnam about her experiences with Copilot Studio, Microsoft's tool for building various agents for your organization. April discusses the multiple approaches available today for utilizing generative AI and the benefits of leveraging template-driven and low-code solutions to capitalize on the latest features in agentic AI. Th
Fabric in 2025 with Arun Ulag
What's happening with Fabric in 2025? While at Build, Richard chatted with Arun Ulag about the fantastic progress Fabric has made in the past year. Arun discusses expanding the product line beyond analytics to include real-time intelligence and hosting primary data workloads. The goal is to make it incredibly easy to get your organization's "data estate in order"... not just for security and analy
Building Real Software using PowerApps with Luise Freese
How does a PowerApp become a fully-fledged software application? Richard chats with Luise Freese about her experience of taking a PowerApp built by an individual through the "onboarding process" of becoming a complete software application, including requirements, tests, deployment pipeline, security, user training, and more. It's easy to create a prototype of an application with PowerApps, but onc
More Azure Innovations with Mark Russinovich
How has Azure been innovating lately? While at Build Richard chatted with Azure CTO Mark Russinovich about some of the latest innovations in Azure, including some of the new hardware available. Mark talks about working with hardware manufacturers to build servers optimized to the workloads the largest Azure customers need. The conversation also explores the new innovations in AI and how Azure is b
Getting More from GitHub with April Yoho
How do you get more from GitHub in your work routine? Richard chats with April Yoho about how sysadmins can take advantage of more GitHub features to make better quality scripts and more! April discusses the capabilities of GitHub Copilot to assist administrators in comprehending the intricacies of source management, including branching and merging. The conversation also delves into extracting mor
SQL Server 2025 with Bob Ward
Here comes SQL Server 2025! While at Build, Richard chatted with Bob Ward about releasing a preview version of SQL Server 2025. Bob discusses SQL Server 2025 as an AI-ready enterprise database with numerous capabilities specifically tailored to your organization's AI needs, including a new vector data type. This includes making REST API calls to Azure OpenAI, Ollama, or OpenAI. This is also the v
The Case for Telemetry with Liz Fong-Jones
How can modern telemetry solutions help you? While at NDC in Melbourne, Richard chatted with Liz Fong-Jones of Honeycomb about her approach to educating leadership on creating great telemetry solutions for organizations. Liz discusses the importance of being able to answer questions about reliability issues without causing problems, as opposed to relying on a dashboard for every measurement taken
Fixing a Security Vulnerability in Active Directory with Steve Syfuhs
Why would a security vulnerability take more than two years to fix? Richard chats with Steve Syfuhs about the evolution of the response to KB5015754. Originally published in 2022, the issue involved vulnerabilities in the on-premises certificate authority for Active Directory. Pushing a fix to force the immediate replacement of the certificates could have left users unable to log into Active Direc
How to Talk to Security with Sarah Young
How do you talk to security? While at NDC Melbourne, Richard chatted with Sarah Young about her approaches to helping folks work with the security team. Often seen as an impediment to business, Sarah talks about what motivates security teams, how to use language to help them understand that you are taking security seriously, and how to get more things done! Ultimately, the DevOps mantra of providi
PowerShell 7.5 and DSC 3.0.0 with Jason Helmick
What's new in PowerShell 7.5? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about the latest version of PowerShell. Jason talks about 7.5 being a version with plenty of community contributions and what that means for everyone. He also discusses 7.6, which will be released as a long-term support version of PowerShell synchronized with .NET 10. Then, on to Desired State Configuration 3.0.0, which makes DSC work ef
Active Directory in 2025 with Liz Tesch
Active Directory is 25 years old - are you still managing it like it's 1999? Richard talks to Liz Tesch about her excellent blog post on the subject and the challenge many sysadmins have with Active Directory today. Liz talks about how WAN bandwidth was a concern in the early 2000s, so we organized Active Directory into Organizational Units to minimize the amount of AD traffic over the WAN - today
Building a Career in Cybersecurity with Yuri Diogenes
How do you make a career in cybersecurity? Richard talks to Yuri Diogenes about his work in cybersecurity, including his book on building a career in cybersecurity. Yuri talks about the inquisitive mindset that works well in cybersecurity - wanting to understand why things happen and get to the root cause. The conversation also explores the value of experimentation and practical experience as well
Modern Work in 2025 with Karoliina Kettukari
So what does modern work look like today? Richard talks to Karoliina Kettukari about her new role as the Head of Modern Work for a financial services company in Finland, and what modern work has evolved. Karoliina talks about how the pandemic accelerated modern work, such as being able to work anywhere and collaborating with whomever you need to. Post-pandemic, there is a push for more work from t
Agentic AI for IT Pros with Tim Warner
What can agentic AI do for you? Richard talks to Tim Warner about his work utilizing next generation agentic AI technologies to help with sysadmin tasks. Tim talks about the early lead that Cursor AI took with AI agents capable of writing and executing scripts on your behalf - as opposed to just creating code you can cut-and-paste. Today, GitHub Copilot has caught up with Agent Mode in Copilot Edi
How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes
Are some of your team members starting to hate PowerShell? Richard talks to Barbara Forbes about her experiences with teams frustrated by PowerShell. Barbara talks about overcomplicating PowerShell scripts—the kind the most senior folks can create but no one else can maintain. Eventually, nobody will want to touch those scripts. Then there is the question of business value—does everything need to
Application Risk in Security Copilot with Ari Schorr
How can Security Copilot help you secure your applications? Richard talks to Ari Schorr about assessing application risk with Microsoft Security Copilot - a new feature in preview in Security Copilot that focuses on application roles and entities. Ari talks about the sheer array of resources that applications depend on, and the many security risks that exist in that space - how do you even get sta
GitHub Copilot for SysAdmins with Jessica Deen
What can GitHub Copilot do for SysAdmins in 2025? Richard talks to Jessica Deen from GitHub about her experiences using Copilot for her work. Jessica talks about Copilot being the first stop for most tasks - describing the task to Copilot helps you think through the problem, and often the tool can generate code or information to get that task done fast. Today's GitHub Copilot can handle everything
Writing Better PowerShell with Jeff Hicks
How do you write better PowerShell? Richard talks to Jeff Hicks about his latest book, Behind the PowerShell Pipeline, and his efforts to promote writing PowerShell scripts that are easy to understand, use, and maintain! Jeff talks about how making a script work is not enough anymore - you can use GitHub Copilot. The goal is to make the output as usable as possible, whether that is consistent outp
Managing AI Costs with Sonia Cuff
How are you managing your AI costs? Richard chats with Sonia Cuff about how she's been helping sysadmins understand how AI technology is billed out and how to measure them within a given application and across the organization. Sonia starts with some definitions since the term AI is so broad. It's not just about large language models! The conversation also dives into carbon footprints, and using t
Strong Certificate Mapping in Active Directory with Richard Hicks
Are you using strong certificate mapping in Active Directory? Richard Hicks returns to the show to talk about the impacts of KB5015754, issued way back in 2022, and how it turned into an enforcement event on February 11, 2025 that might have caused some serious problems for folks trying to authenticate to Active Directory. For most sites, the upgrade to strong certificates was pretty much automati
Secure by Design with Karinne Bessette
What does it mean to be secure by design? Richard chats with Karinne Bessette about the scope of the problem around making more secure software. Karinne talks about the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) push to promote more secure software products. The conversation digs into some of the more famous exploits in recent years and some of the challenges of dealin
Exchange Server in 2025 with Michel de Rooij
What is it like to take care of an Exchange Server in 2025? Richard chats with Michel de Rooij about his work with Exchange, including the many scripts he has written and published over the years to help sysadmins solve problems. Michel discusses how staying on-premises with Exchange is getting harder - the new version will be subscription-based! The conversation also digs into the new version of
Managed DevOps Pools with Eliza Tarasila
How do you manage your CI/CD pipeline resources? Richard chats with Eliza Tarasila about Managed DevOps Pools in Azure DevOps. Eliza tells the story of discovering that teams were using Azure DevOps internally at Microsoft but would need to build their tooling to stand up the resources for testing and deployment. Managed DevOps Pools became the standard way to specify resources like virtual machin
Upgrading to Windows Server 2025 with Robert Smit
Ready to upgrade to Windows Server 2025? Richard talks to Robert Smit about his experiences doing an upgrade—with a few important dos and don'ts! Robert talks about dusting off your Active Directory setup and ensuring you're at the Server 2016 functional level. The conversation also dives into the new-build-versus-upgrade options, taking advantage of SMB over QUIC and SMB Compression, and much mor
Microsoft Entra ID Protection with Corissa Koopmans
How can Entra ID Protection help keep your organization resist security breaches? Richard talks to Corissa Koopmans about thinking beyond authentication and authorization and into conditional access - knowing what is normal and abnormal behavior for your users. Corissa recommends looking at the Entra ID Protection Dashboard - whether you have configured anything or not - to see what potential risk
Querying for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski
Do you Kusto? Richard talks to Mark Morowczynski about his new book, The Definitive Guide to KQL, and the power of Kusto to look across your Azure tenant and understand operational and security issues. Mark talks about being able to query across all log sets, telemetry, the M365 graph, and more - to help understand issues. The book provides example queries you could run today, including knowing th
SQL 2025 and Fabric SQL with Anna Hoffman
What about SQL Server in Microsoft Fabric? Richard chats with Anna Hoffman about the preview release of SQL 2025 in Microsoft Fabric and the power of having your data store where you are doing your analytics and machine learning! Anna talks about new applications being developed using AI technologies like large language models and that often those applications need a data store - so why not keep i
DevOpsDocs with Mattias Karlsson
Are your docs part of your DevOps cycle? Richard chats with Mattias Karlsson about automating documentation for APIs, cloud resources, and more! Mattias talks about using tools to build text files that contain every Azure resource being utilized, hopefully per application, along with API info, NuGet packages, and more. He also digs into the different audiences for that documentation - business wan
Least Privilege in 2025 with Bailey Bercik
How is least privilege different in 2025? Richard talks to Bailey Bercik about the ongoing efforts to minimize users, administrators, and applications' privileges in 2025. Bailey talks about the power of Entra Permissions Management to help you see what permissions are going unused on various accounts so that you can tailor rights to individual accounts without things becoming unmanageable. Artifi
Being a SysAdmin in 2025
For the first show of 2025, let's talk about being a sysadmin in the coming year. This is the sixth year of Richard going solo on the show to talk about the things he's seen in the past year and speculate a bit on the next year, at least for sysadmins. Economic uncertainty is still a thing, as is employment. The security situation continues to be tough - and getting worse. But remarkable new tools
A Very Windows Christmas with Paul Thurrott
What does Windows want for Christmas? Richard chats with Paul Thurrott about the crazy year that Windows has had and what 2025 holds. Paul starts with the Ignite keynote that focused on Windows being an open platform - which sounds funny on the surface, but has some logic to it! Security is a key part of that story, which brings up the issues around Crowdstrike and the Secure Future Initiative. An
