By Hisan Kidwai Wordle is the super fun game from the NYT, where you put your vocabulary to the…
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A year after its acquisition of Cameyo, Google is making the virtual application delivery platform generally available and integrating it with Chrome Enterprise.   

Cameyo’s virtualization technology enables business to access “legacy” Windows applications —from ERP tools to AutoCAD or Excel — a major limitation for Chromebooks in the workplace. It differs from traditional virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) tools by delivering just the individual app a user requires, Google said; the app is then accessed via the Chrome browser or as a progressive web app.

On Wednesday, Google announced that Cameyo by Google, as it’s now known, is generally available, priced at $132 per user a year.  

“Cameyo by Google helps us deliver on our vision for the future of work, one where you can access all of your applications side by side,” Rob Beard, product manager at Google, said during a briefing. It enables a “workspace where web apps and legacy applications are virtually the same, where the virtualization layer is invisible to the end users.” 

IT admins, Beard said, can “deliver apps to end users’ devices in minutes, without having to configure or even touch those end user devices.”

Google has also added an integration between Cameyo and Chrome Enterprise Premium, is browser and device management tool. This will ease the “deployment and management” of virtual apps, saidBeard, with access controls available via the Google Admin Console. The integration enables additional security features around virtual apps, such as URL filtering and data loss prevention (to stopusers from copying data out of an SAP app running in Cameyo, for instance).   

Another addition is the ability for Google’s Gemini AI assistant to interact with Cameyo-basedWindows apps. Otherwise, Cameyo users shouldn’t notice much difference from the product they’ve been using already, said Beard.

Cameyo by Google could help organizations that standardize on Google’s enterprise offerings continue to use legacy Windows apps, said Tom Mainelli, IDC group vice president, device and consumer research.

“Cameyo looks great as a standalone virtualization solution, but what’s powerful about this launch is its increased integration with the broader Google enterprise suite,” he said.

The ability to access Google’s Gemini AI in legacy apps could prove useful for end users, he said, while the Chrome Enterprise Premium integration means customers can “layer on additional security features” to those virtual apps.

While Cameyo by Google won’t convince a fully Windows-based enterprise to move entirely to Google’s ecosystem, it can “make it easier for organizations that are curious about and experimenting with Google’s various enterprise offerings to move more users into that ecosystem,” he said.

Source:: Computer World

Western European organizations are ramping up investments in local and regional cloud providers because growing geopolitical tensions are raising concerns that access to global cloud services could be disrupted for political reasons.

A survey of 214 CIOs and IT leaders in Western Europe, conducted by Gartner between May and June, found that more than 61% plan to increase their reliance on local and regional cloud providers due to geopolitics. More than half (53%) plan to restrict future use of global cloud providers for the same reason — and 44% reported they’re already limiting use.

“It shows that geopolitics absolutely have an impact on the decision making of organizations when it comes to cloud,” said Rene Buest, senior director analyst at Gartner. 

There are several reasons for an increased focus on digital sovereignty, according to Buest. 

One is a fear the US government could block access to cloud services. For instance, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, reportedly lost access to Microsoft services earlier this year, several months after US President Donald Trump placed sanctions on the organization. Microsoft has since denied it suspended services for the ICC. 

Other cases, such as Adobe cutting off Venezuelan customers in compliance with US  sanctions against that country, reinforced concerns about who has access to their data.

“Digital sovereignty has a lot to do with control — who has control over the technology or over the cloud I’m on,” said Buest. “And if I’m not able to control it, there’s the likelihood that I won’t be operational at some point anymore.”

There’s also uncertainty around trade negotiations, with many worried that tariffs could be placed on US cloud services.  

Amid geopolitical uncertainty, many European organizations are turning to alternatives to established cloud providers, and 55% plan to expand their use of open-source software, according to the Gartner survey.

Several public sector organizations in the region are moving to open source digital workplace apps. The German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein is replacing Microsoft software with LibreOffice, Nextcloud, and Open-X-Change, while the city of Lyon in France, will replace Windows and Office with open-source alternatives. And the Austrian Armed Forces will reportedly deploy LibreOffice to 16,000 workstations.

Digital sovereignty is expected to grow as a priority globally, according to Gartner. By 2030, the analyst firm forecasts that more than 75% of all enterprises outside the US will have a digital sovereignty strategy that involves local or regional cloud usage. 

Heightened interest in digital sovereignty will result in increased spending on local clouds and open-source applications, but the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are unlikely to be too troubled. These hyperscalers account for 70% of the IaaS, PaaS, and hosted private cloud market in Europe, according to a report by Synergry Research Group from July. US tech giants also lead in SaaS, with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace widely used by private and public sector organizations.

Buest expects some cloud spending to shift to European providers in the coming years, boosting revenues for local suppliers. But a mass exodus of customers from global cloud providers is unlikely. 

“We won’t see a big shift, or that the hyperscalers lose an immense amount of market share,” said Buest. “It’s still a drop in the ocean.”

For CIOs and other IT leaders, his advice is to select which workloads are appropriate for a sovereign cloud and when to rely on hyperscalers — a room booking application would contain less sensitve corporate information, for instance. They should assess the current level of sovereignty and control over their data and understand the likelihood of various risk scenarios. 

“So basically, [it’s] good old risk management,” said Buest.

Source:: Computer World

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In case you hadn’t noticed, change is in the air.

Over the past few years, every day seemingly brings new tales of how businesses are still trying to integrate generative AI (genAI) tools, figure out what agentic AI can do for them, and decipher what genAI firms are really saying about the new features they routinely unveil. 

There are ongoing reports that augmented or virtual reality really does have a future in the business world, AI PCs will take over the PC market in a post Windows 10 world, Arm-based PCs will change everything, and Apple has moved into the enterprise space faster than expected. 

There’s a lot going on in the enterprise tech world. Add all those changes to the day-to-day standard IT job of keeping everything up running and many IT leaders and professionals can quickly get overwhelmed. 

So how do you keep up?

Here are 14 ways IT departments can approach this conundrum while maintaining their sanity amid constant change — especially with everyone from the C-suite to front-line workers clamoring for the latest tech.

Set expectations. Be clear about what you can realistically accomplish in terms of new technology given your budget and manpower. Set firm boundaries and be consistent both within and outside the IT department. 

Rely on trusted sources for research. Cultivate tech news sources you can rely on. Many tech developments, especially around hot topics like genAI, are routinely covered by a variety of media sources (including mainstream news outlets and tech influencers). Separate the hype from what is really going on — what’s working and what isn’t. 

Communicate with peers. In addition to curating sources, having relationships with people at other organizations in your industry (and sometimes outside your industry) is a powerful way to see what colleagues are doing and get perspective. This can help lead to innovations within your IT department, opportunities for collaboration, and potential new hires.

Be open to suggestions. Being receptive to ideas inside and outside IT can be critical. No IT leader or admin is an expert on everything when it comes to emerging technology. Good ideas can come from anywhere, so it’s important to demonstrate your openness. (Not every idea will be worth pursuing, of course.)

Open proofs of concept. When ideas seem attainable and worth exploring in depth, proof-of-concept projects is a logical next step. Each should be well defined, have set timelines and measurable goals. If projects are open ended or vaguely planned, they risk becoming zombie projects that never die. 

Realize not everything will work. That’s why proofs of concept and pilot projects are important. Be prepared for failure. Many if not most ideas or projects, will fail or at least go through a rough patch. But even failures can be useful learning experiences. Set expectations accordingly. 

Encourage experimentation, but with guardrails. Experimentation is a good thing, be it by technical staff, executives, or everyday users. You do yourself a disservice by outlawing experimentation, but you can’t let it go unchecked. Whether for security reasons, IT resource limits or usability/user training requirements, you need to keep experiments from overtaking everything else need to do.

Shadow IT exists; use it. For years, studies have shown that shadow IT — where users quietly build their own workflows and processes and even make their own purchases without informing IT— is more prevalent than many decision makers realize. With almost any new technology, users will experiment, with or without IT’s knowledge. (This is how BYOD began.) Your best approach is to allow this to happen, and in some circumstances encourage it. Banning it isn’t an effective strategy and you might actually learn how to incorporate various tools and techniques into larger, more managed, projects. 

If you say no, explain why. There’s an old adage that IT is the department of “no,” always shutting down people and ideas. Even if you’re ok with shadow IT projects, there will be times you have to draw a line. Few people like being told no, it but if you can explain your rationale, most will accept it. (Whatever idea you’ve vetoed could still reemerge in the shadows; a solid explanation of IT’s thinking gives you an opportunity to work with those employees cooperatively.) 

Work with vendors, partners and consultants. No IT department is an island. Everyone has to deal with vendors, consultants and other partners to successfully get a handle on new technologies. Outside relationships can bring forward new ideas, allow IT to see things with fresh eyes and augment your internal staff. (Beware of “partners” too focused on hype — and be certain that they understand your current position and specific enterprise needs.) 

Create centers of excellence. These centers can be a good way to educate staffers, execs and front-line employees about the challenges of exploring, adopting and integrating emerging technologies. This can relieve pressure on IT leaders to be up to date on every tech development and how it relates to your company. And they can help build a working group to establish expertise, use cases, best practices and needed requirements, documentation and support.

Avoid hype. Control your enthusiasm for new technology. This doesn’t mean you don’t show enthusiasm; it does mean that you operate in a “no hype” zone, where clear eyes and realism are in order. 

Remember scalability, support and security. New technologies can be exciting, but IT has to consider how each will scale, the strain they’ll place on tech support, and how they could affect corporate security. As each new concept, product or initiative arises, IT always has to keep these three areas in mind. 

Be open to disruption, but be realistic. GenAI, agentic AI, AI PCs — note the AI thread running through all three — are potentially massive disruptors of the status quo. IT can’t afford to be afraid of  disruption, but it’s important to remain realistic about the nuts and bolts of getting new tech initiatives working —as well as the potential affects on your organization and its workers.

A host of new technologies is coming to market faster than ever. Knowing how to evaluate them and their potential impact on your business is a requirement for every IT leader. Things will never be as simple as they once were, but you can develop pathways and processes for you, your staff and organization to manage the flood of news and announcements and separate the potential from the hype.

Because the pace of change isn’t likely to slow down anytime soon.

Source:: Computer World

Later this month, Microsoft plans to enhance its M365 productivity suite with “Agentic Users,” autonomous AI agents with their own identities and access to enterprise IT systems that can collaborate with one another and with humans.

“These agents can attend meetings, edit documents, communicate via email and chat, and perform tasks autonomously,” Microsoft said in an addition to its product roadmap entitled “Microsoft Teams: Discovery and Creation of Agentic Users from Teams and M365 Agent Store.” The update will be rolled out to desktop systems worldwide beginning later in November, according to the roadmap entry.

Microsoft provided further details about its plans for Agentic Users in a message posted to the Microsoft Admin Center, according to various reports from around the web.

Microsoft MVP João Ferreira posted what he said was a copy of it a copy of LC1183300 to his personal blog.

“Agentic Users are a new class of AI-powered digital entities designed to function as autonomous, enterprise-grade virtual colleagues. Unlike traditional bots, Agentic Users are provisioned as full-fledged user objects with their own identity in the organization’s directory (via Entra ID or Azure AD), email addresses, Teams accounts, and presence in the org chart,” the purported Microsoft announcement began.

All users in enterprises with access to Microsoft teams and the Microsoft 365 Copilot store will be able to view agent templates, although only approved users will be able to create agents from those templates, it continued.

Microsoft did not respond to an email seeking confirmation of the authenticity of the message.

The post also contains images that hints at the use cases these new Agentic Users might be used for, including procurement, HR initiatives such as employee wellness, tracking team tasks, and developing workflows. There was no mention, though, of how Agentic Users compare to the many agents that M365 already offers, including its Facilitator and Project Manager agents, its Office Agent, and different flavors of Copilots for sales, service, and finance operations.

Confusion over licensing, increasing costs, and Microsoft’s revenue play

Before they can create any of the new agents, admins will need to approve a template for use and “assign the required A365 license,” the posting said. No further information was included about the nature or pricing of these licenses.

Analysts speculated how the new A365 licenses might relate to existing M365 licenses, which are typically sold on a per-user, per-month basis with an annual commitment.

“Previously released agents like Facilitator or Project Manager were bundled under M365 Copilot entitlements, with advanced actions billed via Copilot credits. A365 introduces explicit per-agent licensing and admin-controlled approval through the Agent Store and separates agent costs from human seats,” said Forrester vice president and principal analyst Charlie Dai.

Alexander Golev, partner at SAM Expert, a specialist in managing Microsoft licensing and cloud costs, suggested instead that A365 will replace M365 user licenses.

“Our expectation is that it will provide a combination of user-like access to Microsoft 365 services on a monthly/annual/3-annual fee basis plus the core functionality of M365 Copilot. Additional AI use will be charged in the same manner as with users — prepaid capacities and pay-as-you-go items. We don’t expect them to be all-inclusive,” he said.

Microsoft has been changing its licensing practices to increase its revenue significantly, Golev said. “In the recent years, they moved from server- or device-based licensing to CPU-based and then core-based.”

In its reporting of M365 revenue, Microsoft focuses on average revenue per user (ARPU), “which is now hitting its ceiling,” he said. “You can only scale so far. Earth’s population grows slower than Microsoft’s revenue targets. What we have been predicting is the move to ARPA — Average Revenue per Agent, which can scale exponentially,” Golev said.

Another licensing expert, Rich Gibbons, blogged about the new A365 licenses, saying that he expected Microsoft to use them as an opportunity to generate additional consumption-based revenue.

Risk of agent sprawl?

Analyst Pareekh Jain of Jain Consulting said he expects Microsoft to update its previously introduced agents as part of the rollout of Agentic Users, giving the existing agents their own email addresses and Microsoft Entra IDs too.

“Too many autonomous agents for overlapping or redundant tasks mirror the challenges most enterprises have faced with bot and app sprawl in prior M365 deployments. Without tight governance, enterprises could face duplication, higher spend, data security exposure, and oversight challenges,” Jain said.

But, said Dai, Entra IDs could play a pivotal role in avoiding that sprawl. “These IDs can be used to treat agents as directory-backed identities enabling lifecycle control, access reviews, and compliance policies….helping enterprises gain visibility and accountability,” he said.

Even before we learn all the details of these new Agentic Users, it’s clear that there are some aspects of them to which enterprises will have to pay particular attention.

Dai pointed out to the need for effective collaboration between IT asset management and FinOps teams, while Everest analyst Tanvi Rai said enterprises will need strong change management to train employees to supervise, validate and govern agent behavior effectively.

Despite all the uncertainty, what is evident is that Microsoft’s move will further intensify the race among rivals, such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, who are also accelerating their efforts to introduce autonomous AI-driven agents aimed at boosting productivity across enterprises.

Source:: Computer World

It’s been an uncomfortable few days for  AI vendors. On Friday, the big tech companies saw $1.2 trillion wiped off their market valuations, reflecting the concerns of many analysts that AI valuations are too high and the market is heading for a serious crash.

Just a few days earlier, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar suggested that the US government could help the industry by providing a “backstop” to guarantee commercial loans financing AI chips in data centers — although hours later she took back those words in a LinkedIn post. The same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also denied the company wanted government loan guarantees in a mammoth 6,000-character post on X (formerly Twitter).

So how should CIOs view the future of their own AI investments? Financial analysts have a mixed view.

According to Shawn DuBravac of the Avrio Institute, big tech customers need to be more pragmatic, but don’t need to panic. “Companies don’t need to rewrite their strategy, but market volatility is a stress test of AI investment. The large tech companies recognize that the long-term demand for AI infrastructure is very strong.

Ilya Rybchin, principal at financial advisory firm BDO USA, said that CIOs shouldn’t be worried  about the technology becoming obsolete or vendors disappearing. “Customers should be worried about the anemic return on their own AI investments, irrespective of how their vendors are performing or what the media is saying about their vendors.”

Freeze AI procurement

He had some stark advice. “Companies should freeze new AI procurement. They should stop buying tools until they can prove they’re getting value from the ones they have.” He added that many companies are buying multiple AI platforms without using any effectively. “It’s like buying three chainsaws when you haven’t learned to use the first one,” he said.

Global technology futurist Daniel Burrus of Burrus Research predicted that organizations may need to rethink staffing levels. “We’re seeing a lot of layoffs due to AI investments, particularly among coders. However, I think these companies are missing a trick. I prefer to think of AI as Augmented Intelligence as it’s about augmenting, rather than replacing.

He said that there is already a change in the air. “We are seeing companies who have laid off people hiring them back.”

Concerns that the AI market is a bubble that’s about to burst won’t entirely go away. Altman has said that OpenAI is projecting an annualized revenue run rate of $20 billion this year and is committed to spending $1.4 trillion over the next eight years. Just last week, the company signed a deal with AWS for $38 billion to host its services on Amazon’s cloud service. That’s heavy investment and there will certainly be doubts whether it can grow revenue to match that expenditure.

Burrus draws parallels with Amazon.. “It took a very long time for them to make a profit but they’re racing for the intelligence to be better than a human being, and that is going to take some time.” However, Amazon didn’t make the dizzying levels of investment that OpenAI is committing itself to.

Not an extinction-level event

There is agreement, however, that the AI industry as a whole can survive without government support for one failing company.

DuBravac said, “If OpenAI stumbles, customers would feel turbulence and disruption but nothing that they couldn’t overcome.”

And Rybchin said that it could aid the progress of AI. “OpenAI failing would not be an extinction-level event for AI. On the contrary, it could be a healthy catalyst, forcing a necessary diversification of the AI landscape, encouraging competition and innovation from a wider range of players.

Source:: Computer World

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Do you think it’s time to turn an AI agent loose to do your procurement for you? As that could be a potentially expensive experiment to conduct in the real world, Microsoft is attempting to determine whether agent-to-agent ecommerce will really work, without the risk of using it in a live environment.

Earlier this week, a team of its researchers launched the Magentic Marketplace, an initiative they described as an “an open source simulation environment for exploring the numerous possibilities of agentic markets and their societal implications at scale.” It manages capabilities such as maintaining catalogs of available goods and services, implementing discovery algorithms, facilitating agent-to-agent communication, and handling simulated payments through a centralized transaction layer.

The 23-person research team wrote in a blog detailing the project that it provides “a foundation for studying these markets and guiding them toward outcomes that benefit everyone, which matters because most AI agent research focuses on isolated scenarios — a single agent completing a task or two agents negotiating a simple transaction.”

But real markets, they said, involve a large number of agents simultaneously searching, communicating, and transacting, creating complex dynamics that can’t be understood by studying agents in isolation, and capturing this complexity is essential “because real-world deployments raise critical questions about consumer welfare, market efficiency, fairness, manipulation resistance, and bias — questions that can’t be safely answered in production environments.”

They noted that even state-of-the-art models can show “notable vulnerabilities and biases in marketplace environments,” and that, in the simulations, agents “struggled with too many options, were susceptible to manipulation tactics, and showed systemic biases that created unfair advantages.”

Furthermore, they concluded that a simulation environment is crucial in helping organizations understand the interplay between market components and agents before deploying them at scale.

In their full technical paper, the researchers also detailed significant behavioral variations across agent models, which, they said, included “differential abilities to process noisy search results and varying susceptibility to manipulation tactics, with performance gaps widening as market complexity increases,” adding, “these findings underscore the importance of systematic evaluation in multi-agent economic settings. Proprietary versus open source models work differently.”

Bias and misinformation an issue

Describing Magentic Marketplace as “very interesting research,” Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, said that despite recent advancements, foundation models still have many weaknesses, including bias and misinformation.

Thus, he said, “any e-commerce operators that wish to rely on AI agents for tasks such as procurement and recommendations need to ensure the outputs are free of these weaknesses. At the moment, there are a few approaches to achieve this goal. Guardrails and filters will enable AI agents to generate outputs that are targeted and balanced, in line with rules and requirements.”

Many enterprises, said Su, “also apply context engineering to ground AI agents by creating a dynamic system that supplies the right context, such as relevant data, tools, and memory. With these tools in place, an AI agent can be trained to behave more similarly to a human employee and align the organizational interests.”

Similarly, he said, “we can therefore apply the same philosophy to the adoption of AI agents in the enterprise sector in general. AI agents should never be allowed to behave fully autonomously without sufficient check and balance, and in critical cases, human-in-the-loop.”

Thomas Randall, research lead at Info-Tech Research Group, noted, “The key finding was that when agents have clear, structured information (like accurate product data or transparent listings), they make much better decisions.” But the findings, he said, also revealed that these agents can be easily manipulated (for example, by misleading product descriptions or hidden prompts) and that giving agents too many choices can actually make their performance worse.

That means, he said, “the quality of information and the design of the marketplace strongly affect how well these automated systems behave. Ultimately, it’s unclear what massive value-add organizations may get if they let autonomous agents take over buying and selling.”

Agentic buying ‘a broad process’

Jason Anderson, vice president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said the areas the researchers looked into “are well scoped, as there are many different ways to buy and sell things. But, instead of attempting to execute commerce scenarios, the team kept it pretty straightforward to more deeply understand and test agent behavior versus what humans tend to assume naturally.”

For example, he said, “[humans] tend to narrow our selection criteria quickly to two or three options, since it’s tough for people to compare a broad matrix of requirements across many potential solutions, and it turns out that model performance also goes down when there are more choices as well. So, in that way there is some similarity between humans and agents.”

Also, Anderson said, “by testing bias and manipulation, we can see other patterns such as how some models have a bias toward picking the first option that met the user’s needs rather than examining all the options and choosing the best one. These types of observations will invariably end up helping models and agents improve over time.”

He also applauded the fact that Microsoft is open sourcing the data and simulation environment. “There are so many differences in how products and solutions are selected, negotiated, and bought from B2B versus B2C, Premium versus Commodities, cultural differences and the like,” he said. “An open sourcing of this tool will be valuable in terms of how behavior can be tested and shared, all of which will lead to a future where we can trust AI to transact.”

One thing this blog made clear, he noted, “is that agentic buying should be seen as a broad process and not just about executing the transaction; there is discovery, selection, comparison, negotiation, and so forth, and we are already seeing AI and agents being used in the process.” 

However, he observed, “I think we have seen more effort from agents on the sell side of the process. For instance, Amazon can help someone discover products with its AI. Salesforce discussed how its Agentforce Sales now enables agents to help customers learn more about an offering. If [they] click on a promotion and begin to ask questions, the agent can them help them through a decision-making process.” 

Caution urged

On the buy side, he said, “we are not at the agent stage quite yet, but I am very sure that AI and chatbots are playing a role in commerce already. For instance, I am sure that procurement teams out there are already using chat tools to help winnow down vendors before issuing RFIs or RFPs. And probably using that same tool to write the RFP. On the consumer side, it is very much the same, as comparison shopping is a use case highlighted by agentic browsers like Comet.”

Anderson said that he would also “urge some degree of caution for large procurement organizations to retool just yet. The learnings so far suggest that we still have a lot to learn before we see a reduction of humans in the loop, and if agents were to be used, they would need to be very tightly scoped and a good set of rules between buyer and seller be negotiated, since checking ‘my agent went rogue’ is not on the pick list for returning your order (yet).”

Randall added that for e-commerce operators leaning into this, it is “imperative to present data in consistent, machine-readable formats and be transparent about prices, shipping, and returns. It also means protecting systems from malicious inputs, like text that could trick an AI buyer into making bad decisions —the liabilities in this area are not well-defined, leading to legal headaches and complexities if organizations question what their agent bought.”

Businesses, he said, should expect a future where some customers are bots, and plan policies and protections, accordingly, including authentication for legitimate agents and rules to limit abuse.

In addition, said Randall, “many companies do not have the governance in place to move forward with agentic AI. Allowing AI to act autonomously raises new governance challenges: how to ensure accountability, compliance, and safety when decisions are made by machines rather than people — especially if those decisions cannot be effectively tracked.”

Sharing the sandbox

For those who’d like to explore further, Microsoft has made Magentic Marketplace available as an open source environment for exploring agentic market dynamics, with code, datasets, and experiment templates available on GitHub  and Azure AI Foundry Labs.

Source:: Computer World

Configuration Manager will move to an annual release schedule while Microsoft focuses on Intune as the long-term platform for device management.

The new release schedule will begin September 2026, with version 2609, Microsoft announced in a blog post this week. Further releases will then align with the Windows security and stability update cycle (H2). Microsoft has already briefed customers on the new approach at events and in discussions; this week’s announcement makes those plans official.

The shift means that hotfix rollups will only be provided when “absolutely necessary,” such as for critical security or functionality problems, Microsoft said, with other updates coming in the annual release.

Configuration Manager, which launched in 1994 as Systems Management Server (SMS), and later rebranded to System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), is an on-premise application that supports management of PCs and servers. Now part of the Microsoft Intune suite, it coexists and overlaps with the Intune app, a cloud-based endpoint management service.

Microsoft will continue to support Configuration Manager, with a focus on “security, stability, and long-term support,” said Danny Guillory, senior program manager at Microsoft. Any changes or deprecations “will be communicated well in advance,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Intune suite will receive “all future investments and innovation,” as Microsoft prioritizes its device management suite going forward.

“This isn’t the end of Configuration Manager, but it’s a clear signal of Microsoft’s cloud-first strategy,” said Daniel Engberg, principal consultant at Agdiwo. 

Although there’s no immediate pressure to abandon Configuration Manager, organizations should start planning for “co-management or eventual migration to Intune,” he said.

Many organizations still rely heavily on Configuration Manager for on-premises and hybrid scenarios, and it remains a mature and highly capable product, according to Engberg. Furthermore, it’s not a direct replacement for Intune. “ConfigMgr does far more than just manage mobile endpoints, including robust server management and advanced deployment capabilities,” he said.

For some customers, such as those in regulated environments or that run complex infrastructure, it could make sense to remain on Configuration Manager for the foreseeable future. “In many ways, it feels like Configuration Manager is moving toward a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC)-style role, focused on stability rather than new features,” said Engberg. 

Source:: Computer World

“What kind of AI does the world really want?”. So begins a blog post by Mustafa Suleyman, director of AI at Microsoft. In his opinion, “it’s probably the most important question of our time.”

Suleyman recalls the progress experienced in recent years, which “has been phenomenal.” “We are breezing past the great milestones. The Turing test, a guiding inspiration for many in the field for 70 years, was effectively passed without any fanfare and hardly any acknowledgement. With the arrival of thinking and reasoning models, we’ve crossed an inflection point on the journey towards superintelligence. If AGI [artificial general intelligence] is often seen as the point at which an AI can match human performance at all tasks, then superintelligence is when it can go far beyond that performance,” he continues.

However, Suleyman advocates that the time has come to think carefully about the purpose of the technology, “what we want from it, what its limitations should be, and how we’re going to ensure that this incredible tech always benefits humanity,” rather than “endlessly debating capabilities or timing.” Accordingly, Microsoft has created the MAI Superintelligence team, led by Suleyman himself, as part of Microsoft AI. In his words, “We want it to be the world’s best place to research and develop AI, bar none. I think about it as humanist superintelligence to clearly indicate this isn’t about some directionless technological goal, an empty challenge, a mountain for its own sake. We are doing this to solve real concrete problems and do it in such a way that it remains grounded and controllable. We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity.”

Suleyman is clear that this AI has extraordinary capabilities, but is specific, contained and aligned with human values. A technology that, in his view, does not seek to create autonomous and unlimited entities, but systems designed to solve real problems — such as healthcare, clean energy or education — while keeping human control as a priority. “We want to both explore and prioritize how the most advanced forms of AI can help keep humanity in control while at the same time accelerating our path towards tackling our most pressing global challenges,” he says.

What’s more, Microsoft’s head of AI says the company rejects the narrative of a “race to AGI,” which has dominated the technology discourse. Instead, he proposes a more humanist and collaborative approach, focused on tangible and lasting benefits. Technology, he argues, must continue to be an engine of moral and material progress, but guided by the conviction expressed by Albert Einstein: “The concern for man and his destiny must always be the chief interest of all technical effort.”

In Suleyman’s view, one of the key challenges is the containment and alignment of advanced systems: “Since this kind of superintelligence can continuously improve itself, we’ll need to contain and align it not just once, but constantly, in perpetuity.”

Suleyman identifies three areas where humanist superintelligence could have a transformative impact. The first is the personal AI companion, designed to assist people in their learning, productivity and well-being, without replacing human connection. The second is medical superintelligence, capable of delivering expert-level diagnostics and treatment, expanding global access to healthcare. And the third, clean and abundant energy, where AI would facilitate scientific discovery, resource optimization and development of sustainable generation technologies.

This, in his view, implies a clear set of rules if this model is to be achieved, as well as international cooperation and transparency. Suleyman says Microsoft recognizes the risk of less safe models advancing faster, so he calls for collective action to prevent innovation from being imposed without ethical control. “We are not building a superintelligence at any cost, with no limits,” he emphasizes.

Ultimately, Microsoft’s AI chief argues that humanist superintelligence seeks to keep humans at the center of the technological equation. As such, Microsoft is clear that AI must be subordinate, controllable and aligned with human values, and that its purpose is not to replace people, but to amplify their capabilities. “Superintelligence could be the best invention ever, but only if it puts the interests of human beings above everything else,” he says.

Source:: Computer World

Japanese media company Nikkei has confirmed that a security breach of its Slack accounts has potentially leaked highly sensitive information from more than 17,000 of its users. Consultants point to the incident as yet another reminder of the dangers when non-corporate devices are allowed to access confidential corporate data. 

“An employee’s personal computer was infected with a virus, leading to the leakage of Slack authentication credentials. It is believed that this information was used to gain unauthorized access to employee accounts,” Nikkei said in a published statement. “The incident was identified in September and countermeasures such as changing passwords were implemented. Potentially leaked information includes the names, email addresses, and chat histories for 17,368 individuals registered on Slack.”

The Nikkei statement added “Considering the incident’s significance and to ensure transparency, we voluntarily reported it to [Japan’s] Personal Information Protection Commission. No leakage of information related to sources or reporting activities has been confirmed.”

Cybersecurity consultant Brian Levine, a former federal prosecutor who today serves as executive director of FormerGov, a directory of former government and military specialists, stressed that this is part of an ongoing trend of Slack breaches.

“There is often increased risk when employees or contractors access company resources from non-company-managed devices. Recent attacks against Okta, MGM Resorts, and others have been linked to such unmanaged access,” Levine said, adding that last year, “an attacker exfiltrated more than [1 terabyte] of internal data from Disney’s Slack environment when a contractor had accessed Slack from an unmanaged device, bypassing monitoring tools.”  

Erik Avakian, technical counselor at Info-Tech Research Group, noted that one of the most concerning things about attacks similar to the Nikkei breach is that the attackers are often able to easily bypass MFA defenses.

“An employee’s computer gets hit by malware designed to steal credentials. The malware grabs Slack session tokens and cookies, then sends them to attacker command and control servers,” Avakian said. “With those stolen and likely active tokens, the attacker is able to log into Slack from their own device and access private channels and chat history without even triggering a multi-factor authentication prompt, since they reused an already-authenticated session.”

Avakian said that the nature of these attacks suggests that enterprise CISOs should consider procedural changes. 

This kind of attack would give threat actors “broad access to channels and integrations, which made the impact worse. Weaknesses around this incident shine a light on unmanaged or poorly protected devices, long-lived tokens, and not enough logging or alerts for suspicious sessions,” Avakian said. “Organizations can learn from these types of incident, and those using Slack, or any other widely used communications platform similar to Slack, should maintain a policy for revoking active sessions and refreshing tokens for affected users routinely, forcing password resets and rotating API tokens.”

Jeff Man, a senior information security consultant with Online Business Systems, pointed out, “the larger discussion should be on the failings of the Nikkei IT/IS program to protect against some sort of attack that targeted its employees. Why are employees allowed to use Slack on personal devices?”

“So this is really an issue of risk management,” Man said. “In the case of Nikkei, it appears the exploitation was elsewhere [on the system]. The initial access allowed the miscreants to use credentials to gain access to Slack. That’s not a compromise of Slack itself, that’s a compromise of employee account authentication.”

Stephen Boyce, security consultant and CEO of The Cyber Dr., said the Nikkei incident represents “what happens when someone uses a personal device to get into work systems. Once that device gets hit with malware, it’s game over for the credentials. The part that worries me is this could happen anywhere. People forget how much sensitive stuff ends up in Slack: messages, files, links, sometimes even credentials. Once someone has that, they can poke around pretty freely.”

“To me, it’s just another reminder that zero trust has to go all the way out to the edge, not just the network. You’ve got to know the device, use MFA tied to managed hardware, and control what data lives in those SaaS tools,” Boyce said. “You may be also asking ‘Well, do we do away with BYOD all together?’ And the short answer is ‘no’ but we do need to look at ways we can secure the workforce beyond company issued assets.”

This article originally appeared on CSO Online.

Source:: Computer World

Some say good government is less government. Others have a different point of view. But the least you should be able to expect from any kind of governance is that following one law doesn’t force you to break another. That is, unless you’re Apple and the laws are made in Europe.

In a letter seen by Computerworld, Apple Vice President Kyle Andeer has come out swinging against yet another investigation into the company’s business. Apple faces a pair of inquiries under Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a sprawling piece of legislation that pretends to make the online world safer and probably won’t. (UK legal firm Slaughter and May offers a useful guide here.)

Apple comes out fighting

The problem is that the two investigations arguably reflect requirements made under the DSA’s companion law, the Digital Markets Act. Apple isn’t happy, and its latest furious complaint against EU regulators pulls no punches in pointing out the futile and contradictory hypocrisy in play. 

“We are concerned that these new inquiries are cynical attempts to distract from the core problems caused by the Commission’s misguided DMA enforcement efforts,” the letter says.

As part of an initial investigation, the European Commission has thrown Requests for Information (RFI) at Apple. These say regulators suspect that Apple:

“Has not put in place reasonable, proportionate and effective mitigation measures tailored to this specific systemic risk [of the dissemination of illegal content related to financial scams through App Store].”

“Has not put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of safety and security of minors on their service.”

Apple helpfully points to its extensive and provable track record of having put numerous protections in place to protect customers and their children, while also pointing out that the Commission has made the task far more challenging in how it applies the DMA.

Apple is the world’s safest ecosystem

“We find it difficult to square the premise of these [requests] with the Commission’s aggressive interpretation and application of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The Commission has consistently taken positions under the DMA that undercut Apple’s ability to protect its users,” the company said.

“Apple has always focused on protecting its users from bad actors on its platforms and in its App Store. For almost two decades, we have been investing heavily in systems and processes to identify risks of financial scams, apps that could potentially harm children, and other apps that we believe pose risks to our users on iOS and iPadOS. We have taken a number of steps to protect our users from harm — whether the risk is at the app level or the payment processor level.”

The extensive letter points to numerous things Apple already does. From App Store and App Review and beyond, its approach helps control fraud, prevent distribution of pornography, and defend against malware. But, of course, the Commission is actively eroding these protections with the DMA.

Europe is fundamentally undermining itself

“The Commission has forced Apple to change that successful approach — while simultaneously refusing to allow it to implement proven safeguards that have helped ensure that iOS users are better protected from malicious actors than users of any other [approach]. Without those protections, risks to users on our devices will inevitably increase.”

Apple also warns that giving developers permission to link out of their apps to wherever they want to link without any significant protections also threatens user security. Needless to say, this is precisely what Europe has demanded Apple do — a move that will inevitably expose people to additional risks. Europe is also insisting Apple “fundamentally undercut” many of the tools it currently uses for parental protection and control, even to the extent of refusing to permit Apple to institute key safeguards. 

“For decades, Apple has been meeting the challenges of an ever-evolving threat landscape by constantly innovating to keep our users safe from harm. Our efforts have made iOS the most secure mobile platform,” the company, quite justifiably, explains.

Apple also points to some of the big companies that have undermined the very protections the Commission now claims to want to encourage.”

European enshittification

“The Commission has made the App Store less safe for users: It introduced new vulnerabilities and undermined the protections Apple has long put in place to protect users of the App Store,” Apple said. “At the same time, the Commission has done nothing to address abuses by developers. Authorities in the United States have condemned Epic Games, Match Group, and other developers for misleading and deceiving users (specifically including children, in at least one case). The silence of the Commission has been deafening. It has turned a blind eye to these abuses, as they would expose the hypocrisy of the Commission’s approach to the digital marketplace. The loser is the user.

“It does not make sense for the Commission to press Apple to protect users, including minors, from fraud within the App Store while at the same time requiring Apple to create functionalities like link-outs and web views that increase the risk of fraud without necessary safeguards.”

Where’s the consistency?

“The Commission cannot both prohibit Apple from taking the steps it has found essential in mitigating the risk of scams and fraud on the App Store while simultaneously scrutinizing Apple for not providing even more measures to mitigate these risks on the App Store.”

Apple is quite evidently in a Catch-22 situation. On one hand, it’s being forced to introduce fundamental insecurities into its platforms, while at the same time facing punishment for what it is required to do. Central to all of this is what appears to be a commitment to denial on the part of Europe, which can’t even accept, for example, that many fraudsters play a long game; that is why intentional use of third-party payment systems with multiple layers of approval is so important when it comes to NFC.

What next?

With that total lack of consistency, Apple will surely see the cost of doing business in Europe increasing fast. So, when will it become so burdensome and expensive to do business in Europe that it becomes worth quitting the market? 

This has to be a question Apple’s senior leadership teams must discuss at morning meetings as Europe’s regulators hammer Cupertino with contradictory and inconsistent requests. If European voters feel like the long wait for Apple Intelligence was painful to them, just how will they feel in the event Apple chose to withdraw some products and services from that market entirely?

Perhaps Europe’s Parliament, which hires the leaders of the Commission, might want to consider that in the prelude to the next election in 2029.

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Source:: Computer World

Microsoft will allow customers in 15 countries to process Microsoft 365 Copilot data locally, part of the company’s plans to address growing digital sovereignty concerns in regions such as Europe. 

Data generated during interactions with the generative AI (genAI) assistant — including user prompts and output responses — will be handled in data centers within each country Microsoft announced Tuesday.

The rollout will begin with Australia, India, Japan, and the United Kingdom by the end of the year, followed by Canada, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States in 2026.

The aim is to help M365 Copilot customers, particularly those in government and highly regulated industries, meet “governance, security and regulatory compliance demands,” Paul Lorimer, Microsoft corporate vice president, Office 365 Enterprise and Cloud Engineering, said in a blog post Tuesday.

“With in-country processing, Copilot interactions are processed, under normal operations, in data centers located within a nation’s borders, giving customers greater control over their data,” said Lorimer. Local processing can also improve the genAI assistant’s performance by reducing latency, he said.

Amid rising geopolitical tension, customers in some regions want their data — and the processing of that data — confined to “specific regional, if not local, data centers,” said Nader Henein, research vice president analyst at Gartner. “This is meant as an additional level of regulatory protection where data stored locally is governed by local laws and further insulated from extra-territorial reach.”

As demands for data residency have risen, Microsoft introduced its Advanced Data Residency add-on for Microsoft 365 apps, but not Copilot processing, “due to limitations in GPU capacity. Now this has changed, with plans to support local processing in a series of 15 regional data centers,” he said. 

“For organizations that had prioritized storage and processing residency as a key requirement, the adoption of Copilot capabilities within the Microsoft stack was delayed — with this change, they have a path to adoption.”

The announcement builds on Microsoft’s earlier efforts to address European data sovereignty concerns, in particular.

Early this year, Microsoft published its European “digital commitments,” promising to “uphold Europe’s digital resilience regardless of geopolitical and trade volatility.” It also introduced services such as Data Guardian, which restricts access to customer data to Microsoft staff residing in Europe, and Microsoft 365 Local, which enables customers to run applications including SharePoint Server and Exchange Server on their own systems with Azure Local. 

Microsoft 365 Local is now generally available, the company said, with a disconnected option for “complete isolation” due in early 2026. 

Other announcements this week include the establishment of a European board of directors comprising European nationals to oversee data center operations in compliance with European law. Microsoft also extended AI data to its European Union Data Boundary service, meaning European customers’ AI data will be stored and processed exclusively in the EU, “whether at rest or in transit.”

Source:: Computer World

Windows enterprise administrators will have until December 2027 at the latest to put in place alternatives to the security protection offered by Microsoft Defender Application Guard (MDAG) for Office, the company has confirmed.

MDAG’s purpose is to protect customers from the threat of boobytrapped Office documents sent via email. The feature was added to some Office subscription tiers from 2019 onwards, but Microsoft announced in November 2023 that the feature was nearing the end of the road, since when customers have been waiting for more detail on how and when this would happen.

According to Microsoft’s new timeline on its customer portal, removal will begin with Office version 2602 for the Current Patch Tuesday Channel in February 2026, the Monthly Enterprise Channel in April 2026, and the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel in July 2026.

Full removal will happen for Office version 2612 by December 2026 for the Current Channel, February 2027 for the Monthly Enterprise Channel, and July 2027 for the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel.

Ambiguously, the timeline also lists December 2027 as the final date for removal, although it’s likely that the later date is a final cut-off for customers with extended support licenses.

Isolation overhead

Instead of opening files in main memory, MDAG opens files in a Hyper-V sandbox, thereby isolating any malware executed from the operating system. The concept is sound, but it comes with the inconvenience of much slower document load times.

It could also be undermined by occasional vulnerabilities in the isolation layer, an example of which would be CVE-2022-26706, a sandbox escape flaw affecting macOS.

Microsoft is replacing MDAG with two security layers it claims do the same job: Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules and Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC).

ASR is a rules-based mechanism for blocking malicious scripts, executables, or code injection. While the performance is much improved, one potential downside is that it relies on behavioral analysis.

What happens if attackers use a novel technique not yet picked up by ASR? Microsoft’s view is that they rarely do because most malicious document attacks exploit predictable techniques. Backed by cloud-based machine learning, the chances of an innovative attack getting past ASR are claimed to be small.

Meanwhile, WDAC analysis, which executes at kernel level, blocks applications by monitoring digital signatures, file hashes, and other reputation signals.

Admin workload

Given that the removal process happens automatically, what’s left for administrators to do?

Although many enterprise IT teams are probably not hugely aware of MDAG, there could still be hidden work caused by its removal. Microsoft, for its part, recommends that administrators do the following:

Enable Microsoft Defender for Endpoint ASR rules to block risky Office file behaviors.

Enable Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) to ensure only trusted, signed code runs on devices.

Review internal documentation and helpdesk guidance if your organization previously relied on Application Guard for Office.

Nevertheless, MDAG’s deprecation could still cause problems for customers that have built it into automated workflows.

A generic example of this would be an automated workflow script that will only allow an Office document to be opened once it has passed through MDAG. If MDAG is no longer present, that script will need to be re-written — and procedures changed if the logs from isolation security testing were being sent into SIEMs as part of compliance rules.

Although primarily affecting organizations with a cautious approach to Office documents such as critical infrastructure or government, this re-scripting could still turn into a lot of work.

What’s not in doubt is the stress induced by the regular churn of new and deprecated features on a Windows platform that has gradually become byzantine in its complexity.

Since 2017, Computerworld has published a regularly updated guide to Windows 10 and 11 components and features as they appear, or disappear. Meanwhile, the arrival of Windows 11 has introduced several changes to the operating system’s underlying security architecture, many built around Security Copilot.

Source:: Computer World