RunAs Radio
- Episodes
- 1,062
- Released
- weekly
- Latest episode
- Nov 11, 2026
About the podcast
RunAs Radio is a weekly Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals working with Microsoft products.
Episodes 1,062
CRM in the Age of AI with Angeliki Patsiavou
Can AI make customer relationships better without taking the human out of them? Richard talks to Angeliki Patsiavou about the changing role of CRM in the age of AI. As agents make CRM increasingly invisible …
Show notes
Can AI make customer relationships better without taking the human out of them? Richard talks to Angeliki Patsiavou about the changing role of CRM in the age of AI. As agents make CRM increasingly invisible, they can summarize customer history, identify opportunities, support negotiations, and help people work more effectively. Still, they can also amplify bad data and turn authentic conversations into agents talking to agents. Angeliki argues for keeping humans in the loop while rethinking CRM interfaces, governance, and even the economics of token-based AI services. The opportunity isn't to replace relationships with AI, but to use AI to give people better context and more time to build those relationships.
Links
Recorded Oct 5, 2026
PowerShell 7.7 and DSC 3.3 with Jason Helmick
Where are PowerShell and Desired State Configuration going next? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about PowerShell 7.7 and DSC 3.3. Jason explains how DSC has evolved from configuring Windows Server into a …
Show notes
Where are PowerShell and Desired State Configuration going next? Richard talks to Jason Helmick about PowerShell 7.7 and DSC 3.3. Jason explains how DSC has evolved from configuring Windows Server into a lightweight, cross-platform configuration engine underlying tools like WinGet Configure, with integrations into other automation platforms on the way. The conversation also digs into PowerShell's annual release cadence, the continuing challenge of moving enterprises from Windows PowerShell 5.1 to PowerShell 7, and Microsoft's efforts to make that migration easier. And Jason discusses how the latest wave of security work is changing PowerShell engineering while the team tries to keep twenty years of automation working.
Links
- powershell.org
- DSC v3.3.0
- WinGet Configuration
- Windows Server Update Services
- Microsoft Intune
- PowerShell
- How Not To Hate PowerShell
- PowerShell 7.7
- Migrating from Windows PowerShell 5.1 to PowerShell 7
- PSScriptAnalyzer Module
Recorded Oct 1, 2026
PostgreSQL with Elizabeth Christensen
Why are so many organizations considering PostgreSQL alongside SQL Server? Richard talks to Elizabeth Christensen about PostgreSQL and its growing role in modern enterprise data platforms. Elizabeth explains …
Show notes
Why are so many organizations considering PostgreSQL alongside SQL Server? Richard talks to Elizabeth Christensen about PostgreSQL and its growing role in modern enterprise data platforms. Elizabeth explains how PostgreSQL’s open-source roots, extensibility model, and broad cloud support have helped it become a mainstream choice for everything from new applications to SQL Server migration projects. They discuss the practical realities of administration, backups, high availability, security integration with Microsoft Entra, and the ecosystem of tools and extensions that surround PostgreSQL. The conversation also explores how PostgreSQL is evolving beyond traditional transactional workloads, connecting to modern analytics platforms, object storage, AI-driven reporting, and open data formats while remaining a proven database platform for enterprises, governments, and cloud providers.
Links
- Databasus
- CloudNativePG
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
- Snowflake Postgres
- DBeaver
- pgAdmin
- PostgreSQL 18.0
- Red Hat Enterprise
- Postgres.app
- Redgate PostgreSQL Resources & Tools
- PostGIS
- Apache Iceberg
- Apache Parquet
- Metabase
- Streamlit
- Apache Datasketches
- DuckDB
Recorded Sept 10, 2026
OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications with Will Velida
What are the risks of using agents in your organization? While at NDC in Oslo, Richard sat down with Will Velida to talk about the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications. AI agents promise productivity gains …
Show notes
What are the risks of using agents in your organization? While at NDC in Oslo, Richard sat down with Will Velida to talk about the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications. AI agents promise productivity gains, but they also introduce entirely new attack surfaces. Richard and Will explore threats such as prompt injection, agent goal hijacking, memory poisoning, privilege abuse, and cascading failures across multi-agent workflows. They also discuss the tooling, governance frameworks, and security practices organizations need to adopt to move agentic applications from proof-of-concept to production safely.
Links
- OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications 2026
- Microsoft Purview
- OpenTelemetry AI Agent Observability
- Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit
- Microsoft AI Foundry
- Hugging Face
- Agent Plugins
- Microsoft Entra Agent ID Documentation
- Agentic Authorization
Recorded Sept 17, 2026
Choosing Tools in M365 with Joy Apple
Turning on every tool in M365 is rarely a successful strategy - so how do you choose? Richard chats with Joy Apple about her work as a consultant helping organizations use the huge array of products in the M365 …
Show notes
Turning on every tool in M365 is rarely a successful strategy - so how do you choose? Richard chats with Joy Apple about her work as a consultant helping organizations use the huge array of products in the M365 universe. Joy talks about meeting people where they are - understanding how they currently work, and then finding tools that can best amplify their productivity. Collaboration tools are a huge part of that story - finding ways to work together is always a challenge. And that's one of the many reasons there are so many tools in M365... It's all about addressing what people want to do!
Links
Recorded Sep 1, 2026
Cloudflare Edge Workers with Bob Fornal
What can Cloudflare do for you? While at KCDC in Kansas City, Richard chatted with Bob Fornal about how his organization uses Cloudflare - not just for content delivery or DDoS protection, but also edge compute …
Show notes
What can Cloudflare do for you? While at KCDC in Kansas City, Richard chatted with Bob Fornal about how his organization uses Cloudflare - not just for content delivery or DDoS protection, but also edge compute - and more! Bob talks about moving workloads between the client and server, where Cloudflare Workers can run some code and save time while staying secure. This leads to a broader conversation about introducing these tools to your organization - it's not likely something web developers will ask for. Still, it can help them, and collaboration between development and operations is always a positive in an organization!
Links
Recorded Sep 11, 2026
AI and Penetration Testing with Paula Januszkiewicz
How is artificial intelligence changing cybersecurity and penetration testing? Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about how her team now uses large language models throughout the security workflow, from …
Show notes
How is artificial intelligence changing cybersecurity and penetration testing? Richard talks to Paula Januszkiewicz about how her team now uses large language models throughout the security workflow, from vulnerability research and data analysis to penetration testing and incident response. Paula explains that AI hasn't replaced security professionals, but it has dramatically accelerated the work, making it possible to analyze more data, build better tools, and identify attack paths faster than ever before. The conversation also explores the defender's perspective, including monitoring, logging, incident response, and why organizations still need to eliminate insecure technologies like NTLM. AI is changing cybersecurity rapidly, but the fundamentals of security remain the same.
Links
Recorded Aug 26, 2026
Building Agents with Andrew Connell
Microsoft offers a surprising number of ways to build agents in Microsoft 365. Which one should you choose? Richard talks to Andrew Connell about the evolving Microsoft 365 Copilot landscape and the four major …
Show notes
Microsoft offers a surprising number of ways to build agents in Microsoft 365. Which one should you choose? Richard talks to Andrew Connell about the evolving Microsoft 365 Copilot landscape and the four major approaches to building agents. Starting with SharePoint Agents for document-focused scenarios, Andrew walks through Agent Builder inside Microsoft 365 Copilot, the increasingly popular Copilot Studio in the Power Platform ecosystem, and the often-overlooked Agents Toolkit for VS Code. Along the way, he discusses governance, licensing, publishing models, security concerns, and when Azure Foundry makes sense. The result is a practical guide to understanding Microsoft's growing agent platform and choosing the right tool for your organization.
Links
- Microsoft Copilot Architecture
- SharePoint Agents
- Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Microsoft Copilot Studio
- Agents Toolkit
- Microsoft Foundry
Recorded Sep 2, 2026
Patching in 2026 with Susan Bradley
How has patching changed in 2026? Richard chats with patching goddess Susan Bradley about what she's seeing in vendor patches and how they're affecting consumers and businesses. On one hand, you have the …
Show notes
How has patching changed in 2026? Richard chats with patching goddess Susan Bradley about what she's seeing in vendor patches and how they're affecting consumers and businesses. On one hand, you have the security risk of unpatched servers, which puts a lot of pressure on sysadmins to deploy patches immediately. And, at the same time, the number of patches has grown massively as tools like Anthropic's Fable have revealed far more vulnerabilities. Then there are the vendors that are slow to get fixes out for drivers and firmware for existing systems, increasing the risk of serious failures - it's not easy patching in 2026!
Links
- UEFI Secure Boot with Richard Hicks
- Reassess your Windows Update Policies
- Dell Hotfix
- HP Bitlocker Loop
- Suspend BitLocker Protection
- End of Support for Office 2016 and 2019
Recorded Aug 21, 2026
State of WSUS with Adam Marshall
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) was deprecated in Sept 2024 - when does it go away? Richard talks to Adam Marshall about how WSUS is still an essential service for Configuration Manager, included with …
Show notes
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) was deprecated in Sept 2024 - when does it go away? Richard talks to Adam Marshall about how WSUS is still an essential service for Configuration Manager, included with Server 2025 and V.Next - it's not going anywhere! Adam talks about the use cases WSUS covers that no other update solution does, especially granular control of updates and offline scenarios. And while Microsoft is still feeding updates into the WSUS stack, no new code is going into the solution, making it hard to maintain. That is why Adam has been building WAM - WSUS Automated Maintenance. The stack includes free and paid tools, and all of them make your WSUS life easier!
Links
- Windows Server Update Services
- Microsoft Intune
- Windows Update for Business
- Configuration Manager
- Windows Autopatch
- WSUS Automated Management
Recorded Aug 20, 2026
Reimagining Intranets with Susan Hanley
How does AI change the intranet? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about her work helping organizations build great intranets and how tools like M365 Copilot are changing the intranet. Susan talks about the new …
Show notes
How does AI change the intranet? Richard chats with Susan Hanley about her work helping organizations build great intranets and how tools like M365 Copilot are changing the intranet. Susan talks about the new reality of an intranet, where some users no longer go to the intranet directly but use an agent to retrieve the information they need. This impacts search statistics, but also means it's important to write pages that an agent can easily understand. The conversation also dives into the bane of all intranets - archiving data. LLMs can help with organizing data, but getting stale data out of view is essential. There are also retention policies and governance, and there's a role for these tools there too - the intranet is evolving!
Links
Recorded Aug 17, 2026
Security Features of PowerShell 7 with Mike O'Neill
How secure are your PowerShell scripts? Richard talks to Mike O'Neill about the powerful security features introduced with PowerShell 7.3 and above, including session configuration files and clean blocks. Mike …
Show notes
How secure are your PowerShell scripts? Richard talks to Mike O'Neill about the powerful security features introduced with PowerShell 7.3 and above, including session configuration files and clean blocks. Mike talks about how some organizations are strict about installing anything on servers, including the latest version of PowerShell - which is one of the reasons 5.1 has persisted so long. But that ends with 26H2 and opens the door to securing your PowerShell with strict controls over accounts, cmdlets, and more! The latest PowerShell makes it easier to have just enough administration - and makes it harder for the black hats to exploit!
Links
- PowerShell 7
- Just Enough Administration
- New-PSSessionConfiguration File
- PowerShell Clean Block
- Monthly PowerShell Team Call
- Mike's Exchange Add-In for PowerShell
Recorded July 9, 2026
Automatic Attack Disruption with Liz Tesch
What if Microsoft Defender not only detected attackers - but also fought back? Richard talks to Liz Tesch about Microsoft Defender Automatic Attack Disruption and Predictive Shielding. Liz talks about how …
Show notes
What if Microsoft Defender not only detected attackers - but also fought back? Richard talks to Liz Tesch about Microsoft Defender Automatic Attack Disruption and Predictive Shielding. Liz talks about how attacks are often detected before the payload executes, but by the time humans can respond, far more damage has been done. Automatic Attack Disruption acts immediately on detection to limit the attacker by locking accounts, restricting access on a compromised server, and more. Predictive Shielding goes a step further by limiting attackers' ability to respond to the disruption by turning off GPO changes, disabling safe mode, and otherwise interfering with the typical actions that attackers take once they know they have been detected. Add AI to the mix, and everything gets more complicated. The black hats are using AI to attack, and Microsoft Defender XDR is using it to defend - the race is on!
Links
- Microsoft Defender XDR
- Automatic Attack Disruption
- Predictive Shielding
- Microsoft Sentinel
- Microsoft Defender for Identity
- Automatic Attack Disruption EBook
- Web Scale Graph Mining for Cyber Threat Intelligence Research Paper
- Local AI Agent Discovery with MDE
- Threat Hunting in Microsoft Sentinel
- Microsoft Defender for XDR Preview
- New Features for MDE
Recorded June 29, 2026
The Content Management System Landscape with Matt Garrepy
What is the state of content management systems today? Richard chats with Matthew Garrepy of CMS Critic about his views on how the CMS market continues to evolve. Matt digs into the build-vs-buy conversation …
Show notes
What is the state of content management systems today? Richard chats with Matthew Garrepy of CMS Critic about his views on how the CMS market continues to evolve. Matt digs into the build-vs-buy conversation that has been going on since the web first emerged - now made more complex with the power of the large language model to generate code. The evolution toward headless CMS brings up the idea of the explosion of different places that a CMS needs to touch now - not just web pages. The landscape for CMS is only getting more complex, and the tooling reflects that!
Links
Recorded July 6, 2026
Ransomware Readiness with Heather Renze
The risk of ransomware is real - are you ready? Richard talks with Heather Renze about her experiences dealing with a ransomware attack and how to get prepared when it happens to you. Heather talks about how …
Show notes
The risk of ransomware is real - are you ready? Richard talks with Heather Renze about her experiences dealing with a ransomware attack and how to get prepared when it happens to you. Heather talks about how ransomware has evolved into a business that has operators, affiliates, and even tech support. Making a plan is essential - involving finance, legal, and IT. Cyberinsurance plays a big role, as do regulatory bodies - it depends on the business you're in. But your plan needs to know three essential things: what breaks first, how long your company can function with it broken, and who can decide on what to do next in the first hour of the event. The plan may or may not work perfectly, but not having a plan is far worse. Get ready!
Links
Recorded June 25, 2026
Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid with Travis Roberts
More ways to use Azure Virtual Desktop! Richard chats with Travis Roberts about how Azure Virtual Desktop continues to evolve and provides more options for remote users. Travis talks about how AVD grew out of …
Show notes
More ways to use Azure Virtual Desktop! Richard chats with Travis Roberts about how Azure Virtual Desktop continues to evolve and provides more options for remote users. Travis talks about how AVD grew out of Terminal Services and so is still very much an IaaS offering - as opposed to Windows 365, which is more PaaS, with less flexibility, but easier deployment. But when you need control, AVD is the way to go, and today will operate in Azure, on-premises via Azure Local. And if you've got an existing virtual desktop infrastructure, AVD Hybrid opens the door to running in a hybrid environment across on-prem and cloud, or to providing a smooth migration path. Lots of choices!
Links
- Terminal Services
- Windows 365
- Windows 365 Flex
- Azure Virtual Desktop
- Windows Enterprise Multi-Session
- FSLogix
- Azure Local
- Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Local
- Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid
- AVD Personal Desktop Assignment
Recorded June 22, 2026
Security Begins at Procurement with Jessie Schofer
Bringing new software or SaaS into your organization is a security risk - how do you assess it? Richard chats with Jessie Schofer about her experiences in HR software acquisition, which led to the creation of …
Show notes
Bringing new software or SaaS into your organization is a security risk - how do you assess it? Richard chats with Jessie Schofer about her experiences in HR software acquisition, which led to the creation of secureless.ai. Jessie tells the story of evaluating various SaaS and other software products and realizing that, while the website says they are compliant with GDPR and/or SOC 2, are they really? This leads to a conversation about the product procurement process and about actually understanding the security risk you take on every time a new product is added to your organization. At what point does security block an acquisition? And after being acquired, how often do you reassess? Supply chain security hygiene starts at procurement - are you part of the evaluation?
Links
Recorded June 23, 2026
Finding Security Vulnerabilities using AI with Sami Laiho
How are large language models changing the way security vulnerabilities are found? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about the rapidly changing landscape in security exploits. Certain LLM models like Anthropic's …
Show notes
How are large language models changing the way security vulnerabilities are found? Richard chats with Sami Laiho about the rapidly changing landscape in security exploits. Certain LLM models like Anthropic's Mythos and Microsoft MDASH are optimized to find software vulnerabilities - and potentially fix them. And so there is an arms race of sorts, repairing old vulnerabilities before LLMs in the hands of black hats can exploit them. But what about everyone else? Sami talks about getting LLMs working for your organization to test for potential security risks and assess the impact of new vulnerabilities as they appear.
Links
Recorded June 19, 2026
Implementing Azure Policies with Barbara Forbes
How can Azure Policies help you? While at Techorama in Belgium, Richard sat down with Barbara Forbes to discuss how Azure Policies have evolved and the techniques sysadmins are using to improve security, cost …
Show notes
How can Azure Policies help you? While at Techorama in Belgium, Richard sat down with Barbara Forbes to discuss how Azure Policies have evolved and the techniques sysadmins are using to improve security, cost controls, efficiency, and more. Barbara talks about how the default policies are designed to get folks started in Azure quickly - not necessarily optimally. And there are plenty of policy templates out there, but before you implement them, it's worthwhile to review each policy and ask the question "why?" Keeping good documentation on policies makes it easier to know intent, especially when it comes to changing them - and you'll need to change them! There are a number of ways to apply policies, but in the end, they are just more Infrastructure-as-Code, and so easily repeatable. Azure Policies are there to help you provide freedom with guardrails if you implement them carefully!
Links
Recorded May 12, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 code distribution mechanisms like npm and how you can protect your organization - starting with, don't install packages as soon as they are released! There are effective tools for detecting malware in code, but they take time. Waiting 48 hours can eliminate a lot of risk!
Links
- Aikido Software
- Trivy
- Claude Mythos
- OpenClaw
- Shai-Hulud Guidance
- ClawHub
- Open Source Malware
- Windows Update Management
Recorded June 15, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 tools require it, and as a result, have become the targets of black hats to get access to accounts, keys, and other exploitable resources. There are plenty of tools available to help work through the issues, including the latest AI-powered tools. LLMs can also help generate more secure code in the first place, and Tanya has created a set of prompts you can use to create more secure software. The threat landscape is shifting with these tools, and we need to act quickly to resist the new attacks!
Links
- SheHacksPurple
- Canadian Guidance on Resisting Supply Chain Attacks
- OWASP Top 10 Security Risks for 2025
- Prompts for Generating Secure Code
Recorded May 8, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 core of these changes is the problem that certificate revocation just isn't working properly, so a short certificate lifespan is the effective solution. Short certificate lifespans make automation to replace certificates essential - and that's where CertKit and other tools come in!
Links
- Lets Encrypt
- ACME Client Implementations
- CertKit
- Apple's 398 Day Rule
- Microsoft SHA-1 Retirement
- Google Transparency Logs
- Perfect Forward Secrecy
Recorded May 8, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 on test data. Your results are only as good as the data you put in, so a lot of focus goes into building good sets, carefully developing the model with those sets, and using techniques like cross-validation to ensure the model is behaving appropriately. There's a lot that can go wrong, but the results with an effective model can be very powerful - it is worth the effort!
Links
Recorded May 7, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 interface, and an MCP server! This is a powerful tool for providing controlled access to data while still allowing for ad-hoc access. The potential is huge - you need to check it out!
Links
Recorded May 7, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 for members of the M365 tenant. Loop is a powerful tool for productivity within the organization!
Links
- Microsoft Loop
- Microsoft Planner
- Microsoft OneNote
- Power Automate
- Loop Components in OneNote
- Teams Polls
- Polls in Loop
- Loop Admin Policies
Recorded April 27, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 already up to date, but servers are a different issue. When the certificate expires, you'll no longer receive updates to Secure Boot for known exploits, leaving your machines vulnerable. Update today!
Links
- Secure Boot Certificates Expiring
- Sony Rootkit Scandal
- Secure Boot Playbook for Windows Client
- Windows Update Management
- Registry Key Updates for Secure Boot
- Richard's Blog Post on Secure Boot EUFI Certificates Expiring
- Get-UEFICertificate in PowerShell Gallery
Recorded March 9, 2026
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! …
Show notes
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 also plays a large role: different countries have specific rules on where data must reside and how it can be accessed. As the scale increases and the tail gets longer, the rules set gets more complex! Lots of great thinking about what LLMs look like in a production environment.
Links
Recorded April 24, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 best to make AD too difficult to target. Jake Hildreth's Locksmith tools are a great place to start - free and open source. There are also Microsoft tools and Spencer's own AD Security Resource Kit to help evaluate your AD infrastructure and lock it down!
Links
Recorded March 4, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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, M365 Copilot can't do what Claude Cowork can do. Sharon talks about describing the goals of a spreadsheet to Claude Cowork and having the tool generate the spreadsheet, make corrections, and add formatting. Cowork has similar capabilities for presentations, and with the Connector library, new functionality is being added routinely. There's some competition in the AI productivity space - things are getting interesting!
Links
- Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Claude Cowork
- Claude Cowork Connectors
- Copilot in PowerPoint
Recorded February 24, 2026
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 …
Show notes
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 11. And now, some security concerns have ended support entirely. So what happens next? Michael offers fixes to keep MDT safe to use, and some alternatives if you want to keep managing your own images!
Links
- Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
- Michael's Post of the MDT Vulnerability
- Windows Autopilot
- Friends of MDT
- MDT Retirement Notice
- Microsoft Intune
- 2Pint DeployR
- MMS Conference
- iPXE Anywhere
Recorded February 17, 2026
These are the latest 40 of 1,062 episodes. You’ll find older episodes in the podcast’s feed.
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