Did you know that on April 1, 1976 (yes… April Fool’s Day), Apple was founded in a garage? What started as a couple of engineers and a bold idea has since turned into a global tech ecosystem worth trillions, proving that in technology, small beginnings and smart platforms can scale fast!

Which feels oddly appropriate for April, and the cloud. In the CSP world, the pace of change is just as relentless: new offers, new rules, new opportunities to build something bigger (probably without the garage). This month’s newsletter breaks down what’s new, changing, and worth your attention so you can focus less on decoding Microsoft updates and more on growing your business.

If cloud security feels like you’ve been hit with a bowl of alphabet soup (CSPM, CWPP, CIEM, CNAPP) you’re not alone. Acronyms are easy to memorize. Understanding what they actually do is the hard part.

That’s exactly why our second session of our CSPM webinar series is right for you, “Understanding the Alphabet Soup.”

In our second session, we take a step back and break down all the moving parts that come together to form CSPM. No marketing fluff or salesy pitches, just clear explanations of the different components, why they exist, and how they collectively help organizations understand and improve their cloud security posture.

Whether you’re new to CSPM or just tired of nodding along while someone confidently strings together five acronyms in one sentence, this session is designed to replace confusion with clarity.

Go grab a spoon, dive in, and finally make sense of the Alphabet Soup!

Cloud security guidance shouldn’t feel like it came with a required vendor loyalty oath.

That’s why we’re evolving our Cloud Security Assessments to be less about checking boxes based solely on “what Microsoft recommends” and more about aligning with industry-recognized best practices, specifically CIS Benchmarks. Same goal (better security), broader lens.

To help make this even more actionable, we’re expanding the value we offer to our Microsoft 365 clients by including AvePoint Elements Baselines at no additional cost. Not only does this give you deeper visibility into how your environment aligns with CIS benchmarks, helping separate real risks from background noise, but also enables the ability to define your environment-specific settings and detect drift from that desired state.

If you are interested in gaining clearer insights into your CIS alignment or just want your cloud security posture explained in in a language humans can understand, reach out to our team to learn more about this new benefit.

If you opened Word, Excel, or PowerPoint recently and thought, “Wait… didn’t Copilot used to live here?”, nope… you’re not imagining things, and no, your coffee hasn’t failed you yet.

Microsoft made a quiet but meaningful change by no longer embedding Copilot Chat directly inside the Office apps (except for Outlook) for free Copilot users (if you have a full Microsoft 365 Copilot license, it’s business as usual). Instead of living in Word or Excel like a chatty coworker who won’t leave your desk, Copilot has packed its bags and set up shot elsewhere.

Copilot Chat is now positioned as a work-wide AI assistant, not a single-document sidekick. Rather than bounding between Office apps trying to answer big-picture questions, Copilot is being treated more like a consistent companion across your workday.

Think of it less like “help me with this paragraph” and more like “help me understand everything I’m working on today.”

So far this summarizes Microsoft’s positive spin on a relatively unpopular change, but if you’re like the rest of us not living in Microsoft’s little dream land eutopia, you’re probably giving Word the single finger salute right now as you try to finish that closing paragraph in your monthly report that you’ve had Copilot rewrite twenty times in the last two weeks.

The only upside, at least for some, is that this also only affects organizations with more than 2,000 accounts in their tenant. Anyone with less than 2,000 accounts will still see Copilot creeping on the toolbars in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but will now be governed by “standard access", which pretty much means the more people use it the slower it gets. So, think of Copilot less of your personal assistant and more like the hotel concierge… helpful, overworked, and noticeable less impressive when the entire ballroom lines up at the same time.

If you’re still holding onto a standalone SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business plan, Microsoft has some news… and like most Microsoft changes, it arrives quietly, politely, and with a one-way exit sign.

Standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business plans are being retired starting in June 2026. No alarms. No dramatic pop-ups. Just a gentle nudge toward the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Consider this your official checkout notice.

These standalone plans let organization buy file storage and collaboration tools without the rest of the Microsoft 365 (so no Teams, no Exchange, no apps). Going forward, Microsoft wants everything to live inside Microsoft 365 suites.

This isn’t a sudden breakup, but rather it’s more like Microsoft saying, “We’ve been a suite this whole time… let’s stop pretending otherwise.”

If you’re impacted and wondering which Microsoft 365 plan makes sense next, or just want help translating Microsoft licensing logic into human language, we’re here to help!

Let’s be clear right up front, we love good security hygiene. Microsoft Secure Score. CIS Benchmarks. Recommended settings done right.

That’s why our cloud security assessments start there, establishing a strong, defensible baseline that aligns with industry and Microsoft best practices. But once everything is configured “correctly” a new question inevitably pops up… “Okay… but would an attacker actually be stopped?”

Our existing assessments answer:

NodeZero answers the next question:

NodeZero safely and autonomously tests your environment from an attacker’s perspective by chaining together identities, permission and configurations to see what’s truly exploitable, not just what looks risky on paper.

No shade at Secure Score. No arguing with CIS. NodeZero isn’t here to replace our cloud security assessments… it’s here to enhance them. Secure Score and CIS tell you what should be locked down. NodeZero helps prove what an attacker can’t get through anymore… or more importantly, what they still can.

If you want to understand how NodeZero fits alongside our existing cloud security assessments (or whether it’s the right next step for you), let’s talk!

Because “configured correctly” is great… but “tested and proven” is better.

April marks the start of a new quarter, and the time to sit down and review your Cloud Security Assessment! If you don’t have a review scheduled, reach out to our team to get it on the calendar ASAP! We’ll also make sure you have your monthly checkpoint scheduled as well.

Our monthly checkpoints are your all-access pass to asking all the cloud questions you may have. Whether that is bouncing new ideas off of, looking for guidance on specific solutions, learning more about upcoming capabilities, diving deeper into a technical issue, or simply just being your monthly emotional support human. If you don’t have a monthly team checkpoint already scheduled, don’t be shy, drop us a message and let’s get one scheduled!