Summer is in full swing, which means vacations are being booked, out-of-office messages are multiplying, and Microsoft has chosen this calm, relaxing season to make several important changes that you'll definitely want to know about.

Before those changes start appearing in support tickets, audit findings, or unexpectedly concerned emails, let's take a few minutes to review what's new, what's changing, and what deserves a spot on your to-do list this month.

If you've ever found yourself thinking, "Surely there's a better way than doing this manually every week," you're not alone. One of the great ironies of modern IT is that we spend so much time working with powerful technology, yet somehow still find ourselves repeating the same tasks over and over again. That's exactly what we're tackling in Session 5 of our CSPM series: how to put automation to work so your security processes can be more proactive, consistent, and scalable.

In this session, we'll explore practical ways to automate cloud security operations, reduce repetitive administrative tasks, and ensure important security controls happen reliably every time. After all, computers are remarkably good at following instructions without getting distracted by emails, meetings, or the sudden realization that it's already Friday afternoon.

The goal isn't to replace the human element of security—far from it. It's about freeing your team from the routine work so they can focus on the things that actually require experience, judgement, and problem-solving. Because if we're being honest, robots should be doing the boring stuff, while humans focus on the challenges that keep the business secure and moving forward.

Microsoft has decided that Power Platform backups should embrace a more minimalist lifestyle.

Starting with the updated retention model, production environment backups are now retained for 7 days by default instead of 28 days. The backups themselves aren’t going anywhere… they’ll still be created automatically. The difference is that your safety net is now considerably closer to the ground.

For many organizations, seven days is perfectly reasonable. Most issues are spotted quickly, and a one-week recovery window is more than enough to rescue an accidentally modified app, a questionable automation change, or that “I was just cleaning things up” moment. The catch comes when problems take longer to surface.

This change affects the point-in-time restore window for active environments. It does not change retention for deleted environments.

The good news? Microsoft hasn’t completely retired the 28-day option. They’ve simply moved it into the “administrator responsibility” category. Organizations that need longer recovery windows for compliance, governance, auditing, or the occasional forensic investigation can still retain backups for up to 28 days by using Managed Environments and configuring extended backup retention.

In other words, Microsoft didn’t just take away your parachute… they just stopped packing it for you. Read more at Back Up and Restore Environments.

Like that one server everyone is afraid to reboot because “it’s been working fine for years,” some devices tend to stay on the same operating system a bit longer than anyone intended. Unfortunately, Microsoft has announced that Teams on macOS 13 (Ventura) has reached the point where “it still works” is no longer pat of the support strategy.

Microsoft stopped providing Teams desktop client updated for macOS 13 in May and began showing upgrade notifications as of last month. As of mid-July, macOS 13 will encounter a blocking screen that prevents continued use of the Teams desktop application. To keep using Teams, employees must either upgrade to a supported version of macOS or switch to Teams in a supported web browser. Microsoft notes this change is automatic and cannot be disabled administratively.

The reason for the change is straightforward: Microsoft supports Teams on current operating systems. While Ventura may still feel perfectly serviceable, Microsoft is drawing the line in the sand and encouraging organizations to move forward.

If you’ve been holding onto Microsoft Entra ID Protection’s classic User Risk and Sign-In Risk policies like a favorite old firewall from 2012, it’s time to start saying your goodbyes.

Microsoft has officially announced that the legacy risk policies in Entra ID Protection will retire on October 1, 2026. After that date, these policies will no longer be the way to enforce risk-based access controls. Microsoft wants everyone to move to Conditional Access Risk-Based Policies, where all the cool security kids have been hanging out for years.

What’s especially entertaining is how this announcement arrived. There wasn’t a flashy blog post, keynote slide, conference session, press release, or obnoxious “we’re retiring this thing you’ve depended on for years” banner splashed across the admin center (focus on obnoxious as there are so many of these it’s just as easy to ignore). Instead, the retirement notice quietly appeared as a warning box in the technical documentation. Because, naturally, we all start every morning by rereading Microsoft Learn articles line-by-line to see what critical platform changes may have materialized overnight.

The good news is that the replacement is actually better. Conditional Access risk policies provide richer diagnostics, report-only mode, Graph API support, sign-in frequency controls, and much more granular policy design. The bad news? October 1, 2026 is one of those deadlines that’s easy to ignore… right up until your risk policies stop protecting anything.

See that sneaky little warning here: Migrate ID Protection risk policies to Conditional Access

If you missed our AI Essentials Workshop for Professionals offer last month, don’t worry… you haven’t missed the AI train. It hasn’t become self-aware, and there are still seats available for upcoming sessions.

The next workshop is coming up on August 10th and it’s built for professionals who want practical, everyday ways to work smarter with AI instead of simply hearing about it in yet another webinar full of futuristic predictions and stock photos of robots shaking hands with executives… or worse yet, AI generated images of itself shaking hands with executives.

This interactive half-day workshop focuses on the skills that actually matter: learning how to prompt effectively with AI, uncover insights from data, generate and evaluate ideas, and create clearer, more compelling communications. You’ll also explore AI’s strengths, limitations, and where human judgement still matters most.

The best part? Our CSP community discount is still available.

So, if you’ve been meaning to figure out what AI can really do beyond generating vacation itineraries and questionable meeting notes, August 10th is a great place to start. Sign up using the link below:

AI Essentials Workshop for Professionals

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!