Show Notes
Andy and Paul Schnackenburg dig into a leadership change at Microsoft that has the security community raising eyebrows. Charlie Bell, the executive vice president of security who championed the Secure Future Initiative, is out and being replaced by a go-to-market sales executive from the Google Cloud. Satya Nadella's announcement focused on selling more security products, with no mention of continuing the SFI's mission. That omission says a lot. In News React, the crew covers the new Microsoft 365 E7 SKU (Copilot, Agent 365, and a $99/user/month price tag aimed squarely at mega-enterprises), and the Iran-linked Stryker wiper attack where hackers compromised an Intune admin account and remotely wiped devices across 79 countries (no malware required). Nerd Hour features Andy's Forgejo self-hosted Git setup and Paul's new electric vehicle. From there Andy and Paul trace the arc from Microsoft's repeated security breaches, to the scathing CSRB report that seemingly forced the creation of the SFI, to what now looks like the initiative quietly losing steam. Included is discussion on Microsoft's pattern of treating security as a profit center, the ethical tension of selling security add-ons for your own platform's vulnerabilities, and what SysAdmins should be watching for as this plays out. SysAdmin Weekly Website - https://www.sysadminweekly.com SysAdmin Weekly Companion Newsletter - https://newsletter.sysadminweekly.com SysAdmin Weekly GitHub Community Discussions - https://github.com/ProjectRunspace/sysadmin-weekly AndyOnTech - https://www.andyontech.com Project Runspace - https://www.projectrunspace.org KrebsOnSecurity: Iran-Backed Hackers Claim Wiper Attack on Stryker - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/03/iran-backed-hackers-claim-wiper-attack-on-medtech-firm-stryker/ CSRB Report: Review of the Summer 2023 Microsoft Exchange Online Intrusion (PDF) - https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2025-03/CSRBReviewOfTheSummer2023MEOIntrusion508.pdf Risky Business Podcast (Recommended by Paul) - https://risky.biz
More from SysAdmin Weekly
The kernel is just software. It happens to be the one program on the box with no guardrails, which is why one bad driver takes the whole system down with it.
Free IT training is real and it is actually free. The exam that gets you past a resume screen is the part that still costs money.
We throw an alert when a disk hits 85 percent. Nobody has ever built the monitoring system for the person who gets the alert.
Microsoft has no intention of making 365 licensing simpler, because the complexity is what gives them room to negotiate.
Which protocol you use to reach the box is the least interesting decision you will make about remote access.