Microsoft made over 100 updates and announcements in the month of April 2025 for the Microsoft 365 platform. Don’t have time to read them all? We’ve gone through all of them and put together what we feel are the most important updates for you to be aware of.
The Microsoft Secure Future Initiative (SFI) is a significant endeavor aimed at enhancing cybersecurity across Microsoft and its ecosystem. The SFI report outlines the progress made in fostering a security-first culture, improving governance, and developing innovative security solutions.
- Cybersecurity Engineering Efforts: The SFI represents the largest cybersecurity project at Microsoft, with efforts equivalent to 34,000 engineers working to mitigate risks and enhance security.
- Cultural Shift Towards Security: A security-first mindset has been promoted company-wide, with all employees having security priorities tied to performance reviews and extensive training participation.
- Innovative Security Tools: The introduction of the Secure by Design UX Toolkit has helped teams incorporate security best practices into product development, benefiting 22,000 employees and enhancing user-centered experiences.
- Enhanced Threat Detection: Over 200 new detections against cyber threats have been integrated into Microsoft Defender, alongside proactive efforts that identified 180 vulnerabilities in cloud and AI areas.
- Improved Identity Security: Key improvements have been made in protecting identity tokens and applying multifactor authentication, significantly reducing risks associated with cyberattacks.
- Commitment to Continuous Improvement: The ongoing evolution of cyber threats necessitates continuous adaptation and collaboration with partners to ensure a secure future for Microsoft and its customers
Earlier this month, Microsoft shared practical guidance to help organizations strengthen their data security posture using Microsoft Purview. The resource guide entitled "Securing your data with Microsoft Purview: A Practical Handbook" emphasizes the increasing complexity of data protection in an environment where organizations often use multiple disconnected security tools and face growing risks, especially from generative AI technologies.
This document discusses the importance of a comprehensive data security strategy for organizations facing increasing cyber threats and the complexity of managing multiple security tools.
- Data security incidents are prevalent: Organizations face an average of 156 data security incidents each year, highlighting the need for effective management strategies.
- Generative AI increases risks: The adoption of generative AI tools raises concerns about sensitive data exposure, necessitating a unified approach to data security across various platforms and services.
- Microsoft Purview as a solution: Microsoft offers a practical handbook aimed at empowering data security leaders to enhance their practices and implement Microsoft Purview effectively, focusing on an integrated strategy.
- A continuous journey of data security: The document emphasizes that securing data is not only about tools but also about fostering a culture of security awareness and collaboration within organizations.
Microsoft released the ninth edition of its Cyber Signals report in April, focusing on the rise of AI-powered fraud and the evolving tactics cybercriminals use to deceive individuals and businesses. The report highlights significant achievements in fraud prevention and offers insights into various types of fraud, including e-commerce, job scams, and tech support fraud. Key points:
- Fraud prevention achievements: Between April 2024 and April 2025, Microsoft thwarted $4 billion in fraud attempts and blocked around 1.6 million bot signup attempts per hour.
- AI's role in scams: AI tools are lowering the barriers for cybercriminals, enabling them to create convincing fraudulent content, including fake websites and social engineering lures.
- E-commerce fraud: Fraudulent e-commerce websites can be rapidly created using AI, making it difficult for consumers to distinguish them from legitimate sites.
- Job and employment fraud: Scammers are leveraging generative AI to create fake job listings and profiles, complicating the identification of fraudulent offers.
- Tech support scams: Scammers impersonate IT support to gain remote access to victims' devices, often using social engineering tactics.
- Microsoft's protective measures: The company has implemented various defenses, including Microsoft Defender for Cloud and enhancements to Quick Assist, to mitigate risks associated with AI-powered fraud.
- Recommendations for consumers: Users are advised to verify the legitimacy of job offers, avoid sharing personal information with unverified sources, and be cautious of unsolicited tech support offers.
Starting March 31, 2026, Microsoft Entra ID will no longer support service principal-less authentication. This change aims to enhance security by ensuring all applications in a tenant have an associated service principal. Applications currently using service principal-less authentication will be impacted unless action is taken by the deadline. Tenant administrators need to verify and provision applications, using sign-in logs to identify those affected. This move is part of Microsoft's effort to enforce "Security by default" and improve governance over application access.
There is a new Conditional Access advanced deployment guide from FastTrack, designed to help IT administrators streamline the setup and management of Conditional Access policies. The guide provides ready-to-use templates that incorporate Microsoft's best practices, covering key security scenarios such as zero trust, remote work, protecting privileged roles, and emerging threats. By using these templates, organizations can quickly deploy multiple policies, minimize misconfigurations, and strengthen security by enforcing multifactor authentication and disabling legacy authentication protocols. Additionally, the guide promotes passwordless authentication methods like Windows Hello for Business and FIDO2 security keys to enhance user experience and security.
Microsoft has released some new updates to Windows Autopatch, focusing on simplifying the update management process for IT administrators. Key improvements include enhanced reporting capabilities that now cover all Intune-managed devices with reduced latency, more flexible and intelligent Windows Autopatch groups, and the adoption of a least-privilege access model for better security. These changes aim to streamline tasks such as device distribution, policy configuration, and update compliance reporting, making it easier for administrators to manage updates and maintain a secure environment.
Microsoft has announced the general availability of hotpatch updates for Windows 11 Enterprise, version 24H2, which provide immediate protection against vulnerabilities without requiring a restart. Hotpatch updates are installed quarterly, reducing the number of required restarts from twelve to four per year. This technology aims to enhance security and productivity by minimizing disruptions for users. To enable hotpatching, organizations need specific subscriptions, devices running Windows 11 Enterprise, version 24H2, and management through Microsoft Intune. The feature is currently available for x64 CPU devices, with Arm64 support in public preview.
Late last month, Microsoft announced the ability for users to easily add Shared Mailboxes as an account in the new Outlook for Windows. Users who have the shared mailbox automapped will see a "Promote" button on the Shared with Me Settings page. This button will add the Shared Mailbox as an account. This enables the Shared Mailbox users to leverage Categories, notifications, rules, signatures, and more. This change is one of many enhancements Microsoft has made exclusive to the new Outlook, giving users another reason to make the switch.
This enhancement is in public preview through May and GA to be complete by end of August 2025.
This April, we were surprised to see the first Syntex-powered library template was released for targeted release by mid-May. The "Resume repository" library template features auto-fill columns to automatically extract Name, Email, Phone, College, and Degree, with additional pre-configured choice and people columns. This template can then be used as a reference for organizations to create additional autofill column-based Organizational Templates.
This feature will require pay-as-you-go billing for Syntex to be configured. The good news is, back in March, Microsoft reduced the price from $0.05 per page to $0.005 per page, making Syntex affordable for any organization.
If your organization wants to explore how Syntex can save you time and money, or if your IT team needs support for a complex solution, AdaptivEdge has industry-leading consultants to support or take over development efforts.
Starting in May 2025, Microsoft will begin to roll out the capability for sensitivity labels to be applied to Loop components when sent via messaging through Teams. The labels will be accessible through Teams for Windows desktop, Teams for Mac desktop, Teams for web as well as Teams on both iOS and Android mobile devices. With this new feature, users will be able to classify and apply label protection features to Loop messages such as encryption, access control, and watermarking. The rollout is expected to finish by early June 2025. Contact us if you are not utilizing sensitivity labels in your organization yet and want to start classifying and protecting your sensitive data.
