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• Another 3 New vendors Zero Networks, Silverfort & Exabeam are added.
• Microsoft EoL section Updated for April 2027 - all about modernisation!
• DarkWeb Weekly Intelligence Report #7 - Business is booming!
• Modern Work Plan comparison table updated for April - Modernisation all the way!
• CoPilot gets Agentic capabilities - Now CoPilot can "lend a hand".
• Teams gets efficiency mode - For the more challenging computers out there!
• OneDrive gets smarter - AI in our drives!
• Malware delivered compliments of WhatsApp- You can trust nobody!
• Teams exploited without breaking a single app - If it's IT support beware!.
• OpenAI releases GPT 5.5 - It's a SuperApp!

We scan the DarkWeb continuously for Hacker signals and Ransomware attacks.

Click above for the report from our live dashboard that we will publish weekly (but actually updated continuously).
This is part of the DarkWeb monitoring services included with many of BUI's managed services offerings. This report is live, and this is a "snapshot" of the top 10 events as of Sunday Afternoon.

Zero Networks, Silverfort & Exabeam have been added for this week.
See below for Linkedin

Try out our AI to see whats been added since launch.

Get all the releases for the next 4 weeks in South Africa.
The long awaited Mortal Kombat 2 is now screening in May along with Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael

Update for rest of 2026 coming in April

Microsoft News This Week

Modern Work Plan Documents Updated 1 April

Microsoft has updated the Modern Work Plan Comparison Guide, and the change log is worth a look.

This is a useful renewal checklist. 
Before you assume “it’s included”, check the table. Not doing that could get expensive!

There are updates across Teams, Places, SharePoint, Purview, Defender and Copilot. The practical message is that Teams is becoming much more than meetings, with Town Hall, Webinars, Immersive Events, Attendee Packs, Shared Space licences and Teams Rooms Pro all called out.

With Places getting more visibility it is clear that Microsoft wants Teams to become the control centre for hybrid work, meeting rooms, events and office coordination.

Security Copilot is now shown as included for eligible Microsoft 365 E5 customers, with 400 Security Compute Units (SCU's) per month for every 1,000 users, capped at 10,000 SCUs, with activation phased through June 2026.

Don't ignore the small print around SharePoint and OneDrive storage, Purview retention policies, Defender Experts add-ons and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to help you review these changes and how you can best take advantage of them, and not get caught out by the small print!

Microsoft Expands Copilot's Agentic Capabilities in Office

Microsoft is expanding Copilot’s “agentic” capabilities across Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Copilot should now do more than suggest what you should do next. It can take multi-step actions inside documents, spreadsheets and presentations, including formatting, restructuring, building visuals and transforming data.

That matters because this is where Copilot either becomes useful, or just remains an expensive talking paperclip.

Microsoft says the improvements apply to Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Premium, and Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers.

It is also launching a new Microsoft Certified AI Agent Builder Associate certification for people building production-ready agents in Copilot Studio.

The direction is clear. Microsoft wants Copilot to move from “chatbot on the side” to “worker inside the app”.

That is useful, but only if your data, permissions and workflows are clean enough for it to work properly.
Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our AI experts to ensure that your environment is correctly configured to take advantage of this new "agentic" functionality.

Microsoft Teams Rolls Out Efficiency Mode

Microsoft Teams is getting a new Efficiency Mode for devices with limited CPU and memory.

It rolls out for Teams on Windows and Mac from early May 2026 and should be complete by mid-May. It will be enabled by default on eligible devices.

When active, Teams will reduce the video resolution sent from your camera and will open with a lighter startup view instead of immediately loading a selected chat.

This should help older or lower-spec machines stay usable in meetings, which is good news if your hardware refresh budget is playing catch-up!

Users can switch it off under Settings, General, Never use efficiency mode.

Useful improvement, but also a reminder. If Teams needs to throttle itself to keep running properly, your device strategy probably needs another look if efficienly mode is activated on "new" devices.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our experts in First Digital who will be able to show how this agent will be able to help specific people in your business to get way more clever with Excel rather than having to depend on external consultants.

OneDrive Gets Smarter!

OneDrive is getting better collaboration, more AI, improved PDF review, OCR on mobile, and smarter search. 
Copilot+ PCs also get semantic search, so users can find files using natural language rather than remembering the exact file name.
I still think this feature alone could be so useful, it could justify a new Copilot+ PC for some users!

There are also stronger controls for sharing, external collaboration, sync health and admin reporting. Microsoft is clearly trying to make OneDrive less of a personal dumping ground and more of a managed business content platform.

One useful technical update is that OneDrive sync support for Windows is moving towards 1 million items in preview. 
That sounds impressive, but it is still not an excuse to let file structures become a museum of useless exhibits!

This is worth reviewing if you rely heavily on OneDrive and SharePoint. The tools are getting better, but so is the need for proper permissions, lifecycle management and governance.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our Security specialists to assist with ensuring these new capabilities are securely Implemented along with the relevant user training.

Security

WhatsApp Phishing Campaign Delivers Malware

A new phishing campaign is using WhatsApp to deliver malware. It tries to trick the user into installing malicious VB script files. This is also a reminder that phishing attacks increasingly use channels other than email, and users need to be made aware that they have to be alert across all the different ways they communicate. 
PLEASE contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our training specialists to help ensure your staff stay up to date. Again, the human is the weakest link where users need to be constantly reminded and educated with new training on how to look out for the latest tricks.

Microsoft Teams is leveraged without exploiting any vulnerability to break into companies.

This is a very scary reminder that users need to be alert at all times. 
This phishing campaign abuses legitimate features in Teams, with users being convinced to override security warnings. Sophisticated psychological tricks are employed to ensure typo-free credential capture.
This is an attack that blends in with high-volume legitimately encrypted cloud services, making it extremely difficult to detect.

In this case the weakest link is an employee who trusts a Teams message from someone claiming to be IT.
PLEASE contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our training specialists to help ensure everybody in your company is updated on the latest ways of being tricked!

Cloud & AI

ChatGPT moves towards a SuperApp with 5.5
OpenAI in response to Claude 4.7, rolled out 5.5 to paid users, claiming it to be another step toward a super app that provides all AI services to enterprise users. The new model uses less tokens, improved safeguards while driving an agentic, intuitive computing agenda. It does put pressure on Anthropic to beat OpenAI in the next round!
Remember - this capability will also appear in CoPilot where Microsoft is also providing access to Claude as well.

Please contact your First Technology account manager to connect you with our AI specialists to assist in seeing how AI can be enabled in your business to improve your productivity, especially when it comes to the rapidly evolving agentic capabilities in CoPilot.