RunAs Radio

What if Microsoft Defender not only detected attackers - but also fought back? Richard talks to Liz Tesch about Microsoft Defender Automatic Attack Disruption and Predictive Shielding. Liz talks about how attacks are often detected before the payload executes, but by the time humans can respond, far more damage has been done. Automatic Attack Disruption acts immediately on detection to limit the attacker by locking accounts, restricting access on a compromised server, and more. Predictive Shielding goes a step further by limiting attackers' ability to respond to the disruption by turning off GPO changes, disabling safe mode, and otherwise interfering with the typical actions that attackers take once they know they have been detected. Add AI to the mix, and everything gets more complicated. The black hats are using AI to attack, and Microsoft Defender XDR is using it to defend - the race is on!

Links

Microsoft Defender XDR

Automatic Attack Disruption

Predictive Shielding

Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender for Identity

Automatic Attack Disruption EBook

Web Scale Graph Mining for Cyber Threat Intelligence Research Paper

Local AI Agent Discovery with MDE

Threat Hunting in Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender for XDR Preview

New Features for MDE

Recorded June 29, 2026

What is the state of content management systems today? Richard chats with Matthew Garrepy of CMS Critic about his views on how the CMS market continues to evolve. Matt digs into the build-vs-buy conversation that has been going on since the web first emerged - now made more complex with the power of the large language model to generate code. The evolution toward headless CMS brings up the idea of the explosion of different places that a CMS needs to touch now - not just web pages. The landscape for CMS is only getting more complex, and the tooling reflects that!

Links

CMSCritic

Sanity CMS

Sitecore

EmDash

Recorded July 6, 2026

The risk of ransomware is real - are you ready? Richard talks with Heather Renze about her experiences dealing with a ransomware attack and how to get prepared when it happens to you. Heather talks about how ransomware has evolved into a business that has operators, affiliates, and even tech support. Making a plan is essential - involving finance, legal, and IT. Cyberinsurance plays a big role, as do regulatory bodies - it depends on the business you're in. But your plan needs to know three essential things: what breaks first, how long your company can function with it broken, and who can decide on what to do next in the first hour of the event. The plan may or may not work perfectly, but not having a plan is far worse. Get ready!

Links

Ransomware Guidance from NIST

Recorded June 25, 2026

More ways to use Azure Virtual Desktop! Richard chats with Travis Roberts about how Azure Virtual Desktop continues to evolve and provides more options for remote users. Travis talks about how AVD grew out of Terminal Services and so is still very much an IaaS offering - as opposed to Windows 365, which is more PaaS, with less flexibility, but easier deployment. But when you need control, AVD is the way to go, and today will operate in Azure, on-premises via Azure Local. And if you've got an existing virtual desktop infrastructure, AVD Hybrid opens the door to running in a hybrid environment across on-prem and cloud, or to providing a smooth migration path. Lots of choices!

Links

Terminal Services

Windows 365

Windows 365 Flex

Azure Virtual Desktop

Windows Enterprise Multi-Session

FSLogix

Azure Local

Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Local

Azure Virtual Desktop Hybrid

AVD Personal Desktop Assignment

Recorded June 22, 2026

Bringing new software or SaaS into your organization is a security risk - how do you assess it? Richard chats with Jessie Schofer about her experiences in HR software acquisition, which led to the creation of secureless.ai. Jessie tells the story of evaluating various SaaS and other software products and realizing that, while the website says they are compliant with GDPR and/or SOC 2, are they really? This leads to a conversation about the product procurement process and about actually understanding the security risk you take on every time a new product is added to your organization. At what point does security block an acquisition? And after being acquired, how often do you reassess? Supply chain security hygiene starts at procurement - are you part of the evaluation?

Links

Secureless.ai

GDPR Enforcement Tracker

Recorded June 23, 2026