The SysAdmin in 2026

A new year - and so much to do! To start 2026, Richard flies solo again to discuss the issues he's seen on sysadmins' minds as we head into the new year. Obviously, AI is eating up a lot of the conversation from many different angles: tools that can help us be more productive, security issues in our organizations due to misuse, and now, AI-driven hacking. Security still looms large, and not just from an AI perspective - the latest round of supply chain attacks has led to litigation, putting new emphasis on making sure you're secure. Windows has a new leader, things are changing there, and there's the ongoing migration to the cloud. Does it still make sense? There seems to be more concern about data sovereignty than ever, and some meaningful conversations to have. Happy New Year! Links Azure SRE Agents with Deepthi Chelupati Microsoft Purview The M365 Copilot Data Readiness Checklist with Nikki Chapple Quering for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski Managing Vendor Incidents with Mandi Walls Incident Management and the Crowdstrike event with Lieam Westley Microsoft Intune Microsoft Entra ID Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Microsoft Entra ID Protection with Corissa Koopmans Windows Server 2025 Upgrading to Windows Server 2025 with Robert Smit Recorded December 20, 2025