A quick note before we get into it. Starting this issue, Innovate.NOW moves from every two weeks to monthly. Same mix of IT insight, cybersecurity guidance, and HBS news you're used to, just landing in your inbox less often.
Five years ago, "Do you have MFA enabled?" was the extent of many security conversations. Not anymore.
Attackers have learned to phish tokens, intercept sessions, and bomb users into approving requests they never sent. Meanwhile, plenty of organizations still have basic gaps: admins protected, standard users not; remote access locked down, email wide open.
Joe Gunnells, HBS Information Security Consultant, lays out how MFA has evolved over the last decade, where we're headed, and what that means for organizations wherever they land on the security spectrum.
Think your Teams chats are fully covered for compliance? Purview handles channel messages and chats well, but voice calls, SMS, and immutable records often fall outside it.
A licensing change may have quietly narrowed what your Business Premium plan actually covers, too. Four quick questions to check your exposure before an auditor asks them for you.
A teacher writing the same instructions every Friday. A counselor fielding the same questions every fall. Google's Gemini Gems can turn those repeated tasks into a tool that already knows the answer, but only if IT has locked down accounts, data, and groups can use them first.
A look at how schools are piloting Gems safely, and the governance questions to answer before rollout.
HBS has earned the Microsoft 365 Copilot Specialization, our 16th Microsoft advanced specialization. It's official recognition that our team can guide organizations from flipping Copilot on to actually using it securely and at scale, closing governance gaps along the way.
The Report Phishing Button You're Probably Using Is Going Away
Microsoft's Report Message and Report Phishing add-ins are now in maintenance mode ahead of full deprecation, in favor of the built-in Report button already present in Outlook. If your organization still relies on the legacy add-ins, now's the time to plan the switch.
To everyone who joined us at The Meadows Events Center for Secure Iowa 2026 last week: Thank you! It was a great day of learning and connection. We hope to see even more of you in 2027!
Get practical Copilot techniques you can use immediately across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Then after lunch, we'll have a second session on building a cloud migration strategy that delivers real business value, not just a lift-and-shift.
Bring the whole family to Vala's Pumpkin Patch for an evening with HBS and Cisco. Admission is on us. Wander through 50+ rides, games, and fall attractions, then join us for dinner in our own private space to relax and catch up. No pitch, just fun, a lot of pumpkins, and good company.
Two sessions + lunch. First: why AI governance is really data governance wearing a different name. Second: how to secure your environment, close oversharing gaps, and lock down permissions before you turn Copilot loose on your data.
Compare today's leading server and virtualization platforms, weigh cloud costs against on-prem investment, and figure out where a hybrid approach could fit your roadmap. Takeout from Mariano's included on your way out the door.
