I've lost even the last shred of hope

I've been working at my current company for about 5 years. At my previous job, I also worked as a sysadmin for around 4 years — a place where I learned everything I know today. When I got hired, I knew absolutely nothing, and my former boss handed me a brand-new laptop in its box and told me to install it and manually join it to the domain. It was a tough but incredibly rewarding time because I was the only sysadmin at a location with 70 employees.

At one point, the entire company's internet went down because my boss asked me to do cable management in the server room — I accidentally connected two ports from the same switch and created a network loop. There were also times when I had to install the BitLocker package on all company laptops (people weren’t installing the pushed package, so I had to remote in and install it myself).

The point is, I had full admin rights. I learned how to use Active Directory, Exchange Server, and laid the foundation for my knowledge in networking and server administration. It was a very stressful but beautiful period.

I left that company because I needed a significant salary increase. When I joined my current company, I was shocked — all the control I was used to was gone. First of all, access to Active Directory was done through a custom tool developed by the company, and I only had access to options like changing names, email addresses, and resetting passwords. I no longer had access to Exchange Center, servers, networks — absolutely nothing.

Four years have passed, and over time, the current company has cut our access to almost everything. All sysadmin-level permissions have been migrated to platforms under the idea of "self-service." Any employee can now make their own changes related to their user account, mailbox, software, and so on.

Now, most of what I do is laptop installations, replacing faulty peripherals, and solving minor issues because colleagues reach out to me on Teams. Over time, I’ve tried to take courses to develop myself in DevOps and Linux. But sometimes I sit and think about how, a few years ago, I was creating policies to optimize company processes, and now I’ve reached the point where I’m just replacing a broken mouse. It deeply saddens me and makes me feel like I’m losing all hope in my professional life.

I want to change something, but I can't find the motivation or the path to take.

https://redd.it/1nv277v
@r_systemadmin

Staff are pasting sensitive data into ChatGPT

We keep catching employees pasting client data and internal docs into ChatGPT, even after repeated training sessions and warnings. It feels like a losing battle. The productivity gains are obvious, but the risk of data leakage is massive.

Has anyone actually found a way to stop this without going full “ban everything” mode? Do you rely on policy, tooling, or both? Right now it feels like education alone just isn’t cutting it.

https://redd.it/1nv3bfg
@r_systemadmin

Oct 2025 Microsoft 365 Changes: What’s New and What’s Gone?

30+ big updates are landing in Microsoft 365 this Oct! From new features to retirements and functionality changes, here’s everything you need to know. 

# In the Spotlight: 

* **Microsoft Entra ID Free Subnoscription**: Microsoft will roll out a new Entra ID free, a no-cost subnoscription to help organizations track tenant ownership through billing accounts. 
* **Limiting MOERA Domain Usage:** Exchange Online will throttle outbound mail from default [*onmicrosoft.com*](http://onmicrosoft.com) domains to 100 messages per day. 
* **Retirement of Legacy MFA and SSPR Policy** – Microsoft will stop supporting management of authentication methods in the legacy MFA and SSPR policies starting October 1, 2025. Move to the Authentication Methods policy in Entra ID. 

**Here’s a quick overview of what's coming:**       

* **Retirements:** 6  
* **New Features:** 8 
* **Enhancements:** 5  
* **Changes in Functionality:** 5 
* **Action Needed:** 4 

# Retirements 

1. Microsoft Defender is retiring the rarely used “*Add to existing remediation*” option for phishing jobs. 
2. Outlook will retire the standalone “*Share to Teams”* experience for users who don’t have the Teams desktop app installed. 
3. *Outlook Lite app* will be retired starting Oct 6, 2025, and new installs will be blocked after this date. 
4. Microsoft 365 subnoscriptions linked to a personal, work, or school account will no longer support the *legacy version of Microsoft Outlook for Mac*. 
5. *OneNote for Windows 10 app* will be retired on Oct 14, 2025. 
6. SharePoint Online will retire the *SP.Utilities.Utility.SendEmail* API on Oct 31, 2025. 

# New Features 

1. Admins can decide *who can create org-wide sharing links* for agents built in the Copilot Studio Agent builders, tightening governance. 
2. Microsoft Purview introduces *Data Security Investigations (DSI)*, an AI-driven tool for analyzing content, visualizing correlations, and refining data protection policies. 
3. SharePoint Advanced Management adds *Content Management Assessment (CMA)*, giving admins visibility into site health, permissions, and lifecycle readiness in one console. 
4. Information Barriers V2 supports *larger and multi-segments with flexible discoverability*; tenants enabling IB for the first time will get V2 by default. 
5. Microsoft Purview DLP brings *Just-in-Time protection for SharePoint,* applying restrictions only when unclassified files are accessed or shared externally. 
6. Microsoft Authenticator enhancements: *removes number matching for same-device sign-ins* and simplifies setup with a new consolidated First Run Experience that *prioritizes Entra accounts.* 
7. Microsoft Entra introduces *cross-cloud synchronization* in public preview, automating user lifecycle management across commercial, US Gov, and China clouds. 
8. Microsoft Teams expands external collaboration by letting admins define *which users/groups can interact with specific external domains.* 

# Enhancements 

1. Microsoft Teams will change the default sender address for guest invites from [*noreply@microsoft.com*](mailto:noreply@microsoft.com) to [*no-reply@teams.mail.microsoft*](mailto:no-reply@teams.mail.microsoft) to improve deliverability. 
2. Microsoft Purview DLP adds *OCR support on Windows endpoints*, enabling detection of sensitive data within images. 
3. Exchange Online GCC High and DoD tenants will gain inbound support for *SMTP DANE with DNSSEC.* 
4. Microsoft is rolling out a *refreshed licensing view* in the Microsoft 365 admin center, providing unified view of user/group assignments, licensing errors tab with resolutions, and a “users without licenses” page. 
5. Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal improves DLP alerts page with a *unified event view, new detail columns, faster load times*, and reduced triage effort. 

# Existing Functionality Changes 

1. Microsoft Purview DLP *decouples email notifications and policy tips*, allowing admins to manage them independently. 
2. Microsoft is modifying the *output format of certain database

properties* in Exchange Online cmdlets. For example, the Database property in the output of Get-Mailbox will change to a fully qualified path format. 
3. Excel for the web Office Script settings are moving from the Microsoft 365 admin center to *Cloud Policy service* for streamlined control. 
4. Microsoft Teams will *shorten meeting URLs* to only include the meeting ID, omitting tenant and organizer details. 
5. Microsoft Graph Beta API will remove the *sendDeviceOwnershipChangePushNotification* property in Oct 2025, as ownership change notifications are now automated. 

# Action Required 

1. Microsoft 365 will deprecate *legacy TLS cipher suites* without forward secrecy on Oct 20, 2025; only approved TLS 1.2/1.3 suites will be supported. Admins must update clients and OS. 
2. Microsoft Entra will enforce *MFA prompts for all credential management actions* on the “My sign-ins” page. Prepare your users to re-authenticate more frequently when performing actions like password changes. 
3. Office 2016/2019, Visio 2016/2019, and Project 2016/2019 will reach end of support on Oct 14, 2025. *Upgrade to Microsoft 365 Apps* or Office LTSC 2024. 
4. Microsoft Defender XDR will *retire the Deception feature* on Oct 30, 2025; customers should shift to automatic attack disruption and exposure management. 

Act now to stay ahead and ensure these updates don't impact you! 

https://redd.it/1nv5bct
@r_systemadmin

Organization Structure

Is anyone else tired of IT reporting to finance in small organizations? We should report to the executive team/owner.

The finance team has no idea what we are doing or talking about and I feel like this diminishes our chances of promotion while finance gets promotions yearly. Also not to mention, the some finance people then claim to be a part of the IT department lmao.


https://redd.it/1nv5c03
@r_systemadmin

Best RMM

I work at an IT company as a student intern. They gave me a task so find the best RMM tool for servers. So meaning i can monitor multiple servers(and the users on them) and execute commands on them remotely like start/stop services, update, restart stuff like that. I want a all in one tool. I've checked out some like grafana but it's mainly for monitoring. What do you guys use and would recommend for windows servers? I've also tried PRTG and looked at grafana but it's mainly for monitoring.


EDIT: Thank you to everyone for the help. I got alot of feedback and tools which i will test. I wish you all the best!

https://redd.it/1nv4ofj
@r_systemadmin

Anyone else drowning in alert fatigue despite ‘consolidation’ tools?

We’ve been tightening up monitoring and security across clients, but every “single pane of glass” ends up just being another dashboard. RMM alerts, SOC tickets, backups, firewall logs, identity events… the noise piles up and my team starts tuning things out until one of the “ignored” alerts bites us in the arse.

We’re experimenting with normalizing alerts into one place, but I’d love to hear how others handle it:

Do you lean on automation/tuning, or more on training/discipline?

Also has anyone actually succeeded in consolidating alerts without just building another dashboard nobody watches?

Feels like this is a universal. What’s worked for you?



https://redd.it/1nva8ir
@r_systemadmin

It was just announced that we where "Invested in" by a private equity group and I am panicking

I have literally never seen anything good come out of private equity, from housing being purchased as assets, to driving companies into the ground like red lobster, pan am ect. I have always heard and believed with decent evidence that private equity groups will 100% fuck you into the ground as a company and extract every dime, bankrupt the company and then fire every one and rinse wash repeat.

I AM ABSOLUTELY PANICKING tbh on the verge of tears, I have never been this upset. We where a company of about 450 or so and family owned, and they are pretty good to us. They are running the "its an investment for expansion" but they are not part of a board and of course hasn't mentioned how much of the company the equity group (a giant one called One Equity Partners) they own.

We are a pretty large iT dept for the company size, however in my dept we are understaffed (not by choice trying to find some one) and It just seems like now we are effed, there going to bring in a outsourced IT like all these places do and well one day be fired.

Does any one have any experience with their company being bought out by Priv equity or work for one, I am absolutely beside myself that the family would sell, but money is a strong drug.

https://redd.it/1nvcird
@r_systemadmin

25H2 Administrative Templates Available

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=108394

A couple of observed changes that should be helpful are GPO/Intune configurations for WiFi 7, Removing individual preinstalled Windows Store apps (goodbye, Clipchamp. At least if you're on Educational/Enterprise).

Pretty minor changes this year.

https://redd.it/1nvbjhp
@r_systemadmin

WSUS only sees a handful of PCs for Windows 11 upgrade, rest “Not Eligible”

Hey all,

I’m new to sysadmin and running into weird WSUS behavior with Windows 11 feature upgrades.

* WSUS initially wasn’t listing Windows 11 at all. A user on here saved me by mentioning it because I noticed the GPO **“Prevent the wizard from running”** under **Add features to Windows 10** was disabled. Setting it to **Not Configured** suddenly made all eligible PCs show they needed the upgrade.
* I tried configuring GPOs for automatic downloads so users could just schedule a restart. A few days later, WSUS showed **only 3 PCs needing Windows 11**, with the rest marked **Not Eligible**.
* Checked GPOs again, everything seems correct for feature updates but still inconsistent. Today it shows **9 PCs needing it**.

Has anyone seen WSUS fluctuate like this with feature upgrades? How do you reliably push Windows 11 to a domain without most machines showing as “Not Eligible”?

Thanks, just trying to get a smooth rollout without breaking anything.

https://redd.it/1nvgu48
@r_systemadmin

Tip: Prevent Microsoft from swiss cheesing your firewall

Have you ever spent any time (hours/days/weeks) trying to harden your windows firewall only to have those carefully curated rules turned into swiss cheese with stupid fucking rules for shit like ZuneMusic, Game Bar, Your Account, or the Windows CLOCK? Be molested no more! Your saviour is Group Policy. Make YOUR setting stick.


Run GPEDIT.MSC. Navigate to Computer Configuration/Security Settings/Windows Defender with Advanced Security and select Windows Defender Firewall Properties. For each network profile you use click on the Settings button, then set Apply Local Firewall Rules to No. Viola. Microsoft's baffling attempts to lower your security will henceforth be ignored. ONLY firewall rules defined in this policy will apply (or the domain policy if you're using AD (in which case, go talk to your admin instead)). Probably don't do this if you're remote. I do recommend defining your polices in the GPO first, or defining them in the firewall MMC where you can export them for use in group policy.

https://redd.it/1nvg629
@r_systemadmin

This phrase always hits the feels

When you are solo SysAdmin and see this: Customers may need to consult their IT administrator or IT Department.


Bro, I am the IT department and everything that comes with it, what more do you want?

https://redd.it/1nvj3vj
@r_systemadmin

Microsoft finally gave us what we've been asking for!

Microsoft has apparently been listening to the community very closely, and has announced new icons for the Office suite... again!

Don't worry about making "new" Outlook feature complete with "classic" Outlook, or making the 365/Azure admin centers faster, or streamlining licensing. That's all useless junk. Icons are what we need!

/s

https://redd.it/1nvl2bt
@r_systemadmin

Fallout After Layoffs

Asking as a greenhorn trying to survive. What do you do after a layoff when you weren't picked to go? As in, how do you pick up where others got left off at and try to keep the ship sailing?

I'm just looking for advice and strategies to keep going with the extra overhead that appeared.

https://redd.it/1nvhufv
@r_systemadmin

Do you back up your ticketing system?

We've had several ticketing systems over the years, but have never backed them up. Others in the team don't seem to consider the data valuable. I had to argue for increasing the archiving period for our existing system, and no one else worried about exporting the tickets from our previous systems.

99% of our old tickets are probably worthless, but I'd hate to lose any with valuable historical information.

What does everyone else do?



https://redd.it/1nvnv7s
@r_systemadmin

Does The Use Of AI Make Me A Shitty Professional ?

I have 8 years of experience working with Microsoft based systems (mainly O365 and Windows) in end-user support. I was laid off and out of work for 8 months. I also have a degree in Cloud Computing based systems and have always wanted to move into that side of the field.

In June, I landed a job as a Cloud Admin. I’m now responsible for nearly every aspect of our organization’s AWS and Azure environments from networking, IAM, infrastructure, etc. For the first time in my career, I’m working in an environment with no training wheels. There’s limited support for complex issues and no real backup. I’ve also fully transitioned away from end-user support and now work strictly on infrastructure.

At the beginning, I was really struggling to understand certain things. And really had no one to ask, So I decided to use ChatGPT to help me work through a specific issue and it honestly opened my eyes. It’s allowed me to say “Hey, I’m thinking of approaching this issue like this, what do you think?”. Which I can't always do with a person. I don't use it for everything.

Lately, I’ve been second guessing my ability. I’ve never relied on AI tools in the past, especially when working with Microsoft systems. Back then, I had years to gradually ramp up on complexity and always had senior engineers around to help if needed. But now, I don’t have that luxury. AI has become a powerful tool for me, and I sometimes wonder if would I even be able to do this job without it? It’s made me question how good I really am at what I do.

Has anyone else gone through this?

https://redd.it/1nvtfnh
@r_systemadmin

Servicedesk newcomers, how to navigate the use of chat-gpt

Hey,

First time in a leadership role for servicedeskers and don't want to impose new ways of searching and getting info for people straight out of school (or just young people) and they use chat-gpt a lot for looking up information.

However, my issue is that if someone calls, or mails, they just enter it into chat gpt and forward the response back to the user.

I always encourage critical thinking and manual searching but you can tell that the younger generation mostly use AI to lookup things.

Whenever I try to nudge them into using google search or by thinking yourself, they usually brush it off and go towards chat-gpt again.

How can I educate them properly, without being a strict parent and just saying NO to chat-gpt? For me they can use it, but they should also read and think critically about what they read and not just blind forward.

https://redd.it/1nvwuhu
@r_systemadmin

Thickheaded Thursday - October 02, 2025

Howdy, /r/sysadmin!

It's that time of the week, Thickheaded Thursday! This is a safe (mostly) judgement-free environment for all of your questions and stories, no matter how silly you think they are. Anybody can answer questions! My name is AutoModerator and I've taken over responsibility for posting these weekly threads so you don't have to worry about anything except your comments!

https://redd.it/1nvzm5n
@r_systemadmin

Looking for specific examples of incidents where shadow IT has caused a significant business impact.

As the noscript says, however dr Google isn't giving me any juicy enough leads. I'm writing some internal education documents and am looking for some examples to cite.
Google search is currenly giving me page after page of vendors selling their services and how they will fix a shadow IT problem drowning out the original query. I have tried varying the search, but not getting many results that quantify specific damages or case studies.
So, here I am asking my fellow sysadmins if anyone can point me in the right directions for some good sources of where people have acted without IT oversight but didn't have malicious intent.

Thanks in advance.

https://redd.it/1nvtndg
@r_systemadmin

For this first time in my career I’m working at a company with a dedicated Security team and I fully understand now why having SysAdmin experience should be absolutely necessary to be on a CyberSecurity team…

I’ve seen people here complain about kids fresh out of college joining their company’s Sec team and making ignorant requests, but only now do I understand.

Younger kid on our security team submitted a ticket, assigned it straight to me and not our team’s queue (ugh), saying “Hey I found this noscript online, could you run it on these three prod machines for me? Feel free to run whenever. Thanks!”

Links to some random blog post, noscript requires some package dependencies to be installed, noscript ends with a reboot command, bunch of cURLs & chmod’s in it.



https://redd.it/1nw6sks
@r_systemadmin

CrownCastle NYC area internet issues

Anyone able to get a ticket open for Crown Castle internet issue that seemed to start around 11:15am EST today? I'm in southwest CT, circuit is flapping and feels like routing issue when it's up. OR could just be flapping.

https://redd.it/1nw7al5
@r_systemadmin