Microsoft Blocks EWS Access for Kiosk Users, Free Security Wins for Sysadmins with Spencer Alessi
+PSConfEU Deadline Approaches
Hello fellow PowerShell Engineers! We have yet another fantastic week of PowerShell Content. My Engineer Exams launch has been a HUGE success. I hope you all consider becoming a pro member! https://engineerexams.com
App-Only Authentication for SharePoint Online PowerShell
Tony Redmond has an excellent article covering the latest versions of the SharePoint Online PowerShell module which now support app-only authentication (certificate-based authentication) for the Connect-SPOService cmdlet. This means applications can now connect to SharePoint Online to run administrative cmdlets by presenting a registered Entra ID app and an X.509 certificate instead of human credentials. This is a significant improvement for automation scenarios and eliminating interactive authentication requirements.
https://office365itpros.com/2025/12/02/app-only-authentication-spo/
PowerShell as a Workflow Amplifier with Jeff Hicks
In this PowerShell Wednesday session, Jeff Hicks demonstrates how PowerShell can be far more than a server administration tool—it can be a legitimate workflow amplifier for your entire day. Jeff walks through his personal approach to using PowerShell to empower day-to-day productivity, showcasing tools and modules he uses to manage reminders, track work items, keep notes inside modules, and run practical “glue” scripts that help him stay on top of everything. He also demos a couple of his community projects, including PSBluesky and the PSPodcast module, showing how PowerShell can support content creation and community workflows beyond traditional IT tasks.
AI as an Awesome Teammate
Jeffrey Snover shares his perspective on the question everyone’s asking during his Office Hours sessions: what’s the right play with AI? His advice is simple—stop viewing AI as a threat and start treating it as a teammate. Teams exist because we’re all flawed, with peaks of capability and valleys of incompetence. AI can fill those gaps. Snover describes four roles AI plays for him: “The People Person” (rewrites his brutal stress-emails to preserve relationships), “The Red Teamer” (critiques his proposals and finds blind spots before customers do), “The Translator” (converts technical concepts into language executives and non-engineers understand), and “The Sounding Board” (lets him ask “stupid questions” without judgment while brushing up on physics for conferences). His conclusion: AI isn’t about replacing workers—it’s about building a team that makes you awesome.
https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2025/12/04/ai-as-an-awesome-teammate/
Dutch PowerShell User Group Virtual Event: Coding PowerShell from Anywhere
Harm Veenstra presented at the DuPSUG virtual meetup on December 3rd, covering the many ways you can write and debug PowerShell scripts from virtually any environment. Inspired by security restrictions at his new job that make storing profiles and modules challenging, Harm walked through options including PowerShell ISE, VS Code (with connections to Windows Sandbox, WSL, Dev Containers, and Linux VMs via SSH), GitHub Codespaces, VSCode.dev, Azure CloudShell, and PSEdit. Each has trade-offs around IntelliSense, debugging capabilities, and setup complexity. Harm also announced he’s joined the DuPSUG organizing team, and noted recordings will be posted to their YouTube channel—which includes an 11-year-old Jeffrey Snover session worth watching.
https://powershellisfun.com/2025/12/04/dutch-powershell-user-group-virtual-event-december-3rd-2025/
Free Security Wins for Sysadmins with Spencer Alessi
Newly minted Microsoft MVP and pentester Spencer Alessi returns to The PowerShell Podcast to discuss his journey from sysadmin to penetration tester, sharing lessons on growth, giving back, and building security through PowerShell. Spencer emphasizes learning from mistakes, documenting your wins, and advocating for yourself in your career. He introduces his latest open-source project, AppLocker Inspector, and highlights free PowerShell-based security tools like Locksmith, Pink Castle, and Purple Knight that help IT pros secure Active Directory environments. The episode is a strong reminder to track your accomplishments, share your work publicly, and pay forward the mentorship that helped you grow.
EventLog Eventing with PowerShell
Jeff Hicks delivers another deep-dive in his Behind the PowerShell Pipeline newsletter, this time covering EventLog Eventing. The article explores working with Classic Event Logs, Win32_NTEventLogFile, registering CimIndication events, building event queues, and getting granular with event reporting. This is essential reading for anyone building monitoring solutions with PowerShell.
https://buttondown.com/behind-the-powershell-pipeline/archive/eventlog-eventing
An Extended DriveInfo Solution
Also from Jeff Hicks, this follow-up article shows how to enhance the basic DriveInfo object with additional functionality. The article covers enhancing object types, adding aliases and script properties, property sets, custom formatting, and named views. Perfect for learning advanced PowerShell object customization techniques.
https://buttondown.com/behind-the-powershell-pipeline/archive/an-extended-driveinfo-solution
Microsoft Blocks EWS Access for Kiosk Users
Tony Redmond reports on a December 2 announcement that Exchange Online will block access to Exchange Web Services for users with kiosk or frontline worker licenses starting March 2026. While the Exchange Online service description has always excluded EWS access for these licenses, the code to enforce it was never implemented. Time to audit your PowerShell scripts that use EWS and check your license assignments.
https://office365itpros.com/2025/12/05/exchange-web-services-kiosk/
The PSConfEU Team has an exciting call for speakers for their upcoming 2026 conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. They are seeking unique session proposals ranging from standard 45-minute talks to 90-minute deep dives, promising selected speakers free admission and hotel accommodation for the event running June 1-4, 2026.
Great roundup this week. The app-only auth support for SharePoint Online is a noticeable step forward for automation workflows. Certificate-based authentication removes that dependency on interactive logins, which has been a pain point for scheduled jobs and CI/CD pipelines. Interesting how these security improvements often lag behinnd what's already available in other parts of the ecosystem. The EWS kiosk restriction timing (March 2026) is tighter than most realize, especially for teams woth legacy scripts still hitting those endpoints.