Teams updates to watch: malicious link warnings, blocked risky files, and a new private backroom chat

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Microsoft has announced three Teams updates the past months. Two that strengthen security and one that will improve how organizers coordinate events: Malicious URL Protection, Weaponizable file type protection and Private chat for organizers, co‑organizers, and presenters. Please note that timelines can shift, so treat the dates as guidance rather than guarantees. Malicious URL Protection (Roadmap ID 499893 ) Microsoft has announced link‑scanning in Teams chats and channels that warns senders and recipients about unsafe URLs. The feature reached general availability rollout by the end of November 2025, while the separate change to make it ON by default, originally planned as part of that release, has been postponed to early 2026.  If you don't want to wait for it to be on by default, or feel the need to configure it, you can do so in the Teams admins center: "Teams admin center → Messaging settings → Scan messages for unsafe URLs”. Or you can mange the configuration with Power...

Note to self: Merging files before CUCM upgrade

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I ran into an issue when upgrading (patching) a CUCM 7.1.2 tonight, and I couldn't see any readme files on cisco.com explaining the problem. However, I came across a blog post mentioning something similar.

When you download patches from cisco.com, they might be big and split into two or more files.
One way to merge them is using the "copy /B" in a dos prompt.

Example: When you have downloaded the two files "UCSInstall_UCOS_X.X.X.XXXXX-XX.sgn.iso_part1of2" and "UCSInstall_UCOS_X.X.X.XXXXX-XX.sgn.iso_part2of2", simply merge them by typing: "Copy /B UCSInstall_UCOS_X.X.X.XXXXX-XX.sgn.iso_part1of2+UCSInstall_UCOS_X.X.X.XXXXX-XX.sgn.iso_part2of2 UCSInstall_UCOS_X.X.X.XXXXX-XX.sgn.iso

The process will take a few minutes, and should complete with "one files copied" (You need to be in the folder where these files are located).

Once this is done, you put the merged file in a folder which you can connect to from the CUCM.
(Tip: I use xlite as a ftp server for this purpose :)