The Weekly
Brief

Microsoft's June security update was its largest single Patch Tuesday on record, fixing around 200 vulnerabilities across Windows, Office, Exchange and Azure. Among them were six zero-day flaws — bugs already public before a fix existed — including one that attackers are actively exploiting: a Microsoft Exchange / Outlook Web Access spoofing bug (CVE-2026-42897) that can run rogue JavaScript in a victim's mailbox.

The update also closed 33 “critical” holes, most of which let an attacker run code remotely, plus two flaws that bypass BitLocker drive encryption on a device someone can physically get to. The fix is the easy part — but only if it actually installs. The danger window is the gap between “update available” and “update applied”.

With the 2026 FIFA World Cup drawing attention, scammers are using the tournament's brand to push fake job offers that harvest logins, Netsafe and researchers at Gen (the maker of Norton) warn. The lure isn't a clumsy pop-up — it's a polished hiring page impersonating FIFA and at least a dozen other well-known employers, complete with a recruiter profile, a “book a meeting” prompt and a “Continue with Google” button that quietly steals your credentials.

These recruitment scams sit inside a much bigger problem: employment and impersonation scams are climbing sharply in New Zealand, part of an estimated NZ$3 billion lost to scams nationally each year. Norton alone has blocked this one campaign more than 250 times since the start of May.

Microsoft has confirmed price increases across its Microsoft 365 business plans, taking effect 1 July 2026 with the new packaging rolling out from June. Business Basic goes up about 16% (from US$6.00 to US$7.00 per user a month) and Business Standard about 12% (US$12.50 to US$14.00); the bigger Office 365 E3 plan rises roughly 13%.

The good news for forward-planning: existing customers keep their current pricing until renewal, so the change lands at your next subscription anniversary rather than overnight. It's a timely prompt to check you're not paying for unused or over-specified licences — many businesses are carrying seats they no longer need.

New research by Deloitte Access Economics, published by 2degrees, puts numbers on something a lot of owners have suspected: AI is moving from novelty to bottom line. The study found 82% of New Zealand businesses now use AI in some form, and that the average small or medium business using AI earned about NZ$400,000 more in FY25 than a comparable firm that hadn't adopted it. Among large businesses the gap was far wider still.

The catch is that most of that value isn't coming from exotic new tools. As Deloitte's lead partner put it, the biggest gains come “not from inventing new technologies, but from using what already exists more effectively” — many firms are still stuck experimenting rather than embedding AI into how they actually work.