IT & Business News Roundup: 22 April 2026. Fake Windows Scams, Agent 365 Lands, and the Windows 10 Tail

It's Wednesday, and that means it's time for the Wavetree weekly roundup of the IT and business news actually worth your attention. We've filtered out the noise so you can get back to running your business. This week: a nasty new phishing trick aimed at Microsoft 365 users, a big Microsoft launch that will reshape how SMEs think about AI, the ongoing Windows 10 hangover, and some encouraging numbers on UK SME tech adoption.

1. Fake Windows Support Sites Are Stealing Microsoft 365 Logins

Threat intelligence reports this month have flagged a sharp rise in convincing fake "Windows support" websites that lift Microsoft 365 logins and saved browser passwords in a single click. The pages mimic official Microsoft branding and often surface through sponsored search results, so even a cautious user can get caught out. Once an attacker has a set of M365 credentials, especially without multi-factor authentication in the way, they are inside your email, SharePoint, Teams, and, frequently, your accounting and payroll logins.

What to do this week: make sure MFA is switched on for every Microsoft 365 account (ideally using the Authenticator app or passkeys, not SMS), and remind the team that Microsoft will never ask them to call a phone number from a pop-up. If you're not sure whether your tenant is fully covered, that's exactly the kind of thing we check during a Wavetree security review.

2. Microsoft Agent 365 and the New Frontier Suite Land on 1 May

Microsoft has confirmed that Agent 365 (the new central control plane for AI agents inside Microsoft 365) goes on general sale on 1 May 2026 at around £15 per user per month. It arrives alongside the Microsoft 365 E7 "Frontier Suite" (E5 + Copilot + Agent 365), which lists at $99 per user per month.

Most Gloucestershire SMEs don't need E7 on day one, but the governance story matters. Until now, AI agents have been spun up inside tenants with very little central oversight. Agent 365 gives IT a proper way to see which agents are running, who owns them, and what data they're touching. If your team has been experimenting with Copilot or building custom agents, this is the tool that lets you keep it safe.

Microsoft has also quietly dropped list prices on Windows 365 Business by 20% from 1 May and added an on-demand start option, which makes Cloud PCs a genuinely sensible option for businesses still carrying old Windows 10 hardware.

3. The Windows 10 Tail Is Longer — and More Expensive — Than Most Firms Thought

Windows 10 officially went out of support on 14 October 2025. Six months on, we're still finding Windows 10 machines tucked away in back offices across Gloucestershire — often connected to accounting systems, line-of-business apps, or shop-floor equipment. Extended Security Updates (ESU) buy you time, not a fix. Every month you run an unpatched fleet, your cyber insurance exposure grows and your Cyber Essentials eligibility starts to wobble.

There are three routes out:

• In-place upgrade to Windows 11 where the hardware supports TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot.

• Hardware refresh for machines that fail the Windows 11 checks — usually anything pre-2018.

• Windows 365 Cloud PC for users tied to legacy applications or who just need a thin client — often the cheapest option once you factor in the new 20% price cut.

If you'd like us to audit your fleet and tell you what each machine needs, drop us a line — it's a fixed-price job and we'll give you a written plan at the end of it.

4. AI Adoption in UK Firms Hits 54%: But Skills Are the Real Bottleneck

The latest British Chambers of Commerce research puts UK AI adoption at 54% up from 35% in 2025 and just 25% in 2024. That's a huge shift in twelve months. But only 11% of SMEs say they're using technology "to a great extent" to automate operations. Government research found 60% of businesses cite AI skills gaps as the main blocker, and 71% say they haven't yet identified a clear use case inside their own business.

Our take: start small and pick one painful, repetitive workflow. Quote generation, supplier onboarding, support triage, and build from there. You'll learn more from one working use case than from a six-month strategy deck.

5. Is Your Broadband a Single Point of Failure?

A piece in the SME cybersecurity press this week made a point we keep banging on about: a typical SME setup runs a single business broadband circuit, a firewall, and everything else hanging off it. When that circuit drops, Openreach works, a drunk driver takes out a cabinet, a storm takes out the village and the whole business stops. Phones, tills, cloud apps, card payments.

A 4G or 5G failover on the firewall is now a sub-£50-a-month line item. If you run a shop, a clinic, a legal practice or anything else that can't take an afternoon off, it's the single most cost-effective resilience investment you can make.

The Wavetree Take

Zoom out and this week's news all points the same way: the basics still matter most. MFA, patched endpoints, a supported version of Windows, a backup you've actually tested, and a second way of getting online. Get those right before you start worrying about AI agents, and everything else gets easier.

If any of this has raised a question, give us a call. We're a Cheltenham-based MSP supporting SMEs across Gloucestershire and the wider UK with managed IT, cybersecurity, and hosting, and we'd rather have a ten-minute chat now than a panicked one at 2am.

See you next Wednesday.