Devolutions Year 2025 in Review: Part 2

Welcome back to our 2025 year in review! In Part 1, we revisited some key highlights here at Devolutions from January to June. Now in part 2, we pick up the story from July through November.

Once again, we invite you to relax and get cozy, spin up some festive music (you simply can’t go wrong with the legendary soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas), and join us as we look back at the second half of 2025.

July

July brought hot weather and some sizzling company news as we announced our $3M sponsorship of Avalonia to secure the native future of Remote Desktop Manager.

Next, we took a deep dive into the State of Cybersecurity in SMBs in 2024–25 Survey report, exploring why using spreadsheets for PAM may be convenient, but it’s a bad idea when it comes to security, visibility, governance, and compliance.

Still on the PAM topic, we highlighted new Devolutions PAM courses at Devolutions Academy, and our Cybersecurity Newsflash focused on a serious vulnerability in Microsoft Remote Desktop Client (CVE-2025-48817).

We also showcased key capabilities in Remote Desktop Manager Free Solo edition — from essential features at zero cost to getting started in under 10 minutes.

To close out the month, we pulled back the curtain with the inside story of how Bing briefly delisted devolutions.net — and how we got it back.

Our experience with Bing was nerve-wracking, but fortunately, we could count on Patrick to put a smile on our faces with Sysadminotaur #156: Machine Unlearning.

August

August is typically when team members take a vacation around here, but despite the smaller roster we didn’t dial back the productivity. We focused heavily on Remote Desktop Manager Free by helping solo users maximize RDM Free before scaling up, and showing how RDM can smoothly grow from flying solo to working in a team.

We also officially welcomed Devolutions Force discussions into the Devolutions Forum, giving our VIP advocates and user community a central place to connect.

On the security side, we continued our survey deep-dive series with a closer look at why password managers are useful, but definitely not a substitute for PAM. We also discussed how an insurance company refused to cover a city’s multi-million-dollar data breach bill because it failed to secure accounts with MFA.

Over at Devolutions Academy, we launched a new course spotlight on how to customize dashboard widgets in RDM.

And on the fun front, Sysadminotaur #157: Vibe Coding captured what can go wrong when AI assistants take over.

September

September is when kids grudgingly head back to school (and many parents celebrate). It usually also means things get busy around here — and this year was no exception!

To start with, we spotlighted Devolutions Hub emergency kit validation, which helps users protect their last line of access.
We also showcased our commitment to security and transparency with a look at the new Devolutions Trust Center.

Next, we launched a new learning path in Devolutions Academy: Introduction to Devolutions Hub, which helps users master credential security and access management.
Plus, we explored Remote Desktop Manager & AI: Where we go from here, outlining how AI can safely support IT workflows.

We also addressed an emerging browser security topic in DOM-based extension clickjacking: What Workspace users need to know.

And Sysadminotaur #158: App Trap reminded us that no matter how intelligent apps may get, there will always be a few clever IT pros who can outsmart them!

October

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and with Halloween on the horizon it felt fitting to focus on scary threats and powerful new defenses.

We began by rolling out the 2025.3 wave of product updates across Remote Desktop Manager, Devolutions Server, Devolutions PAM, Devolutions Hub Business, Devolutions Gateway, and Devolutions Workspace.

Next, we announced that PowerShell Universal is joining Devolutions, marking a new phase in automation for our community.

We continued our survey deep-dive series with a look at why many SMBs still struggle with weak and reused passwords.
We also made vendor assessments easier by publishing Devolutions’ SIG Lite questionnaire.

To close out the month, we highlighted a real-world customer story in Efficiency over management: Fournier’s story with RDM, showing how Remote Desktop Manager helps teams work smarter.

And over in the world of Sysadminotaur, to mark Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Patrick delivered not one, not two, not three — but four security-themed comics!

November

As November arrived, the weather grew colder and the days shorter — but the pace of news and releases at Devolutions only accelerated!

Privileged access management took center stage with several key articles. We explored why SMBs need PAM that just works, and offered concrete guidance in a practical path to PAM: Five quick wins for lean IT teams. We also introduced the bundled approach in Starter Pack with IT-led PAM: The path to privileged access control for small teams.

On the compliance side, we explained what HECVAT is and how Devolutions helps strengthen compliance, and we highlighted how identity has become the new security perimeter for SMBs.

AI-powered automation was another big theme in November. We shared independent validation with the EMA Impact brief: Why Devolutions’ RDM MCP Server sets a new standard for secure AI automation, showing how secure AI can streamline IT operations without exposing credentials. We also celebrated real-world success in How the City of Saint-Hyacinthe strengthened its security with Devolutions Hub.

Also in November, we explored the 2025.3 release story across four solutions: privileged access management, remote connection and IT management, remote access management, and workforce password management.

For fun, to get everyone in a holiday mood we shared some cool tech gift ideas for sysadmins. And Sysadminotaur #160: Concon reminded us that these days there’s a conference for EVERYTHING.

December

And here we are in the last month of the year! We kicked off December with another installment in our IT-led PAM series. This time we explored how Devolutions PAM delivers the four essentials that IT teams need in their security toolkit — vault, discover, approve, and record — and how Remote Desktop Manager + Devolutions Gateway makes them usable day-to-day.

Next, we introduced a new Devolutions Academy learning path that focuses on Devolutions Gateway. The path covers everything that users need to know to deploy and operate Devolutions Gateway as a secure remote access entry point for both internal and external networks.

We also put the spotlight on two ways that Remote Desktop Manager simplifies credential management, and makes work more efficient and productive: the external vault mode to secure link credentials across vaults, and background vault synchronization to keep offline files current.

And last but certainly not least, Sysadminotaur paid homage to the festive season with #161 Christmas Comics.

And that’s a wrap!

Get it? Wrap? Like in wrapping presents? Uh…sorry, that won’t happen again.

We’ve reached the end of our 2-part year in review, which by the way only covered some of the many announcements and happenings over the last 12 months (if we took a look at EVERYTHING, this would be a 15-part series…maybe 20!).

It’s easy to say that 2025 was one of our most productive, successful, and exciting years ever, and it’s all because of three very special groups: our team, our partners around the world, and most importantly, YOU, our amazing users.

In a few days, we’ll expand on how we feel about all of you and get a little more sentimental (you’ve been warned!) when we share our annual holiday message, which as per tradition will also feature a photo of several team members wearing ugly Christmas sweaters (you’ve been warned again!). Stay tuned.