It is important to have accountability to the taxpayers independently proving that each school district has adequate financial controls in place and is properly managing the money it has been entrusted.  In this era of identity theft, ransomware, and electronic financial theft, it is equally important to have adequate technical controls in place to protect […]

I can’t tell how many times I have heard from non-technical Mac people that, “they don’t need anti-virus.” The Apple person that sold them their Mac told them that. I have pointed out that Apple’s technical folks make a strong recommendation for anti-virus in their technical documents despite sales claims to the contrary.

Recently I read an interesting article on malware development techniques.  SentinelOne, Cisco AMP, and other antivirus products rely on the VirusTotal clearinghouse.  This is a clearinghouse that has approximately 67 antivirus vendors. Various antivirus and advanced endpoint products upload suspicious programs to ask, “is this a virus?”.   You get a score back of x/67 for […]

We have to be constantly vigilant to prevent malware, trojans, and other bad actors from taking root in our school networks to steal personally identifiable information (PIA) and money.   Besides web filtering, antivirus, patching, and now advanced endpoint protection, we also have to look at policies.

The school year has started and we’re anxious to update you on what our webinar, seminar, and Tech Talk schedule for the Fall and Winter. Wednesday, September 26th 10:30 pm – Webinar – Troubleshooting SCCM Configuration Manager. Wednesday, October 3rd 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – Cisco Meraki Hands-On Workshop at CSI. Tuesday, October 23rd […]

SCCM Configuration Manager is an amazing tool.   But when things don’t go as planned, that tool becomes immensely frustrating.  Scott Quimby will walk you through some basic SCCM troubleshooting techniques focusing on: Where the logs are Services that run How SCCM gets updated What to do if updates are stuck.

On Wednesday, October 3rd Cisco Meraki will be running a hands-on workshop where you can learn all about the new additions to Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed portfolio. The event will include:  Hands-On Workshop  Coverage of the entire Meraki full stack portfolio  Lunch with your Cisco Meraki Team *Please bring your laptop to participate in the hands-on […]

Through our partnership with Synnex Corporation CSI is an approved vendor on the NCPA national purchasing contract which is a legal alternative for our public sector and K-12 clients to either the NYS OGS or Federal GSA IT Schedule 70 contracts.NCPA (National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance) NCPA  is a leading national government purchasing cooperative working to […]

During our May Tech Talk meetings one of my summertime recommended tasks was for everyone to find and eliminate “zombie” servers.   Zombie servers are servers which theoretically are retired, but yet that somehow still exist, turned on, in your network.

When something goes sideways in our technical worlds some of the first questions we get asked, after “when is XXXX going to be back up”, is “what happened?” and “why did it happen?”   For sure if the event in question is a security or data breach event the urgency to answer these questions ratchets up […]