Your techs *should not* be local admins anymore. It is simply too dangerous.   I have personally been a limited user on all my laptops, VMs and desktops for three years. I am living a happy life. It is time to completely eliminate this concept of “Techs are Local Admins”. It is simply too dangerous […]

We have to plan to safely ride out storms and other unforseen events   I am fresh off another weekend of power issues with the big storm. It was another object lesson that it is imperative to actually test disaster recovery strategies.

  “I think someone shot a torpedo at us” -The Hunt for Red October It started out as an ordinary weekend full of kid’s schedules and errands. I was over at the Boy Scout Camp in the woods picking up my son from the annual Klondike event.

  You can easily block these applications from getting on your endpoints Here’s a quick Tech Tidbit: Configure your “Potentially Unwanted Applications” (PUA) settings in Windows Defender. Hopefully you kept Windows Defender on each workstation and server regardless of what your primary antivirus or EDR type security product is.

  “Everyone fears rejection” -Derek Jeter It finally happened. I got kicked in the head and rejected. Here is what happened. As you may know, for last couple of years I have been writing and presenting on email reliability.

  Keep your browser extensions limited to those you need to support the district and trust “There is a snake in my boot” – Woody, Toy Story When I was whitewater rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, our guides warned us to shake out our shoes/boots before we put them on in […]

  “I am watching you…Always watching” -Roz Monsters Inc. For New Year’s we once again had a holiday crisis. Fortunately, this wasn’t an attack. Microsoft had a 2022 date bug in Exchange that totally shut down the on-premise Exchange server’s ability to send emails worldwide.

  Boring Email Formatting = Improved Reliability We love to use graphics and links in our emails. There are lot cool tools. However, the reality is that your district sends emails out in bulk. Spammers do that too.

  It has been a very frustrating couple of months trying to keep everyone safe and stable. Since the Spring we have been pummeled by multiple Exchange exploits, a Microsoft 365 exploit, a bunch of printing exploits quickly followed by massive printing stability issues.

  With school districts now required to adopt the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) for managing their IT operations, our district administrative and technology teams have just become responsible for ensuring that approximately 108 technical or management best practice outcomes are occurring each day in their IT operations.