Resources

Happy Holidays. As we go through the last full school week before the holiday break, I have a couple of quick professional and personal thoughts:      You should use the holiday break to re-calibrate your UPSes.  Remember Smart UPSes need periodic re-calibration.

The Cybersecurity news has been pretty depressing over the last week. I read an article that a Cybersecurity insurance company is refusing to pay for a Merck breach incident because it is NotPetya and that is from Russia and was designed as a cyber warfare tool.

Bob and are now multiple years in discussing the same thing – how to improve your district’s security footprint.   For most of that time many ignored our warnings as too hard, too expensive, or “on my list”.  But when a member of the family dies, everything  becomes very real and suddenly what is impossible becomes […]

In my 20s I went to Tahiti and went on a sunset cruise on the famed “Liki Tiki”.   It was an amazing sunset.  Hula girls, and music.   Along the way the Liki Tiki sprung a leak.   It was pitch black, and the boat was taking on water.  The captain and crew knew they were taking […]

Just when you thought it was safe to move along to other technical topics, along comes Scott Quimby’s Hardening Active Directory Part III to scare you even more.  If you haven’t watched Part I and Part II, you can find them here. In Part III we will do a little review of some core topics […]

Hopefully for most of you, this is old news, but I know how busy everyone gets, especially this time of year with the end of school coming upon us.   So, in case you missed it Microsoft RDP has been back in the news again as the source in yet another serious vulnerability – dubbed BlueKeep […]

I was recently reading a security study that said that 25% of applications are unpatched for an entire year!  As you approach the summer remember that you need to patch not only the operating system but also all your applications. Many of our biggest threats are application based: Adobe Flash Oracle Java Adobe Reader (PDFs) […]

One of the most important principles of a good network design is accurate time.   Windows time is a whole lot like the 1960s car clock – always drifting away from true time.  However, very weird things start to happen if time on your network and servers and workstations is left to fend for itself.

Bob and I have discussed over and over the need for improved public wireless configuration.   Some of you have gotten the message.  Sadly many have not.  As we approach the summer, let’s get this fixed once and for all. Here are a few design changes many of you need to implement: If your endpoints in […]

As you go through your normal yearly planning cycles remember that in January 2020 Microsoft will be retiring Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, and Microsoft Exchange 2010.  That means no security updates and no vendor support if something goes wrong.