This tech tidbit is a reprise of a tidbit we sent out back in June of 2018.   You may have missed this post back then as it was the end of the school year and preparing for summer was upon all of us.  But, I wanted to bring it to all your attention again.

As 2018 comes to a close, on behalf of everyone at CSI I would like to say thank you for entrusting us with your technology needs.  Unlike most of our competitors we solely service K-12 and Public Sector. We take your network very seriously.   We take what happens to it personally.

As we approach the holiday break it is time once again to remember some basic maintenance that should be done.   On a day where there isn’t any bad weather predicted and there have been no power outages I want you to calibrate all your UPSes. Calibration allows an APC Smart UPS to re-evaluate itself.

The FBI came to visit us last week.  No it wasn’t an investigation.  It was for CSI’s 3rd annual Security Event.  I have talked about the topic of Cyber Threats in person and on-line, but our Supervisory Special Agent had a few interesting things to say beyond the topics Bob and I have been discussing […]

I am watching with some interest a growing trend with district’s implementing newer IP-based building systems (HVAC control, food service temperature controls, door control, video surveillance, etc.) and when properly implemented I think this a fine thing.

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.

In an Active Directory domain, we generally rely heavily on group policies.   Microsoft best practices say that you should have at least two domain controllers.   Most of our clients have two or more domain controllers.   Those domain controllers need to replicate Active Directory information, DNS information, and Group Policy information (i.e. SYSVOL) so that everyone […]

This week’s Tech Tidbit is short and sweet. If you have a server or device that is internet facing, make sure you have a real, commercial SSL certificate on it.   Do not use a self-signed certificate.   I don’t really care that it is just for “internal” use and you are smart enough to bypass the […]

When all else fails we reach for the backups.   However, increasingly the bad guys are consciously seeking out your backups and deleting them as part of elaborate ransomware routines to force you to pay to recover your data. This can be as simple as the bad guys deleting your volume shadow copies to as complex […]

One of the key features of the newest firewalls and intrusion protection systems (IPS) has been the addition of something called GeoBlocking. This feature allows the administrator to shut down traffic to or from specific countries or regions of the world and your local network regardless of any other firewall permissions in place.