I wanted this week to take a few minutes to share with you our latest thinking on the Intel Spectre and Meltdown fiasco. In a nutshell, there are two issues: An actual hardware flaw that exists in Intel and other compatible processor chips.

One area of security we often overlook is that of the servers themselves. Most of our servers have some sort of remote access card built into them to provide remote access in case the server is hung up as well as to provide enhanced alerting of hardware errors.

CSI and Microsoft are excited to present a Windows 10 in Education Deployment and Manageability Workshop on Wednesday, February 28th from 8:30-12pm.  Microsoft will be coming to our office and providing a very detailed presentation on all things Microsoft relating to the deployment, management licensing, and upgrading of Windows 10 in education.

One of the most frustrating things for users and the technical staff that support them is erratic email flow.  Often users and staff don’t know that their email is stuck or being rejected.  By the time the technical staff often realize there is a problem, a whole lot of email has backed up – or […]

The requirements of K-12 are increasingly for anytime, anyplace learning as students use various devices both inside the district and at home.   One to one initiatives are stretching our ability to reliably deliver the applications that our students and staff need access too.

One of the most frustrating things for users and the technical staff that support them is erratic email flow.  Often users and staff don’t know that their email is stuck or being rejected.  By the time the technical staff often realize there is a problem, a whole lot of email has backed up – or […]

Back in May 2015 we started talking about the Microsoft Group Policy security change to prevent a “man in the middle attack” where any Group Policy that you test with security filtering for group membership will no longer operate with the default “Authenticated Users” on the delegation tab.

Short but somewhat scary tidbit from me this week that serves as a reminder that there is a reason that the CSI team advocates: 1 – That we need multiple layers of security protection in our networks since no single tool will catch everything     2 – We need to up the sophistication of […]

You will find on our web site under Webinar recordings, Hardening Active Directory Part I and also Part II. If you haven’t watched those presentations, you should to understand the threat to your Windows networks. One basic concept you can start with is to realize that all the Group Policy security settings are found in […]

For years the best practice, and rules the most auditors hold IT departments to when it comes to secure password policies have included the following: 1 – Passwords should be at least 8 characters minimum and must contain complexity (use at least 1 number, 1 upper case character, and 1 special character)   2 – Passwords […]