Resources

The reality is that your network is under attack.  We need to protect our servers.  We need to protect our data.  One way we do that is by not remoting into servers to do basic tasks.   Almost everything we need to do, we can now do remotely.   Also, we can do many tasks with a […]

Do you know how secure you are from the outside world?  Maybe you’re new and inherited a network, or there has been so much churn over the years with servers being added and retired and software previously available in-house now being hosted?   Maybe you have just lost track of patching? Regardless of the reason, a […]

Another short and sweet tidbit. When you are installing software, updates, patches, etc., reboot your server.   I can’t tell you the number of times that my “updates” fail because there is a “pending restart” from a previous update. If your update fails after the reboot, it is the update that is the issue.

I have been watching the Cisco AMP and Paladin CyberSentinel Managed Endpoint Detect & Respond consoles for a number of clients of late.  One thing is extremely apparent. Your administrators are under constant attack from emails with fake invoices, as well as Microsoft Word and Excel documents – all of which are infected.

This tidbit is a refresher on looking at Cisco Firepower Intrusion Event logs and daily reports. Specifically, I wanted to review for all of you again the meaning of two key columns, the Impact and Inline Result columns The Firepower Impact scale is designed to help the recipient understand where to focus scarce resources first.

One of the things we are quite proud of here at CSI despite the numerous network down stories over the years (many of them gruesome) we have never had a client miss a payroll.  A business official’s worst nightmare is not that the network is down.  It is that they might miss payroll.

This one is short and sweet. Once in a while we encounter equipment or software that you have purchased elsewhere, but you want CSI to actively support you with it moving forward.   The reality with some of these vendors is that we are not allowed to call for technical assistance or even to place a […]

Often we all don’t get true clarity on the importance of certain issues until you are living them.  That is why for instance Dutchess County BOCES attempts to do a yearly, live, full DR test.  It is amazing what you find out when you actually force yourself to go production on plan B.  Documentation is […]

Keeping up with my theme on DNS related posts, this week I will again reprise a post from over a year ago on the importance of implementing proper control of DNS as part of your malware protection program.   It remains as valuable part of your overall all network and security management policies.

In the February Tech Talk Webinar entitled,  “SCCM Troubleshooting Part II” Scott introduced the new  Support Center for client troubleshooting which became available in 1810.  It provides real-time log viewing, or capturing the state of a Configuration Manager client computer for later analysis.