This article lists 10 of the best free tools for managing, comparing, administering and developing databases. I’m confident that you’ll find a gem or two amongst this list.

Here are 20 of the best free tools that will help you conduct a digital forensic investigation. Whether it’s for an internal human resources case, an investigation into unauthorized access to a server, or if you just want to learn a new skill, these suites a perfect place to start.

In 2012 and 2013, I wrote a couple of articles called Scanning Open Ports in Windows: A Quick Guide and Scanning Open Ports in Windows: A Quick Guide (Part 2) that covered how to use a series of neat little utilities to view open ports and troubleshoot client or server side application network connectivity issues. The articles […]

We know how administrators love free tools that make their life easier so here are 20 of the best free tools for monitoring devices, services, ports or protocols and analysing traffic on your network.

Back in 2012, I wrote a number of blog posts that highlighted the efficacy of PowerShell and how it could be used to make your life as a sysadmin easier. This article builds on Windows PowerShell: Extracting Strings Using Regular Expressions, Windows PowerShell: Essential Admin Scripts (Part 1), and Windows PowerShell: Essential Admin Scripts (Part […]

Here are 10 of the best free tools / packages for troubleshooting system issues. These tools should help you as an admin to fix the problem or identify the root cause more quickly.

This post has been reviewed in 2018 and its information is still relevant. We also recently published another post with information about how to automate common admin tasks with PowerShell.  Windows PowerShell is a powerful (no pun intended!) command line scripting language built on top of the .NET framework. Version 2.0 of Windows PowerShell comes […]

This post has been reviewed and the information is still relevant as of June 2018. In early 2012, I wrote an article called Scanning Open Ports in Windows: A Quick Guide that covered how to use NetStat.exe, Tasklist.exe, TCPView.exe and PortQry.exe and Scanning Open Ports in Windows: Part 3 that covered how to use NMAP to […]

This post has been reviewed and the information is still relevant as of June 2018. When troubleshooting client or server side application network connectivity issues, it is often necessary to determine if access to a certain port that the application uses is being blocked. In this article we’ll take a quick look at how to […]

With users taking their work laptops out of the office environment more often, the risk of the device getting lost, stolen or damaged is greater, which means data loss prevention becomes even more important.