If you look at the range of activities that companies undertake to monitor Internet access, it can run the gamut from the extreme to the apathetic. Companies who want to maintain absolute control over their employee’s Internet usage may take measures that include recording and reviewing everything that users do on the web. They might […]

I don’t want to be the Internet police. Neither do you. We both have far more important things to do at work than worry about what our coworkers are doing on the Internet. Whether we are deploying patches, reviewing our firewall logs, or adding disk space to our SAN, practically anything we might have to […]

System admins know the importance of keeping up with operating systems patches on their workstations and servers, and making sure their antivirus definitions are kept up to date. We plan for and test regularly Microsoft’s monthly releases, and ensure 100% compliance on all our systems. But unless we’re using a commercial patch management solution, there […]

One of the biggest problems users encounter when using PSTs is that they can corrupt. Because there are countless messages within a PST that could easily be lost when the file becomes corrupt, knowing how to repair PST files is highly important. Of course, it would be even better if you knew how to avoid […]

A successful patch management process is a critical part of any network, no matter how many or how few systems you are maintaining. There are a few key things you should include to maximize the effectiveness of your patching process, and a few key things that can really cause you problems. Here are the top […]

While companies with unlimited storage, tiers of redundant servers, and high-speed WAN links may want to provide unlimited online storage for their users, the rest of us have to contend with budgets, hardware limitations, and bandwidth that is never enough. Combine this with users’ tendencies to use PSTs, hard drives that crash, and the chance […]

Whether your servers run Windows or Linux, whether your workstations are Windows 7 or Macs, and no matter what vendor your network gear comes from, one of the most critical administrative tasks for admins of any system is patching. With new vulnerabilities announced every week, and with dozens, if not hundreds of different applications running […]

Welcome back. In part one, we explained the importance of understanding the threats against your network and looked at three common hacking techniques that the bad guys might use against you. They included Attacking Defaults, SQL Injection, and Exploiting Unpatched Services. Now, let’s look at two more, and finish up with some good advice.

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.” – Sun Tzu While the famous Chinese general may not have had hacking techniques in mind when he penned The Art of War some 2500 years ago, there is great merit in knowing your enemy, and the techniques s/he may […]