petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

Well, Glass half empty - I didn't win again. Glass half full - I've kept my 100% record of not winning anything.

As has been said elsewhere, most countries have a lower legal speed limit anyway so this is an attempt to win over the safety nutters who think speed is the issue. The real issue is the totally appalling driving standards. I have a close friend who is a driving examiner here in the UK. He carries out 7 driving examinations…

If only we always bought identical devices. I don't think we have two the same so having templates just isn't an option.

Security keys are not a new idea or the answer. Over 20 years ago I had a client who used swipe cards to access their systems. People were forever forgetting to bring them to work or losing them. Last year I was doing a contract at London Fire Brigade. Walking down the street I found someone's LFB ID pass lying on the…

Registered

I've seen real UIs even worse than that. 

True. I also get a lot of "Why can't I have mode disk space. I have terabytes at home". I explain about backups, disaster recovery, speed, costs etc. and wait for them to glaze over and give up.

How are you ?

22 years ago I had progressed as far up the techie path that I could in the company I worked for. I would have to go into management to get any more pay rises (I was already two pay grades above my manager and had a better company car). I refused so was forced out. I went contracting for 20 years as a techie. Now, thanks…

If there's one thing Germans do well it's meat (certainly not football at present). I've had some great times there. I did once get flashed by a speed camera in Germany. I was in a hire Merc but had picked it up in East Germany and was flashed in West Germany. I think they just gave up.

Don't wish for GDPR. Some things are best avoided (From someone having to deal with GDPR).

Most hotels aren't even experts in offering hotel services. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be IT savvy. 

I'm all for replacing lawyers given how many mistakes that have been reported in recent times. It would make courtroom dramas on telly a bit less interesting though.

I think management's problem is that they don't really know where they need things to be in three years. Most places I've seen seem to just drift along whilst implementing whatever sticking plaster solution will stop the business screaming at them. Some of that is down to a poor level of understanding between the business…

Dealing with the insider threat. I agree that a layered defence is best but management don't. I'm only the paid expert so what would I know. Here I complained about how we weren't doing network monitoring properly. Management's response wasn't to agree and ask me how to improve it. No. They took away network monitoring…

Well that IS annoying

Agree. Tech is inevitable. Management don't understand how to do something so they go out and buy something to help them. Unfortunately it is usually the wrong thing as they didn't actually ask anyone who would know and then just told those people to 'make it work'. My place have spent £250,000 on some software that won't…

I think there's a lot of people in the same boat. I'm sure the good folks at SW will sort this out. 

Yes you should use a layered monitoring solution but ICMP Ping should always be the first layer. I know I want to know that a server has gone down or become unavailable. After that I want alerts on disk space, CPU, memory etc. Then I want application metrics alerts. Event logs would come after that.

Not just wireless that needs to be secured. The devices also need some security. I was in hospital on a morphine drip after a serious motorcycle accident. I watched the nurse enter a password, set it to allow 5 'on demand' doses per hour and re-lock it. As soon as she left I used the password to unlock it, adjusted it to…

Good stuff. One of the problems we have is that some of the "technical" people aren't good enough to do root cause analysis (and we have no proper tools). They just jump at the first thing they see and blame that. I then have to take hours (sometimes days) to convince people that my correct analysis is actually correct.…

I don't know any company that would transfer money on the basis of a phone call. There would be processes and procedures in place to stop any form of rapid payment. It all helps cashflow and gives extra interest payments (and is morally wrong but most companies do it).

Of course Microsoft has made GitHub free. Once people really start to depend on it just watch them hike the price. A bit like Office365 and Azure. It's now a loss leader but won't always be.

Possibly but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

A lot of people focus on a complete disaster and the need to recover everything. I prefer to look at each individual system and plan to recover that. Take care of the small problems and the big problems will take care of themselves. We have SLAs, we just ignore them as there are no repercussions.

Must have a look to see if they are available in the UK. If not I can think of a giveaway for the next London SWUG.

Yes. Cloud makes the server side cheaper but harder to manage. However it does increase the network costs as you will need multiple routes to the data which are outside of your control. Changes are more difficult to manage and data security is partially taken out of your control (yet is still your responsibility according…

Turning off car engines remotely. Two apps made in China. Poor security. Where have I heard this before. Huwaei all over again.

Yes. Putting your eggs in someone else's basket where you have no real protection against them even allowing you access to the basket and they may just drop the basket and break the eggs. Imagine trying to take them on in court.

@"undesired_result" Wind your neck in. You were trying to be funny and failed miserably. You were factually incorrect and now your are making wild and irrelevant statements. My point was that I didn't know IF a mission was going to be run, NOT when. Yes. I did find it by accident as I was looking for something else…