rschroeder · NAM SME · ✭✭✭✭✭

Our InfoSec and Citrix teams have worked closely for years. I don't know if the kind of problem reported in the Citrix article has happened, or is ongoing, here, but I trust our people and their tools and training to prevent it. Of course, Citrix Corporate did the same thing, and look how their name is being dragged…

Regarding any large private or public building (such as the Boston Public Library, but could include government buildings, churches, etc.), I've always liked the massive feel and impressive scope their size gives me. Simultaneously I harbor a feeling of money and talent and resources wasted on creating that big impression.…

Increased mobility remains a concern for us when moving from Cisco ASA's to Meraki DMVPN solutions. Where we previously monitored devices by external (or loopback) addresses, we may soon find we're monitoring via DNS entries, as Meraki mobility allows users to frequently move their networking needs from home to hotel to…

I'm disappointed with the GDPR and the U.S. involvement in it. We truly are shooting ourselves in the foot by trying to get the swagger back in our step at the expense of others. Let's do well for everyone, and for the environment, rather than only for ourselves. That goes for Internet security and privacy and ethics and…

Seriously?! Wow. I have to imagine an emergency lighting scenario would be required by local fire code or electrical code, but perhaps not? Our data centers have energy saving lights that are activated by motion or timer. The problem lies in the motion sensors not pointing down every row of equipment racks, and after 60 or…

Similarly, we were concerned about the vulnerability of an EPO switch, and we contracted with a licensed Data Center electrical company to redo the switches, relocate them, put protective coverings over them, put large red warning labels all around them, and train everyone how & when to use them. That didn't prevent an…

I remain highly skeptical of all ASP / Cloud offerings, for many reasons: * Will they let you monitor/test/verify/validate their security solutions in any way that is comparable to how you can confirm your own internal data centers are secure? * What will you do when you or your customers can't get to the Cloud provider's…

I confess to confusion about the article regarding "rescuing" stolen credit card info from a hacker's database. What was the point? What was done with the data? I'd hope a White Hat would have done the work and promptly shared all the data with the credit companies owning the vulnerable accounts, who would verify the info…

As part of an automation tool, being able to push out patches and performing automated upgrades is key. Here in Health Care, before patches are rolled out to the general population we use many test environments to discover patching processes, to learn the scope of the devices involved, and to learn what processes may break…

The best part of the upgrade, after having gone through upgrades of Solarwinds products for the last fourteen years, is that the new versions' upgrade process are so much simpler, easier, and reliable than their predecessors. Get to Server 2016, get to NPM 12.3 and its peers, and watch the magic start to simplify your…

I'm good at music performance, and I love doing it. Back in the '70's and '80's my expenses were low and the paying music jobs were plenty--WIN! Now I live where demand for live musicians is much lower, and pay is 5% of what it was in 1979 (that's not accounting for inflation, either). So financially my musician life is…

If I were writing that document, instead of only saying “Ensuring devices are properly hardened increases the cost of, and complexity required for, successful exploitation attempts by the adversary,” I'd include the unstated, but implied, concept: "Hardening devices does not prevent their successful exploitation.…

I like this idea. I'm one of those who has manually copied URLs and added them as new Resources to Menu's. While it seems easy enough to do, modern and competitive products should be able to leverage the power of apps & computer processing to make a one-click "Add To Menu" feature happen. It seems like a basic cosmetic…

("Unless I (Doc Brown) want to do it. Then it's OK. But only for me and my friends/family. Remember what happened with Biff, Marty.")

So many things have to go wrong, must be assumed, for disaster--and it's all so easily done--to the detriment of the organization and customer/client relations. What MUST you do to get it wrong? Here's a starter list, and everyone's welcome to add to it: * Don't know your customers * Don't care what impact your actions may…

You became, and will remain, my hero when I read: "giving a cloud provider unfettered access to all of it just doesn’t sit well with me". I'll expand on that idea: Giving a cloud provider ANY access to your data is a risky decision. Why would you? To save money, while giving up logical and physical security of your data?…

What Jfrazier​ said is "the word." If you don't recognize it, if you don't trust a "strange" Network Engineer's word, then trust the experience of a fireman and an Emergency Medical Responder--he's all of that, and more. Building your DR plans is a good first step, but that step is of limited worth until you have everyone…

Monitoring cloud-based O365 will be a challenge . . .

Amen to that, jeremymayfield​! I feel for CIOs and IT Directors. We need them to do so much, like for stopping purchases from other departments that haven't been vetted by the IT staff, and to ensure uniformity and corporate compliance by all divisions and players. It's obviously a challenging job, and I don't see any…

Sweet.

Thank you for the nice update, Leon. You make me happy when you share the stories of your confident and humorous offspring--thanks for sharing the human part of adatole​, along with the I.T. Geek. Please keep up the great work--we appreciate your ideas and insights and experiences! Rick Schroeder

??? I needed no assistance or permissions from Server folks to get my NetPath running. I just browsed to it in the new NPM 12 view and started adding Probes. Ten minutes later they had discovered all the paths. Of course, I was setting probes pointed at my switches, not at servers. Is that where the hangup is? If so, I…

I've got 12 running, I appreciate what I'm seeing so far. I manage just shy of a thousand nodes, with 43,000 active edge devices, and my four pollers handle 34,000 elements without issue. The documentation mentions that improvements in efficiencies allow an unlimited license poller handle 12,000 elements instead of 10,000.…

Dramatic inner peace.

I was working a tech support issue with a gentleman based in India last night. I asked him what sites he reads / surfs in his spare time. He surprised me by saying he got rid of his home Internet connection, doesn't have a smart phone (only a plain cell phone), and he intentionally stays disconnected when away from work.…

Back in the 80's and 90's, DARPA worked to create a "new" solution called a "firewall" that would better defend the government, military, and private sector from cyber attacks. They called that firewall a Sidewinder, and the original DOD version had aggressive strike-back capabilities that could be turned on with a simple…

The Verizon article didn't amaze or surprise me. It disappointed me. Initially the impression was "Here's another site that's going to mine my credentials/name/e-mail address and sell them and I'll get another hundred spams per hour." Digging deeper the useful information was not all that useful, none of it was new to me,…

@"gfsutherland" I've never had the pleasure of visiting beautiful Maine. I hear there are wonderful rolling landscapes, forests extending past one's imagining, Moose, and Whales. And sometimes comically stoic individuals who practice brevity in their speech. I'd like to go there and make a new friend or three. Retirement…

Amen to THAT, brother! Bump!