WServerNews: IT Book Corner

In this issue:

Leading Virtual Project Teams. Digital Forensics Explained. SMS for 2FA? New GPO settings in Win10 21H2. A modest proposal for Daylight Savings Time. Recovering lost technical documentation. Excuses, excuses. Plus lots more — read it all, read it here on WServerNews!

Hot new titles for IT professionals. Photo by Ryunosuke Kikuno on Unsplash

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Mailbag

From a fellow Canadian named Steve:

Hi Mitch,

In your latest newsletter, you asked for feedback about “Autonomous Transport”.

It’s probably been decades that we’ve been hearing about the self-driving vehicles that will take care of everything for us. I see commercials on TV for a driverless pizza delivery vehicle and can’t help but wonder how much of an advancement that truly is for society. For the now-unemployed teenager who was at least making minimum wage plus tips, I’d suggest it’s probably not much of an advancement. Years ago we heard about the drones that would be delivering our Amazon packages but I have yet to see one in my neighborhood. When it comes to mass transit, the world hasn’t even been able yet to figure out how to do this with trains running on a fixed track where they always have the right-of-way. I can’t even imagine riding a driverless bus, on real roads, with real idiots ahead, beside and behind it. This idea would especially laughable on the days when we get a big snowfall – you can’t even see the lines, usable parts of the road often narrow from three lanes to two or from two lanes to one, and when things get really crazy/slippery, the driver often has to make some creative decisions to keep passengers moving to where they need to be.

If I recall correctly, you live in Winnipeg so I’m sure you can relate to at least some of what I am saying.

I know exactly what Steve is saying. I have no doubt though that all this autonomous transport stuff will eventually make its way to Winnipeg, but I also have no doubt that numerous problems will arise that make its implementation difficult and perhaps even impossible in some respects. What about where you live?

Editor’s Corner

In this issue of WServerNews your Editor talks about a couple of recently published technical books he’s been reading. Then after that he goes madly off in all directions as usual…

Leading Virtual Project Teams

I’ve had to manage or be involved in several virtual projects in the last year, and with trends towards hybrid work accelerating I expect this will likely continue. Leading Virtual Project Teams, 2nd Edition from CRC Press is a book that has been quite helpful for me in this regard. Margaret R. Lee the author of this title has done an excellent job of exploring the different approaches to leaders that can be used in virtual environments, how virtual communication among members of a project team can be facilitated, various cultural issues that can impact communication in virtual environments, and the different kinds of competencies needed for effective virtual project leadership. This short but well-written book also includes case studies that highlight key points the author makes and includes numerous references where those interested in learning more can explore topics further. Excellent reading for IT managers and IT project managers working in hybrid or entirely online environments.

Digital Forensics Explained

If you’ve ever had to try and deal with the aftermath of having your IT infrastructure compromised and didn’t know where to start, this book can get you headed in the right direction. Because it’s not enough to clean the decks and right the ship, you also need to track down those who perpetrated the crime, both so they won’t try to do you again and also to protect others in our IT community from experiencing what happened to you. Digital Forensics Explained, 2nd Edition from CRC Press lays down a foundation for understanding the various areas of forensic analysis needed in Information Technology, what tools you need familiarity with to perform different forensic tasks, how to deal with law enforcement and write reports, and other important topics. One chapter I found especially useful in reading this book is Chapter 6 on cloud computing and digital forensics as the advent and now near ubiquity of cloud computing means that many of the typical artifacts found during a forensic analysis of compromised IT infrastructures are no longer easily accessible to your business or organization. Another chapter that opened my eyes a bit more is Chapter 11 on anti-forensics where the author Greg Gogolin explains some of the different ways criminals cover their tracks after compromising your network and data. If you’re an IT professional interested in learning more about the forensic side of cybersecurity, this short book is a good place to begin.

SMS for 2FA?

In a recent article on TechGenix I briefly looked at the good and bad sides of using text messaging for two-factor authentication and then rambled on for a while ending with some practical tips. This news however made me even more doubtful about the efficacy of using SMS for 2FA in anything but the most innocuous scenarios. It seems more and more like the bad guys are winning in the race to keep our online life and activities safe and secure.

New GPO settings in Win10 21H2

Wolfgang Sommergut provides an excellent overview of some of the new Group Policy stuff you can find in the 21H2 release of Windows 10. One of these in particular named “Specify source service for specific classes of Windows Updates” is in my opinion long overdue for helping those of us who manage the patching of Windows systems. More details concerning this new policy setting can be found on admx.help.

AND FINALLY: A modest proposal for Daylight Savings Time

Well, the clocks have turned back an hour and we’re all dealing with the adjustment to ending Daylight Savings Time for another year. Some of this hate this change, some of us love it.

I however have a modest proposal I’d like to make on how we can improve upon the current DST/noDST situation.

Why not move the clock back 1 hour each day at 2 am? That way busy IT professionals like ourselves can get a much-needed extra hour of sleep *every night*. Wow!

Of course knowing how Microsoft tends to do things, this will probably mean they’ll release a new DST patch every day. But hey, we IT pros just love patching Windows, don’t we?

What do you think of my proposal?

Heh.

Got comments about anything in this issue?

Email us! We love hearing from our readers!

Please tell others about WServerNews!

Enjoy this issue of WServerNews and feel free to send us feedback on any of the topics we’ve covered — we love hearing from our readers! And please tell others about WServerNews! It’s free and always will be free — and they can subscribe to it here. Thanks!!!

Tip of the Week

Recovering lost technical documentation

Still running Windows Server 2008 in your environment? Or Windows Server 2003? Or maybe even Windows 98? And you’ve got a problem and you want to find some technical info on the Microsoft website that can help you with your difficulty. So you google (or bing or quack) it and you get a link to an old TechNet article, and you click the link, and up comes a 404 error page—RATS!! Why can’t Microsoft just leave their documentation online for their legacy products?!?

Here’s a tip that might help. Right-click on the link in your search results and copy the link, then paste it into the WayBack Machine to see whether the Internet Archive has that old TechNet article safely archived for future generations. I mean who knows, maybe somebody somewhere will still be running Windows 95 or Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS on some old box somewhere in the basement of a prison or factory or who knows where, right?

Admin Toolbox

>> Got any admin tools or software you’d like to recommend to our readers? Email us your recommendations!

dtSearch®-Instantly Search Terabytes. Doc. filters for popular file types, emails, databases & web data; 25+ search options; Win/Lin/Mac C++/Java/.NET Core APIs; Azure/AWS FAQs. Enterprise/dev evals available.

https://dtsearch.com/

Did you know that you can ensure access to old emails and PST files with an email archiving solution – even on the go? If that sounds useful, have a look at the email archiving solution MailStore Server:

https://www.mailstore.com/

Ksm is a fast, hackable and simple x64 VT-x hypervisor for Windows and Linux. Builtin userspace sandbox and introspection engine:

https://github.com/asamy/ksm

SpecuCheck is a Windows utility for checking the state of the software mitigations and hardware against CVE-2017-5754 (Meltdown), CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre v2), CVE-2018-3260 (Foreshadow), and CVE-2018-3639 (Spectre v4):

https://github.com/ionescu007/SpecuCheck

Keypirinha is a fast keystroke launcher for Windows:

https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha

 

Factoid: Excuses, excuses

Our previous factoid and question was this:

Fact: A computer is simply a device enabling the deletion of vast quantities of irreplaceable personal data using simple mnemonic commands. And similarly a network is a mechanism that allows the deletion of vast quantities of other people’s irreplaceable data using simple mnemonic commands.

Source: Paraphrased from something I read recently on a mailing list somewhere.

Question: What’s your own worst personal experience accidentally deleting data on a computer? Or even worse, deleting data stored on your company’s network.

Steve Murray answered this by saying:

It’s the late ’80s (’88 or ’89) and I’m an intern at a NYS gov’t agency. I need to sneakernet some files from my boss’s pc to mine. The boss is out for the day. I sit down at his desk, pop the diskette into the drive and type “del *.*”

Note that I did not remember to switch to the A: drive first. Panic sets in. Thankfully, we all had Norton Utilities, so I was able to use Undelete to recover the deleted files. When my boss returned to the office, he never knew anything had happened.

Norton Utilities saved my butt too several times during its heyday.

Another reader who asks to remain anonymous shares this story:

We had a trading system at a company I worked for that tracked all the trades and recorded them for historical purposes. We were upgrading the server to new hardware and because of the process it took, the server changeover took up most of the night — I ended up having a nap on the boardroom couch before starting my normal days’ work and forgot to move the historical archives to the new server. Now no one ever referred to the archives so we thought we had heaps of time to move them, and unbeknownst to us the archives had not been backed up — backups were run by a third party that managed the server, we just changed the physical tapes. That was fine, up until the time that we needed to provide the archive data for a legal trial when I found out that (1) the archives had not been moved, and (2) the server had recently been formatted and reused as a test server for a new VMware server. The IT Manager had to provide a statutory declaration that the data had been wiped and that all efforts to recover it had been undertaken unsuccessfully.

Yikes!

Now let’s move on to our next factoid:

Fact: IT professionals who design, implement and manage large networks have a ton of different excuses why they haven’t yet fully deployed IPv6 in their environment.

Source: See https://ipv6excuses.com/ and click the Reload button on your browser’s toolbar until your coffee spurts out of your mouth.

Question: What’s your excuse?

Email us your answer and we’ll include it in our next issue!

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Conference Calendar 2021/22

NOTE: Conference dates and locations (real/virtual) are subject to change

AWS re:Invent — Nov 29-Dec 3 in Las Vegas, USA

https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

RSA Conference — Feb 7-10, 2022 in San Francisco, USA

https://www.rsaconference.com/usa

Cisco Live Amsterdam — Feb 7-11, 2022

https://www.ciscolive.com/emear.html?zid=cl-global

Big Data & AI World — March 2-3, 2022 in London, UK

https://www.bigdataworld.com/welcome

Mobile World Congress — June 29-July 1, 2022 in Shanghai

https://www.mwcshanghai.com/

Cisco Live Las Vegas – June 12-16, 2022

https://www.ciscolive.com/us.html?zid=cl-global

Def Con 30 — Aug 11-14, 2022 in Las Vegas, USA

https://defcon.org/

Big Data Expo — Sept 14-15, 2022 in Utrecht, The Netherlands

https://www.bigdata-expo.nl/en

 

Podcast Corner

Chaos Engineering with Julie Gunderson (RunAsRadio)

http://runasradio.com/

Taking A Systems Approach To Networking With Bruce Davie (Heavy Networking)

https://packetpushers.net/series/weekly-show/

USA sanctions NSO Group, hits REvil (Risky Business)

https://risky.biz/netcasts/risky-business/

Microsoft Ignite 2021 Microsoft 365 Recap (Microsoft Cloud Show)

http://www.microsoftcloudshow.com/podcast

 

New on Techgenix.com

Troubleshooting an unresponsive Hyper-V host with VM Manager

Encountering a situation where a Hyper-V host is unresponsive is frustrating. But with a little patience, you can find and fix the problem.

https://techgenix.com/troubleshooting-an-unresponsive-hyper-v-host/

Exchange 2016 CU22: Microsoft hardens security

Microsoft is still dealing with the “how-did-it-happen” aftereffects of the big March Exchange hack. CU22 should help prevent future attacks.

https://techgenix.com/exchange-2016-cu22/

Managing access to your Azure invoices

Beyond the tech nuts and bolts of Azure, there’s dollars and cents. This Quick Tip helps you prepare Azure invoices.

https://techgenix.com/managing-access-to-your-azure-invoices/

12 tools enabling DevSecOps for cloud-native applications

Here’s a look at the best open-source, cloud-native security tools that contribute to a culture of DevSecOps.

https://techgenix.com/12-tools-enabling-devsecops/

Add an email alias address using the Attribute Editor in Microsoft 365

If you are an Exchange admin, users may have requested you to add an email alias give to people externally. Here’s how to do it.

https://techgenix.com/add-an-email-alias-using-attribute-editor-in-microsoft-365/

Fun videos from Flixxy

Danny Macaskill Rides A Bike On A Wind Turbine Blade

Watch Scottish trial cycling legend Danny MacAskill’s spectacular ride through a renewable energy factory up to the top of a wind turbine!

https://www.flixxy.com/danny-macaskill-rides-a-bike-on-a-wind-turbine-blade.htm

Markus Eder -The Most Amazing Ski Run Ever Imagined

With the first snow falling in the Alps and the Rocky Mountains, ‘The Ultimate Run’ is a must watch for all winter sports enthusiasts.

https://www.flixxy.com/markus-eder-the-most-amazing-ski-run-ever-imagined.htm

Magician From Tokyo – Shoot Ogawa

‘The best slight of hand of anybody in the world right now.’ (Penn & Teller)

https://www.flixxy.com/magician-from-tokyo-shoot-ogawa.htm

When Your Dog Is Smarter Than You Think

Dogs are truly a man’s best friend. And sometimes they are even smarter than you think.

https://www.flixxy.com/when-your-dog-is-smarter-than-you-think.htm

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