Archive for the ‘ALL’ Category

VMware 6 Features

Wednesday, March 4th, 2015

Here is the new features in VMware vSphere 6.0.

Virtual Volumes
Want “Virtual SAN” alike policy based management for your traditional storage systems? That is what Virtual Volumes will bring in vSphere 6.0. If you ask me this is the flagship feature in this release.
Long Distance vMotion
Cross vSwitch and vCenter vMotion
vMotion of MSCS VMs using pRDMs
vMotion L2 adjacency restrictions are lifted!
vSMP Fault Tolerance
Content Library
NFS 4.1 support
Instant Clone aka VMFork
vSphere HA Component Protection
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White House taps VMware exec Tony Scott as next U.S. CIO

Friday, February 6th, 2015

After a headhunting search spanning several months, the Obama Administration has found a new U.S. chief information officer.

The White House announced on Thursday that it will be hiring Tony Scott, currently chief information officer and senior vice president at VMware, to fill the void.

Scott has more than three decades of experience in the technology industry — not to mention the role of CIO pops up several times on his resumé.

Scott joined VMware in 2013 to oversee the virtualization company’s global information technology group.

Prior to VMware, Scott served as chief information officer at both Microsoft and The Walt Disney Company.

Scott also served as chief technology officer, overseeing information systems and services, at General Motors.

The role of CIO at the federal government level is a relatively new one.

Vivek Kundra was the first one to hold the job after being appointed in 2009. However, he resigned within two years for a new position as a joint fellow at the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

Kundra was then followed by Steven VanRoekel, the country’s second CIO who left his position in September to serve in the same capacity at the humanitarian organization USAID.

Since VanRoekel’s departure, a few names for the job circulating speculative reports included Dr. David Bray, CIO of the FCC, and Dr. Alissa Johnson, Deputy CIO of the White House.

7 Habits of Highly Successful Help Desks

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

 

You are responsible for running your company’s help desk. So, you have some number of IT technicians working on resolving help desk tickets. This approach may be the norm, but is it really good enough for truly successful help desk service? While the sheer number of tickets is ever increasing, the types and complexities of help desk tickets grow exponentially as well. In the wake of this growth, consistently meeting SLAs and improving customer service is clearly not getting any easier.

What you need is not more help desk staff, but rather some wise counsel to help you plan, optimize, and execute your current help desk services smartly and effectively. Let’s take a look at some best practices:

 

#1 Plan Ahead & Institute a Structured Workflow

Simply put, this is the most fundamental step for the success of any help desk implementation. You need to know the ins and outs of your help desk strategy. So, start by planning a structured workflow of:

  • How you intend to assign a technician to a ticket
  • How the ticket is going to be escalated
  • How the communication with the end-user is going to be established
  • How to implement the ticket approval process

You need to define reasonable service level agreements, appropriate support levels, and good business logic for ticket routing and assignment. Planning only begins here.

 

#2 Know Your IT Environment

You need to know your IT environment, your end-users and their designated assets, because they are the source of your IT tickets. You need to have quick access to details of user accounts, as well as your enterprise hardware and software equipment. Start by:

  • Integrating your help desk solution with your corporate Active Directory®
  • Importing all your assets and IT inventory into your help desk software

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Application Development: Top 10 Programming Languages to Keep You Employed

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

If you want to make money in programming what are the best languages to learn? Well, This question was asked to a host of developers, recruiters, born-on-the-Web startups and the creators of some of the most widely used programming languages out there. However, picking the language that is right for you also has as much to do with what kind of development you want to do and who you might want to work for as it does with how much money you want to earn.

Java

For the enterprise, Java and Microsoft’s .NET rule. However, Java has the edge, as it is No. 1 language in terms of number of developers. According to Evans Data, there are more than 9 million Java developers in the world. That means there are tons of Java applications out there that will have to be supported, updated and maintained. Furthermore, Java is the language of the Android mobile operating system. Android provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications for the Android OS using the Java programming language. Java ranks No. 1 on the TIOBE Programming Community Index for June 2010 (after a brief stint at No. 2, behind C, in May). The need for Java developers to build new Java applications is not about to wane.

C#

C# is a multiparadigm programming language encompassing imperative, functional, generic, object-oriented and component-oriented programming disciplines. Microsoft developed C# within its .NET initiative and the language was later approved as a standard by Ecma and ISO. C# also is slated by Microsoft to become the primary development language for Windows Phone 7. Like Java, C# is big in the enterprise. However there are considerably fewer C# developers than there are Java developers. But the importance of C# as part of the Microsoft .NET strategy and its support through the Visual Studio tools suite make C# a formidable contender in the programming language race. C# ranked No. 6 on the most-recent TIOBE Index

Today in Tech: Kindle Fire owns 54% of Android tablet market

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

Fortune’s curated selection of tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.

* According to a new report from comScore, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire now accounts for nearly 54% of all Android tablets in the U.S. Also: Amazon blew away estimates with its latest quarterly earnings: $13.2 billion in revenues and $130 million in net income. (Electronista and CNNMoney)

* Zynga (ZNGA) topped estimates with its latest earnings, too. The popular social gaming company announced sales of $329 million and a net loss of $85 million. Stock compensation costs aside however, Zynga also reported a profit of 6 cents per share. (CNNMoney)  (more…)

Top analyst: ‘Apple will decline’

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

The CEO of a top research firm didn’t mince words about Apple in a new blog post.

“Apple will decline in the post Steve Jobs era,” wrote George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research. “Here’s why.”

The iPhone and iPad maker will coast for two to four years on its current momentum, Colony said; but Jobs, who died in October, left a void because his successor, Apple CEO Tim Cook, doesn’t possess his star power.

“[W]ithout the arrival of a new charismatic leader it will move from being a great company to being a good company, with a commensurate step down in revenue growth and product innovation,” Colony wrote.   (more…)

Code Year draws 200,000 aspiring programmers

Friday, January 6th, 2012

“Learn to program” isn’t a typical New Year’s resolution, but it’s one that’s gone viral thanks to a clever campaign by Codecademy, a startup that helps newbies learn the basics of software coding.

The New York-based venture kicked off 2012 by launching Code Year. Sign up for the free project and you’ll receive an interactive programming lesson each week in your inbox. Nearly 200,000 people have already joined, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who tweeted about his plan to participate.  (more…)

How to lower cell phone bill

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Keep the services you love while saving up to $300 a year, thanks to these smart tactics.
Most of us are feeling the pinch as our cell phone bills climb higher: For an individual with a service contract, the average monthly tab is a whopping $92, reports J.D. Power and Associates, an information-services firm. While talk time is actually getting cheaper, add-on charges for text and data services — and the fact that most households now have multiple mobile lines — mean that “owning a cell phone is an increasingly large chunk of the monthly budget,” notes Linda Sherry, director of national priorities for Consumer Action, an advocacy group. But it’s a chunk you can whittle down by identifying and eliminating unnecessary (and sometimes sneaky) charges. In fact, the bill-comparison site billshrink.com estimates that the average American who has a single wireless line can save $336 a year; the key lies in finding a plan that better suits how much you talk, text, and Web surf. Here, six strategies that will help you avoid common cell phone money pits and save big on that monthly bill:

MONEY PIT #1
Shifting “Friends and Family”  (more…)

Amazon Kindle Fire Silk Web browser given green light by EFF

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is off the hook with one important group when it comes to privacy worries about Silk, the specially created Web browser for the new e-reader/tablet due out next month.

Representatives from the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation have talked with Amazon officials about the speedy, new cloud-based browser, focusing on what user information will be transmitted via the cloud and shared by the company.

“Our conversation with Amazon allayed many of our major concerns,” said the EFF.

As msnbc.com’s Wilson Rothman explained when Kindle Fire was announced, Silk “weds the tablet to Amazon’s cloud network.   (more…)

Employment in the USA and job search- Why companies cannot find the right employees

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

Everybody’s heard the complaints about recruiting lately.

More in Leadership: Human Resources

Even with unemployment hovering around 9%, companies are grousing that they can’t find skilled workers, and filling a job can take months of hunting.

Employers are quick to lay blame. Schools aren’t giving kids the right kind of training. The government isn’t letting in enough high-skill immigrants. The list goes on and on. But I believe that the real culprits are the employers themselves.

With an abundance of workers to choose from, employers are demanding more of job candidates than ever before. They want prospective workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time.

In other words, to get a job, you have to have that job already. It’s a Catch-22 situation for workers—and it’s hurting companies and the economy.  (more…)

Must-have Certifications for IT Pros

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

There are some certifications that are nice to have and others that are simply “must haves” in today’s competitive job market. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the certifications that IT Pros must have to be relevant today and some that will be gaining increased importance in years to come.

1. Project Management Professional (PMP)

The role of a project manager is to serve as the intermediary between the IT project team members and the key individuals who are involved with a project. A project manager tries to ensure that a project is completed in a timely manner and within all budgetary and legal constraints. The typical scope of project managers responsibilities include overseeing the processes and methodologies used for the successful completion of the project. The successful project managers can not only help save money for their company, but can also by ensuring all timelines are met (which some would argue is also money as well). There is a growing demand for skilled and competent IT project managers. These are the PM’s who can work through a budgetary crisis and conflicting resource priorities.  (more…)

VMware changes vRAM licensing on vSphere 5

Friday, July 29th, 2011

Last few weeks a lot of talk has been about the new VMware licensing for vSphere 5. Many reported how this would work against VMware’s principle of running as many VMs on one host as possible. After the dust had settled, people started checking their own situations and found that things weren’t as bad as they looked in the first place but for some the new licensing policy would still mean a substantial cost impact.

When reading all the comments, people weren’t complaining about the vRAM model, but mostly about the entitlements. A vSphere 5 Enterprise license would give you a 32GB vRAM entitlement per CPU and 48GB vRAM on Enterprise Plus. Many thought this was much too low.

Well, there is some great news. I picked up on a rumor which will make a lot of people happy. Personally, I never thought VMware would change the licensing policy and especially not in such a short time. A big company like VMware would need weeks and maybe months to change their plans, but I stand corrected. VMware used the customer feedback and changed the vRAM entitlements. My compliments!!!

The new policy:

  • VMware vSphere 5 Essentials will give a 24GB vRAM entitlement
  • VMware vSphere 5 Essentials Plus will give a 32GB vRAM entitlement
  • Max vRAM in Essentials / Essentials Plus will be maxed at 192GB vRAM
  • VMware vSphere 5 Standard vRAM entitlement has changed to 32GB ( <- my assumption)
  • VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise vRAM entitlement will be doubled to 64GB
  • VMware vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus vRAM entitlement will be doubled to 96GB

The amount of vRAM that counts against your vRAM license pool will be capped to 96GB per VM !!! In other words, even if you assign 256GB or the new 1TB limit of RAM to a VM, it will only count as 96GB for your license.

Cellphones can cause brain cancer

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

An international panel of experts says cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to humans after reviewing details from dozens of published studies.

The statement was issued in Lyon, France, on Tuesday by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a weeklong meeting of experts. They reviewed possible links between cancer and the type of electromagnetic radiation found in cellphones, microwaves and radar.

The agency is the cancer arm of the World Health Organization and the assessment now goes to WHO and national health agencies for possible guidance on cellphone use.
(more…)

VMware vSphere 5 leaked features

Monday, May 30th, 2011

ORLANDO, Fla. — VMware vSphere 5 is expected to include Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler, host-based replication and several other new features.

These improvements were part of the vSphere roadmap presented here at this week’s Partner Exchange conference.

VSphere 5 will be out in the second half of this year, but the release will be before VMworld, according to VMware product managers who led the roadmap session. That puts the vSphere 5 release date in July or August. The subsequent vSphere release, due in 2012, is expected to add a service-level agreement (SLA) framework and long-distance vMotion.
(more…)

Apple fights fake anti-virus software

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

 Apple Inc is fighting what security experts say may be the most pernicious types of computer virus to ever target its line of Mac computers.

The company has issued a security advisory warning to customers about a recent scam that infects Macs with malicious software that wrongly tells them their computer is infected with a virus (Fake Anti-virus). The ultimate goal is to get credit card numbers and other valuable personal information.
(more…)

Cannot Access Farm from Citrix Delivery Services Console

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

When launching the Citrix Delivery Services Console after installing XenApp 5.0 or Presentation Server 4.5 on Windows Server 2003, the XenApp node is missing. The administrator is unable to configure the farm.

A recent Microsoft update to .NET Framework 2.0 is the cause. Some of the files necessary for the .NET Framework, or the Delivery Services Console, might not have registered properly during the installation of the XenApp management consoles.
(more…)

Google to unveil mobile payments Thursday as an alternative to using a credit card

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Google Inc will take the wraps off a mobile payment system on Thursday that lets consumers pay at checkout with phones instead of cards, a source said, hoping to beat Visa and others to the punch.

The Internet search and advertising leader will work with MasterCard Inc, the world’s second-largest credit and debit card processing network, to launch the system, the source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Google has teamed with MasterCard and Citigroup Inc to develop the system, the Wall Street Journal reported in March.
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Ctrl+Alt+Del takes forever to prompt for password

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

We saw an issue with a customer whose Ctrl+Alt+Del took forever to prompt for password. We looked at several things to try to figure it out. It was also happening when unlocking the workstations. We finally we found out…
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Expect Google Chrome OS for Notebooks on June 15th at Best Buy and Amazon and why not about tables

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

After a long wait, Google has announced that the first Chrome OS-based notebooks will be available for order at Amazon and Best Buy on June 15. The devices, built by Samsung and Acer, respectively, offer a lightweight notebook style. Acer’s option comes with an 11.6-inch HD display and 6 hours of battery life. It’s running the Intel Atom processor. Samsung’s notebook, on the other hand, features a 12.1-inch display and boasts 8.5 hours of continuous usage on a single charge. Like Acer’s option, Samsung’s platform runs the Intel Atom processor, and includes an HD Webcam. Though recent reports suggest that Google might eventually bring Chrome OS to tablets, for now, the company’s plan is to offer its latest operating system only on lightweight notebooks, in spite of the rapid rise of tablet sales and wide speculation that users are choosing to buy tablets instead of notbooks. Why did Google choose notebooks over tablets to run Chrome OS? And perhaps most importantly, was it a good idea? The second question won’t be answered for months. Here’s why Google spurned tablets and chose notebooks for Chrome OS.
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VMware vSphere 4 and Citrix XenServer 5.6 Pros and Cons

Friday, May 13th, 2011
Virtualization is indeed a significant solution to maximize the resources utilization, increase reliability and availability. Further more, virtualization simplifies portability and administration and faster deployment.

Since virualization has a big market, it is also highly competitive. Having big players behind the solution should give us advanced key benefits over one another. Here we will try to understand the present top two Server virtualization products and their advantages and disadvantages.
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Cannot install Internet Explorer 9

Friday, May 13th, 2011

If you attempt to install Internet Explorer 9 and you encounter errors, you should try one of the followin:

1) Make sure that your system meets the minimum operating system requirementsTo install Internet Explorer 9, one of the following operating systems (or later versions) is required.
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LTO-5 for data backup: The cure for storage woes?

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

For years, tape storage systems have played a key role in efforts to store data for backup and retrieval, archiving, and contingency planning purposes. More recently, tape has been called on to help preserve and safeguard data to meet data retention laws and regulations. The challenge is how to manage, retain, and safeguard the data volumes being generated today. To put the data explosion issue into perspective with respect to its impact on tape, consider that even in last year’s tough economic times shipped disk storage capacity grew at a remarkable rate. All of the data being placed on that new disk capacity needs to be backed up, and much of it must also be retained for long periods of time. New tape technology provides a solution. With a capacity to store 3 TB of data per cartridge, recently introduced Linear Tape-Open (LTO)-5 tapes offer twice the storage capacity of LTO-4 and about four times the capacity of LTO-3 systems.  

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Replace Windows 2003 Domain Controller

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

It is a known fact that servers reach the end of their lives. Some get there quicker than others, based on age, manufacturer, usage and several other factors. However, if your organization has spent time deploying Microsoft’s Active Directory server, you will know that replacing a Domain Controller and migrating everything Active Directory based over is not the easiest procedure you’ve ever performed.
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VMware vs. Citrix vs. Microsoft

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Server virtualization is no longer a one-horse race, as Microsoft, Citrix and others compete more convincingly with market leader VMware

 VMware has enjoyed a long run as king of x86 server virtualization, and the pioneering vendor remains the one to beat when tallying enterprise market share. But its competitors, particularly Microsoft and Citrix Systems, are gaining ground as IT executives begin to view server virtualization not only as a means to cut costs in the data center but also as a baseline technology for enabling cloud computing. 

VMware introduced its first x86 server virtualization products in 2001. It wasn’t until a few years later that the first commercial versions of the open source Xen virtualization hypervisor hit the market, and Microsoft’s release of Hyper-V followed in 2008. 
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Buy Secure SSL Certficate from SSL4ALL.com

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Hello Everyone,

IT-ETC would like to share this exciting news with everyone. SSL4ALL.com has been launched as its latest addition to focus on Reselling SSL Certificates to the public.

These SSLs are through its Enterprise partner COMODO which is the leader in the SSL industry.

The SSL4ALL.com is a give back project where IT-ETC will make SSL4ALL.com for the first 5 years a low profit margin as a way of contributing to keep websites secure while still being affordable.

We certainly hope this will be a successful project and kindly ask everyone to contribute to make our project a great success by either recommedning us, trying us, or just share ideas with us on how we can be better

FREE Authorize.Net Set-Up

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

 

IT-ETC in collboration with SSL4ALL.com has worked a great deal with Authorized.net (Leader in internet gateway) and E-Onlinedata (online merchant) where all of our referrals would get special rates and pay no setup fees. This is in celebration of the launch of SSL4ALL.com

ITETC is excited to offer specially priced Internet Merchant Accounts to our valued clients! When it comes to conducting smart business, a REAL Merchant Account is the right choice.
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Enable of Windows 2008 R2–the Active Directory Recycle Bin

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Even in professionally managed network environments it is still possible for mistakes to happen. If an Active Directory object such as a user or computer account is accidentally deleted  network access will be lost. Worker productivity will decline until the account is restored and IT support costs will add to the total expense incurred by the organization.

In the past the best method to restore a deleted AD object is to reboot a domain controller into Active Directory Restore Mode, logon the computer with a special administrative account, and restore the Active Directory database from a backup file. The final steps are to run the NTDSUTIL command line utility to authoritatively restore the object in question and then reboot the computer into normal mode. This procedure is cumbersome, time consuming and requires that the backup file selected contains the most current version of the object.  Many administrators have wished that an easier method was available.

With the introduction of Windows Server 2008 R2 it is possible to enable an Active Directory Recycle Bin. Deleted AD objects can be restored complete with all object related attributes intact. These attributes includes user and computer account group memberships. In order to enable the Active Directory Recycle Bin all Domain Controllers in the Domain must first be upgraded to Windows Server 2008 R2. The Domain functional level of the Domain and the Forest must be raised to 2008 R2 functional level. This can be accomplished in the Domains and Trusts administrative console. If the Active Directory Forest was created using Windows 2000 or 2003 Server it is also necessary for a member of the Schema Admins group to update the Active Directory Schema by running the ADPREP /Forest Prep command on the Schema Master domain controller and the ADPREP /DomainPrep command on the Infrastructure Master computer. Raising functional levels may affect some applications that integrate with Active Directory, therefore it is important to research possible issues before raising the levels.

Once the functional levels are raised the Recycle Bin can be enabled using the following PowerShell command: “Enable-ADOptionalFeature -Identity <ADOptionalFeature> -Scope <ADOptionalFeatureScope> -Target <ADEntity>”. This command must be run using the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell  by an member of the Enterprise Administrators group.  Microsoft gives us an example of how this command would look when it is used to enable the Recycle Bin for the Contoso.com domain:

“Enable-ADOptionalFeature –Identity ‘CN=Recycle Bin Feature, CN=Optional Features,CN=Directory Service, CN=WindowsNT, CN=Services, CN=Configuration, DC=contoso, DC=com’ –Scope ForestOrConfigurationSet –Target ‘contoso.com’”

Now that the Recycle Bin is enabled, deleted object can be recovered using either PowerShell or the ldp.exe utility. This process is described by Microsoft here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd379509(WS.10).aspx

Save yourself time and aggravation by enabling the Active Directory Recycle Bin soon!

How Sarah Palin Yahoo email account got hacked?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

The trial of David Kernell, the alleged Sarah Palin hacker, has started, and he could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.  In this case, the defendant is accused of hacking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account.  The account was breached when the attacker was able to guess the values for the password reset.  Many online services allow you to reset passwords if you can answer several cognitive questions such as your date of birth, your zip code, where you met your spouse, or maybe what high school you attended.  While some might argue that this attack was not even a real hack, the potential jail time is. The defendant could be sentenced to many years in prison if found guilty.

The real moral of this story is the accessibility of information and how this accessibility can work for or against you. The attacker used available information to figure out the answers required to reset the email account password.  Once the hacker had access to the email account, screen-shots of the email account were posted online for everyone to see.  These screen-shots not only showed the content of the email account, but also the URL of the proxy server that was being used to hide the hacker’s true identity.  This information ended up being the hacker’s undoing as it allowed authorities to track the suspect by his IP address and tie the activity to Mr. Kernell.

Keep the “Advanced Features” view always on in Active Directory Users and Computers MMC

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

“Is there a way to keep the “Advanced Features” view always on?”

If you start a blank management console, add the ADUC snap-in, turn on Advanced Features view, and save the console, whenever you use *that* console file, Advanced Features will be on.

1. Launch a blank Microsoft Management Console: Start-> Run… mmc.exe

2. In the MMC menus, choose File->Add/Remove Snap-in… (or Ctrl+M)

3. Select “Active Directory Users and Computers” and hit the “Add >” button in the middle.

4. Hit OK to finish adding the snap-in.

5. Back in the console, select the Active Directory Users and Computers node under the “Console Root.”

6. Right-click on that ADUC node and choose “New Window from Here” in the menu.

7. In the MMC menus, choose  View->Advanced Features (this turns on the Attribute Editor, Security, Object, and other tabs as well as several other features in menus and makes other objects visible).

8. In the MMC menus, choose  File->Save (or Ctrl+S), specify a file name folder, file name, and hit the Save button.

9. In the MMC menus, choose  File->Options… and choose “User mode – limited access, single window,” then check the “Do not save changes to this console” checkbox, and finally hit OK.

10. In the MMC menus, choose “Save As…” and save under a different file name, and choose “Yes” when warned about the single window interface option.

11. In the MMC menus, choose File->Exit

12. Launch the second console you saved (in step 10) and use it – it should always have Advanced Features turned on.

13. If you need to make changes to other settings in the console, open the first console you saved (in step 8), adjust whatever other options you want, then repeat steps 9, 10, and 11 using a different file name in step 10 this time to distinguish the new settings.

Five Keys to Security Fundamentals

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

(Excerpted & condensed from the Cisco Press book Network Security Auditing, by Chris Jackson, available June 4, 2010)

To understand security, it is critical that you realize that security is a process, not a product. Security is a broad topic, and one of the few in information technology that literally touches all aspects of a business. To focus security efforts and to make them manageable, it helps to break down the various aspects of security into the five pillars of security.

1. Assessment

Assessments document and identify potential threats, key assets, policies and procedure, and management’s tolerance for risk. Assessments are not something that are done once and then forgotten. As the business needs change and new services and technologies are introduced, regularly scheduled reassessments should be conducted. Doing this gives you an opportunity to test policies and procedures to ensure that they are still relevant and appropriate.

2. Prevention

Prevention is not just accomplished through technology, but also policy, procedure, and awareness. Expect individual security controls to fail, but plan for the event by using multiple levels of prevention.

3. Detection

Detection is how you identify whether or not you have a security breach or intrusion. If you can’t detect a compromise, then you run the risk of having a false sense of trust in your prevention techniques.

4. Reaction

Reaction is the aspect of security that is most concerned with time. The goal is to minimize the time from detection to response so that exposure to the incident is minimized. Fast reaction depends on prevention and detection to provide the data and context needed to recognize a security breach.

5. Recovery

Recovery is where you play detective to determine what went wrong so that you can get the systems back on line without opening up the same vulnerability or condition that caused the problem in the first place. There is also the post-mortem aspect that determines what changes need to be made to processes, procedures, and technologies to reduce the likelihood of this type of vulnerability in the future.

About the Author

Chris Jackson, Technical Solutions Architect in the Cisco Architectures and Verticals Partner Organization, has focused for the past six years on developing security practices with the Cisco partner community. During a 15-year career in internetworking, he has built secure networks that map to strong security policies for organizations, including UPS, GE, and Sprint. Chris is an active speaker on security for Cisco through TechwiseTV, conferences, and web casts. He has authored a number of whitepapers and is responsible for numerous Cisco initiatives to help build stronger security partners,. He holds dual CCIEs in security and routing and switching, CISA, CISSP, ITIL, seven SANS certifications, and a bachelors degree in Business Administration.