Taking a New Look at Security

When the National Security Agency comes out and says "there's no such thing as 'secure' any more...we have to build our systems on the assumption that adversaries will get in", it should make you stop and think for a moment.

If the NSA cannot completely secure their network, then what hope does your average network administrator have with a fraction of the budget and manpower? Are those firewall rules, password policies, and security updates just pissing into the wind?

Hopefully not, but it is interesting to consider a security design around the premise that your systems are compromised, that each user is or could be malicious, and that your network is as open as the wi-fi at Starbucks.

Super Users to the Rescue!

You may not know it, but the first line of support in IT is not the help desk or Service Desk.  Instead it is a special group of users in your organization who have taken it upon themselves to help their fellow coworkers.  In ITIL, these special people have been given a formal designation - Super User.

Who are these Super Users and what have they been doing behind your back?  Let's take a look at what a super user is, and how they can help you out.

Disaster Recovery Planning: Know Your RTO and RPO

When working on a disaster recovery or business continuity plan, two essential points that must be agreed upon by all parties are the recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO and RPO). Without these, it is impossible to correctly size your backup systems or recovery procedures.

Do you need clustered systems or off-site failover? How frequently should backups be performed? What about SQL transaction logs?

These questions can only be answered once you have an agreed upon RTO and RPO with the business units. So what exactly are they?

5 Ways to Improve Your IT Department's Reputation

Let's face it. We all know IT doesn't have the greatest reputation in many companies. We can be considered aloof, obstructive, or even rude. Most of the time that is simply due to a lack of resources (both time and money) or a difference in personalities. Despite that, here are five ways to improve the image and reputation of IT in your organization with just a little bit of time and patience.

How To Setup Home Directories on a Windows File Server

The concept of home directories is fairly universal across all organizations.  Essentially, it is a networked storage location for users to store their personal files instead of using a directory on a local drive (like the non-redirected "My Documents").  Despite this being a common configuration item, there seems to be little standardization on how to configure a Windows file server to support personal home directories.  Should permissions be set using NTFS or shares?  Should individual shares even be used?  What about the Home Folder Active Directory attribute?

My recommendation is to keep things as simple as possible with a single share and simple permissions only set at the NTFS level.