This post is aimed at home users, but the ideas are sound for business as well. If you’re like me, you’ve reached a point where most of your must-have information and data is in digital form. Whether its photos, music (commercial or self-created), financial records or documents, all my important data is virtual. That is,…
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Pour Yourself a Grog. Today’s featured beer is another West Coast brew, Lagunitas Maximus IPA Ale. When a regular IPA (India Pale Ale) just isn’t enough, Maximus IPA is sure to satisfy. It goes for $13 a six-pack at my local Wegmans Food Market, which is starting to become a common price among the tastiest craft…
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To stay on top of security you need to regularly review your server configurations. It’s helpful to build a checklist to be used as part of an internal security audit review. Below is just such a checklist, specifically tailored to audit a SQL 2008 Server running on Windows Server 2008. Most of what’s in this…
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The Account Lockout Policy in Active Directory is not what it seems. Oh sure, at first glance it appears simple enough. Set a threshold, set a counter, and when that threshold is tripped in the allotted time, account locked out. What could be simpler right? Well, as with most things in IT, what should be simple isn’t….
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Pour yourself a grog. Today’s featured beer is Rogue’s “Dead Guy Ale,” which is a German Maibock, or in other words a strong golden lager. Rogue is a West Coast brewery located in Portland Newport, Oregon. You can expect to spend around $13 for a six-pack of Dead Guy, which is definitely pricey, but far from…
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I think the “Log On To” setting within the Account tab of an Active Directory user could easily be overlooked. As simple as this setting is, it’s very easy to forget about it in favor of something more elaborate when attempting to restrict user access to specific computers. Let’s say you want to allow a…
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As part of an internal security review, I put together the following best practices guideline to secure SQL servers. This is just an example, and is not meant to be a comprehensive list of SQL server security parameters. DATABASE CREATION AND CHANGES New databases must be requested using a SQL database request form with proper…
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A guide for LAN Administrators who want to secure their systems without a user revolt. GOLDEN RULE OF PASSWORD CREATION: length + the uniqueness of your brain More on that in a moment. But first, if only we could trust our fellow human beings, there would be no need to secure our sensitive data. No need…
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