Security

For IT admins for school districts, remote learning is fickle environment that can present a number of unique challenges.

One relatively simple and common tool that provides additional valuable analysis into security incidents is log management.

SD-WAN (the software-defined wide-area network) offers a way to create a private network from widespread consumer internet connections without limiting their connectivity.

You can get a leg up on a potential attacker by figuring out what processes are running under an administrative account in your organization. One way to do that for absolutely free is to use PowerShell!

Despite being an essential piece of the Sysadmin toolbox, Network performance management (NPM) can be a bit of a mystery for many IT professionals.

Over the past week, news broke about a rogue device that had gone unnoticed on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) IT network. The fact that a Raspberry Pi went unnoticed for almost 10 months is a clear signal of network management issues and lackluster security policies in place within NASA, and other government agencies for that matter.

Improper configuration changes to a network—or even just one server on a network—can cause huge issues. They can degrade network performance, shut down key services, and even result in noncompliance with regulatory standards like SOX, PCI, HIPAA and FISMA. And they can compromise network security.

The World Wide Web’s 30^th birthday came and went this week, and though there was much to celebrate—just look how far we’ve gone since the days of America Online CDs and Yahoo! chat rooms— it also seems like the problems the Internet causes are beginning to outweigh the problems it solves.

The following is an excerpt from our Network Monitoring blog at whatsupgold.com/blog.

For most IT organizations, network monitoring is an essential tool. Network monitoring tools play an important role in letting IT pros get complete visibility into the status of network devices, systems, and applications, keeping the IT team aware of problems with services, networks, application performance, and more.

For most IT organizations, network monitoring is an essential tool. Network monitoring tools play an important role in letting IT pros get complete visibility into the status of network devices, systems, and applications, keeping the IT team aware of problems with services, networks, application performance, and more.

For most IT organizations, the network monitoring tool is an essential, even central part of the IT toolkit. Network monitoring tools play an important role in letting IT pros know where issues exist before helpdesk tickets start coming in, keeping the IT team aware of problems with service, networks, application performance, and more.

Monitoring traffic on the dark web is the kind of thing that IT administrators worry about, but they can't do anything about. Now IT can pinpoint who and what is accessing the dark web from corporate networks with WhatsUp Gold. 

For years, there have been concerns of the Chinese government building backdoors and spying capabilities in to phones and hardware built on their soil, and now it seems those concerns are coming to head with a recent Bloomberg story that alleges that Chinese government agents installed thousands of spy chips into servers used by Amazon, Apple, and the US government. How true are these allegations, are our servers safe? In this article, we’ll attempt to figure out what—if anything—happened, and how IT pros should react.

The computer security world uses a lot of military language and concepts. This is not just because it "sounds good" but because there are many useful analogies to be found.

Let's cut right to the chase here, the life of an IT pro is hard. With endless to-do lists stuffed with infrastructure maintenance, security management and support, it's always a new adventure. Unfortunately for us, it doesn't look like things are getting any easier. Technological trends such as BYOD have made many aspects of modern business more efficient, but they've also increased the complexity of IT environments and made processes such as endpoint security management a real thorn in the side of many an IT pro.

With the advent of BYOD, it seems like just yesterday that a new mobile movement was making waves through enterprise organizations across the globe. BYOD offers new opportunities for increased productivity, but it also raises a slew of difficult security questions. While many IT pros are still wading through the repercussions of this mobile onslaught, a fresh, new user revolution is creating similar buzz (and similar problems).

If you do any security monitoring, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of events you need to track. You can start by doing longer hours, but eventually you'll end up in a swamp — sucked in to the point that workflow comes to a standstill.

Human error is responsible for more than half of all security breaches as of last year, making employees the biggest cyber threat of all. Shadow IT, on the other hand, is the deliberate installation of software that is not authorized by IT. The reasons for it? They vary, but generally include tools to make your tickets easier — which should already be available in a centralized company repository.

It's been a year since Sony Pictures employees logged into their workstations, expecting to start a normal workday, when they were greeted by soundbites of gunfire, images of skeletons and threats scrolling across their monitors. To date, the Sony Pictures attack is arguably the most vivid example of advanced persistent threats used to disable a commercial victim. A corporate giant was reduced to posting paper memos, sending faxes and paying over 7,000 employees with paper checks.

Knowing which BYOD risks your fellow IT pros face is paramount in determining how to mitigate them. And the scope of BYOD's influence on company data hasn't stopped changing since your office first implemented a BYOD policy. What kinds of devices are users likely to bring to work with them? The range of devices encompasses more than just smartphones and tablets. Once these devices are identified, however, the risks they represent can help your team formulate a policy to keep resources safe when accessed from outside the network.