My oh my how the landscape of malware has changed over the last 10 years. The traditional “virus” is all but dead, and the transports for new threats are evolving almost faster than the security services can adapt. The latest trend of malware is web-borne annoyance-ware like FakeAV, which tries to trick you into buying something and then essentially makes doing any task on your computer so obnoxious that you can’t even use it. Is FakeAV dangerous? That depends on how you look at it. Is FakeAV a big problem? Absolutely. » Read more: Let’s stop web-borne malware – Qualys
Archive for the ‘General IT’ category
Let’s stop web-borne malware – Qualys
March 1st, 2010Disaster Recovery Simulation
October 13th, 2009I’ve had this problem over the years, with managing to execute even a basic DR simulation. Once I bought some huge external drives to test restores from tape. By the time I got around to doing the test, the external drives weren’t big enough to do any but the smallest of our restores. I’ve been fortunate though, and the few real disasters we’ve had were easily recovered from, but I’ve been burned a few times by smaller instances of data loss because of issues that would have been discovered during a DR Simulation. » Read more: Disaster Recovery Simulation
OpenDNS is DOWN!!!
October 2nd, 2009At 3:15pm EST today I got an email from our BES that it had lost its SRP connection. This happens from time to time and I ignore it as long as it reconnects within a few minutes. Today it did not. A quick test revealed that internet connectivity was alive and well, but that external DNS resolution was not. The OpenDNS servers were unreachable, as was their website. Oh dear.
I switched the forwarders on our internal DNS servers back to our ISP-provided servers and we were back in business, but what does this mean for OpenDNS? I’ve been using them at the corporate level at several of our US sites for over a year with success, but today’s mishap has me wondering if I will continue to do so in the future. I await more information from OpenDNS and hope they have a good explanation as well as a plan to keep this from happening again in the future.
Update: A rather snide comment (below) from David Ulevitch of OpenDNS suggests that this was a Verizon issue rather than an OpenDNS issue. Given the general lack of buzz on the internet, I’m inclined to believe it, but shouldn’t this type of issue warrant some sort of communication to the public? A blog post on the OpenDNS website, or a sticky thread in the forum would go a long way toward getting the word out when problems prevent access to their services, even if said problems are not directly an OpenDNS problem.
2009: The Year Without Money
January 7th, 2009The economy is in the toilet, and everyone from the gardener to corporate CEOs are feeling it. With that, many businesses are facing reduced IT budgets in 2009, forcing us to come up with new and creative ways to utilize our existing infrastructure. From workforce layoffs to spending cuts, the world of working in IT is changing shape right before our eyes.
I had big plans for 2009, with additional SAN storage, a new backup platform, and a better core switch for our network, all on our list of needs rather than our list of wants. Now I have to address those needs without buying new stuff, which will present new challenges in creativity and patience, I am sure. Although I’m a little disappointed, I welcome the challenge and plan to make the best of it.
Be careful! “Out of touch” isn’t as far out as you might think!
September 18th, 2008Like most people in IT, I deal with a lot of people in this industry on a day to day basis. I see people that are really good at this, and people that are really bad. What interests me is that of those that are bad at this, the reasons for being so are often vastly different. I’ll use this example in the context of two people performing at similar admin/support levels in an IT department, with the assumption that they are both amply smart and capable of learning.
In this corner we have Jody, with a good handle on the fundamentals and a history of poor logical thinking. In that corner we have Dianne, with a good sense of logic and troubleshooting skills but very little knowledge of the fundamentals. Jody: Poor logic, in my opinion, is a career-limiting characteristic to have if you work in IT. I don’t think you can effectively teach logic, you’re either good at it or you’re not. Dianne: Lacking fundamental knowledge is relatively easy to overcome. With the internet and all the training programs available, there’s almost no limit to what Dianne can learn. » Read more: Be careful! “Out of touch” isn’t as far out as you might think!
