by Matt Jenkins
February 21, 2009 in miscellaneous
I’ve been in Germany this week installing a new branch office. The phone system is to be the very capable IP Office 500 from Avaya – which is great for branch offices as its pretty cheap and remotely configurable, and has the capability for small community networking across the VPN.
A couple of things caught me out on this install Read the rest of this entry →
by mjenkins
January 31, 2009 in miscellaneous
Google may contain badware!
Earlir today Google flagged every site with the statement “This site may harm your computer” in its search results on both Google.com and Google.co.uk. I saw this issue live, and immediately started using Yahoo for search.
by Matt Jenkins
June 7, 2008 in Uncategorized
A few thoughts on the problem with a tiered internet and why ISPs who deliver content need net neutrality to avoid a conflict of interests.
by Matt Jenkins
May 28, 2008 in database
In MSSQL2k, a lot of users would use the detach command within the GUI to kill all the active processes on a DB, this functionality is somewhat cut down in MSSQL2005 – you can see the processes & kill them individually, but not as a bulk kill.
To detach a database in Tsql, you can use:
EXEC sp_detach_db 'database', 'true'
This will detach the DB and skip checks on doing so.
by Matt Jenkins
April 1, 2008 in networking
The office perimeter can be the most vunerable area of the smb network, it is the access gateway for the world – friends and foe. As an ever increasing number of users require external access, how can you stay secure without hindering legitimate users? Every user has a different need for VPN access, and there are many different requirements in different businesses.
Here is my view on how you can use the VPN to help secure your network: Read the rest of this entry →
by Matt Jenkins
March 9, 2008 in networking
I am a strong beleiver in empowering the end user. The ideal is to give them enough support and freedom to enable them to do their job better and more effieciently & after all, that’s what IT is meant to be about. However, there are a few exceptions to that rule:The use of modern SSL VPN software is an extrememly high risk for corporate IT. It puts the responsibility of computer, software and malware management on the user, not the IT dept. Imagine the following scenario:
Jon is a senior sales exec, he uses a desktop in the office, and occasionally uses the SSL VPN from his home PC to catch up on email & update a few spreadsheets. One day Jon is out with friends when he gets a call from his boss & he needs to access a file, but isn’t able to get to the office. So Jon goes into an internet cafe, where he logs on to the VPN & edits the file.
Would you want that Administrator driven, multi user, unlocked PC accessing your network
What if Jon’s son was music crazy, and used his home PC everyday to download music via various P2P software?
What if Jon was using his friends mothers neighbours unpatched Windows ME machine?
I’m sure you get the idea, when you cant limit which machines have access, you cant protect the network.