Is Facebook aiming at something bigger with its new data center? Rather than commissioning the buildup of its data center, Facebook went for a complete new model, which they call the Open Compute Project. The technology behind Facebook's green data center is developed together with major hardware vendors such as HP, Dell, AMD and Intel which shows that Facebook has... Read More
For those IT Professionals who would like to plan their future career based on a job role rather than technology or platform, I suggest Microsoft's Professional Career Chart. The chart is structured around the different roles we find in IT operations, management and software development based on Microsoft technologies. For example, an application developer can match his current job description,... Read More
Auditing or assessing risks related to cloud setups may seem daunting at first, especially if an IT audit and assurance professional may lack cloud computing experience. A fine book published by ISACA & ITGI can give you the necessary heads up to initiate an assurance process. It is an excellent starting point but remember that it has to be modified... Read More
I would like to share with you a couple of points taken from Ian Foster's presentation about the future of research computing and the current trend of moving the administrative load to the cloud. While, the big science projects are the ones that most often get the required funds and resources, the small to medium projects on the other hand... Read More
A highly recommended best practice in securing Windows Servers is to stop unnecessary services and disable unused functionality. A brief checklist containing high level definitions of tasks to be performed would help administrators reduce the attack surface of their servers. A typical checklist would include: Stopping and disabling all unnecessary services and applications Renaming the Administrator account Creating a new... Read More
Managing outbound traffic has become very crucial in determining computer infections. Malware infects computers and then tries to send out stolen data to perpetrators. Viruses seek to replicate themselves by attempting to send packets to infect other computers. Users might use unapproved applications which may result in the transmission of confidential data. Therefore, it is appropriate to review your Windows... Read More
The RODC (Read-Only Domain Controller) in AD DS environments is designed specifically for the branch office scenario. RODC receives authentication requests from branch office users and forwards them to a domain controller in the hub site for authentication. There are two types of configuration scenarios, one option is to allow caching of branch office users login credentials and the other... Read More
There are certain times when organizations decide not to deploy a software update solution and use Windows native functionality – Microsoft Update, as their main solution. This may be the best approach when organizations have dispersed offices around the globe with a small number of standalone computers. It is simpler to enable automatic updates on these clients' computers rather than... Read More