So, you’ve verified your firewall appliance is allowing your application traffic, you’ve ensured your routers are getting the traffic where it needs to go, and your access control lists on your switches are perfect. A packet cap on your switch shows the traffic getting to your Windows server. Why isn’t it working? I’ve run into the Windows server itself blocking traffic destined to its own...

Introduction

This will be the final installment in this NSLOOKUP Primer series. Last time, I talked about MX & SPF TXT records here, but I didn’t touch on DMARC & DKIM TXT records which are also highly encouraged to help add additional layers of security to your email domain.

In my last nslookup blog, I talked about some basic DNS troubleshooting. If you missed it, here’s the link. This time, I wanted to dive in to how I use nslookup for email info gathering and troubleshooting.

So there you are in front of your computer, you know you have internet access, you can ping 8.8.8.8, but your browser isn’t working, and when you try to ping google.com, the name is unable to resolve. You think to yourself “If only I had saved that blog article about nslookup locally, so I didn’t have to depend on the internet to get all that great info!”.

The Meraki dashboard is phenomenal in my opinion. With next to no effort on your part, you have a LOT of data at your fingertips. What if you want that data available for easy export, or if you want to access data older than 30 days old? I ran into just that scenario and found that on top of the GUI, Meraki provides a pretty fantastic API with access to even MORE data. Let me show you how to...

I recently set up SSO on our Rubrik backup device and had a hard time finding a thorough walkthrough, so I put this together in hopes that it will help someone else out. My suggestion would be to read it over once paying attention to the notes I threw in there before starting. Ready? Ok, let’s do it!

We’ll start with configuring an Identity Provider (IDP) in Rubrik, then we’ll jump back and forth...

How secure are your logins to your bank, credit cards, email, online stores, social media, password safe, or accounts you use for work? Do you use authentication apps like Duo, Google Auth, or Authy? How many different factors do you use today to get access to your devices and services? Once you’ve thought about your answers to these questions, let’s see if I can introduce any new ideas to you.

You may have seen news reports on the Colonial Pipeline malware attack. The main questions I’ve heard from family and friends are “How did something like that happen?” and “Why couldn’t they stop it?” In my opinion, there are many reputable news agencies and other organizations that have weighed in and done very good work at explaining the intricacies of what happened. I would encourage the...

Would you know if one of the 2 power supplies in one of your critical switches went out? What would alert you to an SSL certificate expiring on a web-based application you use every day? If you’re like most organizations, you have some kind of infrastructure monitoring in place. Could you take the approach of “If anything breaks, my users will let me know”? Sure you could! Would it work? Yep!...

Today I have the opportunity to tell you about the wonders & joys of managed services. First, what are managed services? Ultimately, managed services are the outsourced, proactive management of your stuff. In this case, we’re talking about your technology. A good provider will give you time back to focus on the fun parts of your job and save you money. That sounds good, right? Time, fun & money?