@reid-cooper said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@reid-cooper said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

And training your users, I didn't see that mentioned. That might be the biggest thing.

Good points and your probably right on the training

And beatings, user beatings are often necessary as well.

lol I will remember that but then some of the ladies might not bring me home made tamales and chocolate chip cookies...

@guyinpv said in Opinions on good cloud backup?:

I was on Crashplan for many years, simple unlimited plan, cheap enough, just my one home computer.

Now they are getting rid of "home" plans, only business plans, which would be $10/m per computer.

I'm looking at options, I'm sure I'm not the only one! iDrive, Crashplan business, BackBlaze, Spideroak, etc etc

A few features would be nice:
Ability to adjust what is backed up, not one of these "we'll automatically grab only your user folder and exclude tons of stuff" deals.
Client-side encryption would be nice. Trust no one.
Individual file restores, ability to browse backup files and histories, etc.
Restore to alternate computer in case of new HDD or crash, etc.
Light on resources.

I'm considering two options at the moment. Continue with Crashplan business as they are giving 75% discount for first year. That at least puts off the decision for another year, and I don't have to wait weeks to upload backup to new service.
Backblaze, for home plan is $5/m unlimited. But business plan is also unlimited for $50/yr (which is $4.17/m) .

I'm already paying Crashplan $6.54/m, so switch to BB is actually cheaper anyway. I don't really want to do $10/m on CP.

Any other good options?

I use BB business, think it was 47$ for the year. Took 3 days to back everything up but its just archive for me. Its my 3rd copy and protection against Texas tornadoes that happen every year. Been happy so far but havent had to use it. I did check on how fast it is to get files back and they came along decently quick

@storageninja said in Do You Need Two AD Domain Controllers? SAMIT Video:

Any RMM worth it's salt (get it, a SALT joke)

Hilarious!

@wrx7m said in Intel CPU question:

@jmoore said in Intel CPU question:

@reid-cooper said in Intel CPU question:

Even an i5 is typically overkill today. What kind of workloads will these run?

I totally agree. Bottlenecks are hardly ever the cpu, they are almost always disk and memory. I have been going round and round with my management on this. They buy I7's but a mix of 5400/7200 hard drives. The i5 would be just fine for general use.

I have been buying SSDs, for users, exclusively, for about 6 months and it is by far the most noticeable improvement. Period.

I have personally been using SSDs for several years after the amazement of the massive performance increase. Nothing has improved performance so dramatically in the past 15+ years like SSDs.

Yep your absolutely right

@reid-cooper said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

And training your users, I didn't see that mentioned. That might be the biggest thing.

Good points and your probably right on the training

@jaredbusch said in Intel CPU question:

So this is what I am sending off to my preferred VAR.

Desktops: Quantity 9
Option A:
HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Tower
Windows 10 Pro
Intel Core i5 7600
16GB RAM
256 GB SSD
Intel 8265 802.11 ac with Bluetooth 4.2
No optical drive
HP Wireless Business Slim Keyboard and Mouse

Option B:
HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Tower
Windows 10 Pro
Intel Core i7 7700
16GB RAM
256 GB SSD
Intel 8265 802.11 ac with Bluetooth 4.2
No optical drive
HP Wireless Business Slim Keyboard and Mouse

For the memory in both of these desktop options, if it is more cost effective to get 8GB and an additional 8GB separate, please quote it as such.

Laptop: Quantity 1
Make it the same as the one just ordered for IPMA

Monitors: Quantity 13
Option A:
HP V273a

Option B:
HP 27sv

Similar model 27” monitors are acceptable. These were pulled from HP’s website.
Display port to HDMI needed per monitor as the EliteDesk has 2 Display Ports and both of these monitors have HDMI

I think that is a great lineup. It might be a little ram heavy depending on the users but at same time its future proofing some. Looks good

@dashrender said in Intel CPU question:

I still standardize on 8 GB. But at our next upgrade I'll take a look to see if 16 is really needed.

I buy display port monitors now for display port machines.... love the single cable, no convertors.

yeah I do the same. been great

@wrx7m said in Intel CPU question:

@scottalanmiller I have been giving out 8 for several years now. Maybe it is time to check my users' utilization. I am sure that some people could benefit from more but I would be surprised if most were above 60%.

8gb memory has been just fine for us also as i do check people every once in a while. Someone else could have different needs than my community college though

@reid-cooper said in Intel CPU question:

Even an i5 is typically overkill today. What kind of workloads will these run?

I totally agree. Bottlenecks are hardly ever the cpu, they are almost always disk and memory. I have been going round and round with my management on this. They buy I7's but a mix of 5400/7200 hard drives. The i5 would be just fine for general use.

@scotth said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

@jmoore said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.

yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.

Ouch. That's just bad management, lol.

Oh! Btw, we bought this. See if you can get it work by next Thursday.
Thanks

Yeah thats pretty much how it was. No one did any testing. We have had tons of issues with network apps because win 10 does things a little differently than win 7. I mean, who would have figured that and we should have tested...

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@dafyre said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

My preferred config?

Firewall -> Local Anti-Virus and ransomeware prevention.
IDS/IPS at the network level along with asset monitoring.

Depending on the needs of the organization, more can be added on, but I'd consider that the starting point to not be without.

I have used Snort before and i think it did those functions. What do you recommend using for IDS/IPS protection on Windows and on Linux?

I'm going to be installing Wazah here this week. While it'll be the first time I've used that specific software setup, it has OSSEC as it's base which I have used quite often. I'm looking forward to seeing how Wazah compares to some of the paid solutions out there.

Also, like @scottalanmiller already said, IDS/IPS exists at the network level, not the OS.

Ok that is what I am confused about. Where does IDS sit at physically on the network? firewall?

Nothing should ever sit on the firewall, nothing. Proper "anything network" should be a VM that may or may not get all network traffic, depending on the task.

For IDS, I agree. For IPS, i had better luck and performance with hardware in-line ie:

<internet>-->Firewall-->IPS-->Local Network

This was on a 50/50 fiber.

Who makes a good IPS hardware?

Palo Alto

ah I see. well that makes sense. I was just looking to see if Ubiquity or Fortinet made something like this.

@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.

yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.

@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

Another aspect of home labs, that I think that people often overlook, is that when you do work "at the office" it is almost always constrained by someone. Rarely do we, even if we are the head of IT, get carte blanche to do the best things for the company. At home, we can follow all best practices and learn not just "how things often get done" but "how things should be done." It can be a very different way of learning.

Yes your right, there are many constraints here that keep me from doing the things I would do at home.

@dbeato said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:

@scottalanmiller Yes, I actually did. I needed context.

I did too but at times I was about to give up because they were posting faster than I could keep up

@dafyre said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

My preferred config?

Firewall -> Local Anti-Virus and ransomeware prevention.
IDS/IPS at the network level along with asset monitoring.

Depending on the needs of the organization, more can be added on, but I'd consider that the starting point to not be without.

I have used Snort before and i think it did those functions. What do you recommend using for IDS/IPS protection on Windows and on Linux?

I'm going to be installing Wazah here this week. While it'll be the first time I've used that specific software setup, it has OSSEC as it's base which I have used quite often. I'm looking forward to seeing how Wazah compares to some of the paid solutions out there.

Also, like @scottalanmiller already said, IDS/IPS exists at the network level, not the OS.

Ok that is what I am confused about. Where does IDS sit at physically on the network? firewall?

Nothing should ever sit on the firewall, nothing. Proper "anything network" should be a VM that may or may not get all network traffic, depending on the task.

For IDS, I agree. For IPS, i had better luck and performance with hardware in-line ie:

<internet>-->Firewall-->IPS-->Local Network

This was on a 50/50 fiber.

Who makes a good IPS hardware?

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

My preferred config?

Firewall -> Local Anti-Virus and ransomeware prevention.
IDS/IPS at the network level along with asset monitoring.

Depending on the needs of the organization, more can be added on, but I'd consider that the starting point to not be without.

I have used Snort before and i think it did those functions. What do you recommend using for IDS/IPS protection on Windows and on Linux?

I'm going to be installing Wazah here this week. While it'll be the first time I've used that specific software setup, it has OSSEC as it's base which I have used quite often. I'm looking forward to seeing how Wazah compares to some of the paid solutions out there.

Also, like @scottalanmiller already said, IDS/IPS exists at the network level, not the OS.

Ok that is what I am confused about. Where does IDS sit at physically on the network? firewall?

Nothing should ever sit on the firewall, nothing. Proper "anything network" should be a VM that may or may not get all network traffic, depending on the task.

Oh I see now, thanks

@scottalanmiller said in YouTube TV:

@rojoloco said in YouTube TV:

@dashrender said in YouTube TV:

@scottalanmiller said in YouTube TV:

@dashrender said in YouTube TV:

@scottalanmiller said in YouTube TV:

@dashrender said in YouTube TV:

@scottalanmiller said in YouTube TV:

@bigbear said in YouTube TV:

2.) Shows we watch on FX, AMC, NBC etc (Walking Dead, The Voice, Modern Family, Mr Robot (theres at least 20)

I only have Netflix and Amazon and I have the Walking Dead, Modern Family, etc. Definitely not The Voice, thank goodness, no idea about Mr Robot. Network shows that are good enough for Netflix to want, they get. Just because it's also on a network doesn't mean you won't get it some other way.

Sure months later.

And? That was my point, who cares? There is no one to discuss it with, and once you don't start when it first releases the impact is literally zero. There is no real world negative here.

I think If I stopped watching TV according to a network schedule, I'd probably stop watching most TV in general. Not sure I am ready to go that route.
yeah it's a me thing.

All bonus for me. That's how I know it is that bad, I wouldn't watch it if I had to select it.

yeah, well in that regards... I'd be happy to watch history channel, etc more than I do, but my wife hates those shows... and since I already mentioned that she wants to be in the same room as much as humanly possible.. we watch something that is tolerable by both of us.

Man, I'm glad my gf knows to watch the shows I won't like when we're not together. We have lots of shows we both like, so plenty of stuff to watch together. She has kinda warped my Netflix cue though...

You can set up different profiles on Netflix to keep that from happening. We have all four of us in the house with our own profiles. Works great.

I did that but everyone keeps using my profile. I come home and my suggestions are little baby time, puppy dog pals, chuggington, and a thousand shows liek them

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

My preferred config?

Firewall -> Local Anti-Virus and ransomeware prevention.
IDS/IPS at the network level along with asset monitoring.

Depending on the needs of the organization, more can be added on, but I'd consider that the starting point to not be without.

I have used Snort before and i think it did those functions. What do you recommend using for IDS/IPS protection on Windows and on Linux?

I'm going to be installing Wazah here this week. While it'll be the first time I've used that specific software setup, it has OSSEC as it's base which I have used quite often. I'm looking forward to seeing how Wazah compares to some of the paid solutions out there.

Also, like @scottalanmiller already said, IDS/IPS exists at the network level, not the OS.

Ok that is what I am confused about. Where does IDS sit at physically on the network? firewall?

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@travisdh1 said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

My preferred config?

Firewall -> Local Anti-Virus and ransomeware prevention.
IDS/IPS at the network level along with asset monitoring.

Depending on the needs of the organization, more can be added on, but I'd consider that the starting point to not be without.

I have used Snort before and i think it did those functions. What do you recommend using for IDS/IPS protection on Windows and on Linux?

IDS/IPS go on the network, not on an OS.

i must be confused or remembering wrong then, how does IDS/IPS work then?

@dashrender said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@dashrender said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@jmoore said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

@scottalanmiller said in How to Layer Your Security Needs:

AV....

There are several decent AV vendors, and tons of terrible ones. In most cases, I would just stick with Windows Defender. If you are going to get into the Windows ecosystem and don't trust Windows security, you need to rethink what you are doing.

Understandably getting a central console for AV can be important, so products like Webroot can be great. They are one of the few AV companies that haven't done something to make me really question their integrity or quality.

that makes a lot of sense. I read in lots of places when people ask for AV recommendations it is always somethign different and Defender is barely mentioned. Why is that then?

Because no one makes money pushing Defender.

Plus people are MS haters.

You are right on that. I mean I don't like a lot of things either but if your business is built around Microsoft products then it really does make sense to use Defender for most people

Yes, embrace or move on. This weird half assed approach is the worst. It's like they tend to start off as fan bois, then suddenly become haters of their own platform choices.

I think that people are stuck in the past - Security Essentials was pretty bad.. but MS was just getting it's feet wet. By now it's on par in my opinion. Others think - you get what you pay for - i.e. Defender is free, therefore it must be shit.. so they must pay to get something worthwhile.

and others want/demand the central console, which you can't get without Intune, so you'd be spending either way.

doesn't group policy do everything you need as far as updating and such? do most people really need a central console?