Best posts made by Nic

Just having a quiet thanksgiving at home.

@JaredBusch said in Cerber virus/ransomware making the rounds...:

@Rob-Dunn said in Cerber virus/ransomware making the rounds...:

@Kelly said in Cerber virus/ransomware making the rounds...:

@Rob-Dunn said in Cerber virus/ransomware making the rounds...:

Another cool thing that we're going to be doing, but not as a result of this infection, is evaluating and maybe implementing Cylance in lieu of Trend on our systems.

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say, but their engine seems revolutionary.

What makes you say that Rob?

Mostly that it's not conventional scanning, but instead it analyzes what the files do rather than just signatures or patterns. The closest comparison I can come up with is the way Android app permissions are broken down in the app store - - it can identify if a file's threat by the characteristics contained therein. Here's an analysis of the FreeConferenceCall.com installer:

I really want to see a good comparison of Webroot and Cylance from someone not related to either company.

My problem with Cylance was that there was no small business pricing. they started at something like 1000 licenses at their SpiceWorld 2015 demo. Only knocking it down to 500 during the show.

Hopefully the testing companies will get there eventually. They're all so geared towards signature detections and it's hard to get them to change. That's why we don't show up in some of them, as they won't come up with a methodology that better reflects what we do.

I got a sous-vide attachment a while ago:
http://www.amazon.com/Nomiku-Sous-Vide-Immersion-Circulator/dp/B00GB31I8I

and have been really loving cooking with it. Cleanup isn't bad since the food never comes into contact with the attachment or the pot you are cooking in.

well you're starting off with the right name

@DustinB3403 Yep, you want to vacuum seal the food in a bag, so it doesn't get waterlogged, but it has good contact with the water for temperature transfer. You can do that with a real vacuum sealer, or just slowly submerge the bag with the top open to force the air out and then close the bag.

You can not only clean it but restore some of the original coloring if the plastic has yellowed:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/how-to-restore-old-computers-to-their-original-color/

@hubtechagain said:

yes. the previous owners of this house replaced their gas unit with an electric flat top....stupid. when a few stars line up we will be replacing this unit with gas.

why...why in the hell would they do that???

@travisdh1 said in Light Gaming Desktop:

@Kelly said in Light Gaming Desktop:

In that price range it is hard to build for better or less than OEMs. I've had good experiences with iBuyPower machines, but there are so many options. A refurb might be a good direction to go too.

Yeah, it's hard to beat iBuyPower or CyberPower most of the time. A couple weeks ago I got some friends kid a system from CyberPower, I don't think they've seen him since we got it plugged in.

Agreed. I'd say the only reason to build your own is if you want the experience, or if you are willing to wait for every single component to go on deep sale to beat an OEM assembler (assuming your time is worth $0)

I picked up a couple games from these lists that Total Biscuit made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBi7r-ROhV8
Youtube Video

You couldn't get a career with better job security at this point. IT folks with security chops are charging top dollar.

Reddit live thread here: https://www.reddit.com/live/w0nn1o5hu90y
news feed: http://ktla.com/2015/12/02/authorities-respond-to-20-victim-shooting-incident-in-san-bernardino-fire-dept/

Last I heard it still doesn't have all the functionality of the non-hosted version. Still, if you can live without the features that it doesn't have, then it's a good option. Also consider some of the alternatives like Freshbooks.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Nic said:

QB dominates the market because they make the software for the preferences of the accountants, not the sysadmins. If that's what your accountant uses, as an SMB, that's what you use. You have no choice.

Of course you do, you have the choice to use an accountant who also takes what they do seriously. Why would you ever chose an accountant that isn't serious about accounting? That's totally crazy.

Doesn't matter when they have 97% of the accountants locked up.

@Reid-Cooper said in Quickbooks Online:

@Nic said in Quickbooks Online:

Last I heard it still doesn't have all the functionality of the non-hosted version. Still, if you can live without the features that it doesn't have, then it's a good option. Also consider some of the alternatives like Freshbooks.

I've heard that recently as well. Lots of limitations that you would not expect.

Yeah I used to work at Intuit so I was pretty familiar with both products. QBO was a complete rewrite, which is good because the QB codebase is 30 years old, but bad in that you have to play catchup with the features and the dev/support efforts.

@scottalanmiller said:

If we think about the needs of the SMB market and approach what a baseline product in finance and accounting would look like, we get something dramatically different than QB. Here are some thoughts...

• It should be hosted. The smaller the company, the less that critical software should be running in house. That SMBs would run their financial server in house is a bit crazy as a starting point.
• It should run on a server. Not that every SMB will do this, but that should be their decision to not take their systems seriously, not the software vendor's.
• It should be natively multi-user.
• It should be insanely easy to protect and backup and restore and to egress data.
• It should be cost effective and practical.
• It should be easy to use.
• It should be made in such a way that we are impressed, not embarrassed, to use it.
• It should be made by people we trust and respect, not people we laugh at and despise.
• It should be made by a vendor that wants to succeed by helping us to succeed, not one that exists to trip us up and take advantage of us when we fall.

It's built on a 25 year old codebase which is insanely hard for them to update. Again, I'm not making excuses for them, just explaining why.

What will you play first on it?

@scottalanmiller said:

@Nic said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Nic said:

QB dominates the market because they make the software for the preferences of the accountants, not the sysadmins. If that's what your accountant uses, as an SMB, that's what you use. You have no choice.

Of course you do, you have the choice to use an accountant who also takes what they do seriously. Why would you ever chose an accountant that isn't serious about accounting? That's totally crazy.

Doesn't matter when they have 97% of the accountants locked up.

It still matters to the businesses. In any field only a small percentage are really any good or take what they do seriously. Most are just there to coast, take advantage of others not looking to do a good job, etc. That most accountants are not very good or don't care about their jobs or their customers is not surprising. That businesses don't care about themselves and keep using them isn't surprising either. But none of that means that IT pros should look the other way and just act like one bad decision after another isn't bad. Once we do that, we are acting just like those accountants.

You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.

@scottalanmiller said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@scottalanmiller said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Breffni-Potter said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Nic said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

re: no internet - Webroot defaults to monitoring any new exe using the local heuristics until it can get back online. That way if it's determined to be malicious it can roll back any changes that new process has made.

seems like a nice compromise on a cloud AV

Oh Webroot is an amazing product. If you are thinking of getting it, do try it out and give it a run for it's money.

Unfortunately we just renewed our horrible Kaspersky since we didnt have time to properly test a new AV in our environment :due to all the major projects we had at the time

Hit of @nic and see what webroot can do to fix that. Don't just assume that all is lost. Webroot might be able to bail you out.

They already spent the $$$ for Kaspersky, they wont replace it until renewal time.

Right, and I'm saying that that is not necessarily a factor. If they are intentionally throwing money and protection away, well nothing is going to help with that. But that they already spent money is not a factor. Not necessarily, anyway.

Or you just wait out the Kaspersky contract and then check us out come renewal time. I mean, it's not like you're on Symantec - Kaspersky is at least decent

@scottalanmiller said:

@Nic said:

You don't have much choice if all the accountants in a 100 mile radius only use QB. And most businesses are shitty too, so they just go with whatever is handy.

Accounting is one of those things that has no reason to be local. We changed accountants over this, it's not an idle threat. Even in the poorest, remotest regions there are accountants who want to make money and do their job well.

I'm not saying that I'm surprised that Intuit has a market in working with crappy accountants to screw businesses that just don't take the effort to run well. I'm just saying that as IT we should never act like it isn't ridiculous on many levels and that businesses that do this can't honestly expect anyone else to actually take them seriously.

You can't just pretend Sturgeon's Law doesn't rule the universe

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@scottalanmiller said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Nic said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@scottalanmiller said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@scottalanmiller said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Breffni-Potter said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Brains said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

@Nic said in Asus RoG Rocking the WebRoot Secure Anywhere:

re: no internet - Webroot defaults to monitoring any new exe using the local heuristics until it can get back online. That way if it's determined to be malicious it can roll back any changes that new process has made.

seems like a nice compromise on a cloud AV

Oh Webroot is an amazing product. If you are thinking of getting it, do try it out and give it a run for it's money.

Unfortunately we just renewed our horrible Kaspersky since we didnt have time to properly test a new AV in our environment :due to all the major projects we had at the time

Hit of @nic and see what webroot can do to fix that. Don't just assume that all is lost. Webroot might be able to bail you out.

They already spent the $$$ for Kaspersky, they wont replace it until renewal time.

Right, and I'm saying that that is not necessarily a factor. If they are intentionally throwing money and protection away, well nothing is going to help with that. But that they already spent money is not a factor. Not necessarily, anyway.

Or you just wait out the Kaspersky contract and then check us out come renewal time. I mean, it's not like you're on Symantec - Kaspersky is at least decent

Yea thats what im planning, I absolutely hate Kaspersky's management. Exclusions arent even consistent across all of their modules. Mid Sized company = mid sized budget

But why plan for that? Why not fix the problem now if it ends up not costing any money?

I dont understand how it wouldnt cost money to switch to Webroot. IT hours cost - I could probably make it work. IT hours cost + new software cost = unfeasible

Setup's pretty easy with Webroot. You just push out the MSI file, assign computers to policy groups, and away you go. The only real work is checking to make sure none of your custom or rare software is getting blocked or monitored, but support helps you with that. You just look and see what if anything need whitelisting and then put in a ticket.

Still, it's non-zero, so I can understand needing to budget time for any switchover.