IT Pro Tuesday #121

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Hello IT Pro,

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

This week, we’re looking for your favorite tips to share with the community. Please let us know those that help you do things more easily so you get better at your job!

As always, we’re updating the full, searchable list on our website here. Enjoy.

But on with this week's tools...! Here are the most-interesting items that have come across our desks, laptops and phones this week. Hornetsecurity has no known affiliation with any of these unless we explicitly state otherwise.

A Free Tool

PyCharm brings all the Python tools together for faster, easier coding. Features a keyboard-centric approach, with intelligent code completion, on-the-fly error checking and easy project navigation. Offers PEP8 checks, testing assistance, smart refactorings and a host of inspections that help you write high-quality, maintainable code. A shout out to too_many_puppies for pointing us to this one!

A Website

PacketBomb is dedicated to teaching IT professionals how to make the most of their packet analysis tools. Since packet analysis can sort out most network problems pretty quickly, fully developing this skill is extremely valuable for anyone who’s expected to keep networks running properly. SecAbove suggests it as a "great place to learn about packets (free)."

Another Free Tool

fzf-project is a plugin that makes it easy to switch between project directories that are indexed from a particular folder(s). Kindly shared by the author, who explains: "You specify a number of "workspace" folders in a vimrc variable. The plugin provides a command to switch between any of the contained folders using fzf… once you've made that selection, it provides automatic rooting of any edited files within those folders, and a fzf file finder."

One More Free Tool

VirtualBox is an open-source virtualization app that enables you to run Windows or Linux apps on a Mac. Offers great speed and flexibility, plus a large library of prebuilt third-party emulated systems. Our thanks go to Matt F for the recommendation.

A Cheatsheet

Nmap Cheatsheet is a comprehensive overview for Nmap and Nessus. Covers usage options for Nmap,  scanning command syntax, port specification options, host discovery, scanning types and options, version detection, firewall proofing, output format and timing options, Nmap scripts NSE, 172.16.1.1 specification and commands. Appreciation for this one goes to TruthSeekerWW.

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

Snipe-It is a web-based asset and license management app that lets you keep tabs on your inventory. A fast, simple way to track assets so you can see everything that is currently deployed, pending, ready to deploy or archived. Email alerts can be set up to notify you when licenses are expiring. Suggested by tclearinghouse, who says, "I can’t recommend it enough. Used to use a sharepoint list previously, and that was painful."

Icinga is a secure, open-source network monitoring solution. The multithreaded design means it's fast and capable, while offering extreme flexibility. Makes good use of metadata information to give you a better understanding of the state of your hosts and services. Performance data can be sent directly to third-party tools, and it natively supports Graphite and InfluxDB. Setup is undeniably complex, but there is good documentation that can help motivated users get the most from this powerful tool.

Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.