IT Pro Tuesday #152
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
First item: on June 23, Altaro will be broadcasting an educational webinar entitled “Your 5 Most Critical M365 Vulnerabilities Revealed And How to Fix Them.” This will include a live demo of Threat Monitor—a new, free tool we developed for M365 sysadmins.
The event will be presented by Andy Syrewicze and two very experienced security experts from Truesec—a Swedish-based security consultancy.
You can find all the details here.
We're also asking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.
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
BorgBackup is an open-source deduplicating archiver that features compression and authenticated encryption for efficient storage of your backups. malikto44 tells us, "Borg Backup is something that has proven itself a lifesaver when doing one-off stuff. For example, Raspberry Pis at a remote location, I have them dump to Borgbase, and if I get a note that Borgbase has not seen one of them check in and do a backup, it is time to head out and see what's going on."
A Course
Python for Network Engineers is a free, 8-week course that is being offered again starting today (Jun 1). It covers Python fundamentals but "with a network engineer's bent." The weekly lessons cover, in order: Why Python, the Python Interpreter Shell, and Strings; Numbers, Files, Lists, and Linters; Conditionals and Loops; Dictionaries, Exceptions, and Regular Expressions; Functions and the Python Debugger; Netmiko Basics; Jinja2 Basics, Introduction to YAML and JSON, Complex Data Structures; Libraries, Package Installation, and Virtual Environments. Uses Python3. Our thanks go to ktbyers for this one!
Another Free Tool
MeshCentral is a multi-platform, self-hosted, feature-packed website for remote device management. You can use the public, community server for free or install on your own server. The server and management agent run on Windows, Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD. This one comes compliments of MLP_Legend, who explains, "I would recommend meshcentral. It has worked great for our 200+ computers and it’s open source."
One More Free Tool
openDCIM is designed for simple, complete data-center asset tracking. Offers support for multiple rooms; management of space, power and cooling; basic contact management and integration into existing business directory via UserID; fault tolerance; computation of center of gravity for each cabinet; template management for devices (with ability to override per device); optional tracking of cable connections within each cabinet and for each switch device; archival functions for equipment sent to salvage/disposal; integration with intelligent power strips and UPS devices. Kindly suggested by noukthx.
Free Tool for MVPs
AdminDroid is a free-for-MVPs-only reporting option that is more user-friendly than what you'll find in the Office 365 Admin portal. It serves as a single tool to manage your entire Office 365 infrastructure, with advanced reporting capabilities such as scheduling, export, customizable reports, advanced filters and more. icoco_ likes it as a reporting and auditing tool.
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
StackStorm is an automation engine that can connect your apps, services and workflows. Allows you to create everything from simple if/then rules to complicated workflows within your existing infrastructure for a customized, automated remediation and security response. packetgeeknet likes it for event-driven automation.
Openfire is a powerful instant messaging and groupchat server that combines easy setup and administration with solid security and performance. Uses the open-source extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP) real-time collaboration (RTC) server.
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.