IT Pro Tuesday #160
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
Did you know that Microsoft 365 allows ransomware threats, phishing messages and spam to enter your users’ mailboxes? Although Microsoft provides email threat protection on M365, it only offers a basic level of security that is not enough. To prevent your users from introducing ransomware and other threats, you still need an additional layer of email security.
This week, we’re proud to announce a new, free tool we developed so sysadmins can find out how many threats make it through to your organization on M365 and proactively prevent users from being tricked. It’s called 365 Threat Monitor, and we’re excited to share it with all of you in the IT Pro Tuesday community!
365 Threat Monitor is a forever-free mobile app that detects any threats that breach your Microsoft 365 security. Once it identifies a malicious email, it sends a phone alert so you can instantly delete it with just one click and prevent any damage. The app is developed by Hornetsecurity, which provides premium email security services to 40,000+ customers worldwide.
To celebrate the launch, Hornetsecurity—the people behind IT Pro Tuesday—are offering the forever-free version to the first 10,000 M365 IT admins who download the app.
Setup takes seconds – Learn more and download the app here.
We're also marking the occasion with a categorized MEGA LIST of all the items we've featured over the past 6 months. Enjoy!
Free Tools
ScreenToGif is an open-source tool for recording your screen, webcam feed or sketchboard drawings. The integrated editor allows you to edit recordings to adjust individual frames in assorted ways and add overlays. Exports to gif, apng, video, project, images and psd.
Remote Utilities is a secure, configurable remote desktop tool for viewing screens, sending keystrokes, controlling the mouse, transferring files and more. A free license allows you to control up to 10 remote PCs. pturpie explains, "I've been using it a few weeks and it seems pretty good. There is a free license available, though the link [included here] is tricky to find."
DNSdumpster is a domain recon and research tool that can discover hosts related to any domain. Enables you to assess your security by locating which hosts are visible to attackers. Thanks for the suggestion go to MattF.
Disk2vhd is a utility to create a VHD version of physical disks for use in Virtual PC or Hyper-V VMs. Unlike other such tools, Disk2vhd can be used on a system that’s online. MrMoo52 appreciates that “you can then mount the vhd in disk manager just like any other HDD and give it a drive letter."
AutoPkgr makes it simple to install and configure AutoPkg quickly and reliably in the Mac OS. It's the easy way to take advantage of automated macOS software packaging and distribution without the need for command-line methods. gabhain explains, "For Mac downloads AutoPkgr is a god send, and you can make some interesting workflows and automations.”
5G-air-simulator is an open-source, system-level simulator for modeling the 5G air interface. CulturalSock explains, "It is a compiled C++ code for Linux, which it's launched via terminal, that gives out a text trace. Then through grep and awk, I extracted the KPIs I needed."
Patch My PC Home Updater is an easy way to update or install over 300 apps on any computer. This simple tool can help keep things secure for users whose home equipment might be accessing your network by making sure they always have the latest security patches and updates installed. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to TheGraycat.
GNU Make is a tool for controlling the generation of executables and other non-source files, which can be helpful in building tools to manage and update configuration files. It enables an end user to build and install your package without really understanding what's going on under the hood, because it automatically determines which files it needs to update (based on which source files have changed) as well as in which order to update files if they are dependent on one another.
Teleport is an open-source solution that provides unified access for SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, web applications and databases across all environments. Features include single sign-on that allows discovery and instant access to all layers of your tech stack behind NAT across clouds, data centers or on the edge. Records all interactions in a structured audit log, so you can easily see exactly who did what. roiki11 adds, "It seems really nice for remote ssh... It's also nice in that you get remote guis and ssh in a browser, so it works on my iPad too."
SeaweedFS is a fast, distributed storage system for blobs, objects, files and data that stores/serves billions of files. Can transparently integrate with the cloud with both fast local access and elastic cloud storage capacity. Blob store has O(1) disk seek, local and cloud tiering. Filer supports cross-cluster active-active replication, Kubernetes, POSIX, S3 API, encryption, Erasure Coding for warm storage, FUSE mount, Hadoop and WebDAV. chrislusf finds "it is much faster than the 'high performance' Minio."
nfdump enables you to collect and process netflow and sflow data sent from compatible devices for both historical analysis and continuous tracking of interesting traffic patterns. Optimized for speed in order to filter efficiently. Our thanks for the suggestion goes to servidge.
Continuous Bandwidth Tester is an internet speed stress test that can run for an unlimited period of time. Measures download/upload bandwidth, packet loss, RTT and ping—to show you the outages and drops of bandwidth affecting the stability of your internet connection. Imburr found it useful for "a client with a home user complaining they are getting kicked off an RDP server randomly... pretty sure it had something to do with their home internet. [It can] execute on their local PC over a few days to see if their internet connectivity is being lost briefly at random times [but without] a constant ping option, which might get them blocked."
Scrapli is a fast and easy Python 3.6+ screen-scraping client for network devices. This flexible tool offers great editor support, sync/async, a pluggable transport system, the ability to add new device support, a Nornir plugin as well as options for NETCONF devices. Kindly suggested by comeroutewithme.
Dog is a distributed firewall management system for Linux that can manage hundreds of per-server firewalls, with consistent network access rules across servers in different regions across multiple providers. Features defense-in-depth, beyond gateway firewalls; constantly updated blocklists with thousands of addresses distributed across many servers; connection and/or bandwidth usage limits; and auto updates of per-server iptables rules. Appreciated by Humble-Magician6657.
ImportExcel is a PowerShell module for importing and exporting Excel spreadsheets without involving Excel. Allows you to read/write Excel files without the Excel COM-object, so you can more easily create tables, pivot tablesa and charts. 229-T explains, "the ImportExcel function in Powershell (all bow before the great and mighty Doug Finke) is life-changing if you manipulate data inside Powershell. If anything deserves a shout-out, it does."
sg3_utils is a set of Linux utilities for sending SCSI commands to devices. Works with transports like FCP, SAS, SPI as well as less-obvious devices that use SCSI, like ATAPI cd/dvd drives and SATA disks that connect through a translation layer or bridge device. Our thanks for the recommendation go to Necrowerx.
Apache Kafka is an open-source, distributed event streaming platform that captures data in real-time from event sources like databases, sensors, mobile devices, cloud services and software applications. Data is stored durably in the form of streams of events that can be manipulated, processed and reacted to in real-time as well as retrospectively. Event streams can be routed to different destination technologies as needed.
PeaZip is a cross-platform, open-source file archiver utility for reducing the size of large files. Simply add files for compression/decompression using the file explorer on the right, then choose an action to apply from the main toolbar or by right-clicking. A full-featured, user-friendly alternative to WinRar, WinZip and the like that allows you to open and extract over 200 archive formats.
Free Carrier Lookup allows you to enter any phone number to get the carrier name and whether the number is wireless or landline. Provides the latest data so it stays current and accurate for most countries. Also offers the email-to-SMS and email-to-MMS gateway addresses for US and Canadian phone numbers. Our thanks for this recommendation go to raad_altaie.
pyWhat enables you to easily identify emails, IP addresses and more. Feed it a .pcap file or some mysterious text or hex of a file, and it will tell you what it is. The tool is recursive, so it can identify everything in text, files and more. A shout out to the tool's author for sharing his creation.
Arkime is secure, scaleable, indexed packet capture and search tool that can improve your network security by providing greater visibility. This open-source tool stores and indexes network traffic in standard PCAP format. Our thanks for the suggestion goes to Security_Chief_Odo.
TCP Port Scanner with Nmap is designed to detect open TCP ports and running services (including their versions) as well as conducting OS fingerprinting on a target IP address or hostname. Allows you to map your network perimeter, check firewall rules and verify which services are reachable from the Internet.
Veyon is an open-source tool for computer monitoring and classroom management on Linux and Windows. Enables you to monitor and remotely control all computers, access individual computers or take screenshots with a click, lock all computers and block input devices, and broadcast any screen to the group. Integrates with your network and directory services using the information already stored on your LDAP or ActiveDirectory server. pizzaandcheese adds, "I've been using it for around a year or so in 2 of our labs and it is fantastic. But… make sure the devices have DCHP reservations or static IPs as it causes issues otherwise."
Cloud Foundry is an open-source tool for writing code in any language, with any framework, on any Kubernetes cluster. Provides a highly secure environment in which you can bypass complex configuration and routine operational tasks. Integrates with your environment and tools, including CI/CD and IDEs. Security patches are implemented quickly in response to vulnerabilities, so it stays secure for sensitive, mission-critical application development.
Octopus Deploy is an easy, centralized tool to automate your deployments and operations runbooks. Integrates with your favorite CI server and brings with it fantastic enhanced deployment/ops automation capabilities. Free for 10 deployment targets. habibexpresslikes it "for .NET application deployment. Create some pipelines in Azure DevOps and send packages into Octopus for deployments. Really great for managing environments, variables and credentials amongst other things."
Packetbeat is a lightweight, zero-latency-overhead network packet analyzer that sends data from your hosts and containers to Logstash or Elasticsearch. This passive tool lets you keep tabs on application latency and errors, response times, SLA performance as well as user access patterns and trends so you can understand how traffic is flowing through your network. Our thanks go to elk-content-share for the suggestion.
Sumatra PDF is a powerful multi-format reader for Windows. Supports PDF, EPUB, MOBI, FB2, CHM, XPS and DjVu files via a simple user interface with a top focus on speed. Thanks for this suggestion go to K0media.
Dehydrated is an easier way to sign certificates with an ACME-server. It can sign a list of domains (including wildcard domains) or a custom CSR (either standalone or completely automated), renew if a certificate is about to expire or defined set of domains changed, and revoke certificates. raad_altaie recommends it for "auto-renewing all Let's Encrypt certificates in your environment (was a huge headache before using this tool…)"
Kimchi is an open-source HTML5-based KVM management tool that is designed for ease of use. This web-based virtualization management platform provides an intuitive, flexible interface that displays and provides control of all the VMs running on a system. Allows you to manage most of the basic features you need to create and control a set of guest virtual machines.
HESK is a basic, lightweight help desk tool with an integrated knowledgebase that helps customers quickly resolve some common issues on their own. Includes scripted responses, ticket templates, custom data fields and statuses and much more. Tickets can be prioritized and organized, and they include request details, your ongoing discussion with the customer, which staff member is assigned, notes, files, status and time spent on resolution. Staff accounts can be created with restrictions on access and functionality, and you can track who is working on what. Our appreciation for the suggestion goes to tickhack.
Otter allows you to easily run complex PowerShell and Shell scripts that provision servers and manage their configuration. The custom GUI includes templates that make it easy for users to develop complex, multi-server orchestrations regardless of programming expertise. Includes dashboards and reports that show the state of your infrastructure, permissions and installation status. Free version has no server limit and includes all features but gives all users unrestricted access.
Murder enables you to use Bittorrent to distribute files to a large amount of servers within a production environment. This approach allows for fast, scaleable deploys in large, data-center environments with hundreds or thousands of servers—where centralized distribution systems wouldn't otherwise function. Kindly recommended by mfinnigan.
TCP Throughput Calculator can help you determine your network's theoretical limit, bandwidth-delay product and TCP buffer size to help you avoid or troubleshoot network speed issues. shadeland explains, "If traffic is TCP-based, latency can have a huge effect on bandwidth."
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
Fast Software Audit offers you a quick, easy way to gather details on the installed software and Windows product keys/IDs from remote computers. Enter the computer name you want to scan, or specify multiple computers by importing a list of names from a CSV file. Results can be viewed on screen or exported to CSV for use elsewhere.
Homebrew is known as "The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux)." It's designed to easily install all the useful items your original OS installer didn’t bother to include. Our appreciation for the suggestion goes to My-RFC1918-Dont-Lie.
Micro is a highly customizable, intuitive terminal-based text editor that's easy to install. Supports over 75 languages; 16, 256 and truecolor themes; and Sublime-style multiple cursors. jftuga explains, "It is very similar to Nano. It is a single-file, stand-alone executable that has mouse support, macro record/playback and syntax highlighting. It also has a Windows binary available for download (as well as Linux and MacOS)."
Total Commander, a simple file-manager replacement, has been around forever because it is genuinely useful and works well. While the popular Windows version is offered as shareware, the mobile version (Android, Windows Phone, PocketPC/WinCE)—which can be quite helpful in certain situations—is absolutely free.
inSSIDer is a simple tool to show how your WiFi network is configured as well as how other WiFi networks in the area are affecting yours. Also offers suggestions to improve speed and security. Can be a nice tool to suggest when users ask for help with problems on their home network. Kindly suggested by 1_1x1_1.
RackTables helps document hardware assets, network addresses, space in racks, network configuration and more for datacenter and server room asset management. Allows you to compile a list of all devices, racks and enclosures; mount the devices into the racks; maintain physical ports of devices and links between them; manage IP addresses, assign them to devices and group into networks; document NAT rules; describe loadbalancing policy and store configuration; attach files to various objects in the system; create users, assign permissions and allow/deny their actions; and label everything and everyone with a flexible tagging system. Kindly suggested by Alien864.
Logstash is a server-side data processing pipeline that dynamically ingests data from logs, metrics, web applications, data stores and assorted AWS services, and then transforms and ships it to your favorite "stash" in a continuous, streaming fashion. Regardless of format or complexity—Logstash filters parse each event as data travels from source to store, identify named fields to build a structure, and transform them into a common format to better facilitate analysis. Thanks for this one go to elk-content-share.
Alacritty is a modern terminal emulator with both a nice set of defaults and the option for extensive configuration. It integrates with other applications to offer a flexible set of features with high performance. Supports BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows. While currently in beta—i.e., there are still a few missing features and bugs to be fixed—it is appreciated by many for daily use. zhao-kun likes it as a "fast, cross-platform, OpenGL terminal emulator."
Network Stuff is a portable, open-source application with a host of useful network tools. Includes TCP/UDP telnet, ping/traceroute, DNS resolver, whois, ARP, stats and TCP/UDP/IP tables (iphelper functions), TCP/UDP/ICMP/CGI multithreaded scan (TCP and CGI scan could be done throw HTTP or socks proxy), raw packet capture (multiple options including application name), raw packet forging, wake on LAN and remote shutdown and interactive TCP/UDP transparent proxy.
Speed Test WiFi Analyzer EXPERT includes a robust set of tools for analyzing network connections. Provides speed tests, wireless coverage 360 analyzer, WiFi analyzer, multi pinger and LAN connected devices. 96Retribution adds, "I use https://analiti.com/ daily on my Android tablet, Amazon fire devices, etc. The free version is good. The paid version is cheap and great."
Everything Toolbar is the easy-access interface you've been craving for Everything that enables you to quickly search for files, folders and more right from the Windows taskbar. Our thanks for this suggestion go to hectornuss.
Observium Community is a low-maintenance, auto-discovering network monitoring platform that supports a wide range of device types, platforms and operating systems. It offers a powerful, intuitive interface for assessing the health and status of your network so you can proactively respond to more issues before they affect your services. Automatically collects and displays information on services and protocols and provides long-term metric collection and intuitive visual representations of collected performance data. Kindly suggested by meshinery.
Samplicator is a simple tool for receiving UDP datagrams on a given port and resending them to a specified set of receivers for occasions when you need to export NetFlow traffic to more than one NetFlow collector. Can also be configured to individually specify a sampling divisor N for each receiver that will only receive one in N of the received packets. crankynetadmin adds, "It's normally used for replicating netflow data, but can also replicate any UDP traffic."
Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) is a compliance checker tool for evaluating the hardening of your machines. It used to be available only for DoD, government or contractor use but was recently released to the public by DISA. This automated program scans a machine (locally or remotely) to determine security posture based on Security Technical Implementation Guidelines (STIGs)—the checklists that identify what constitutes an open or closed vulnerability and how to remediate it. swatlord notes that "STIGs (the rules SCC derives from) are what the DoD and DISA think should be set in order to harden machines... some of the items they hit against are no longer standard practice (eg expiring passwords). This is why it’s important to not just blindly remediate open STIG items without understanding how it impacts your environment."
gProfiler is an easy-to-use, open-source tool that produces a unified visualization of what your CPU is working on, displaying stack traces of your processes across native programs, Java and Python runtimes and kernel routines. It's a lightweight combination of different sampling profilers that requires minimal overhead, so it can be truly continuous. You can even upload results to the Granulate Performance Studio, which aggregates results from different instances over different periods to provide a holistic view of what is happening on your entire cluster. Comes with a pre-made Container image, and needs no changes or modifications to get started. Thanks for this one go to NoamGranulate.
netmiko is a multi-vendor library to simplify Paramiko SSH connections to network devices. It provides a fairly uniform programming interface across a broad set of devices and handles many of the low-level SSH details that can be time consuming and problematic.
Problem Steps Recorder is a useful tool for creating documentation that can be found in all versions of Windows since Windows 7 (client) and Windows 2008 R2. It quickly and easily captures each step of your procedures on the fly during execution and allows you to add comments—although sadly, keystroke capture is not included. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to in00tj.
ipcalc is a simple way to calculate the broadcast, network, Cisco wildcard mask and host range for any IP address/netmask—presenting the subnetting results in easy-to-understand binary values. cool-nerd suggests it "if you do a lot of network stuff. I've had it for years as a favorite. I'm sure there's fancy new ones out there, but for some reason I keep using it."
TortoiseGIT is an open-source Windows Shell Interface to Git that offers overlay icons showing the file status, a powerful context menu for Git and more. Works with whatever development tools you like and with any type of file. The primary means of interaction with TortoiseGit is through the context menu of Windows Explorer. Our thanks go to The-Dark-Jedi for this one.
IPinfo allows you to quickly pinpoint user locations, customize their experiences, prevent fraud, ensure compliance and more. PrettyBigChief explains: "It responds to invoke-webrequest with info about your IP."
Napalm provides a vendor neutral, cross-platform unified API to network devices. Since the configuration and management of network devices differs by vendor and platform, Napalm aims to make things simpler with a consistent API you can use across network devices from various vendors. This open-source solution works with all the most-popular automation frameworks. Our appreciation for this recommendation goes to packet_whisperer.
Squid is a caching proxy for the Web that supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and more to reduce bandwidth and improve response times. It can route content requests to servers in a wide variety of ways to build cache server hierarchies that optimize network throughput. Offers extensive access controls and runs on most available operating systems. YourBrainOnJazz explains, "Squid is not only a proxy, it also is an in-memory cache and has load balancing capabilities... Squid is used by companies, CDN's and ISP's around the world, legally, to help optimize delivery of content to consumers more efficiently and quickly."
Apcupsd is designed for power management and control of most of APC’s UPS models on Unix and Windows machines. During a power failure, it notifies users that a shutdown may occur. If power is not restored, a system shutdown will follow when the battery is exhausted, a timeout (seconds) expires, or runtime expires based on internal APC calculations determined by power consumption rates. Apcupsd works with most of the Smart-UPS models and most simple signaling models such as Back-UPS and BackUPS-Office. gerdesj likes that it "has a mini web interface that can show multiple UPS's details."
Pping measures the roundtrip delay application that packets experience relative to any capture point on the connection's path, using the naturally occurring reflected signal that can be obtained when the timestamp option is used in a TCP connection. These delays are collected per TCP connection with outbound packets providing the signal and inbound packets the reflection, and Pping measures the delay of two different round-trips from the monitored packets. jiannone suggests it as a "more intriguing option [for service assurance monitoring] ... It's an edgier solution but not synthetic in any way. The philosophy is spot on. The execution requires a lot of effort though."
Pynetbox is a Python API client library for Digital Ocean's well-loved NetBox. JasonDJ explains, "it’s basically a wrapper for requests and allows you to lookup and delete objects via the API in a python script. You can also create and delete via dictionaries. Very powerful when combined with for loops."
iTop is designed to manage the complexity of shared infrastructures, giving you the ability to analyze the impact of an incident or a change on various services and contracts. This open-source web application is flexible enough to adapt to your processes whether you want rather informal and pragmatic processes or a strict ITIL-aligned behavior. Features include documenting IT infrastructure and the relationships between elements and stakeholders of the infrastructure; managing incidents, user requests and planned outages; documenting IT services and contracts with external providers including SLAs; manual or scripted information export; and mass import (manually and using scripts) or synchronize/federate any data from external systems. Kindly recommended by biswb.
perfSONAR is an open-source network measurement toolkit that provides visibility to the nuances of your network to help with debugging. It offers federated coverage of paths and helps establish end-to-end usage expectations. jiannone appreciates that it "can do scheduled probes and statistics, along with iperf tests."
Network UPS Tools provides support for assorted power devices, like UPSs and PSUs. It offers many control and monitoring features and a uniform control and management interface. Covers over 140 manufacturers and thousands of power device models. Appreciation for sharing this tool goes to cdoublejj.
CherryTree is a hierarchical, wiki-style notetaking application for organizing your notes, bookmarks, source code and more. Features rich text, syntax highlighting and the ability to prioritize information. Uhaventlookedintoit tells us, "I love CherryTree. The node/subnode feature is great too.”
VSCodium is a repository of scripts that automatically build the Microsoft vscode repository into free-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration. aberu.gg explains, "It's just Visual Studio Code (which is open source), but with the telemetry/branding/licensing removed."
LibreSpeed is a configurable, lightweight self-hosted speed test for HTML5 and more. Supports PHP, Node, multiple servers and more. Features download, upload, ping, jitter, IP Address, ISP, distance from server, telemetry, results sharing and Multiple Points of Test. Our thanks for this one go to sryan2k1.
Unimus is a multi-vendor network device backup and configuration management system aimed at making automation, disaster recover, change management and configuration auditing easy. Free for up to 5 device licenses. Appreciated by TheDerpie, who explains, "Unimus fully discovers devices that you add into it, no need to configure each device credentials, vendor, model, etc. manually - just add a bunch of IPs in, it will figure everything out. Mass Config Push for automation is also really nice. Config change notifications with a few clicks. You have a multi-user RBAC system, with per-device access rights. It supports proxies for distributed device polling ... I could go on :)"
Joplin is an open-source notetaking/to-do app that can sync via plain text files for optimal flexibility. Notes can be organized in notebooks; are searchable; and can be copied, tagged and edited from the applications directly or from your text editor. Recommended by 1flewoverthereddit, who adds, "I have been using Joplin with success, android, windows, linux and a web browser clipping tool. All sync using one drive or nextcloud. Markdown."
Filezilla is a fast, reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client and server. It's ability to connect to SSH secured hosts makes it a great choice if you need to give access to a client who is more comfortable with GUI than CLI interfaces. Our thanks for this one go to Matt F.
Kate is a feature-packed editor for viewing and editing text files. Offers a wide variety of plugins, including an embedded terminal that can launch console commands, a powerful search and replace, on-the-fly spellcheck and a preview that shows how your MD, HTML and SVG will look. Supports highlighting for 300+ languages, understands how brackets work and helps navigate complex code block hierarchies. N0repi appreciates the "session feature which can resume everything i was previously working on. When it starts, a menu displays all of the sessions you saved and leaves it up to your choice. The tabs features saves me from having to open more than one window. You can also change the Kate's window theme, which is a small feature but very noticeable."
Mailcow is an open-source suite for running a self-hosted mailserver. It is a collection of different applications—like SOGo, Postfix and Dovecot—with an intuitive web interface for managing accounts. Recommended by spidernik84, who adds, "[It's] free, dockerized, comes with rspamd, a powerful webgui, easy single-command upgrades and sogo (webmail/calendar/contacts). Obviously based on open-source software. I've been running it for 3 years. Never a single issue, it's just fantastic."
Security Trails allows you to access current and historical DNS, domain and IP data. A free account gets you 50 queries per month. Recommended by DrinkMoreCodeMore: "Security Trails (formally known as DNS Trails) still has free accounts for anyone needing historical DNS data."
Moodle is an open-source, web-based learning management platform. Offers scalability and customizability, a simple interface with drag-n-drop features, good documentation and lots of plugins and add-ons. lorimar explains, "It ties into Banner and plenty of other college ERP systems, but does have a little bit of a learning curve/quirks."
ViewDNS offers a nice, online collection of DNS and OSINT tools. The tools are also offered as an API to give webmasters the ability to easily integrate them into their own sites. A free API "sandbox" account has a monthly limit of 250 queries. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to CingularIT.
TRex is an open-source tool that generates realistic L3-7 traffic for testing end-to-end network perfomance. Stateless functionality includes support for multiple streams, the ability to change any packet field and provides per-stream/group statistics, latency and jitter. Advanced Stateful functionality includes support for emulating L7 traffic with fully featured scalable TCP/UDP support. Emulation functionality includes client-side L3 protocols i.e ARP, IPv6, ND, MLD, IGMP, ICMP, DOT1X in order to simulate a scale of clients and servers. Can scale up to 200Gb/sec with one server. Thanks for this one go to StubArea51.
kube-state-metrics is an add-on agent that listens to your Kubernetes API server to generate metrics on the state of objects like deployments, nodes and pods. Exposes raw data so you can get it unmodified and perform your own heuristics. SuperQue suggests it for Kubertnetes users, "To see the status, you use kube-state-metrics to get the Kubernetes status of your services into Prometheus/Grafana."
Hashtab is an intuitive Windows tool for calclulating and displaying hash values from more than 2 dozen popular hashing algorithms. Simply select your file, go to properties and select the "File Hashes" tab to get started. Combines drag-n-drop simplicity with copy/paste and a built-in browse option. T-A-Z suggest it "to quickly calculate checksums for files."
Read the Docs is an open-source solution that helps organize your software documentation and keep it up to date through versioning. Hosts your documents and automatically builds them as you push code to Git, Mercurial, Bazaar or Subversion. Can host and build multiple versions of docs by having a separate branch or tag in your version control system. Kindly recommended by webfork2.
FSumFrontend is a drag-and-drop tool that allows you to compute message digests, checksums and HMACs for files and text strings. Can handle multiple files at once. Ninjanomic explains, "[It] generates hash values from a huge number of cryptohash algorithms. Good to prove file integrity when sending out data to other organizations, use it on the daily."
Audacity is an intuitive open-source multi-track audio editor and recorder. mythofechelon tells us, "I'm hardly an audiophile and definitely not an audio engineer, but any changes that I've ever needed to make to an audio file (convert from FLAC to 320 KbPS MP3, add fades, splice tracks, etc.) has been easily handled by Audacity, especially when you add additional libraries (LAME for MP3, FFmpeg, etc.)"
Bees With Machine Guns is a utility for creating micro EC2 instances to load test web applications. You simply enter a target url and an army of "bees" will simulate traffic originating from several different sources to hit the target. Thanks for this one goes to OkPomegranate6125.
Altaro VM Backup is a reliable, easy-to-use backup solution for Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware. The award-winning free version allows you to back up 2 virtual machines per host, so smaller businesses can enjoy robust, streamlined, enterprise-level functionality.
The Dude is a network monitor designed to improve the way you manage your network environment. It automatically scans all devices within specified subnets, maps the networks, monitors services and alerts you to problems. Allows you to mass upgrade RouterOS devices and configure them, run network monitoring tools and more. Kindly suggested by yashau.
vRIN is a VM appliance that can inject a large number of routes into a network, with routing, load test and GNS3. Generates /32 IPv4 and /128 IPv6 static routes and redistributes them into the selected routing protocol(s). Supports BGP (IPv4/6), OSPF, OSPFv3, RIPv2 and RIPng. onyx9 appreciates it as "a small VM with an easy-to-use interface to inject as much routes as you like."
Policy Analyzer for analyzing and comparing sets of Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to highlight redundant settings, internal inconsistencies or differences between versions or sets of Group Policies. Can compare GPOs against current local policy and registry settings. rroodenburg explains… "Maybe it’s not user friendly, but it’s a very good tool for comparing policies! You can export results to Excel as well."
ONLYOFFICE is an open-source office and productivity suite that includes viewers and editors for text, spreadsheets and presentations. It is fully compatible with Office Open XML formats. SgtKashim describes it as an "[o]nline 'O365'-like product, [that] includes some project management and CRM stuff as well."
MemTest86 is a comprehensive, standalone memory tester for x86 and ARM computers. It boots from a USB flash drive and checks for faults using a set of algorithms and test patterns that have been in development for over 20 years. S1mpel tells us, "In my current job, I always carry a stick with memtest86 and one with the current Windows 10 image around. Both come in handy pretty often."
Vistumbler is wireless network scanner for Windows that uses wireless and GPS data to map and visualize the access points around you. Thanks go to karateninjazombie for the recommendation.
Diagrams.net offers collaborative, security-focused diagramming for teams. Available as either a convenient online tool or a desktop app for those who need maximum privacy and control. Suggested by Gurve1, who finds it to be "amazing at network drawings."
Bulk Rename Utility is a Windows tool for easily renaming files and folders according to whichever criteria you choose. Allows you to add date/timestamps, replace numbers, insert text, convert case, add auto-numbers and more. pickymeek tells us it "has come in handy more at home, but I could see it being useful in an enterprise situation too."
iTerm2-Color-Schemes is a nice resource for MobaXterm users, kindly shared by Mambaaa, who explains “I’ve taken screenshots of 230+ syntax color schemes from GitHub and assembled them in an Imgur album ... To install you'll need to find the matching entry in the GitHub and replace the corresponding section in your ‘MobaXterm.ini’ configuration file found wherever Moba is installed. Just make sure Moba is not opened when you save the .ini file."
Invoke-GPOZaurr is a cmdlet found in the GPOZaurr PowerShell module that allows you to access a nice assortment of useful group policy reports. MadBoyEvo recommends it as "a tool to eat your Group Policies and tell you what's wrong with them or give you data for further analysis with zero effort on your side."
CADE is a 2D vector editor that's ideal for creating detailed network diagrams, flowcharts, schemas, maps and more with an intuitive GUI. It's Visio-style functions allow you to drag-n-drop and connect predefined blocks, shapes and both raster and vector images. Blocks/attributes collections can be modified and extended. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to baychildx.
TFC Temp File Cleaner cleans out the folders that house temporary files for Java and Windows and the IE, Opera, Chrome and Safari caches. It cleans the folders for all accounts on the computer, including Admin, NetworkService and LocalService. Kindly recommended by KenTankrus.
GNU Wget enables you to retrieve files from the web via HTTP and FTP. Retrievals can be time-stamped, so a new version can be retrieved when the file has changed. Supports proxy servers, for a lighter network load and access behind firewalls. Our thanks go to mikedopp for the suggestion.
VcXsrv is an open-source display server for Microsoft Windows that allows a Windows OS user to run GUI programs designed for the X Window System. VcXsrv can run Linux GUI programs installed with WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux. A shout out to JustAnotherITUser for pointing us to this one.
Visual Paradigm Online is a network diagram tool with support for UML, Org Chart, Floor Plan, wireframe, family tree, ERD and more. Features a simple, intuitive diagram editor and the ability to work collaboratively with your team. A shout out to baychildx for directing us to this resource.
RUPS (Reading and Updating PDF Syntax) enables you to look inside a PDF document to see all the PDF objects and content streams. This tool is built atop iText. Thanks for the recommendation go to JustAnotherITUser.
Trello is a simple, intuitive app for organizing all your task lists and to-dos. Our appreciation for the suggestion goes to Screwyoumrhat, who describes it as an "amazing free web app! Changed my world!"
QuickLook offers a quick preview of file contents when you press the spacebar. batterywithin explains that it "gives you preview like in MacOS... I love this, it's one of my favorite mac tools, now on Windows." (Not for Windows 10 S devices)
Shodan is a search engine for Internet-connected devices that allows you to discover all the IoT devices on your network. Find out what is connected, where it's located and with whom it's communicating. Appreciation for this one goes to panzerstyle.
f.lux changes the color temperature of your display based on the time of day, which can be far easier on your eyes. uwaterloo adds, "It takes a while to get used to the hue, but it's an easy solution to headaches (besides blue-light blocking lenses). Only disadvantage is if you're doing color-sensitive work since the color will be distorted (but even then, you can disable it for as long as you need)."
ImHex is a hex editor for "reverse engineers, programmers and people that value their eyesight when working at 3 AM." Recommended by At-M, who tells us, "I like this hexeditor a lot, i'm not too sure if this still qualifies as fast and simple, but it's great… (also, darkmode).”
NetzTools is a secure, lightweight multitasking network app. It contains the following tools: show ip interface, ping, ping6, secure shell, telnet, port scan, traceroute, LAN scan, OUI lookup and name lookup. Kindly suggested by rrattayork.
Ant Renamer makes the task of renaming large groups of files and folders easier. You simply select the files you want to rename and choose one of the provided renaming rules. Allows you to stop and undo renaming tasks in case you have regrets. Supports Unicode names. Kindly suggested by Moubai.
Unchecky is a quick answer to installers that try to push crapware or system modifications by requiring you to uncheck boxes at installation. Should you miss unchecking a box, you end up having to remove programs or reconfigure later on. Unchecky automatically unchecks unrelated installs and warns you about potentially suspect offers. corewen2 likes that, "This little small program has saved so many headaches of having to go back and uninstall crap…"
Websites
MITRE ATT&CK Navigator is a simple, open-source web app that provides basic navigation and annotation of the ATT&CK for Enterprise, ATT&CK for Mobile and PRE-ATT&CK matrices. It allows you to manipulate the cells in the matrix by color coding, adding a comment, assigning a numerical value and more. For those who appreciate MITRE ATT&CK, lucasni recommends adding this one to the toolbox.
urlscan allows you to scan and analyze websites by submitting a URL to find out if if it is targeting users. It automatically assesses the domains and IPs contacted, the resources (JavaScript, CSS etc.) requested from those domains and additional information about the page itself then takes a screenshot of the page and records the DOM content, JavaScript global variables, cookies created and a lot of other details. hard_cidr appreciates that it "gets a lot of good info on a website and takes a screenshot."
MITRE ATT&CK is a global knowledge base of cybercrime tactics and techniques that is compiled from real-world observations. It is intended to fuel development of threat models and methodologies in the private sector, government and the cybersecurity product and service community. rujopt finds it "useful for describing threats and quantifying your SIEM's visibility/detection/response coverage."
Networking with FISH is a networking website that shares both technical information and relevant career tips and life lessons from Denise Fishburne, a talented CCIEx2 and CCDE. Ms Fishburne's work is well appreciated by VA_Network_Nerd, who described her as "perfectly capable of driving a steel spike through the heart of anyone who would like to suggest "Girls can't route." She's been working in CPOC for 17 years and has probably physically broken more network devices than many of us have installed."
Threatpost provides the latest cybersecurity information for an audience of IT pros. Includes security news, videos, original feature reports, expert commentary and reader discussion on high-priority news. Credit for this resource goes to CGKL25.
Blogs
Practical Networking offers simple, concrete explanations of complex technology in a way that ensures what you learn is immediately applicable. It is intended to bridge the gap between very-basic articles on network engineering and those that get so far into the minutiae that they are virtually impossible to follow. Our thanks for the suggestion go to youngeng.
PrajwalDesai.com is the place where the author—a Microsoft MVP and server technology expert—shares his knowledge and helpful technical information. You'll find lots of posts and videos on SCCM, LYNC, Exchange and more, with detailed explanations including screenshots when appropriate to make solutions easier to deploy. narpoleptic suggests it as a good resource "for Configuration Manager/SCCM stuff."
DMAC Network Automation Blog is where network engineer Daniel Macuare shares his passion for solving problems with code and improving the state of network infrastructure. You'll find original articles, automation ideas and how-tos.
Lessons in Tech offers a series of well-written, detailed how-tos that explain assorted web, security and networking topics. Includes lots of example code and images for enhanced clarity. Our appreciation for the recommendation goes to DarkAlman.
Steve on Security offers high-level, practical advice and information on security for Microsoft products. It's the work of Steve Syfuhs, a senior developer on the Azure Active Directory team at Microsoft who was previously a Microsoft Developer Security MVP for many years before joining the MS team.
Tips
A great idea for labelling cables, compliments of reddwombat: "Use wrap mode, but not directly on cable. Put a large diameter plastic straw over the cable first. On fiber, it gives you more space to type… also allows spinning to read it, and labels tend to stay stuck."
GoogleDrummer adds, "You can still do this with premade, just run a cut up the straw, place it around the cable, then wrap the label around the cut closing it back up."
And gregarious119 shares another idea: "Something we have found to make installs/troubleshooting/organization easier is that we have our patch cables color coded to length: 5’-White, 7’-Green, 10’-Blue, 14’-Gray, 25’-Black, 50’-White, Custom-Purple, Orange-Non-data (Video/HDMI converters, etc), Red-Crossover, Yellow-Datacenter. It's not a game-changer, but it really makes identification quick and easy when you're in a pinch and need to install something quickly."
moltari adds, “We color code by what they do: black-Security, Purple-WAP, Yellow-Corp Data, Blue-Phone, etc."
We all hate accidentally sending unfinished emails, especially on sensitive topics, but it happens nonetheless. To eradicate the risk from your life, hasthisusernamegone suggests, "[D]on't compose it in your email client at all. All my ‘this is official, don't get this wrong’ emails are composed in a basic text editor (often Notepad), then copied and pasted over to Outlook when I'm happy with them. Then it gets another proof-read and a chance for the spell-check to do it's thing and only then does it get sent. That way I can't accidentally send a half-finished email to the board or whoever."
A great idea, kindly shared by gartral:
I automated the clock cards (mag strip badges) re-encoding the strips that *always* fail between 4-6 weeks of daily use. Cards have a barcode that identifies the person for certain systems. Cards have mag strips that identifies them for the doors… Took a tedious job Security absolutely despised doing and turned it into a self-help kiosk.
Workflow went from: Get buzzed in by security > have chat with guard > wait 5+ minutes for guard to fumble around… < repeat last step 1x > Get freshly written card
to: Get buzzed in > Shrug at Security > Scan badge > Enter AD Password > Swipe Card > Continue your day.
Some sage advice from technicalityNDBO for anyone thinking they should probably feel more 'expert' in the field by now:
"IT is like a knowledge treadmill. You're always learning new technology and forgetting obsolete. Other skilled trades allow for spending 100% of your effort into getting better and better. In IT, you have to invest a non-significant amount of effort into just not getting worse."
Building on our recent tip about logging terminal sessions, ahelsby adds:
[W]hen logging your terminal sessions – make sure you don’t log your password to those plain text log files! You can also log all of your powershell work too – I use the following to save to a temporary directory and update the window title with the filename
$transcriptlog = "c:\temp\powershelllogs\" + $env:username + (get-date -uformat "%y%m%d-%H%M%S"") + ".txt"
try{
stop-transcript|out-null
}
catch [System.InvalidOperationException]{}
start-transcript $transcriptlog
$host.ui.rawui.WindowTitle = $transcriptlog
If using powershell, install the psreadline module and then add the following to your $profile so your history does not contain any commands with the secret words in it.
Set-PSReadLineOption -AddToHistoryHandler {
param([string]$line)
$sensitive = "password|asplaintext|token|key|secret|credential"
return ($line -notmatch $sensitive)
}
A trick for rack mounting a heavy switch from docmn612:
"Screw a rack screw into the hole right below the one the device is going in, and rest the ears on those. The device should stay put while you lift one side up at a time and screw in the bottom screw."
Time-savers offered by shipsass:
- What is that IP address? ping -a 192.168.xx.xx to return an A record lookup
- Instead of telling a user "click in the address line" tell them press ctrl-L. Works in any browser or explorer window.
- in00tj offers a nice shortcut that works on any system that doesn't block broadcast responses: “If you ping the broadcast address, it will build an arp table."
Some time-savers kindly offered by fl3abag:
- Get last reboot: systeminfo | find "Time"
- Is user in any admin groups: whoami /groups | find "Admin"
- Reboot in 10 minutes: shutdown -r -t 600
- Generate battery report: powercfg /batteryreport
- Generate wifi report: netsh wlan show wlanreport
- Force an app to stop running: taskkill /f /im notepad.exe
...on a remote computer: taskkill /s computername /im notepad.exe - Windows update stuck shutting down trustedinstaller and you need to force reboot (run from another networked pc): sc \\computername queryex trustedinstaller
Taskkill /s computername /f /im trustedinstaller.exe
An engineering suggestion from PeakSufficient2839:
"Set up your favorite terminal program to log EVERY session. Make a folder, put it somewhere you'll remember, and log all your sessions into it. I called mine ‘Sessions’ and put it on my desktop. This works wonderfully for tracking config changes, remembering CLI commands, ‘show’ commands from weeks ago etc. I've come back to files over and over again, finding relevant info from previous events. Totally worth it."
Tutorials
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical Networking – But Were Afraid to Ask is a nice tutorial that touches on every area related to fiber in order to provide a basic understanding of how and why these networks function. Covers topics from the day-to-day to the advanced. TheTechnicalBoy explains, "20+ years of networking and I still refer to this all the time."
Developing NetBox Plugins is a series of how-tos on creating small, self-contained applications that can add new functionality to Netbox—extending as far as creating full-fledged apps. Plugins can access existing objects and functions of NetBox and use any libraries, external resources and API calls. Kindly suggested by ttl255.
20 CIS Controls & Resources offers detailed explanations of key controls you'll want to address in your security planning. rujopt finds this resource from Center for Internet Security "useful to help get understanding and prioritization of critical security controls to focus on implementing or building up."
Red Team Blues: A 10 step security program for Windows Active Directory environments provides a nice set of steps you can take to make it dramatically more difficult for attackers to create an opening that allows them to move inside your Active Directory environment. Flashy-Dragonfly6785 describes it as a "condensed primer [on AD].”
Linux Upskill Challenge is a month-long course for those who want to work in Linux-related jobs. The course focuses on servers and commandline, but it assumes essentially no prior knowledge and progresses gently. This valuable content was offered as a paid course in the past, but is now free and fully open source. Our thanks for this one go to nz_kereru.
CsPsProtocol offers a collection of simplified tutorials on core technology topics, including networking, programming, telecom, IoT and more. The helpful content is original and not available elsewhere. Kindly shared by cspsprotocoltech.
NetworkChuck Video Channel features tutorials on pretty much any IT certification area you might be pursuing offered by a CBT Nuggets Trainer. Covers Cisco, CompTIA, AWS and Microsoft with a focus on teaching the concepts in a way that is actually fun. lifeinbedlam tells us "he's taught me a lot about the future of networking and how I can prepare myself."
Lawrence Systems Blog offers video tutorials on firewalls, storage solutions, MSP tools, security tools and open-source topics. There's also discussion on some of the products and solutions they've worked with in addressing problems for their clients.
Robert McMillan’s YouTube Channel offers videos that teach how solve various complex technical problems—with a focus on speed. The videos quickly cover the essentials, so you can get the answers you need without a lot of extraneous detail. McMillan is an IT consultant, MCT and college instructor with over 50 technical certifications. Our thanks for the suggestion goes to Ping_Me_Later_Dude, who particularly appreciates the offerings on server training.
Shell Scripting Tutorial covers some of the basics of shell scripting and helps explain the powerful potential of programming available in the Bourne shell. Appreciation for directing us to this one goes to DhaiKhan.
This excellent blog post explains exactly how to use the GPOZaurr command. Kindly suggested by ahelsby, who tells us, "I’d highly recommend getting familiar with the GPOZaurr powershell module that in minutes can produce an excel doc of all your gpo’s, let you know which ones have issues, reveal passwords stored in GPO’s and much more."
NANOG Tutorials is the video channel of the North American Network Operators’ Group, which offers a good selection of highly useful tutorials on networking engineering, operations and architecture. Content is intended for both students and those working in the field, with a goal of sharing industry best practices, tools and resources. Our appreciation for helping us find this one goes to rankinrez.
Microsoft Virtual Training Days are 1-2 day virtual events for enhancing your skills. Take advantage of expert webinars on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Microsoft Power Platform and interact with Microsoft experts. denyaaa explains, "you can get 2 free certifications and insight into newer Microsoft products, totally free." US options here.
Training Resources
dn42 is a large, dynamic VPN that uses various internet technologies (BGP, whois database, DNS etc.) where you can learn networking and experiment with routing. Gives you an opportunity to build your understanding of routing technologies risk-free using a reasonably large network. roundbacon recommends it for those who "want some practical experience with BGP."
flAWS Challenge is a fun way to learn about security issues to watch for with AWS and devops. A series of levels teach about how to avoid common mistakes as well as AWS-specific "gotchas." Hints are provided that teach you how to discover what you need to know. If you're in a hurry, you can just use the hints to go from one level to the next instead of playing along. Our thanks for this one go to disclosure5.
A Practical Guide to (Correctly) Troubleshooting with Traceroute is a rather lengthy slide deck from Richard Steenbergen's presentation on how to make the best use of the traceroute tool in troubleshooting network connections. Walks you through the hows, whys and how tos of this highly useful tool. According to the recommendation from sletonrot, there's "some good info here."
Vscode Vim Academy is a game to help you learn and practice vim and vscode keys in an enjoyable way. Covers 2-5 vim keys per level, with level text and keys randomly generated per level. You race to complete 10 sets of tasks with as few keystrokes as possible. Appreciation for the recommendation goes to quackycoder.
Cheatsheets
CSP Cheatsheet is a quick reference on all the supported features and directives of Content Security Policy. Includes example policies and suggestions on how to make the best use of CSP. Can be helpful when you need to identify valid and invalid directives and values.
Vim Cheatsheet is a nicely organized, printable collection of key, useful Vim commands. A dark version is also available here. Kindly shared by kaisunc.
Regexp Cheatsheet is a helpful blog post on Basic Regular Expressions (BRE) and Extended Regular Expressions (ERE) syntax supported by GNU grep, sed and awk. It covers the differences between these somewhat complex tools — for example, awk doesn't support backreferences within regexp definition (i.e., the search portion). Kindly shared by its author, ASIC_SP.
Awk Cheatsheet is a collection of one-line Awk scripts compiled into a time-saving resource by Eric Pement. Kindly shared by Bluecobra, who appreciates it as a quick place to look for "nearly everything I need for Awk in one cheatsheet."
The Most Common OpenSSL Commands is a list of essential commands and their usage for those who want to leverage the incredible versatility of OpenSSL but aren't all that comfortable dealing with certs. SheeEttin explains, "You don't need any understanding of openssl at all [for it to be useful]. You probably only need this... and a basic understanding of certs and cert formats. Also, never publish your private key."
Sed Cheatsheet is Eric Pement's handy reference to help facilitate Sed scripting. Bluecobra appreciates this compilation of useful one-line scripts because "knowing your way around the gnu toolset has been super useful for me.... Nearly everything I need for Sed [is] in the one-liners cheat sheet."
JavaScript Cheatsheet is a highly useful, 9-page cheatsheet full of illustrative examples. It is highly readable, easily understood and available in a printable pdf version. Kindly suggested by ribs_all_night.
A Script
Meraki-CLI is a wrapper around the official Meraki Dashboard API Python SDK that makes all 400+ commands available to the user as a standard command-line tool, including -h help options, commands, switches and arguments. Supports classic Linux-style pipelining, so you can pipe the output of one instance of the program to another. Kindly shared by its author, packetsar, who recommends it for "any network engineers out there [who] have had a need for easy Meraki scripting, but didn't want to write code against Meraki's REST API."
A Free eBook
Office 365/Microsoft 365 – The Essential Companion Guide covers everything from basic descriptions to installation, migration, use-cases and best practices for all features within the Office/Microsoft 365 suite. This 100+ page second-edition eBook, written for Altaro by Microsoft Certified Trainer Paul Schnackenburg, is the perfect desktop reference guide for current and aspiring Office/Microsoft 365 admins.
Podcasts
Network Collective is a network engineering podcast with industry experts, pioneers and fellow engineers from the networking community. Topics range from protocol deep-dives to career management, but with a focus on relevance and providing value to those working in the field. Kindly recommended by FlyingPasta.
The History of Networking features fascinating discussions about the creation of all the technologies that make the modern Internet possible. It's an opportunity to hear stories about world-changing technologies and the organizations involved from the very people who created them. Credit for this one goes to BPDU_Unfiltered.
The Hedge is a network engineering podcast that covers technology and other topics of relevance to a network engineer, from the smallest networks up to the entirety of the internet. Appreciated by BPDU_Unfiltered.
Heavy Networking is a weekly podcast from Packet Pushers that takes an "unabashedly nerdy" deep dive into data networking tech. Features hour-long interviews with industry experts and real-life network engineers from the tech community, standards bodies, academia, vendors and more. Appreciated by FlyingPasta.
Clear To Send is a weekly podcast on wireless engineering that covers WiFi technology, design tips, troubleshooting and tools. Features informative interviews with wireless engineers, tech news on the topic, and product information. batwing20 thinks you'll like it... "if you are into wireless."
On-Call Nightmares Podcast features the intriguing tales of those brave souls who work on-call in technology. Host Jay Gordon interviews the "survivors" as they share some of their nightmare experiences in trying to understand and resolve the problems that got dropped in their laps.
Lists
Microsoft Mac Downloads is a one-stop shop for all the Mac-specific Microsoft installers. cardboardmoon explains, "It's a cleanly-organized table of download links (automatically updated) for standalone installer packages of Microsoft products for macOS systems. As someone managing a 70/30 Win/Mac workstation environment, this will save me quite a bit of hassle with the Apple side."
Awesome Network Automation is a curated list of fantastic network automation resources that is a real treasure trove for anyone looking for a convenient way to find useful information on network automation. Kindly suggested by onefst250r.
Documentation Resources
A Proper Server Naming Scheme is a terrific blog post that explains a well-thought-out approach to hardware naming for small- to medium-sized businesses. These best practices are designed to help you avoid common problems as the list of devices grows and changes over time. Thanks for this one go to techforallseasons.
Affinity symbol set is a collection of printable, manufacturer-independent 2D icons you can use in your computer network diagrams. Kindly suggested by FunderThucker, who tells us, "Just drag and drop these svg icons onto your visio doc. They're high quality and look good."
Humor
Tech Support Cheat Sheet is the answer for those tired of being expected to know how to use every piece of software that has ever been written, regardless of whether it is at all related to your job. This all-purpose how-to is the perfect addition to your arsenal of user training materials. Battle-tested by Hoggs, who wryly adds, "I share this with my users a lot. :)"
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.