IT Pro Tuesday #165

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

This week, we're gathering information on how sysadmins are dealing with ransomware attacks. If you can spare 4 minutes to complete this survey, we'll include you in a drawing for a chance to win an Oculus Rift S VR worth $399/€349! 

Also, in case you missed it, we’d like to spread the word about our own free tool: 365 Threat Monitor. This newly released tool will allow you to find out how many threats make it through to your organization on M365—so you can proactively prevent users from being tricked.

The forever-free mobile app detects any threats that breach your Microsoft 365 security and sends a phone alert, so you can delete it with just a click and prevent any damage. The app was developed by Hornetsecurity—the people behind IT Pro Tuesday—a provider of premium email security services to 40,000+ customers worldwide.

The first 10,000 M365 IT admins who download the app will get a forever-free version that allows you to make a limited number of deletions. Setup takes seconds – Learn more and download the app here.

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

Regshot is an open-source registry-comparison utility that can be helpful after making system changes or installing a new software product. It allows you to quickly take a snapshot of the registry pre- and post-change, and then produces a changes report (in either text or HTML) that lists all modifications between the two snapshots. You can also specify folders (with subfolders) to scan for changes as well. A shout out to daonlyfreez for directing us to this one.

A Tip

A clever tactic shared by sobrique to diplomatically help a user discover "obvious" problems: "If I think it's not plugged in, I never ask 'is it plugged in?'… Because inevitably they will say 'yes' because ‘of course it is.’ So instead, I'll ask a question that requires them to look at the right location to find the answer. Some variant on, ‘What sort of cable number is it?’, ‘Is there a machine ID on the back of your computer/printer?’ or ‘What sort of cable do I need to bring to replace it?’ A reasonable amount of times, I get an 'Oops, never mind' when I do this."

Another Free Tool

Universal is a cross-platform solution to facilitate the creation of web-based tools using PowerShell—including APIs, automation and dashboards. Offers an administrator console, management REST API, PowerShell cmdlets and an idempotent configuration system using PowerShell scripts.  TurnItOff_OnAgain appreciates its "automation interface that gives a webUI for creating and scheduling PowerShell scripts. It really is amazing. I migrated all of my scripts to it, then created dashboards in place of the scripts the required user input. I just keep finding new things to do with it."

A Blog

PeteNetLive is the technical blog of Pete Long, an expert, highly credentialed Technical Architect, IT Consultant and Microsoft MVP. You'll find lots of well-explained and detailed articles (with very helpful diagrams and screenshots) on topics related to networking, VMware, Microsoft and Cisco. A shout out to mls577 for directing us to this one!

One More Free Tool

Lightshot is a fast, easy way to take a customizable screenshot. The intuitive interface lets you capture any area on your desktop with just two clicks. Allows you to edit your screenshots, search to find similar images, and share them right from the app. Appreciation for this one goes to FenrisFrost.

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

Combofix scans your computer for known malware and attempts to clean any infections found. Afterward, it displays a report on anything that was not automatically removed. MattF tells us, "This is my go-to tool when the standard antivirus/malware software can't seem to find the problem—ComboFix almost always does. It looks for and removes most rootkits and trojans. In order to use it, you must completely disable all antivirus solutions (you should completely remove AVG). Caution: If not used properly, it can could wreak havoc on the machine you're trying to fix."

iCACLS allows you to efficiently change permissions and display or modify Access Control Lists for files and folders. Because most permissions are set at the per-directory level, this tool simplifies the process of restoring the entire directory—which is necessary in order to get Access Control Entries for even a few individual files. Resolves various issues with the older CACLS & XCACLS. Our thanks for the recommendation go to NervousComputerGuy.

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