IT Pro Tuesday #227
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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
Discover what were the biggest security threats of 2022 and what to look out for in 2023 with Hornetsecurity’s Cyber Security Report 2023. Based on an analysis of more than 25 billion emails it’s essential reading for all IT pros and especially those running Microsoft 365.
You’re also invited to take a brief survey to help us better understand what’s going on regarding remote management in the context of IT security. Those who participate will be entered to win a Google Pixel watch worth $349!
We’re looking 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 list on our website here. Enjoy.
A Free Tool
ntfy allows you to send notifications from any computer to phone or desktop via scripts. It's a simple, open-source HTTP-based pub-sub notification service with no signup or setup required. bsnipes explains: "It allows you to listen for notifications sent to 'https://ntfy.sh/super-secret-whatever' and have the notifications appear in your phone app or desktop notifications. You can self-host also. Many examples of usage are provided on their pages."
A Tutorial
The Ultimate SPF/DKIM/DMARC Best Practices 2022 walks you through the implementation of the latest recommendations to reduce spoofing and phishing, improve your organization's reputation, and enhance email deliverability. Thanks for compiling this useful guide goes to freddieleeman, who explains, "After a lot of sleepless nights carefully reading every related RFC and best practice, I've written a concise blog with the latest best practices on the subject of outbound email security (SPF, DKIM and DMARC)."
Another Free Tool
yamllint, as the name suggests, is a linter for YAML files. It checks syntax validity, as well as looking for more-complex errors like key repetition and cosmetic problems such as line length, trailing spaces, indentation etc. This one was kindly recommended by yankdevil.
Yet Another Free Tool
Tera Term is an open-source tool that uses software to emulate different types of computer terminals, from DEC VT100 to DEC VT382. Supports telnet, SSH 1 & 2 and serial port connections plus has a built-in macro scripting language that supports Oniguruma regular expressions as well as a some nice plugins. Ron-Swanson-Mustache says, "I personally like TeraTerm more than Putty."
One More Free Tool
wavemon is a Linux wireless-network monitoring tool for watching signal and noise levels, packet statistics, device configuration and network parameters. The ncurses-based application is designed to work with all devices supported by the Linux kernel. Appreciation for the suggestion goes to sliddis.
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
fping is similar to ping in that it sends ICMP echo probes to network hosts, but it is optimized for better performance when pinging multiple hosts. This useful tool has been around for ages and is considered a standard for network diagnostics and statistics. Suitable-repl describes it simply, "fping -g x.x.x.x/24 pings the subnet."
Client Center for Configuration Manager is a ConfigMgr Agent troubleshooting tool that provides a user-friendly interface for a quick overview of client settings, running services and agent settings. vawlk uses it to "remotely troubleshoot SCCM client issues … This is just a gui for SCCM/Windows powershell commands, and it shows you a window for those commands as they run. Pretty sweet for an SCCM environment."
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.