E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva"

The perfect gift for Christmas

Want to give the perfect gift for Christmas?  XP sp2 that's what.  So what are you missing out on if you don't have SP2?

• You don't have the full protection of group policy features that sp 2 has
• You don't have the built in IFrame protection and all the “preventive“ protection stuff they've done in sp2
• You don't have all the latest IE protections

While Windows 98 will have critical patches released until June of 2006, the fact that you have to lower the security in your network to accomodate them in your network is unacceptable to me.  Remember you are only as strong as your weakest link. 

For those folks that say “I have apps who's vendors won't support XP sp2”, to that I say, let me know whom those vendors are.  Your vendors should not be the ones setting your security policy.

And Jethro?  Dude!  Get up to SP2 as fast as you can!  The people that I'm trying to jump up and down and get on XP sp2 are probably wheezing on Windows 95 and 98.  It almost sounds like you are already on XP sp1?  If so, what in the WORLD are you waiting for?  Granted, I think that XP sp2 without a server to control the features is like driving a fast car in second gear the whole way and I would argue that if you have 6 XP computers... dear... come on up to the pleasure us control freaks can get with group policy and XP sp2s and join us with a Windows 2003 server or better yet a SBS 2003 server to control those 6 machines!  Okay so maybe I'm a major control freak, but knowing that I can remotely patch, touch and control all my workstations just makes my day.

The only pain I had in upgrading to SP2 was two workstations that had digital video cards from nvidia.  That's Nvidia not Windows at fault.  All of my other machines had no issues.  What's cool now is that I have firewalls on my desktops that I control from my server.  I've limited the attack surfaces of both my server and my desktop.  Now once I kick my workstations down to user mode ... that's “my” Christmas present to myself...I'll be in an ever better position to protect and defend all over the place.

Jethro... it's not painful.  Not when you've made sure your machines are clean of spybot gunk like Charlie said.  And once it's done you can rest snug as a bug knowing that your machines have the best protection around.

If I never post back to the blog, tell my Sister I'm stuck in the attic

We're putting up the Bradley Christmas tree and this normally includes one of us [normally me] crawling on my knees in the attic to pull out the Christmas ornaments.  The good news is this year we found the spare tiny light bulbs.. the huge bag of tiny light bulbs...that is as big as it is because every year we can't find the bag of spare tiny light bulbs until about December 26th and we buy more each year. All bulbs worked this year [we leave the light strings on the tree], so it's fitting we found the bag when we don't need it.  We'll probably forget where we're going to store it this Christmas season in case we need it so we'll probably end up with more light bulbs after we go to the store and buy more because neither one will remember where we stuck the bag.

When I was a little girl we had a mondo kewl Christmas tree.  Aluminum tree with the color glo wheel.  Now THAT was a Christmas tree.  None of this warm, cozy Christmas tree stuff, this was George Jetson's tree embodied.  To see how much it costs now...just don't tell my Dad who probably sent it off to Salvation Army years ago how much they are selling for now.  But we didn't have a hardwood...nah ... our tree was 100% metal.  One day Mom was vacuming the living room and had to yell “timber” as she sent the tree tumbling over.

Okay enough of a break... time to crawl back in and drag out the rest of the ornaments.

P.S.  You don't have to call my Sister.. I made it out.  :-)

Mouse potatoes - check out the resources here

If you are into learning online you might want to check out some of the resources and links for info.

First off are the full video webcasts or seminars that can be found here at the Microsoft online seminars.  Click around and take a look.  Some great topics out there.

Then there are the Office Live meeting style of webcasts which can be searched from [sort of anyway] through here.  It's really not clear that if you uncheck everything except “on-demand” it appears to seach old webcasts.  I'm checking to see if there's an easier way.

Then there are the chats [through the new interface that doesn't need funky ports opened up]. 

Then there are e-courses that you can take online.  Michael Howard refers to several of the Security Dev courses here.

A couple of other sites that have great security online seminars.  Blackhat for one has online presentations.  Defcon has online stuff as well [check out their “see it“ “hear it“ sections.

Last but not least Jerry has a long list of excellent resources.

I know that I even will fire up an archived webcast and stick the video over on my second monitor and listen in while multi-tasking.  It's a great way to at least keep up to date on the buzz words :-)

If you run an SBS user group, we're starting to do Office Live meeting presentations to groups amongst ourselves.  It's really cool.  All it takes is a phone, a high speed connection and an Office Live meeting account and we've had presentations where I'm in Florida, Roger and 25 other people are in San Diego and another presenter is in Redmond.  I've used the technology as well to have presenters talk to my CalCPA tech groups. 

Think about remote presenting to your clients as well.  Nothin' sells SBS more than showing what it can do.

P.S. Forgot one more source for Webcasts... the MSDN ones.