Do you ever wonder why you have to add an uppercase letter or an exclamation point when you create a password? You can thank Bill Burr for that. In 2003, Bill Burr wrote password security guidelines for National Institute... Read More
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Winners from our Sysadmin Day meme contest
Happy SysAdmin Day! In the run up to this important day, we encouraged sysadmins to share with us a funny meme of their creation illustrating stereotypes associated with their jobs. The results illustrate a widely misunderstood profession – by users, colleagues and the society! All the winning submissions made an attempt at humor. Are you in for a chuckle? Here is the list of winners: Christopher,... Read More
How to show appreciation on Sysadmin Day
Have you heard of System Administrator Appreciation Day? The last Friday of July, which this year falls on the 28th, is dedicated to those unsung heroes who make sure your network is secure, your computer is up and running,... Read More
3 reasons why a client is not PXE booting and how to fix it
In this blog post, we will go over a few scenarios where a client might not PXE boot as expected. If you’re not familiar with the PXE boot functionality used by Specops Deploy, you might want to start with... Read More
Office 2016 Silent Install with Specops Deploy
In this blog post, I will walkthrough how you can silently install Microsoft Office 2016 on machines on your network using Specops Deploy / App. To get started, you will need to run the Office Customization Tool, and create... Read More
Credential stuffing – the password breach aftermath
RIP Passwords – the 2017 Data Breach Industry Forecast by Experian anticipates your demise. Until then, experts are predicting “aftershock” breaches. In 2016, there were 1,093 security incidents involving loss of sensitive data, and three billion credentials stolen worldwide.... Read More
Reduce vulnerabilities to the WannaCry/WannaCrypt Ransomware outbreak with Specops
The first line of defense in this scenario is to run the latest Operating system(s) fully patched. The exploit code used by WannaCrypt was designed to work only against unpatched Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (or earlier OS) systems,... Read More
Remove Specops Authentication Client Start menu shortcuts
The Specops Authentication is a shared Client that provides functionality for Specops Password Policy, Specops uReset, and Specops Password Reset. For uReset & Password Reset, the Client provides Start menu shortcuts, a Reset Password link on the login screen,... Read More
Password Strength Meters – more harm than good?
Fact one, passwords are here to stay, at least for the near future. Fact two, users have not gotten any better at making them stronger, or using additional factors during authentication. To help users with this seemingly impossible task,... Read More
PXE boot, GUIDs, and MAC addresses in Specops Deploy and WDS
In this blog post, I will describe the core functionality in the PXE boot used by Specops Deploy. I will address prestaging, and how the MAC address, or UUID work when finding objects in AD. Pre-boot eXecution Environment (PXE)... Read More