As announced before, I will be speaking once again at the annual Atlanta SQL Saturday. The Atlanta MDF is a great group and they put on an excellent event each year. Note: this year, the venue has changed for the first time in as long as I can recall. Be sure to check the location: … Continue reading Speaking at SQL Saturday #652 Atlanta 2017
During my talk "Azure SQL DB: 12 Things to Know ," I briefly discuss the importance of monitoring and updating the IP addresses allowed to connect to your Azure SQL DB. Efficiently managing those firewall rules means you want to script them. In this post, I will provide a few ideas of how you can manage the database server rules using PowerShell scripts.
Most summers are opportunities to take a break, reflect and recharge. I am thankful for visits from my mother and my mother-in-law. I am pleased to be able to travel regularly. And I am also excited about the many opportunities to present at community events. Here is my speaking schedule for summer 2017. July 15: … Continue reading Summer Speaking Schedule
I am preparing some posts about managing aspects of Azure services with PowerShell. Before you can do that, you'll need to authenticate to Azure. In this "prereq" blog post, I'll briefly walk through the process of authenticating to your Azure subscription from PowerShell. This blog post will only use the "newer" Azure Resource Manager (AzureRm) … Continue reading Logging on to Azure with PowerShell
The final day... and it's all about memory. The operating system and some processes' memory contain secrets, such as password hashes and private keys of X.509 certificates. The value of these is very high, as demonstrated not too long ago by the severity of Cloudbleed and a few years ago by Heartbleed. Knowing how to … Continue reading CQURE Academy 5-Day Challenge: Final Day
Read about: Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 The fourth day was all about Windows password hashes. The video tutorial by Greg demonstrated how to access the local SAM database on a running computer and how to access the local and domain SAM database offline. I thought I knew a few things about … Continue reading CQURE Academy 5-Day Challenge: Day 4
Wednesday was Day 3 of the 5-day challenge. CQURE appears to be monitoring feedback because they've added a way to comment on and discuss the day's challenge. Nicely done! (Unfortunately, they used Facebook Connect which I would rather stay away from.) Still, it's nice to see them being very responsive! The video tutorial showed different … Continue reading CQURE Academy 5-Day Challenge: Day 3
On day 2, the challenge continued with access management. This time, the video tutorial covered file permissions and how to query them using a variety of script commands. Very useful skills to have if you've ever tried to audit a file server where many people have had their hands in the pot. I didn't fare … Continue reading CQURE Academy 5-Day Challenge: Day 2
It's time to start preparing a new thick image for the computer labs. There are some interesting changes that need to be made this go-around, including a solution for Installing Office 2016 (VL, MSI) together with Visio and/or Project 2016 (click-to-run, C2R): Deadlocked, but I will write about that later. This post is about Visual … Continue reading Silent, Offline Install for Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise with MDT
CQURE is running an online challenge contest this week (May 8-12, 2017). I am participating and I will blog about the assessment challenge the day after the challenge. These are my notes and lessons learned from the first day challenge. The first day challenged my knowledge of security settings of Windows Services. You too might … Continue reading CQURE Academy 5-Day Challenge: Day 1