Sunday, June 27, 2004
How Secure Are Your Systems?
Microsoft has come up with some rules called the 10 Immutable Laws of Security. It really gives you something to think about. It is very easy to get complacent and forget the basic principles of computer security.
I found a reference to this site on Susan Bradley’s blog. She is a Small Business Server MVP (you will find Small Business Server MVP’s listed in the right column) and is security conscious to a fault. Oh, don’t take that as a complaint. It’s a good thing.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Critical Trojan in the Wild - Download.Ject
There is a vulnerability in Internet Information Server 5.0 that was reported today. Websites can become infected and then infect visitors to the web sites on the infected machine. However, that being said if the System has been patched with update 835732 the system will not have the vulnerability.
Just another reason to keep your system up to date. On the client side you will be protected if you keep your antivirus updated and your security settings for Internet Explorer set properly.
For details see this Microsoft Bulletin.
A technical look at the problem can be found on SANS Internet Storm Center Handlers Diary dated June 25th.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Install Software Update Services Server 1.0
If you have Small Business Server installed and you want to automatically distribute updates and patches to your network systems check out this guide. It explains how to deploy Software Update Services Server to your Windows 2003 Small Business Server.
I recently updated the Small Business Server in my test lab. The installation took about 30 minutes and works as advertised. The install took 30 minutes but in order to have the updates available for network systems you had to approve each update in the server by checking each one. This took some time. There was a bunch and it was a real pain because you couldn’t select them all then uncheck the ones you don’t want.
It is completed and I no longer need to go to the workstations and update manually. If your have a lot of systems on your network SUS will save you some administrative time.
Check it out.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
The Small Business Server Weblog
Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 has to be one of Microsoft’s best products for small business. I wanted to do a weblog on Small Business Server to talk about my experiences with the product and provide a resource for the Small Business Server community in the process.
Small Business Server is an “enterprise in a box” and has everything that a small business could need to leverage information technology in a way that is easily managed. It incorporates a company intranet website, with network wide FAX, e-mail, database server and firewall on a single computer. It can make a business very productive.
I look forward to building this into a good resource for the Microsoft Small Business Server.
Stay tuned.