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Every now and then, cleaning through the devices abandoned at customers’ premises by the various providers, we also come across little toys that can still offer a lot, especially in a HomeLab context or for emergency solutions (being careful that they do not become permanent…). These can certainly include the Huawei AR502 4G router**, kindly offered decommissioned by Vodafone, which happened to fall into my hands and to date is doing excellent 24/7 service as a HomeLab router....

When it comes to Backup, we know, things get serious. In an ever-changing IT and CyberSec landscape, whether it’s your company’s data or your customer’s, careful planning of this process is critical. The (minimal) best practice of 3-2-1 we all know, right? Let’s start with live data on Server, copy to local NAS and further copy to Cloud for example. If you use Synology NAS, the obvious choice is Hyper Backup: integrated, free, does the job....

MFA everywhere! This is THE mantra that every organization should adopt to protect access to its resources and sensitive data. Whether it is access to e-mail, HR systems, financial data or cloud applications, MFA must be an integral and integrated part of it. Of the various MFA solutions available, Microsoft Entra ID in combination with the Microsoft Authenticator app is certainly one of the most popular and provides a smooth and secure user experience, particularly when supported by appropriate Conditional Access policies....

For those unfamiliar with it Milestone XProtect is one of the most widely used video management software (VMS) on large scale environment. Quoting from the company’s website: The XProtect VMS products are video management software designed for installations of all shapes and sizes. Whether you want to protect your store from vandalism or you want to manage a multi-site, high security installation, XProtect makes it possible. The solutions offer centralized management of all devices, servers, and users, and provide an extremely flexible rule system driven by schedules and events....

In enterprise environments for many years we have managed user data through solutions such as Folder Redirection and Roaming Profiles. These methods, when properly implemented, have proven to be very effective, allowing users to access their data from any computer in the corporate network. In some cases, these solutions have even been a compelling choice, both to promote mobility and to facilitate more streamlined and centralized backup management. However, with the rise of cloud computing and the almost universal adoption of Microsoft 365, we now have an additional and in some cases preferable option available: OneDrive Known Folder Move (KFM)....

As we saw in a previous article, Wake on LAN is a network protocol that allows a computer to be remotely booted by sending a special packet called Magic Packet. Trying to be vaguely technical, it is important to remember that this protocol operates on layer 2 of the OSI model. In other words, Wake on LAN packets are transmitted as Broadcast UDP and are therefore limited to the local network in which they are generated....

Nearly a year has passed since the preview launch of the New Microsoft Teams and, although not exactly all the features seem to be perfectly stable, Microsoft decided long ago to automatically deploy this new version in place of the dear, old, established Teams Classic. Now, in principle, I see this automatic update as absolutely welcome, according to Microsoft’s own words: Users who have installed a different version of Teams will have their version replaced with the version being provisioned....

Remote, remote, remote! In the management of our machine fleet at the very first places of the must-haves we surely find the configuration of remote access no? We have options such as RDP, SSH, and WinRM. However, we may encounter an issue if the machine is turned off. You have a choice between calling someone on site to turn it on, going to the site yourself, doing everything yourself from your desk with WOL....

In a bureaucracy that, albeit slowly, is increasingly pushing digital and dematerialization, digital signatures have been in daily use for some years now. Their best-known incarnation takes the form of files with the extension p7m: a digital container for one or more signed documents. In fact given their widespread use recently I needed to make a utility available for opening and verifying p7m files to all users in a company. How to do this?...

Several times in our articles we’ve emphasized the significance of monitoring our infrastructure closely. This certainly applies to simple UPSs as well, in fact in the previous article we talked about how we can monitor an APC UPS even without SNMP thanks to APC-ScrapConnect. The article ended with a cliffhanger by revealing that APC-ScrapConnect was designed to integrate with Zabbix more easily through a specific discovery function. Shall we explore this further?...