Rodney from Microsoft Canada forwarded me this, to get it pushed out to as many people as possible. 

In case you have been living under a rock for the past month you have most likely heard about the DNS cache exploit recently discovered by Dan Kaminsky.  This might be one of the most severe flaws discovered as it was cross platform affecting everything from Windows to Linux, UNIX, Cisco IOS etc....  It was so big in fact that all the major vendors worked together to get the patch issued on the same day.  The flaw would allow an attacker to insert a malicious DNS record into the cache.  As an end user you type in www.technet.com and rather than get the proper IP address the cache delivers the malicious IP address sending you to ????  You can find out more on the details of the flaw at Dan's blog.

You should also make sure that you are patched.  Make sure that your upstream ISP DNS servers are patched by calling them or using Dan's DNS Checker at the top of his website.

So why all of a sudden a rush to ensure you are patched?  Well the patches issued by the vendors have been reverse engineered and exploit code has been published!  Dan has said many times that this is an extremely easy to launch exploit that could be implemented in seconds.

MS08-037 - Vulnerabilities in DNS Could Allow Spoofing (953230)

KB953230 - Vulnerabilities in DNS could allow spoofing

Go. Read. Patch. Now.

And when you are done, copy and paste this blog post to your blog, email it to your IT Pro buddies, get the word out!

If you have links to the patches from other vendors, please leave a comment with the URL!

Friday was Bill Gates last day at Microsoft.....like you were able to miss the biggest retirement since Bill Clinton (not that I am comparing Ballmer to George W!). I have to write a small thank you to Bill, as without him I would not have a job, the passion I have or the vision for the world I do.

I think there are many people in the world who have passion for technology like Bill Gate`s. Most of us do not the opportunity to take that passion to the same level Bill has. Equally I believe there are a number of business savvy people around the world on par with Bill. What differentiates Bill Gates from all others, other than maybe Steve Job, is his extreme ability in both of these fields. He is an uber geek and a ruthless businessman all rolled in to one, and it as been awesome to watch.

I received my first home PC computer in 1984. I used to write basic applications to help my dad’s company cost out products it manufactured and keep track of the average cost of the year’s production. I was just entering university and there was a limited number computer classes but I was enrolled in them. I ended up leaving university after the 2^nd year to go to work for a while to try and find my focus but kept working on computers.

It was from this point that I started to use predominately Microsoft products. DOS, the early releases of Windows, Windows 95, 98, NT, the early releases of Office and Windows Server. Sure I learned some UNIX, Novel, Corel, Adobe and Apple along the way, but the reality is that what I have been using, like most of the computer world is Microsoft’s products. No other software company has been able to find a niche in almost every single computer field. The bread and butter is the OS business, on the desktop and server side but the dominance in the browser, development tool set and framework, productivity tool sets, email solutions, mobile solutions and gaming systems is unbelievable. While they do not own some of these markets, they are usually 2^nd in all other niches.

Sure there have been some failures along the way (see Bob, ME, URGE, TabletPC, UMPC and some of the hardware they have pushed) but they tend to succeed way more than they fail.

I love technology and the possibilities it provides, and for this I thank Bill Gates for his vision of a world with a computer in every house and on every desk. Some said it was crazy, but in some areas of the world it is the norm. I have had 20+ years to watch the evolution of the PC and computing in general, and can’t wait to see where it goes. Gates fingerprints are all over this…..for good or bad some may argue…but no one can argue his impact.

When Mitch Garvis and I were presenting on when to choose EBS or SBS on the weekend, we asked a very simply question of the audience and received a very shocking answer….”How many of you are providing managed services to you clients?” and the answer was very few.

Now the reality is that most in the room really were providing this service in one form or another…but not necessarily charging for it. As SBS consultants we all manage our clients systems remotely and check on them from time to time to make sure the systems are running as expected. We may run disk utilities, ensure the backup is running regularly and of course check on the patch level and virus scan version. The big question is: Are you charging for this service and better yet have you bundled this into a service offering?

Small Business owners are frugal, I understand and respect that, but they are practical as well. They do not want to suffer the down time that a system failure, backup issue, etc can cause. As such, there is always a balance between the cost and value such services provides. This can be a very lucrative way to increase your revenue while providing you customer greater value. Even greater is the ability to build trust and a business relationship on these services when they are needed for the wrong reasons. Saving the data issues that an about to fail drive will cause in a proactive manner will win you nothing but respect and positive referrals with the customers business contacts.

If you are not offering this service look into it, if you are….market it as hard as you market any aspect of your business as it very well could be what you build your entire SMB practice around.

Cheers

Will

I am a big fan of the Edge Community at TechNet and the work of my hero's department...Jeff Sanquist, Senior Director of Evangelism for microsoft who is from Estevan, SK. A slick graphical UI and fun the use of new media make this a great site with even better information. I blogged on Edge for TechNet Canada's CanITPro blog a while back and saw this video post on SBS and needed to promote it again.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/SBS-2008-Setup-PM-demo-and-interview/

Will

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of  Kevin Beares]

This is the third year we have published an SBS WW Community Survey to the SBS Community.

We have learned an amazing amount of information from the people who have taken the time to tell us what they thought. Some things we kind of knew already, but other things were not as clear before we had received the feedback.

Because of the previous surveys, we have made some adjustments in our community engagement. To name a few; we really worked on putting more focus on the Official SBS Blog. Our Sustaining Engineering team runs mini betas with our MVPs before KB's and Bug Fixes are released via Windows Update. We try to get more involvement in our techbetas from our User Groups. The list does go on.

To the survey, the SBS Product Team would like to hear from the Windows SBS Community again. This survey is completely anonymous. In fact, some of you may have to sign out from Live in order to take the survey. So, if you get a PAGE NOT FOUND error message, please log out of Live and click on the link to the survey again.

We want to know how valuable your experience is with the community resources and information that is available to you today as a member of the Windows SBS Community. We also want to know what you think could be done to improve your Windows SBS Community Experience. Please take a couple of minutes to provide us your candid feedback via this survey and let us know what you think.

SBS WW Community Survey 2008

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

 

• First and foremost is the fact it is built on Microsoft’s newest server technologies: Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server Update Services v3, and Windows SharePoint Services v3
• A new setup and administrative experience that has been re-designed to make initial deployment and day-to-day management significantly easier
• Many new management features such as extensible monitoring reports, and tools to manage internet domain names, data folders, certificates and more
• A revamp of the Premium Edition to include both SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition technologies, a 2nd copy of Windows Server 2008 and a new CAL Licensing model allowing for singles, 5’s or 10’s to fit any circumstance
• A new server backup wizard built on the Windows Server 2008 block-based backup technologies, which allows you to back up your server in minutes rather than hours
• A redesigned Remote Web Workplace with new features such as custom links, logos and user to computer mapping
• Built-in anti-virus and anti-spam support with 120-day trial subscriptions to Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server and Windows Live OneCare for Server

I have to give a presentation next weekend in Toronto as part of EnergizeIT!, so I have been preparing my slides, doing research and a bunch of dry runs...including one with Damir from Microsoft and Mitch from the IT Pro Toronto User Group via LiveMeeting. I give lots of presentations now between work, the Regina IT Pro User Group and CIPS so it is not a big deal for me. But I have been thinking twice about my style in the last few days.

I had the pleasure of bringing Jeff Sandquist to Regina last week for the 2008 CIPS Regina Spring Seminar. For those unfamiliar with Jeff, he is the Senior Director of Evangelism for Microsoft, and a guy originally from Estevan, SK. I have been following Jeff's work for a couple of years now, after stumbling across the fact he was from Saskatchewan when reading his blog. Jeff made a 60 minute presentation on Evangelism, his teams work and how he got to where he is today on 8 slides in PowerPoint and 2 short videos. Even better was the fact none of his slides has bullets. He honestly had 1 slide up for 30 minutes, and it took to the end of those 30 minutes to get to the slide. The great part was the fact the slide was a picture of a Channel 9 squishy toy! Jeff's presentation was really a series of stories that came across more as a conversation with pictures than a presentation.

This got me to thinking about the presentation I was about to make. Now granted, I am doing a product demo on the release of Small Business Server 2008 coming later this year, so they are not quite the same style of presentation but how can I turn that into a conversation. I recently did the Heroes Happen {here} Community Launch in Regina, presenting on the new Windows Server 2008. I had 40 slides in 1 hour and 2 very short product demos. It was very clinical, and did not engage the audience the way I would have liked. I don't want the presentation at EnergizeIT! to be the same. I attended the event last year and found some of the afternoon sessions to be the same.....Death by PowerPoint.

So now I am sitting here cutting slides from my presentation and working on speaking notes to turn the presentation into a conversation on my experiences with the Small Business Server product line over the last 9 years and how the newest release compares in features and usability. I want the presentation to be a two-way conversation with the audience to understand if they are business people, Microsoft partners looking to expand their market through this product or IT Pro's working with SBS.  This combined with some heavy emphasis on a hands-on product demo should make the presentation fun.

We will see how it goes!

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Regina has a chance to participate in a national security tour specifically geared towards the recently launched Windows Server 2008. May 22^nd at the SaskTel Auditorium we will have the opportunity to first hand discuss security within the Microsoft platform of products with subject matter expects.

Register now

With new products being launched,  new technologies being introduced and increased pressure to ensure security across the board, it’s hard to know what the best way is to get up to speed and make sure you’re ready for this wave of opportunity. And even if you do know your “stuff”, how to prove that to your boss or clients?

Join us at the Energize IT Certification Bootcamp where we will take you through hot topics such as Windows Server 2008 and Virtualization Security as presented at this year's Energize IT event in Toronto and discuss certification paths available along with tips and suggestions on how to approach exams.  Be ready ahead of the curve and show what you know through certification.

By joining us at this event, you will have the opportunity to choose a certification study kit from one of the following four books:

1. MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training (Exam 70-299):
Implementing and Administering Security in a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network
2. MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-640):
Configuring Windows Server 2008 Active Directory
3. MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-642):
Configuring Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure
4. MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-643):
Configuring Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure

About the Presenters:

Kirk Munro started his professional career in 1997 as a developer at FastLane Technologies Incorporated, where he worked on an advanced scripting language called FINAL (FastLane Integrated Network Application Language). 10 years later while working at Quest Software he returned to his scripting language roots and became a Poshoholic when he started working with PowerShell and PowerShell-based applications like PowerGUI. Today he is a member of the PowerGUI team and spends all of his professional time using PowerShell and helping others use PowerShell through newsgroups, online forums, events, and his Poshoholic blog.

Kai Axford (CISSP, MCSE-Security) is a Senior Security Strategist in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group.

A nine-year Microsoft veteran, Kai is responsible for discussing and recommending security solutions for both private and public sector organizations. In addition, he conducts Chief Security Officer councils worldwide, taking executive feedback and affecting change within Microsoft’s security products and processes.

Kai started with Microsoft in 1999 as a Server Support Engineer and then moved on to become an IT Pro Evangelist, focusing on his peers through the Microsoft TechNet Events program. Kai has delivered more than 200 security presentations on a variety of topics, including digital forensics, security management, and incident response. He is a frequent speaker at security conferences, executive meetings, and business seminars around the world.

Kai is currently pursuing an MBA in Information Assurance and is a member of ISSA, INFRAGARD, ASIS, and the North Texas Electronic Crimes Task Force. He was the recipient of the 2006 “Rising Star” award from the Information Security Executive council. Kai is interested in security management and hopes to become a Chief Security Officer one day.

Prior to Microsoft, Kai served as a leader in several real-world operations with the U.S. Army's elite 75th Ranger Regiment. Originally from Wisconsin, Kai is a huge NFL Green Bay Packers fan.  He is based in Dallas, Texas with his lovely wife and a (very wet) yellow Labrador.

Cheers! 

Wednesday April 30th saw the Regina.net User Group and Regina IT Pro User Group co-present the community launch for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. The 3 sessions were hosted by local community members Gary Pronych (VS2008), Vance Petriew (SQL2008) and myself (W2K8) and sponsored by EDS Canada and Solvera Solutions. The event was located at the University of Regina in the classroom building; this brought back some memories of my years wondering the halls in 1984, 85, 86 when I was taking CS100, CS110, etc.

The event was pretty well attended as we had 80 register for the event and at least that many turn up. We decided to make the presentations 1 hour long and repeat them twice so people could attend 2 sessions over the evening. I personally think this was a great idea as my big issue in attending events like this is which ones to miss and attend. I cannot speak on the content of the other session, given I was presenting all night, but my sessions we very well attended. Server 2008 is a very big product update and to squeeze any type of overview into the product as well as a couple of live demos was a very difficult thing. I had 41 slides for a 1 hour presentation, and to be honest only really presented information on about 30 of them. I was able to include a brief overview of the new management console and of the core installation, but nothing too detailed. I will be presenting a couple of deeper dives into specific topics related to Server2008 (Hyper-v, AD Security and Group Policy the most likely starting points).

So, what was good about the event? The fact that the Regina.net User Group and Regina IT Pro User Group worked together to present an event that was geared towards all of every IT Professional at some level was great. I hope that we are able to that again. The fact a couple of local vendors stepped up to sponsor the event and cover the cost of the food was fantastic. The space was great, lecture halls with built in high-end AV equipment are awesome from a presenter’s perspective and theatre seating means everyone can see. Seeing students out for the event, this is very important to the success of the industry as a whole.

What was bad; the space. The U of R has great rooms, but no parking and a bit of a drive from downtown where most of the attendees work. I personally go a parking ticket while in there presenting, so I am sure others did as well. The food wasn't that great. We had to use the U of R catering service and to be honest it was disappointing. The fact we tried to cram what should have been a half or full day series of topics into a 2 hour evening event sucked and the more over the fact that Microsoft skipped over Regina as a whole in the actual product launch. It would be nice to have had this event supported by Corp. They were kind enough to give some prizes to give away in the form of TechNet subscriptions. I was able to leverage some additional prizes from my contacts in Microsoft to make the experience better for the event attendee.

Based on the evaluation forms handed in at the end of the night, people were satisfied with the event as a whole. There were some comments about the level of detail and the fact we started the 2nd session a little late as people moved between rooms. If I had to rate the event, I would have given it 7.5, good but with room for improvement.

cheers

will