Networking

Demystifying Managed (MSA) and Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA)

Using Managed (MSA) or Group Service Accounts (gMSA) offers significant advantages over standard user-based Service accounts in an enterprise environment. Managed Service accounts provide a higher level of security and automation. Specifically designed for applications and services, they reduce the risk of password-related vulnerabilities. Managed accounts have automated password management, complex password policies and automatic password rotation. enhancing overall security posture. Group Service accounts on the other hand allow centralized management and granular access…

Active Directory Recycle Bin

Anyone whos worked with Active Directory knows that you need to be 100% certain before deleting any object in AD as it’s a right pain having to recover deleted items. That’s where the Active Directory Recycle Bin comes in; however, there is one caveat in that you need to have the Active Directory recycle bin enabled before any item is deleted. So, If you are here looking for a quick fix because you have…

MFA in Office 365 – Notes from the Trenches.

In this tutorial, I wanted to try something a bit different. Instead of just doing a simple how-to guide on setting up Multi-factor Authentication in office 365. I wanted to cover some of my experiences and notes in actually implementing MFA on customers tenants. Microsoft bosts that MFA prevents 99.9% of account compromise. However, this statement is true to an extent. However, you don’t have to google too much to find an abundance of…

Creating an Active Directory Home Lab

At some point in your IT career, you are going to need to build yourself an Active Directory home lab. This tutorial covers segmenting your lab from the rest of your home network, Installing Windows Server 2019, Installing Active Directory, and then joining a Windows 10 workstation to a domain. Other than the physical hardware costs of running your own lab, Microsoft basically allows you to set all this up for free using their…

First Three Steps to Secure a Linux Server

This tutorial covers the first three steps to secure any Linux server. Be it a VPS, Linux Virtual Machine, or a raspberry pi. These steps will work for any Debian-based Linux distribution, However, other Linux distributions should use similar commands. The three steps in this tutorial should be the bare minimum you need to secure a Linux server. This is in no way a complete server hardening guide. Researching for this tutorial, I noticed…

Illustrated Tutorial for Installing Microsoft LAPS

In this Tutorial, I cover the Installation and deployment of Microsoft LAPS on a Windows Domain. Giving you an Illustrated step by step guide through the whole process. LAPS stands for Local Administrator Password Solution and provides management of Local administrator passwords of any domain joined Windows Client. Once installed, the Local Administrator password becomes stored centrally in Active Directory. In-turn, only allowing domain admins or specified users to read or reset these local…

Creating a Simple HTTP Server with one line of Python

Python can run a simple HTTP server, using a built-in module called SimpleHTTPServer this provides standard GET and HEAD request handlers. The great thing about this is that you do not have to configure anything, you only have to have Python installed. This is perfect to use when you need a quick web server and don’t want to mess with setting up apache. You can use this to turn any directory on your system…

Headless Raspberry Pi Setup

No need for an extra keyboard or HDMI cable to set up your Raspberry Pi, Below I will show you how to do a headless Raspian install, which I have to credit www.jamesfmackenzie.com for the original post. Download the Rasbian image Head over to www.raspberrypi.org and download their latest Image. For this tutorial, I will be using the LITE Version but this will work with either image. Write the image to your SD Card…

Testing Email Connections with Telnet

This is one of the essential troubleshooting tricks that an Exchange administrator needs to know, sending an email using telnet from command prompt. Lets say you’ve just configured a relay connector and want to test it from the server that you wish to allow relay from before you let that server’s owner know that it is all set up for them. Or perhaps you want to quickly test whether a another email server on…

Secure Shell (SSH)

Secure Shell or SSH is a cryptographic (encrypted) network protocol operating at layer 7 of the OSI Model to allow remote login and other network services to operate securely over an unsecured network. SSH provides a secure channel over an unsecured network in a client-server architecture, connecting an SSH client application with an SSH server. Common applications include remote command-line login and remote command execution, but any network service can be secured with SSH. The…

Scroll to top