Microsoft Defender for Business

This is a quick post, as I often get asked by our customers about the newly included Microsoft Defender capabilities in the Microsoft 365 Business Premium licensing SKU. There is a good article by Microsoft that details what features are included with Microsoft Defender for Business, so I will leave

AutoHotkey Focus Macro

If you haven't heard of AutoHotkey then first I would recommend you go and check it out.  Basically its a simple macro programming language that allows you to create keyboard and mouse shortcuts. AutoHotkeyFree keyboard macro program. Supports hotkeys for keyboard, mouse, and joystick. Can expand abbreviations as you type

What did I learn from the Log4j vulnerability? 🐛

Firstly, if you are not 100% sure what Log4j is, you might find this article from the NCSC interesting: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/log4j-vulnerability-what-everyone-needs-to-know . When the Log4j vulnerability was announced, there was a lot of scrambling around from Italik and some of our customers as we were trying

Voice Enabling Microsoft Teams

There are a few ways to put calling and voice functionality into Microsoft Teams. One is through a Microsoft calling plan. This option has its merits but is tailored for a finite segment of customers. The second option, Direct Routing [https://www.sippio.io/what-is-sippio/], exemplifies the brilliance of how

ISO 27001 is an investment, not an expense

ISO 27001 graphics on a personWith unprecedented levels of uncertainty, everyone’s budgets are feeling the pinch. But whether you are a multinational, an SME or even a government organisation, with threat levels on the rise there’s one line item you cannot scrimp on. Information security. This good news

Microsoft Teams Q & A: Your Questions Answered

If you are already using Microsoft Teams within your workplace or looking at getting started with it, here are some common Q and A’s which may help you and your organisation. Q) Can the "General" channel be renamed? No, unfortunately, the General channel is always present in each Team

Microsoft

Cleaning up Disks

An essential part of system administration is to look after your systems and keep them in tip-top condition. Microsoft has some tools to maintain the disks, namely the Disk Cleanup utility. This is however not installed by default on older server operating systems 2012 R2 or earlier unless you have

Mobile device management, why you need it.

In the modern world, everyone has a smartphone with the capabilities to install multiple applications, store files, photos, and emails. The line is often blurred when staff are permitted to use personal phones for work purposes. But what implications can this have on your business? GDPR in the UK came

Cisco Featured

Fending off Brute Force with Duo

Brute Force attacks are prevalent and indeed, with the current climate seem to be on the rise. Brute Force attacks are the trial and error of accessing systems. They are not just attacking from outside your network, but can also be inside your network. What can you do to reduce

Security Featured

12 Days of Christmas Cyber Security

Christmas is finally here and for many of us, our attention has turned to family and festivities as an unforgettable year comes to an end. Unfortunately, at this time of year, there are some that will turn their attention to you and your business. We have put together our 12

Microsoft

Give me more power scotty! ⚡

Here Robert explains how to get the High Performance power plan back on your Windows 10 Laptop if it is missing

Microsoft

Running 64-Bit PowerShell scripts using Intune Win32 app install

Robert runs into a strange issue where his Win32 Intune PowerShell scripts were not creating registry keys in the right place - found out how he resolved the issue

Microsoft

File Server Migrations, things to be careful of

Recently Jonathan has completed a File Server migration, and here he explains some gotchas that he encountered on the way

Veeam

Veeam - Replication; It Just Works

Looking at the simple, but effective, DR solution. A brief insight into how it can work for any company.

Microsoft

What time is it?

Here Jonathan has been deploying Azure VMs and time doesn't appear to be on his side!

Microsoft

Windows Intune App Failing To Install

In this post, I ran into a weird issue where an app failed to install even though I didn't make any changes. Here I run through the troubleshooting steps, and how to fix it.

Cisco

Upgrading Cisco ISE with an “Upgrade Bundle”

How to go about upgrading a multi-node ISE deployment using the automated process.

Infrastructure

Don't forget the cables

An architectural approach to cable management

Security

Digital Certificates and PKI

Certificates can be quite confusing, and after some work migrating them between two Cisco ASA devices, I thought I would try and provide a summary of the key concepts (no pun intended) and the various file formats used. Introduction Digital certificates, or more specifically X.509 certificates, are used in

Coding

Basics of using Git & Github

Over the past few weeks I have been using VSCode with the Git integration to save all my code to Github. Here I will share what I have found useful, and how I got myself up and running using Git via the CLI on Windows.

Microsoft

Azure AD Connect Synchronisation of Existing O365 Accounts

Here I ran into an issue where soft matching existing Azure AD accounts with on-premises AD accounts would not match if they were a global admin. Here is my write-up on this finding

Microsoft

Migrating Azure AD Connect

Here I ran into a permissions issue when trying to migrate a customer Azure AD Connect install to a new Server. This is what I did to fix it 🔨

Cisco

Early mornings with OSPF

Last weekend the team were involved in a migration of a pair of customer WAN edge switches which provided fail-over routing for their WAN and point to point circuits. The original configurations had been reviewed and migrated to a new pair of Cisco CAT 9K switches which would get installed

Microsoft

Who says that Azure hosting has to be expensive? 💰

More companies are looking at deploying services to cloud based platforms like Azure, but it might be cheaper than you think

Infrastructure

It's the little things...

… That can make a big difference. This post highlights how one small change could have a big impact when it comes to business continuity.