security Archives -

How I Passed The #CISSP #vExpert #VCDX @kmcnam1

May 10, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 2

My Background: My career has covered areas that turned out to be quite helpful. I started at a bank, doing Media Management/Backups/Silo tapes, moving them between sites etc. I then became a data centre engineer, racking and stacking and cabling I then joined a BC/DR provider and helped customers test their DR processes and workplace recoveries and just managed services. I then became a VMware and Storage admin, working on keeping it running and upgrading it all and managing their DR recoveries. I now work as a Senior Consultant doing migration work and helping customers with changes and joining CAB meetings and all that jazz. I’ve been through many certification exams; I enjoy doing them as they force me to […]

Routing from a single public IP with Azure Firewall

April 23, 2019 Graeme Vermeulen 0

In Microsoft Azure, routing to the internet works slightly differently than it would on-premises. When you build a machine out of a catalogue, all you can choose is the subnet that it goes into. The networking is handled from the Azure portal, and when you connect onto that VM and browse the internet, you might notice you get a different IP each time / from each VM. Note: You get a lot more granularity with extra options if you build via PowerShell, however most admins will probably build it from the browser. Once the VM is built, you can make its IP address static as well as change the DNS servers. This would be the case if you wanted to […]

IT as a force for good – Security in your digital workspace

January 11, 2019 Frederiek Vanhoornick 0

How technology can help against accidental data leakage? This week an article caught my attention: Somebody was able to steal an external disk. This disk contained backup data of autopsy reports related to the bombing on March 22th, 2016. https://www.expatica.com/be/news/autopsy-reports-from-brussels-attacks-stolen-official-92660/ So, for me a couple of questions raised instantly! How is it possible that he can just enter the office? How is it possible that the doctor could save sensitive data to a personal/external disk? Both questions are about security! The first one could be solved just by installing badge readers at the door and an automatic lock And off course some common sense by just closing the door 🙂 The second question is more up my alley […]

Security 101 Series – Volume 1

September 5, 2018 Don Ward 0

Hello again my old friends! Since my last post https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/career-20-don-ward/ I’ve been keeping my head down below the parapet as I’ve focused all of my efforts on all things security including Cyber. I’ve also been given an ear bending (aka nagging) from my fellow blog founders (Graeme cough cough) to put out more (giggedy – I mean blogs) so it’s time to surface once again. Standard caveats apply to this post in that these are my opinions at the time of writing, subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the same opinions of my current or past employers. Since joining my new organisation Atos as a principal Cyber Security Solutions Architect, the learning curve has been massive and the […]

What is new in vSphere 6.5 Security?

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

Data security and data privacy are still becoming more and more important. On the flip side of trying to tighten the security layer is that security is becoming vastly harder to manage. VMware’s vision about security is that it has to be easy to manage. This of course applies to traditional applications as well as cloud native apps, such as VMware’s Photon. Of course in both cases it is mandatory that the infrastructure hosting data, the data itself and the access to data would be always as secure as possible. vSphere 6.5 Enhanced Logging For years we have been having issues getting the right logs for auditing out of vCenter and ESXi server logs. For example today, vSphere 5.x and vSphere 6.x […]

vSphere Hosts: Blades vs. Rack-mounted Servers

March 9, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 2

One of the political-like eternal debates is the debate around vSphere Hosts Form Factor, which to choose: Blade Servers or Rack-mounted Servers. Both technologies are mature and support high computing power and Hardware Vendors offer both of them now equally. In addition, VMware vSphere supports using both of them and puts no limitation on the form factor of the hosts. They’re dominating now over Tower form factor which began to disappear because of its large foot print and high power usage. Confusing to choose between them, right? Long story short, both options have their own Pros and Cons that should be aligned with your (customer) case and your (customer’s) requirements and constraints. In the following table, a summary of the main differences […]

Unable to log in with “root” on vCenter Server Appliance 5.5

February 24, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Yesterday, I went to a customer for a migration project to vSphere 5.5. After deploying vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 U2d and configuring IP addresses, I logged in with “root” account and default password to begin configuration and I started with adding it to my customer’s AD Domain to adjust its time sync and confirm machine naming and DNS settings. After I added it successfully, I rebooted the vCenter Appliance and once it booted up I tried to log in with “root” and boom, I can’t log in. It threw an error: “Unable to authenticate user. Please try again.” First, I thought I was writing password wrong, but I wasn’t as I found that I could log in using SSH. Then, […]

Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange 2010/2013 on vSphere 5 Best Practices

February 12, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 1

We’ll talk today about virtualizing Microsoft Exchange on vSphere 5.x platform. Microsoft Exchange is considered the most common messaging system in any business all over the world. From SMB to huge Enterprises and Corporations, they all may use Microsoft Exchange as their messaging and communication system. For most of them, Exchange is considered Tier 0/1 that should be served with highest level of performance and availability. vSphere 5.x is capable of providing such level of performance and availability while reducing Microsoft Exchange footprint with 5x to 10x by consolidating many Exchange roles and nodes on the same physical hardware while providing 100% or more of the required performance. Best practices mentioned here are collected from different sources that are mentioned in […]