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Articles by Ryan Brooks
🧠 15 of the Best Life Hacks Ever (That Actually Work!)
Looking to make your everyday life easier, smarter, and a little less chaotic? These tried-and-true life hacks are quick, clever, and seriously useful. From kitchen tricks to time-saving tips, here are the best life hacks ever – with visual ideas you can add to bring each one to life. ⸻ No more guessing which cable belongs to what device! Clip those plastic bread tags onto each cord and label them with a marker. ⸻ Got scratches on wood furniture?
Insta360 X4 Review: Elevate Your Content with 8K 360 Video
In digital landscape world, high-quality video content is essential for capturing attention and engaging your audience. The Insta360 X4 offers an impressive 8K 360 video capability that can significantly enhance your storytelling. Whether you are a content creator, a traveler, or simply someone who enjoys documenting experiences, understanding the features and benefits of the Insta360 X4 can help you elevate your content to new heights.
5 Must-Have Travel Gadgets for Spring 2025 Adventures
Ryan Brooks · Follow 10 min read · -- As you prepare for your spring adventures in 2025, having the right travel gadgets can significantly enhance your experience. These gadgets not only add convenience but also ensure that you stay connected, entertained, and organized while on the go. Investing in these essential tools can make your travels smoother and more enjoyable, allowing you to focus on creating lasting memories.
Cincinnati Bengals Tight End ‘Expected’ to Miss the 2025 NFL Season
The Cincinnati Bengals' sights are set on the 2025 season. After posting a 9-8 record and being a mediocre club that missed the playoffs, the Bengals have been active in making changes. While Cincinnati has brought in a new defensive coordinator already and seems poised to make some massive, season-defining changes before the 2025 season -- they've yet to make any substantial roster moves. Until free agency and the draft roll around, that's expected to be the case.
Nikola Jokic Has Managed What No Other Active Player Has, And He’s Done it in 30 Days
Nikola Jokic has been nothing short of remarkable this season. Somehow, after capturing an MVP victory in three of the past four seasons, Jokic is posting a career year. One would assume that Jokic posting a career season would mean the Nuggets are near the top of the Western Conference, right? Not exactly. Through 22 games played, the Nuggets are 12-10 on the season. Now, regression was expected as the team's depth has deteriorated in recent years.
Introduction to Information Governance
Organizations are experiencing explosive growth in the volume and variety of data they collect, store and process. Unfortunately, many of them do not understand what types of data they are handling — and what value that data has — so they cannot maintain proper control over it. As a result, they often suffer serious legal, financial and reputational consequences. Proper information governance can help you avoid the same fate.
Why Database Hardening is Essential to Any Data Security Strategy
Hardening the various systems across your network helps you improve your cybersecurity posture level and block attacks. Hardening includes regular patching of known software vulnerabilities and turning off nonessential services on each system to reduce the number of processes that can be exploited. Hardening your database servers is a vital part of this information security strategy.
The Modern Data Repository: Understanding Your Options
Today, organizations have a variety of options for storing the data they generate, collect and use.
Windows File Access Monitoring
In this post, we will dive into how to configure file access auditing on a Windows file server and explore the challenges with interpreting critical access events. Background The first step in developing an effective audit strategy is to gain a good understanding of your systems, use cases and business needs, so you can avoid the impact of configuring a wider audit scope than is actually needed.
PUBLIC Role in Oracle
Roles make it easier to grant and revoke privileges for users of a relational database. Rather than managing privileges for each user individually, you manage privileges for each role and all changes apply to all users who are assigned that role. Organizations often create multiple roles to suit their unique needs. However, most databases come with a pre-defined role called PUBLIC. In this blog, we explain what the PUBLIC role means in Oracle and key best practices for using it.
What DNS over HTTPS (DoH) Is & How to Enable in Windows 10
Why Move from Traditional DNS to DNS over HTTPS When your web browser accesses a website, it needs to first translate the friendly URL (such as Netwrix.com) to the public server IP address of the server that hosts that website. This is known as a DNS lookup. Traditional DNS is unencrypted, unlike modern HTTPS web traffic that’s almost entirely secured via HTTPS these days.
Do You Know How Technology Is Reshaping Today's Workplace? Learn From These Simple Tips
1. Changing How Businesses Communicate Technology has completely transformed how people communicate in the modern workplace. Chat apps, social networking websites, and smartphones have all brought communication to a different level. Communication between employees, or management to management, or management to subordinates has become instantaneous, fast, unified, collaborative, and more deliberate.
Insider Threat Detection
Insider threat incidents have increased by 44% over the past two years, and the cost of an incident now tops $15.3 million, according to the 2022 Cost of Insider Threats report from Ponemon. To defend against this pressing security — and business — risk, organizations need a comprehensive insider threat detection strategy. This article provides extensive guidance to help you get started building an effective program. Insider threats: What are we dealing with?
5 Things To Do Before Making a Final Offer on a Home
So, you think you’ve found that ideal home, and after a myriad of open-home viewings, questions, and false starts, it’s finally time to get that offer sent over and begin that new chapter of your life. But being diligent in the last few stages of a buyer’s journey is essential if you want to enter that new place with complete confidence. Checking out any potential loose ends is an important part of your decision-making process.
Liberalism and American Literature in the Clinton Era
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Data Breaches Come in All Shapes and Sizes
We’re most likely to hear about the largest data breaches, the ones that affect big companies and lots of consumers, or the ones that involve nefarious hacking exploits to invade IT systems and exploit vulnerabilities. Those are the breaches that make headlines, that can be used to generate clicks and page views. And of course it’s important for consumers and IT pros to know what’s going on with these attacks.
A Guide to CIS Control 10: Malware Defenses
Control 10 of CIS Critical Security Controls version 8 is focused on malware defenses. It describes safeguards to prevent or control the installation, spread and execution of malicious applications, code and scripts on enterprise assets. (In CIS version 7, this topic was covered by Control 8.) Malware, especially ransomware, has become a pressing security issue in recent years.
Understanding LSA Protection
Securing your Windows servers and Windows 10 running is vital, especially given today’s sophisticated threat landscape. These are usually the first machines to be compromised in an attack through exploitation of the weakest link in the chain — the user. Through trickery and social engineering, threat actors gain access to these machines and then seek to move laterally and elevate their privileges.
Performing Pass-the-Hash Attacks with Mimikatz
Mimikatz has become the standard tool for extracting passwords and hashes from memory, performing pass-the-hash attacks, and creating domain persistence through Golden Tickets. Let’s take a look at how easy Mimikatz makes it to perform pass-the-hash and other authentication-based attacks, and what you can do to protect against these attacks. How Passing the Hash with Mimikatz Works All you need to perform a pass-the-hash attack is the NTLM hash from an Active Directory user account.
How to Detect Pass-the-Hash Attacks
Attackers frequently rely on lateral movement techniques to infiltrate corporate networks and obtain privileged access to credentials and data. In particular, one common technique is pass-the-hash: Hackers use stolen password hashes to authenticate as a user without ever having the user’s cleartext password. This tactic enables them to bypass normal system access controls to move laterally within the environment.
Extracting Password Hashes from the Ntds.dit File
With so much attention paid to credential-based attacks such as Pass-the-Hash (PtH) and Pass-the-Ticket (PtT), more serious and effective attacks are often overlooked. One such attack involves exfiltrating the Ntds.dit file from Active Directory domain controllers. Let’s take a look at what this threat entails, how an attack can be performed and how you can protect your organization. What is the Ntds.dit File?
Regin: New Sophistication in Advanced Persistent Security Threats
End of November, three major antivirus vendors released details about what they deemed the most sophisticated virus ever discovered. But to call Regin a virus is somewhat underestimating its capabilities. Such is its sophistication, it would be more appropriate to refer to it as a compromise platform that allows its authors, probably backed by one or more nation states, to gather intelligence through a variety of methods.
Patching Is Mitigation You Do on Daily Basis
Recently, Disaster Recovery was a topic of several blog posts.
How to Label Sites in Microsoft 365
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked by customers if we can help them apply sensitivity labels at scale to data at rest in SharePoint Online. Unfortunately, I’ve had to tell them that there’s really only one option, and it’s not pretty. To date, there is no API that allow an end user to apply a sensitivity label directly to a file in a SharePoint Online site, so the only real option is to download the file locally, apply the label and then upload the file.
Active Directory Certificate Services: Risky Settings and How to Remediate Them
Active Directory Certificate Services has been around for a long time, but resources for learning it are not great. As a result, it often has misconfigurations that are an increasing vector for attacks. In fact, SpecterOps released a whitepaper detailing a number of misconfigurations and potential attacks and providing hardening advice.
What Is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack?
The term DDoS attack refers to a malicious actor or group of actors intentionally trying to overwhelm a victim’s computer network with traffic. The large influx of network traffic being directed at the target can cause serious issues for legitimate traffic, such as regular users who need to access websites, data or services. Everyone from gamer sites to large enterprises fears the threat of distributed denial of service attacks.
Data Security Explained: Challenges and Solutions
Data is the most valuable asset for any business. No matter what industry you are in, it’s critical to take care of your data, whether it is financial reports, healthcare records or a start-up business plan. Despite increased data protection regulation, data breach risks are growing. According to Capita, 80% of data breaches involve personally identifiable information at a cost of $150 per record. What is data security?
[Infographics] Data Breach Statistics 2021
Cybercrime has been on the rise for years now, and it is not showing any signs of slowing down. Indeed, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 just fueled the situation, and the number of attacks is escalating. Here are important data breach statistics that can help you better understand the risk landscape for 2021.
A Deep Dive into Airbnb's Server-Driven UI System
How Airbnb ships features faster across web, iOS, and Android using a server-driven UI system named Ghost Platform 👻. By Ryan Brooks Background: Server-Driven UI Before we dive into Airbnb's implementation of server-driven UI (SDUI), it's important to understand the general idea of SDUI and how it provides an advantage over traditional client-driven UI. In a traditional world, data is driven by the backend and the UI is driven by each client (web, iOS, and Android).
Understanding Insider Threats: Definition and Examples
Insider threats remain one of the biggest issues plaguing cybersecurity. A study by Ponemon shows that the costs of insider threats leaped 31% in just two years, from $8.76 million in 2018 to $11.45 million in 2020. The same report shows that it takes companies an average of 77 days to contain an insider threat incident. Forrester predicts that insider threats will cause 31% of data breaches by the end of 2021, up from 25% in 2020.
Best Active Directory Management Tools
IT teams rely on Active Directory (AD) to keep networks secure and maintain user accounts — but they often need to adhere to strict budget limitations when it comes to selecting software to help. That’s why we’ve put together this list of the top free Active Directory management tools. Our picks focus on AD tools that will help you complete routine AD management tasks much faster so your team has time to focus on other priorities.
NIST 800-53: A Guide to Compliance
The NIST 800-53 standard offers solid guidance for how organizations should select and maintain customized security and privacy controls for their information systems. NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5 is one of many compliance documents you need to familiarize yourself with if you are working with information technology. This post breaks it down for you into digestible pieces that emphasize the standard’s practical meaning and application. What is NIST 800-53?
Information Security Policy: Must-Have Elements and Tips
Organizations often create multiple IT policies for a variety of needs: disaster recovery, data classification, data privacy, risk assessment, risk management and so on. These documents are often interconnected and provide a framework for the company to set values to guide decision-making and responses. Organizations also need an information security policy. This type of policy provides controls and procedures that help ensure that employees will work with IT assets appropriately.
How to Perform a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
Conducting a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) or privacy impact assessment (PIA) is a complex and challenging task. Nevertheless, it’s critical to do. Data privacy concerns have become a significant focus across all industries, and for good reason: data is at higher risk than ever before. In its 2020 Q3 Data Breach QuickView Report, Risk Based Security revealed that 36 billion records were exposed during the first three quarters of 2020.
What Is Data Leakage?
Data leaks don’t get as much press as data breaches — but they can be just as devastating to your business. In this article, you’ll learn how data leaks happen and the key steps to take to defend your organization. What is a data leak? How does it differ from data breach? A data breach occurs when an attacker from outside your organization gets into your IT ecosystem and steals private or sensitive information.
Best Server Monitoring Tools: Software Review
If you don’t know the state of your network and server health every second of the day, you’re like a blind pilot inevitably headed for disaster. Fortunately, the market now offers many good tools, both commercial and open source, for network and Windows Server monitoring. We’ve put together a list of best open source, free and paid Windows Server monitoring tools that have proven their value in networks of many sizes.
Top GDPR Solutions for Security and Consent Management
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of provisions and requirements governing data protection and privacy for individuals across the European Union. It applies to any business or public body — inside or outside the EU — that handles the personal data of EU residents.
ISO 27001 Compliance: What You Need to Know
ISO/IEC 27001 is a set of international standards developed to guide information security. Its component standards, such as ISO/IEC 27001:2013, are designed to help organizations implement, maintain and continually improve an information security management system (ISMS). Compliance with ISO 27001 is not mandatory.
Top 11 NTFS Permissions Tools for Smarter Administration
Managers and compliance auditors often ask IT admins to present a report listing file share permissions granted to a group or a particular user. Here are a few paid and free tools that will help you save time on generating these reports. Free Tools for NTFS Reporting and Management 1. NTFS Permissions Reporter Free Edition from Cjwdev Cjwdev’s NTFS Permissions Reporter is a good tool that helps you export file and folder permissions.
What Is HIPAA Compliance: Guidelines for Becoming Compliant
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. law designed to protect individual privacy by establishing national standards for maintaining sensitive patient health information and medical records. HIPAA compliance rules incorporate requirements from several other legislative acts, including the Public Health Service Act and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
2020: IT Security Lessons to Learn
The year 2020 reshaped business processes and accelerated changes in the way we work, communicate and live. The shift to remote work put a lot of strain on business processes, IT departments and security teams, and cybercriminals used panic and chaos to exploit the situation. Here, we analyze the experiences of the past year and explore the most important challenges we should be prepared for in 2021, as well as share some comments from IT security pros.
ROI: Expert Tips for Justifying Security Investments
The challenges of ROI in IT security Over the last few months, I’ve had a number of conversations about the need to justify security spending. This year has been tough for a lot of organizations, so IT budgets are generally not growing. Plus, the money already allocated often had to be re-prioritized to meet changing business needs. At the same time, executives and board members become painfully aware of today’s cyber risks and the cost of not paying attention.
Data Security: What Happened in 2020, Continues in 2021
The year 2020 has been a time of unprecedented change. This year’s events continue to alter the course of cybersecurity, making it even more important to ensure that we better prepare ourselves for what’s to come. In this blog post, we review the key data security trends of 2020 and share several predictions about how they will affect enterprises and cybersecurity leaders in 2021. The global pandemic reinforced the exceptional value of cloud computing to the world economy.
Compliance Tools: Choosing the Right Solutions
Making sure your environment is compliant with regulatory requirements can be a challenge. No matter your company’s size or industry, ensuring you have the required security controls is never a set-it-and-forget-it process. With your IT environment, your user base and the threat landscape evolving all the time, you have to adjust constantly. Indeed, with so much to keep track of, even your best efforts at keeping your company compliant can fall short, unless you have help.
How to Calculate Return on Security Investment
During my 20+ year career in IT, I have been involved in projects from many different angles. I have been an end user and a consultant; I have managed technology and I have sold it. But throughout it all, there has been one constant challenge: How to assess the return on investment for a technology you either provide or consume. My journey has led me to IT security, and I often hear statements like, “It’s hard to measure the effectiveness of security investments.
Information Classification for ISO 27001 Compliance
ISO 27001 is an international standard that focuses on information security. This standard guides the establishment, implementation, maintenance, and continuous improvement of an information security management system (ISMS).
Cloud Computing Security Tools: Choosing the Right Solutions
No matter where you host your data, there are always risks. The public cloud is no exception. While providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google offer security features, ultimately, cloud security is your responsibility. Where do you start? This article explains the key elements of a strong security posture in the cloud and how to choose the right security software solutions for your organization.
Common Cloud Computing Security Issues and How to Mitigate Them
Securing your cloud environment effectively is no easy task. What cloud security issues should you be prepared for? What are the most serious security risks? Which best practices are most effective at keeping your data safe? In this article, we will explore the two primary cloud models and the principal security concerns you will face when using each model. Private vs public cloud: How the security issues differ There are two primary models for cloud environments: private and public.
The Importance of Data Classification for Data Loss Prevention
Data loss prevention (DLP) tools and processes help ensure that critical data is not accessed by or tampered with by unauthorized users. The underlying technology that can make or break your success in data loss prevention is data classification. This article explains how data classification affects the success of your data loss prevention measures. What is data classification? Data classification is the process of organizing data into relevant categories.
Data Classification in Microsoft Office 365
More and more organizations are recognizing the power and value of data classification. By accurately classifying and labeling the information you store, you can: Strengthen security by identifying sensitive data across the enterprise and improving your controls around it. Ensure compliance with regulations such as CCPA and GDPR, and enable quick compliance with new regulations as they are add Enforce privacy, retention and confidentiality policies.
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