Five ways to assess your wireless network security

Network security requires ongoing attention. To keep your WLAN secure, it is important to be aware of new wireless vulnerabilities. You can identify and close any security holes before a hacker slips through them by performing a vulnerability assessment on your wireless network.

Discover wireless devices on your network including wireless routers and wireless access points (WAPs) as well as laptops and other mobile devices, is very important. The scanner will look for active traffic on wireless network. Then document all the data you collect from the scanner about the wireless device’s locations and owners.

Rouge devices are wireless devices such as an access point which should not be on your network. Take your list of devices which you documented via scanner and compare your known inventory of devices. Any equipment which you didn't recognize should be blocked from network access immediately.  

Make sure that WAPs on your network are just as secure as your routers and any other device that can be accessed from the Internet. Make sure to change the password to a hard to crack one. Check the WAP is configured to use the most secure options such as strongest available authentication setting and an encrypted admin interface, filters to block unauthorized protocols and send secure alerts.

Updating your device inventory is very important at this point. Update the device inventory to include every Smartphone, Tablet, Laptop, Desktop, VoIP phone and any other wireless device that is approved to access your network. You should find out if these devices are running the most current OSs and associated security patches, are running current antivirus software and configured according to your security policies.

Finally you should plug the holes which your vulnerability scanner reveals. Completing the above steps is not enough you should test your fixes and make sure that they closed the security holes. 

Difference between SharePoint and AD groups

There are two types of groups which you can find in SharePoint. Those are Domain groups and SharePoint groups. This blog post describes the differences between those two groups briefly.

Domain Groups

• These groups are created and maintained by the IT department.
• Domain groups can be used across different SharePoint sites and Site Collections.
• Organizations may already have good AD group structures that map well to SharePoint implementations.
• We can add another AD Group as a member to an existing AD group – can be nested.
• There are no features for users to submit a request to join a group.

SharePoint Groups

• The creation of groups can be done by business users.
• When a group is being created, we can define who "owns" the group.
• Allow users to submit a request to join a group.
• Can determine who has permissions to see the users within groups.
• Groups which have created within a particular Site Collection cannot be used in other site collections
• We cannot add a SharePoint Group as a member of another SharePoint group -no nesting
• SharePoint Groups cannot be used in other systems (e.g. network Shares)
• SharePoint Groups are separate from Active Directory 

Ways to secure your data when using public Wi-Fi.

Most public W-Fi hotspots have no passwords or encryptions on the service. This means the data you are searching is wide open. This post describes how you can prepare yourself for such situations where network is not secure.

Always you should keep in mind that there is no public Wi-Fi security. Therefore, is better if you do not do anything related to your work so that your valuable data will not float out. Both Mac OSX and Windows have built-in firewall tools for both home and public Wi-Fi security. For an example in Windows you can enable Windows Firewall and turn off incoming connections. Also you can turn off the file sharing.

Storing passwords locally on your machine is generally a bad idea. If your passwords are on a keychain, your keychain can be cracked. There are more secure ways to store your passwords. LastPass is a free online password manager which makes your web browsing easier and more secure. LastPass program will save your passwords for you in a secure way. It puts the password on a cloud so that it can’t be found on your machine. This is really better. Try this out.

You should always know what you should and what you shouldn’t be doing on this network. Keep your browsing simple.  Now you are armed with this knowledge and just take precautions when using public Wi-Fi.

Advantages & Disadvantages

This post presents some of the possible advantages and disadvantages of Cloud Computing. Even though Cloud Computing has become a great innovation in the field of computing still there are few reasons of not adopting to Cloud Computing.

Advantages

•  Flexibility

Cloud computing has a high level of flexibility since users can choose to use it whenever they want to. There is no limitation of the place and medium. Users can access to their applications and data from anywhere in the world.

• Low Cost

By using Cloud Computing in companies for their business purposes, they can reduce cost for hardware and software.  Companies can use the resources of hosting company to store their applications.  Users also can save money on software updates, management cots and data storage costs.

• Less time consuming

If we use the traditional method we have to buy and configure hardware and software and it consumes lot of time. By using Cloud Computing we can get rid of that.

• Easier management of data

All data are organized and located on a centralized location therefore it makes easier to manage data.

• Device Diversity

Users can access their application through various different electronic devices such as iPad, Smartphone, Laptop or desktop computers.  

• Increase storage capacity

The storage capacity is very high compared to a personal computer. This saves users from upgrading the computer memory which helps to reduce the cost.

• Easy to understand

The application on the cloud like G mail, Google docs etc are likely to be understood by users therefore it saves time of making arrangements for training as well.

• Automatic updating

Once the server gets updated the users can get the updates without doing anything. It saves companies time and effort.

Disadvantages

•  Dependency

Users have to depend on the provider since users don’t have their data stored with them.

• Risk

In Cloud Computing we are getting services from remote servers. If something goes wrong in the servers nothing can be recovered. Therefore there is always an insecurity regarding stored documents.

•  Requires a constant internet connection

Cloud Computing is completely relying on the network connection therefore users have to depend on the reliability of the internet connection.

• Security

In Cloud Computing Security is the biggest concern. Data are stored in a virtual server therefore it makes an uncomfortable feeling in users.

• Migration issue

If a user wants to switch from provider to another then it is not easy to transfer huge data from one provider to another.

Export a SharePoint User List to an Excel Sheet

In this post I'm going to explain an easy way to view a list of SharePoint Users in an Excel sheet.

First go to Site Actions and select Site Settings. Then select People and groups under the Users and Permissions category

Then go to Settings and then select List Settings.

Then you will get the List Settings page. Go to the bottom of that page and select List View under the Views category

Then you will get the Edit View of the List Settings. Now copy that page URL and copy paste it on a notepad.

Example URL :

http://camintdev01.domainx.local/_layouts/ViewEdit.aspx?List=%7BA1EA3A11%2D7F67%2D40BE%2D890B%2D7DB85EDDA7FF%7D&View=%7B8914C42E%2D5E0D%2D41D2%2D80C7%2D75E302D91FEE%7D&Source=%252F%255Flayouts%252Flistedit%252Easpx%253FList%253Da1ea3a11%252D7f67%252D40be%252D890b%252D7db85edda7ff%2526Source%253Dhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fcamintdev01%25252Edomainx%25252Elocal%25252F%25255Flayouts%25252Fpeople%25252Easpx%25253FMembershipGroupId%25253D5

Now get the Site Name, List ID and the View ID from that URL

Example:

Site Name : camintdev01.domainx.local

List ID      : %7BA1EA3A11%2D7F67%2D40BE%2D890B%2D7DB85EDDA7FF%7D

View ID    : %7B8914C42E%2D5E0D%2D41D2%2D80C7%2D75E302D91FEE%7D

Then copy the below URL and add the Site Name, List ID and View ID to the correct places.

 http://[site]/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109&Using=_layouts/query.iqy&List=[LISTID]&View=[VIEWID]&CacheControl

Example URL:

http://camintdev01.domainx.local/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?CS=109&Using=_layouts/query.iqy&List=%7BA1EA3A11%2D7F67%2D40BE%2D890B%2D7DB85EDDA7FF%7D&View=%7B8914C42E%2D5E0D%2D41D2%2D80C7%2D75E302D91FEE%7D&CacheControl

Navigate to the above URL and then download and save the owssvr.jqy file. Finally open it in Excel. Now you  can view the SharePoint Users list.

Business benefits of Cloud Architectures 

This blog post is about some of the clear business benefits of building applications using Cloud Architecture.

If someone wants to build a large scale system it may cost a lot. He needs to invest for hardware such as machines, routers, backup power supplies etc and also for hardware management like power management and cooling. By moving to cloud we can have almost zero upfront infrastructure investment with no fixed cost or startup cost.

If you choose to develop your applications in the cloud you can have just in time infrastructure. If not, even though your business become famous your infrastructure may not scale and you become a victim of your own success. On the other hand if you invested heavily and if you couldn’t become famous then also you will fail. If you are deploying applications in the cloud you should not worry about pre-procuring of large scale systems. The solution has a low risk because you scale as you grow.

Normally Administrators worry about hardware procuring when they run out of capacity and about better utilization of infrastructure when they have excess capacity. With Cloud Architectures they can manage resources more efficiently by having the applications request only when they need.

Usage based costing is another advantage of using Cloud Architecture. If a user has a desktop application or a traditional client-server application runs on customer’s own infrastructure the cost is very high but when shifting to the Cloud Architecture customer uses a third party infrastructure and gets billed only for what was used.

Parallelization is one the great ways to speed up processing. For an example if one compute-intensive job that can run in parallel takes 200 hours to process on one machine but with Cloud Architecture it would be possible to do it in less than one hour. This can reduce the total processing time in a cost effective manner.