The Microsoft cashcow gets scratches. This is not what I write but what the FAZ writes in its today’s article: “The quasi-monopoly of Office gets scratches”1. Some might say the FAZ has no expertise in IT. Well aactually this could be correct, because their undisputed circle of competence is the economy. But this should make you even more concerned. According to a representative survey by the market research company Nielsen2, Microsoft’s position in its own US home market is now at only 80%, and the trend is continuing to decline. One reason for this development is that more and more people are working online and apps in a web browser are better acessible than their classic, locally installed counterparts. Read more

Winter is coming! Winter time has already arrived, and soon the Corona Lockdown aswell. Sitting at home in the warmth with a cup of tea, having a complete overview of the IT is a good feeling. The catchword here is “complete”. I don’t rely on traditional blackbox monitoring solutions1 but rather on the whitebox solution called Prometheus2. Behind Prometheus there is no single company but an initiative of various ones. The who-is-who of the tech industry with RedHat, Amazon, Apple, ARM and many others3. Of course Prometheus comes with a free licence and is completely open-source. Read more

This weekend I was very active in improving my own security. I have also found two neat tools for quality testing which are Hardenize1 and DNSViz2 - both added to my Micro-Blog post “Measuring website quality”. On my own mailserver I have implemented MTA-STA according to RFC 84613 incl. reporting. This standard is quite new (2018) and is particularly suitable for servers without DANE4. However, even without DANE I believe that I have the best and most complete server by standards (DKIM, SPF, DMARC, MTA-SRA, TLS-RPT, TLS1.3) in the entire Sieger- and Sauerland. Read more

The third and last part of my little blog series is all about planning and implementation. Inevitably, we come into contact with project management and other underlying factors. I keep my promise from part one and finally show a blueprint for risk assessment. I hope you enjoy the read! As always, the following disclaimer applies: Everything without any claim to completeness and universal validitiy. Your mileage may vary! Don’t ask your IT Departement Where to go when it all comes down to workingplaces at home? To your IT Department? Read more

My rant showed some effect ;-) Coming Friday, 2nd October 2020 from 7pm on, I will give a presentation covering IT risk assessment and information security. Everything will be hands-on with realistic (live) examples from the web for an audience of developers, project managers, independent consultants and anyone interested in technology. Have a look at the original announcement here. Friday, 02.10.2020, 1900 (CEST, local time) Room: https://meet.jakobs.systems/b/tom-hwb-uzi-mo0 Password: 350533 Everybody is welcome but you should have at least a microphone for discussion after the webinar. Read more

Terminal Server - A look back The second part of the home office series is about terminalservers. The concept is quite old and we can’t avoid a short excursion into the past: It leads us back to the late 40s and 50s of the last century right to the beginnings of computer history. Computing time on such huge Von-Neumann-Computers1 was limited, very expensive and of course sometimes secret. Without going too much into details, I recommend the book by Kai Schlieter “Die Herrschaftsformel”2, which shows the developmental trajectories of computer science, defence technology, cybernetics and public relations. Read more

Feedbacks to my recently written blog “Working in Homeoffice Part I”: No Tomas, you can’t say you believe Windows is broken by design, bashing everybody up in the face. or: It’s not that simple getting privileges on windows computers. Well, how to put it right? Perhaps by explaining how easy and quickly you can become an administrator on Windows 7 or Windows 2008R2 server? Without knowledge of any login data at all? Read more

Home Office Workstations - Introduction How to integrate a corporate home office securely? And preferably also in a cost-effective, transparent and sustainable way! Some people might have been busy on this question due to Corona lockdown. As an external contractor, I used to stand at the sideline more than once and looked into the big arena of swarm idiocy1 and stupidity2. With this picture in mind, I’m launching a new blog series describing what I think a home office workplace for small and medium-sized businesses should look like. As always: No solution fits every use case universally. Your mileage may vary and of course the remark: I am buyable for exactly such challanges. Read more

After some finetuning of this blog it is time for a break and to check the current state objectively. Yes, quality is measurable - these online tests give you a quick overview where you stand: Google Lighthouse Mozilla Observatory SSL Labs Servertest Webbkoll Hardenize DNSViz The results are quite impressive. Everything’s shipshape. Postscriptum from October, 18th 2020: I’ve added Hardennize and DNSViz to the list. Hardenize offers wonderful birs-eye view for Web+Email, DNSViz due to the fact that its checking the DNS.

Installing a Nextcloud instance is a snap. There are numerous tutorials and, on better NAS systems or hosting providers, even ready-to-use appliances that can be easily clicked together. When it comes to data backup, my observation is that the sources are rather limited and I would rather not use the few manuals that are available on the net. This blog post wants to help increase data protection with an automated, daily and complete backup for your Nextcloud. It is aimed at private users. The focus should not just rest on the script, but rather on the thoughts and considerations around it. Read more