Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Windows Server 2003 R2 Release Candidate (RC0) download

Windows Server 2003 R2 is the same core operating system as Windows Server 2003 SP1 but with new and updated tools including:
  • Storage Resource Manager [folder-based quotas]
  • Print Management Console [deploy printers to remote clients]
  • Active Directory Federation Services [share! securely!]
  • improved DFS Management console
  • Storage Management for SANs
  • Services for Unix
  • Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)
  • improvements to Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)
  • MMC 3.0
  • Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) Service Pack 2
The enhancements to Windows Server are quite welcome and will be well worth the small cost for those who don't get it free.
Kick the tires now with a 180-day trail:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/R2/trial/default.mspx

Posted by Kevin at 2:37 PM | | Comments | links to this post  

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

This aint rocket science...

UPS, GE, Chrysler, CNN, NYTimes, ABCNews, CNN and the list goes on. They were all hit by worms exploiting MS05-039.

Why haven't they been able to patch their machines? There's really no excuse for not keeping Windows 2000 patched up. Microsoft does more than an adequate job to provide tools and notifications to IT professionals. To patch machines there's Windows Update, Microsoft Update, SUS, WSUS, SMS, Windows Automatic Update. To communicate about updates Microsoft provides Instant Message and mobile device notifications, emails advance notifications the Thursday before Patch Tuesday, emails whenever it revises patches or notifications, and additionally publishes feeds (RSS) the day a patch is released. Someone on /. complained they can't update the day patches come out because Sarbanes-Oxley doesn't allow them to. That's just nuts! Why don't they then have other means of prevention like McAfeeVirusScan 8.0i, which can block these exploits, or firewalls?

I wonder what will be the fate of the person(s) in charge of IT at ABCNews and all the other hapless companies that got hacked today...

Posted by Kevin at 9:16 PM | | Comments | links to this post