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IT Labbing Tools

Information Technology professionals cannot afford to become complacent regarding training. We must keep striving to understand technology lest we become obsolete in our roles. Besides keeping up with technology news and trends, IT pros should regularly practice their craft using labs. This also has the added benefit of providing IT pros a place to experiment safely outside of production environments. This brief post will cover some of the tools one can use to build their Read more…

By ryanbrunkhorst, ago

Podcast Review: Wi-Fi in the Classroom

My typical commute to work is about 30 minutes. When I’m not listening to music in my car, I typically have a podcast from one of my two favorite IT creators: Security Now! and Clear to Send. As it so happens, I was listening to the latter on my commutes to and from work today. Clear to Send is a podcast dedicated to wireless networking and has been around for a little over two years. Read more…

By ryanbrunkhorst, ago

Public Key Infrastructure: An Introduction

Wikipedia defines public key infrastructure as “a set of roles, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption.” In other words, PKI is the system with which we establish trust between digital entities through the issuing and revocation of digital certificates. This blog entry attempts to cover PKI from a broad and generalized perspective and serves as a beginner’s guide to the topic. In order Read more…

By ryanbrunkhorst, ago

The Need for Methodology in Troubleshooting

Teaching troubleshooting skills is one of the most challenging tasks in IT. Figuring out why a piece of software is misbehaving or underperforming is a challenging endeavor without the right mindset or tools. In circumstances like these, I have seen IT workers simply have users reboot their computers to resolve such issues. A week or two later they get a call with the same problem, and they repeat the procedure. Kicking the can down the Read more…

By ryanbrunkhorst, ago

Phishing: What it is and how to avoid becoming a victim

What is Phishing? Phishing is the most popular and accessible method that attackers use to infiltrate a business to exfiltrate data, instigate wire fraud, and hold company data ransom. It involves sending thousands or millions of messages that ask victims to act on the sender’s behalf. While phishing is the term attributed to random email solicitations, spear phishing and whaling are forms of phishing that target specific individuals or groups within a company and are Read more…

By ryanbrunkhorst, ago