IT Pro Tuesday #275

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

In the latest episode of the Security Swarm Podcast: “Key Takeaways from our Ransomware Survey,” we discuss our findings regarding the awareness and preparedness of businesses in the face of ransomware attacks. We also talk about effective tools and protocols to protect your business.

We’re also looking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community… those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

Libre Hardware Monitor is a utility that reports on a computer’s temperature sensors, fan speeds, voltages, load, and clock speeds. Thanks to Vallamost for noting last week’s hardware monitoring tool (Open Hardware Monitor) appears to have been abandoned by the devs. Fortunately this fork is actively maintained.

Bufferbloat Test checks for a software issue with networking equipment that causes spikes in Internet latency during uploads or downloads. The latency of your internet connection is compared with results of latency tests taken while running a download test and an upload test to detect the issue. Kindly suggested by spiffiness.

A helpful tip from digitaltransmutation on how to get a report that can help with troubleshooting when a Windows system is going to sleep unexpectedly: Use powercfg /sleepstudy and it will give you a reason for every sleep state transition both in and out.

ESnet Fasterdata Knowledge Base offers detailed solutions for improving network performance and troubleshooting. Includes sections on network architecture, host tuning, network tuning, data transfer tools, network performance testing, and wireless and 5G networking for science. Thanks for directing us to this one go to Digi_Rad.

Brent Ozar Unlimited is a YouTube channel that features videos on how to make Microsoft SQL Server faster. Brent is a MS Certified Master with decades of experience and an impressive list of conference teaching gigs. Our appreciation for this recommendation goes to Anlarb.

Clavier+ is a lightweight utility for creating customizable keyboard shortcuts. Offers global shortcuts, a compact and portable EXE file, and no need for Registry entries or setup installation. hudgeba778 explains, “it’s a free to use keyboard macro software and I absolutely love using it to make repetitive data entry MUCH more efficient.”

AlienVault OTX is an open-source platform providing access to a large collection of threat indicators contributed by a global community of over 200,000 participants. Allows users to collaborate to investigate emerging threats, extract IOCs from various sources, submit files for malware analysis, and more. candyke appreciates it for “threat intel and malware related OSINT.”