Group Policy Preferences are a great feature to use for distributing mapped drives, shortcuts, registry keys, files, and a number of other Windows components. One of the nice things about Group Policy Preferences is that it has a framework built-in to allow logic to decide when a Preference is applied. You can create or edit your Group Policy Preference under the Group Policy … [Read more...]
Google emails stating AdSense tax information has changed
I just received an email from Google AdSense claiming that my tax information had been changed. This induced a small panic thinking that 1) my Google account has been compromised and 2) my AdSense revenue was going to be diverted elsewhere. The email, a screenshot of the email is included at the bottom of this article, is genuinely Google and not a phishing email. Just to be … [Read more...]
Two psychology terms that every IT Pro needs to know
Careers in IT can be stressful if you allow them to be. Part of that stress comes from IT infrastructure being the core of many businesses while also having limited applicable training or education for maintaining those complex systems. Those reasons are why we recently discussed implementing blame-free postmortems after incidents. Another source of the occupational stress can … [Read more...]
Microsoft announcements at Ignite touch on almost everything
Microsoft has done a great job reaching their target audiences with recent announcements. Last week's BUILD conference is for developers and the keynotes touched on Azure cloud capabilities and other related offerings from Microsoft. The company's first Ignite Conference, held in Chicago this week, combined a number of other conferences and provided announcements targeted at IT … [Read more...]
Microsoft makes Local Administrator Password Solution official
Local administrator passwords are a problematic situation in an organization of significant size. Every computer either has the same password for the local administrator account, some formula to determine it, or a spreadsheet to track it. The bigger threat surrounding those accounts having a common password is more of an internal threat. With technicians coming and going, it … [Read more...]