1-Man IT Department

StillSecure, and still on top!

I just wanted to give a quick CONGRATS to Alan and Mitchell at StillSecure. While perusing my copy of WindowsIT Pro last night, I ran up on the article “Guard Your Network with Software NAC”. I read the opening and found that StillSecure’s Safe Access product was being reviewed against offerings from Sophos, InfoExpress and McAfee.

The article shows the strengths and weaknesses of using a software-based NAC (that is Network Access Control) to protect your network. NACs evaluate each device plugged into a network against a set of rules/filters and decide if that device is allowed full access to your network. If it does not meet the standards that you have set for the network, the device is quaranteened until it can be brought up to standards.

A Long and Winding Road

It has been awhile since I have posted here, and since I have been pinged a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, I figured that i needed to start posting here again. So a quick recap of things that have been happening to me since I posted last.

1. I have FINALLY released the bid for the server that will become our new Exchange 2007 Server at work. Working in local government, if I hit a specific amount ($7,500), I have to bid out the machine to at least 3 vendors. I released the bid on June 2, and I will open them on June 18, 2007. I am pretty excited aboout this moving on. This is the one project that needed to get going. We are using Novell Groupwise currently on a Novell 5.1 server that was not configured correctly (e.g. my SYS:Public dir is not at /sys/public it is in sys/mail/public…why, you ask…I have NO IDEA, but it has been this way for over 5 years). I had never spec’ed out an Exchange Server before so I severely underbudgeted for the project for this year. It may be that I get the hardware this year and the software next year first thing. I am getting the OS and Exchange Server software off of state bid, so there should not be any delay in getting it in October or November. (We start our FY in October.)