Tom Decaluwé

If you were at Techdays in Belgium this year you will know I’m a huge fan of Windows8 with all it’s capabilities.

Aside from the “missing start button” and the “no default to classic desktop” there is very little you can really say about the OS other than it’s the best MS has ever brought to market. Regarding the above two points, the missing start might just go away in windows 8.1 read here and even now there are many options to work with it instead of against it and I illustrated an easy to use free option during Techdays. View video here and here

Apart from the great new features in windows 8 one of the biggest revelations is the multitude and all new form factors. So I thought it would be high time for me to try this out and go ultra-mobile.

I’m trading in my trusted laptop form factor, my trusted android tablet and I’ll try the to work of a Dell latitude 10inch Windows Pro tablet Pc full time for a few days/weeks.

To ensure I’m as diverse as possible I’m setting it all up in 4 forms

1) Mobile office setup

This will be my ultra-light travel setup. Working off the Dell latitude screen with a Microsoft wedge keyboard and a Microsoft arc mouse. As always I’ll keep my analog pen as backup ;-)

2) Home office setup

At home I’m looking if I can get the Latitude to hook up to a usb port replicator with an external keyboard, mouse and mini-HDMI to dvi cable. If that all goes well I’m sure I’ll miss my dual screen so I need to see if I can add in a USB to DVI to get that running. More to follow…

3) Office setup

In the office I have the complementary docking station that should work beautifully again the dual screen might pose an issue.

4) Tablet setup

And of course that last scenario will be to use the device as tablet for casual light reading and to command my home entertainment system.

I’m looking forward to experimenting with a modern device and let you know how I get along.

Hi Everyone,

It’s time to free up a time slot in you busy calendar as the next Wintalks ChalkTalk data is set!

Wintalks "ChalkTalk "

Thursday, May 30, 2013, 18u30

Combell Group NV
121 Skaldenstraat
Gent, Vlaams Gewest 9042 BE

I hope you can all be there, i’m sure this ChalkTalk will be even better than the last one giving a unique environment to “speak Geek“

Register now at:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6175504099

Unable to attend MS Techdays 2013 this year or missed my sessions on windows 8? Good news for everyone as my session was put online!

Now many of you have been asking me where i got all this wonderfull information for the slide deck. As always I did a lot of research and it all started down at the Microsoft Virtual Academy. http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com This is Microsoft’s free training platform and it’s packed full of great sessions covering just about everything within windows 8. This realy got me going in the new OS and each time the video would mention something i wanted more info on, i would pause it en ten do an intensive BING around the world for more info on that topic. The result of this all is a wopping slide deck packed with info on the greatest OS to date.

If you don’t have windows 8 yet, you can get a 90 day eval on MSDN. There is realy no reason not to get started asap. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/jj554510.aspx

Enjoy

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Windows 8 Client Part 1 "The OS internals for IT-Pro's" |

Video recording: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/tdbe13-windows-8-client-part-1-quot-the-os-internals-for-it-pro-s-quot

Slide deck: To Be uploaded

Part2:

The recording: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/tdbe13-windows-8-client-part-2-quot-the-application-internals-for-it-pro-s-quot

The slids: http://www.slideshare.net/technetbelux/windows-8-client-part-2-the-application-internals-for-itpros

Many of you may not be aware that with the release of windows 8 Microsoft took a big step in the direction of Malware protection in the core OS. One of the hidden jems is the new and improve Windows Defender. In the old days (Vista / Windows7) Defender used to be a light weight spyware scanner, however with the release of windows 8 Microsoft revamped it merging Windows essentials and Defender into the Windows 8 Defender.

With Windows 8 you now get an full blow Anti-Virus product out of the box to protect your system from the very first moment you boot for the first time. This is a significant step in malware protection.

Even though this build in product does not have the feature rich environment we all know from third products, it will significantly increase overall protection of computers and ensure everybody (even home users) have a minimum level of defense.

In the March 2013 security updates MS as gone a step deeper and released some enhancements to this great new feature:

This anti-malware platform update contains the following improvements:

· Adds new malware remediation functionality to the anti-malware platform.

· Adds anti-tampering improvements to the anti-malware platform.

· Improves overall performance of the anti-malware platform.

Hi everyone,

A college of mine brought the blow two articles to my attention. Well worth the read if you have Intel's 82574L Ethernet controllers

http://www.zdnet.com/intel-ethernet-controller-vulnerable-to-packet-of-death-7000010984/

http://www.kriskinc.com/intel-pod

In March Microsoft is hosting it’s annual techdays here in Belgium. With the release of windows 8 and windows 2012 a lot will change for us and having so many top national and international speakers in one place is an ideal time for any IT pro to invest 3 days to gain knowledge for the next 3 years.

As many of you know I work for a retail company in Europe and I too am faced with the challenge of integrating these new possibilities into my organization.

I specifically looking forward to

- Marcus Murray’s security session on 5 March. I strongly believe security is getting more difficult than ever. BYOD is not only brining technology challenges that we have been familiar with for so long and understand. We are now being faced with end-users that are indifferent to security and unwilling to see that home based network security is something totally different than corporate security and this in times when the type of attacks are getting more and more advanced, stealthy and serve the purpose of earning money by well organized cybercrime organizations.

- Daniel Pearson will be speaking about windows 8 tools on day two. As much focus as we love to have on server side we have to realize that our end-users will be working off of windows 8. As an It pro we need to understand this new OS to it’s full potential and know the tools within it is no luxury.

- Johan Arwidmark will be showing us deployment and MDT. There is no OS without deployment and fast, accurate deployment makes all our lives easier. A session i would not want to miss.

- On day 3 i’ll be faced with a huge dilemma. Richard will be speaking about DirectAccess and Kurt on Powershell Advanced. Both topics are reshaping the way we think about managing our infrastructure and getting our clients connected. I’m hoping by then I can 3D print and clone myself and follow both simultaneous.

I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s more important for your organization going forward.

If you have not done so, high time to get your ticket now 3days for 3 years, not a bad tradeoff if you ask me

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/Home.aspx#p=home

Hi everyone, i’m happy to start the new year with a new event.

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IEEE 802.1x is an authentication protocol that restricts unauthorized clients from connecting to your wireless or wired network. Before a client actually can connect, the authentication server authenticates first the wired or wireless client. After successful authentication, the client can access your network.

During this session, you will learn how to configure and implement IEEE 802.1x for wired and wireless networks based on Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. Johan explains you the differences between the available authentication methods (PEAP, EAP, TLS, …), implementation steps and an overview on the requirements. Based on the condition of the client computer, Windows Server 2012 can be used to place the client computer in the correct VLAN, if authentication fails; the client becomes a member of a restricted VLAN.

Agenda:

• Understanding IEEE 802.1X
• Understanding PKI
• Understanding VLANS
• Network Policy Server
• Switch configuration
• Configure Windows 8

During this live demonstration, I will use virtual machines and Cisco switches

Presenter

Johan Loos works as a freelance information security specialist/trainer and is owner of Access Denied bvba, a Belgian based company. He focus on wired and wireless security, vulnerability management, and next-generation firewalls. Johan has more than 15 year experience in ICT and during his career he obtained several certification such as CISSP, CEH, GCWN, OSWP, MCT, MCITP EA, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer/Lead Auditor, ISO 27005 Risk Manager and many others.

Event to be held at the following time, date, and location:

Register here

If you are thinking about VDI and wondering if this could be the ultimate solution to all your desktop deployment problems?

Read this great book from Brian Madden:

http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_106512/item_579433/The%20VDI%20Delusion%20-%20from%20Stoneware.pdf

Have you ever pressed windows key + prt scr in windows 8 ?

If not, high time to do so and take a look at: C:\Users\<profile>\Pictures\Screenshots

This function takes a print screen and dumps it straight to file.

If you have not seen the good news yet, here it is, MS released a win7 rdp 8.0 version.

From now on you can fully enjoy windows 2012 RDS from both win8 and win7 clients.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2012/10/09/remote-desktop-protocol-8-0-update-for-windows-7-sp1-enabling-a-great-wan-user-experience-for-windows-7-sp1-virtual-desktops.aspx

Our next WinTalks event is coming up soon and registration is now open. If you have never heard of Veeam or don’t know what next generation backup and management can do for you in a virtual environment?

Be sure to join us on 18 October

As you all know I have been playing with the Azure platform. One thing you need to do after creating a VM is also try removing the VM and see how that experience goes.

Well creating the VM went without fault, however removing the VM is a different story.

I could simply remove the VM from my azure console however when I then went down to remove the Storage I got the below error. That was strange as I had just removed the VM itself thinking that everything was gone.

I opened a call with Azure support => very straight forward and to my surprise within the hour I got a response back from MS support. The whole support flow was very professional and to the point. First I got an email defining the issue and scope of agreement. I personally feel this is a must as I have been in the support profession for many years and if you don’t you end up having people trying to have you solve every issue they have ever run into inside a single ticket.

The second email clearly indicated the issue and how to resolve it.

Followed the steps and within 2 hours of opening the call I had achieved what I needed.

As many of you know one of my favorite topic’s and pass times has always been core networking and sniffing using Wireshark and Netmon.

I have always been a huge fan of the amazing power and control of Wireshark and Netmon has worked in tandem for me as it has some features and capabilities not found in Wireshark.

Knowing my passion for these tools you can guess my excitement  when I read about MS releasing a new Beta for Message Analyzer, in their own words: The successor to Microsoft Network Monitor!

Now that’s a tool I just needed to see for my self.

And oh yes, this is looking really really good!!

The officials MS announcement is : “Message Analyzer is much more than a network sniffer or packet tracing tool.”

The Key capabilities include:

• Integrated "live" event and message capture at various system levels and endpoints
• Parsing and validation of protocol messages and sequences
• Automatic parsing of event messages described by ETW manifests
• Summarized grid display – top level is “operations”, (requests matched with responses)
• User controlled "on the fly" grouping by message attributes
• Ability to browse for logs of different types (.cap, .etl, .txt) and import them together
• Automatic re-assembly and ability to render payloads
• Ability to import text logs, parsing them into key element/value pairs
• Support for “Trace Scenarios” (one or more message providers, filters, and views)

The first thing I wanted to see was the automatic on the fly Field data rendering and that is really cool to show off to your friends and colleagues even though we have been able to do alike stuff with WireShark for years.

1. All you need to do is create a capture, surf to a web page http://wintalks.cloudapp.net/
2. swap to field data in the lower right corner
3. scroll down the packets until  you find a ContentType image (or set a quick filter http.contenttype == “image/jpeg”
4. click on the payload
5. love what you see

Want to try for your self?

https://connect.microsoft.com/site216

http://blogs.technet.com/b/messageanalyzer/

You might have noticed that Microsoft has launched Infrastructure as a Service on our Windows Azure platform.

I have stayed well away from Azure in the past as it seemed like more a developer thing and with limited time I thought I would be better in playing with win 8 and win 2012 the old fashioned way in my own home on my own “server hardware”.

The last time I was learning a new windows OS was back in 2008 and I must say I enjoyed the hardware install more then than I am know. OS install is so low touch  (read boring), keeping hardware running in your own cellar is cumbersome and expensive and all I want to do is jump in and get my hands dirty on the OS in a nice lab environment where I have total control.

Well for those of you that have the same feeling, there is a solution and it’s called “ Azure Infrastructure as a Service”

High time to give this platform a run for it’s money so I subscribed to

- https://account.windowsazure.com

- Logged on with my Live ID

- Quick provisioned a virtual machine and about 10 min later I was logged onto the server using RDP

- From there it was a quick navigation to the 2012 manger for an IIS install

- And From IIS back to the Azure platform to configure and Endpoint. This is your port forwarding / firewall interface for Azure. I setup a WWW forward

- And only 15 minutes after starting the registration of my Azure account I had my first cloud hosted Wintalks splash screen online for you all to enjoy!

http://wintalks.cloudapp.net/

I’ll see what more  I can get out of this and let you all know what my experience s are with Azure Cloud

Well it’s finally official now. About a year ago the first rumors started about ForeFront TMG/ISA going end of life. Since that first notification in Gartner’s paper MS has been reluctant to give us any confirmation of this.

However the cat’s out of the bag now and TMG is on the exit along with a number of other ForeFront products.

• Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE)
• Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint (FPSP)
• Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (FSOCS)
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG)
• Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Protection Services (TMG WPS)

The full list of products will remain in the standard MS support cycle and extended support cycle going forward. This means TMG’s official end date is April 14 2015 and extended support will end 14 April 2020

you can find all the details on the link below:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2012/09/12/important-changes-to-forefront-product-roadmaps.aspx

It’s sad to say the above statement is not a surprise for me and I have actually anticipated this scenario for many months now. I’ll be sharing my TMG exit strategy with you all the upcoming weeks as I strongly believe a security product that goes out of development will be obsolete much faster than the MS support cycle.

An important cut off date for TMG will be 1 January 2016 as Web Protection Services (URL filtering, virus/malicious software scanning, and Network Inspection System) will stop receiving updates.

For those of you that a wondering about UAG and Identity Mangers, these product are still going forward and have roadmaps for the future.

I can only say, this is bad news as TMG was/is a great product. However bad news in my opinion is still better than no news and at least now we can start planning for the future.

Tom