Author: jay f

Do you have an Excel spreadsheet that takes hours or day to complete?

Do you have that really fast computer with the note on it that says "Do not touch" while the computer working doing complex calculations complex..

Have you played the game of buying faster and faster computer to get you excel spreadsheet processing done faster

Yes you could go to Excel 2010 version 64 bit to address more memory, but if I am using custom XLL UDF there may not be a version of the custom UDF for 64 bit so what one to do ? And does that make my spreadsheet much faster? Excel allows you to create custom functions, called "User Defined Functions" (UDF’s) that can be used the same way you would use SUM() or some other built-in Excel function or I can user Automation add-ins are suitable if your UDF deals a lot with the Excel object model; XLL add-ins are faster in financial and mathematical calculations. Note however that native code XLL add-ins work faster than managed UDFs.

I have clients who have these problems and have just resolved themself to it is just going to take day to get the data out; for example;

Insurance company

• Insurance company who need to do reserve requirements calculation which answer the question do the company have the minimum reserves require buy regulators’ this is based on Hundreds of thousands of policies and can take 4 weeks to calculate each monthly.

• A controller at big company who doing, what if scenarios on budgets and forecasting the same formulas over and over again and the process takes 1 week s each time

• Assist with Monte Carlo simulation for risk analytics and other suitable scenarios in Financial Services and Energy trading in Oil & Gas industry verticals.

If you look at your company you probably find this is an issues for someone who user the big, complex, spreadsheet I have a solution for you!

HPC Services for Excel 2010

Here is a way to have MUTIPLE Computers share the workload

*** What new is now you can use Excel 2010 PLUS edition and have multiple computers share the workloads ***

HPC Services for Excel 2010 – HPC is part of Microsoft Technical Computing solution

HPC stand for High Performance Computing

HPC is a group of computers or a cluster of computer consists of several servers networked together where each server in the cluster performs one or more specific tasks. Cluster components include Head Nodes, and Compute Nodes, Job Scheduler and sometimes Broker Nodes (for SOA enabled clusters.)

(Graphic from Microsoft HPC site)

Head Node – is point of management and job scheduling for the cluster. It provides failover and controls and mediates access to the cluster resources.

Compute Node(s) -Carries out the computational tasks assigned to it by the job scheduler.

There are many ways that you can run a cluster, here are the methods.

Method 1: use 7 computer that at night or during the week end can be used as computer nodes

Method 2: use Widows Azure as a cloud solution

Method 3: Build a Windows HPC cluster in house

To learn more about HPC and to use HPC with Excel go here

I will be creating more Blogs detailing this solution.

Overview
I will be presenting  a webinar for a cyber disaster makes recovering from one much easier. Still, as important as disaster planning is, it’s often overlooked or put off until it is too late. In this webinar, I will discuss planning for the unexpected, and he’ll teach simple tricks to reduce your company’s downtime before, during, and after a disaster.

Using a fictional company as an example, I will walk you through the disaster planning process a security professional should use.

Outline

• What a disaster is
• How to plan
• Techniques to reduce the impact of a disaster
• What BCP is
• Five rules for creating a good disaster plan
• Testing your disaster plan
• Funding the plan
• How and where to get help with your disaster planning process

Date: April 27, 2011
Time: Noon – 1 PM ET
To Registration Here

I get ask all the time for tools or tricks that a administrator can use here a great one. AD Unlocker Pro.

You and administrator of a Active Directory Domain you don your due diligence and set a group policy that say after x tries lock user account , Now how do you audit and see what accounts are locked?

Here a very small utility that you can run that will show you what accounts are locked and Unlocking them with only one click.

This application also  can use alternate login (useful if your Active Directory Administrator account is not your default user account).

 

See the accounts

Choose what account to unlock

and you can ever have application running to show when account is locked

For those of you who read my blog daily here a great deal

TODAY 2/24/2011 you can download and get a free copy

by clicking Here (follow the directions)

Microsoft today announced a free planning guide to help with Malware.The Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Malware Response empowers readers to take action quickly in the event of a malware incident by matching the technology solution to the business need and aligning business and IT from the beginning. This guide discusses three primary recovery methods: cleaning the system, recovering system state, and rebuilding the system. Each method presents different risks and benefits to the organization. The guide also describes approaches to investigating outbreaks and cleaning infected systems. Read this guide to make an informed decision about how to return the systems to operation while limiting the likelihood of the malware infecting additional systems.

The guide empowers readers in the following ways:

• Shortens the time required to recover from a malware outbreak by describing the decisions to be made.
• Provides a cost-effective and straightforward solution by matching the most suitable technologies to the business needs.
• Prompts decisions to be made in choosing one of three courses of action: clean, restore, or rebuild a system.

To learn more about Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Malware Response click  here. To download the guidance, click here.

 

The first webinar, "Protecting Your Network with Authentication and Cryptography," is scheduled for 12 pm EST Wednesday, February 9, and will focus on password protocols, user verification, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and using cryptography to protect data.

In the second cyber security webinar, " Securing Communications," scheduled for 12 pm EST Wednesday, February 23, attendees will learn how to put into practice the cyber security concepts covered in the first webinar. They will learn about using cryptography to secure services and wireless networks and about using rights management for protecting data.

"In this cyber security webinar series, we’ll discuss using cryptography, authentication, and encryption from theory to practice," said Ferron. "Grasping these concepts will help you understand the basics of keeping your data secure."

Webinar: Protecting Your Network with Authentication and Cryptography
Live Presentation: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 12:00-1:00 pm EST

Webinar: Securing Communications
Live Presentation: Wednesday, February 23, 2011, 12:00-1:00 pm EST

Register for "Protecting Your Network with Authentication and Cryptography" and " Securing Communications" on the Global Knowledge web site. Recorded versions of these cyber security webinars will be available approximately one week after the live sessions.

 

Microsoft is  giving away a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate to the ten (10) best Windows stories from IT Professionals. Stories can be related to how Windows 7 saved your company money, solving your application compatibility issues, deployment, management of your installations, and virtually anything else. The more compelling your story, the better chance you have to win.

Go HERE to learn more

 

INTRODUCTION

With the introduction of Windows 7 and Server 2008 r2 there are new security features that an auditor or IT professional should be aware of. As you roll out the new operating system, what are the issues and benefits that your company will see? What are the risks, benefits and issues that need to be planned for?

In this session I will be covering these important issues with the use of lecture, demos and group discussions.

If these are questions that you and your organization are asking, then we invite you to attend our session, “Windows 7 and Server 2008r2 New Security Features.”

OUTLINE

The educational session will introduce attendees to the key issues surrounding deploying these new operating systems and using features that help reduce risk for enterprises and organizations.

SEMINAR TOPICS

· Windows 7 new features

o Demo of new features

o Tricks and demos

o Hard drive encryption

o Bitlocker to go

· Server 2008 R2

o New group polices

o New Audit and logging features

o NAP – Network Access Protection

o Direct Access

o Hyper-v (Server virtualization)

· Deployment Issues

o XP to Windows 7

o Discussion

o MDT 2010

o XP Mode

· Analysis of Windows Event Logs

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

● Audit and risk professionals whose organizations are considering Windows 7 and Server 2008 r2 Security Risks.

● Information Security professionals interested in learning about Windows 7, and Server 2008 r2 deployment issues, new features and benefits.

This Session is being offered to the

ISACA- Connecticut Chapter on January 31 from 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM

To register for this event click here

and again for the

ISACA – New England Chapter 

February 18  from  8:30 AM – 4:30 PM

2 Financial Center
60 South Street
Boston, MA 02111

To register for this event click Here

 

In this session, I will cover the following topics by applying what you have learned in the first of three-part webinar series devoted to the subject of Protecting Your Network by using Cryptography to solve some IT issues.

Outline:

• Applying Cryptography to OSI Model
• Securing Services with the use of Cryptography
  • Web Servers
  • Mail Servers
• Right Managements for protecting data
• Network Traffic
• VPN in the following modes
  • Gateway-to-Gateway VPN
  • Host-to-Gateway VPN
• Securing Network traffic with IPsec
• Wireless Weaknesses
• Securing wireless with Cryptography
  • We will explore WEP, WPA, and WPA2
• Steganography

To attend this session on February 23, 2011 Time – Noon – 1 PM ET

Click Here

Part Three:  will be Disaster Recovery – April 27, 2011

On Wednesday Jan 26 I will be presenting 3 sessions, they are;

Presentation Title: Security for the Network Administrator

Date and Time: 01/26/2011, 0830-1020

Location: Great Hall D

Track: Information Assurance

Description: You are a new system administrator and have been trained to maintain that system. But have you been trained to secure it? Many network administrators are assigned the task of securing a network, but they have no idea how to do that.
Do you understand the “Big Picture” and how your actions could compromise the security of your vital data and systems? Most administrators are living in a silo of information and don’t have a real view of the big picture. This results from network administrators thinking “It’s Not My Job”. While true from an evaluation point of view, this can lead to major security issues.
During this presentation, we will help you break out of the silo and get the big picture. We’ll help you identify security issues and how and where to report them.

———————–

Presentation Title: Securing the Weakest Link

Date and Time: 01/26/2011, 1320-1420

Location: Great Hall D

Track: Information Assurance

Description: Network security issues are something organizations are faced with everyday. You can implement technologies such as IDS/IPS and firewalls to help lock down your network. However, have you considered how to protect your networks against non-technical intrusions such as social engineering?
This session will explore 10 things you can do now to help protect and defend your data, network, and personnel against social engineering attacks.
During this presentation, we’ll discuss the following topics:
-How Easy It is to Gain Information That Can Put You at Risk
-How Social Engineering Can Also Be Done via Technology
-Case Studies and Examples of Techniques That Work to Social Engineer Users
———————–

Presentation Title: Understand the Security Concerns Associated with Virtualization

Date and Time: 01/26/2011, 1500-1600

Location: Great Hall D

Track: Information Assurance

Description: Many organizations realize the benefits of implementing virtualization. In fact, by implementing virtualization, you can reduce the physical number of host computers. But does it reduce or add risk to your infrastructure?
The goal of this session is to take a look at all of the issues and identify areas of concern as a cyber specialist.

 

Here is a link to a great article on network security.

Threat Area
Worst Case Scenarios

1. Insider Threat
Enterprise data including backups destroyed, valuable secrets lost, and users locked out of systems for days or even weeks.

2. Tool Bloat Backlash
Decision-makers become fed up with endless requests for security products and put a freeze on any further security tools.

3. Mobile Device Security
A key user’s phone containing a password management application is lost. The application itself is not password-protected.

4. Low Tech Threats
A sandbox containing a company’s plan for its next generation of cell phone chips is inadvertently exposed to the public Internet.

5. Risk Management
A firm dedicates considerable resources to successfully defend its brochure-like, ecommerce-less web site from attack, but allows malware to creep into the software of its medical device product.

6. SLA Litigation
Although the network administrator expressed reservations, a major customer was promised an unattainable service level for streaming content. The customer has defected to the competition and filed a lawsuit.

7. Treacheries of Scale
A firm moves from a decentralized server model to a private cloud. When the cloud’s server farm goes offline, all users are affected instead of users in a single region.

To read the full article go here