December 2008 - Mike Foster, CEH, CISA, CISSP

Mike Foster's IT Security & Best Practices Blog

Latest Posts

How to erase an old hard drive before giving it away

An executive asks: I need to erase my old hard drive before I give my old PC to a friend. What is the best way to do this? Of course, the best way is to have a qualified IT security professional do this for you. Still, if you want to do it yourself, here is […]

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7 quick tips about setting up your new computer

An executive asked me today for quick advice on setting up his new personal laptop. Below are 7 tips: 1) If you didn’t buy XP with the laptop, you may want to go buy a copy and install XP Pro instead of Vista but you may have some drive issues to deal with (or not). […]

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Going through an IT audit can be easier than you think

The keys to having a good audit experience are many. One of the biggest ones is to simply relax! Unless the audit state mandated following your failure to comply with some regulation, then the review can be enjoyable.

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Microsoft releasing important patch Today at 1pm Eastern

Early this week a major bug was discovered in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer – IE – that would allow code imbedded in web sites to potentially exploit the computers who visit those sites. This has many people wondering if they should use a different browser besides IE. Some people choose to use a different browser other […]

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Should you have an IT audit before or after you upgrade your network?

The best answer, of course, is both. However, if you are only going to have one audit, most people think it should be AFTER your own IT professionals have implemented the very best solutions they know. This can be a costly mistake.

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Time and money wasters plague many IT professionals. This hurts your entire organization

In these economic times, it is even more important to be sure you are allowing your IT professional to be as productive as possible. Whether you have internal IT professionals or utilized outsourced IT, see if any of these time and money wasters apply to your IT professional: Time and Money waster # 1: Constant […]

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