Idea 11 Blog

We have moved!

By James Kahn / November 23, 2015

We have moved to a new larger office, just up the road from our old office. Our phone and mailing details haven’t changed. Our new office address is: 1/88 Brandl St Eight Mile Plains QLD 4113

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Load Balancing Exchange ActiveSync with Client Certificates

By Idea 11 Consulting / November 4, 2015

We were setting up a NetScaler to load balance the Exchange 2013 CAS protocols a few weeks ago and we had an interesting dilemma.  The client had mandated the use of Certificate-Based Authentication (CBA) when accessing Exchange ActiveSync from mobile devices and wanted to leverage their NetScaler appliances to provide high…

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Upgrading to Windows 10

By Idea 11 Consulting / July 30, 2015

With the release of Windows 10 hitting – it is time to show you how easy the upgrade process is! Let’s get started!

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What Does the End of Mainstream Support for Exchange Server 2010 Mean for You?

By Idea 11 Consulting / January 15, 2015

What does the end of mainstream support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 mean for your organization?

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AHBL Shutdown Causes Spam False Positives and Email Delivery Problems

By Idea 11 Consulting / January 7, 2015

The shutdown of the AHBL service has caused spam false positives and email delivery issues for email systems that are configured to use the service.

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Fixing Chef Manage after upgrade to Chef Server 12

By James Kahn / December 8, 2014

Chef is a popular open source configuration management and automation tool. It’s one of the tools we use here at Idea 11 to manage servers. After we upgraded Enterprise Chef Server from version 11 to 12, the management web interface didn’t function even though we followed the official upgrade instructions. When hitting the management…

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Using PowerShell to Launch an Amazon Web Services EC2 Windows Instance

By Idea 11 Consulting / December 4, 2014

Now that we’ve looked at how to get started with the AWS PowerShell tools lets take a look at a simple scenario of launching an EC2 instance to run a basic web server. The steps involved are: Create an Amazon EC2 key pair Create a Security Group (ie, a firewall rules)…

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Getting Started with AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell

By Idea 11 Consulting / December 3, 2014

Admins who run Windows on their desktop or laptop computer can use the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell to perform their Amazon Web Services administration. Installing the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell The pre-requisites for the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell are minimal. Windows XP or later, with PowerShell 2.0 or…

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PowerShell Script to Install the Amazon Web Services Tools for Windows PowerShell

By Idea 11 Consulting / December 3, 2014

This PowerShell script has been written to streamline the process of downloading and installing the Amazon Web Services Tools for Windows PowerShell to a Windows computer. The general workflow of the script is: Validate the download path exists, and create if necessary Download the file from AWS using Invoke-WebRequest Run the…

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How to Create a PowerShell Profile

By Idea 11 Consulting / December 3, 2014

Here at Idea 11 we’re big fans of PowerShell. We use it every day to support our customers and develop scripts and tools to help with our services and support. When you spend as much time in PowerShell as we do it is useful to create a PowerShell profile. A PowerShell…

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Amazon Web Services Migration

By Idea 11 Consulting / October 22, 2014

The introduction of ‘pay for what you use’ and ‘pay as you go’ consumption models in cloud infrastructure are a dramatic departure from the traditional capital budgeting process that has underpinned decades of previous IT projects. Many business and IT managers are currently evaluating a cloud project and in weighing up…

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Dropbox Password Leak Highlights the Importance of Multi-Factor Authentication

By Idea 11 Consulting / October 15, 2014

The news that up to 7 million Dropbox usernames and passwords may have been compromised is a good opportunity for businesses to review their use of multi-factor authentication for the online services that they rely on. At this stage the Dropbox leak appears to be a result of re-use of passwords…

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Shellshock Exploit Prevention Using Palo Alto Networks IPS

By Idea 11 Consulting / September 29, 2014

The Threat Prevention feature of Palo Alto Networks firewalls protects your network in several ways. One of these is an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) that enables you to block known vulnerabilities at the network gateway. This approach to intrusion prevention helps to protect your network by detecting and blocking known attack signatures for security…

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What is Shellshock, and How Can You Protect Your Networks?

By Idea 11 Consulting / September 26, 2014

A new security vulnerability called Shellshock has been discovered. Security experts are already calling it one of the most serious vulnerabilities of all time, even more serious than Heartbleed. The Shellshock vulnerability is present in Bash, a remote shell commonly used to remotely administer Linux-based systems. This includes many Linux distributions…

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SSL Decryption of Web Traffic at the Network Gateway

By Rian Brooks-Kane / August 11, 2014

One thing I’ve realised from working with Palo Alto Networks firewalls is how much network traffic runs over HTTPS/SSL these days. Having your web traffic secured with SSL encryption is great for when you’re using your banking website, but it also means that malicious traffic can be masked from your network’s…

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Verifying your SSL Certificate is secure

By James Kahn / January 17, 2014

Setting up SSL correctly is not as simple as it looks. The basics: install the certificate and check it works. But out of the box, it might not work in all browsers, and your server might not be as secure as you think. Qualys SSL Labs is a great (free) tool…

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System configuration, hold the sauce

By Idea 11 Consulting / November 21, 2013

Let’s dive into building systems that build themselves. Sound complicated? It’s not. And making the switch can unlock some huge efficiency and flexibility improvements in your environment. Too much secret sauce Traditionally you build a system by gathering the recommended specifications from your software vendor or dev team, perform some sizing…

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The Consumerisation of Enterprise IT Part 2: Information Security

By James Kahn / May 13, 2011

With the ongoing consumerisation of Enterpise IT, increasingly users need to access corporate information systems from any device, anywhere. Traditionally, IT has used heavy-handed techniques that involve locking the information down in one form or another. This is difficult – and in some cases not possible – with the consumerisation of…

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Configuring virtual desktops

By Idea 11 Consulting / April 18, 2011

Since the introduction of Windows 2000, IT departments have used group policies to control and configure workstations. A corporate workstation build will typically contain the operating system, service packs and hotfixes and core applications common to all user groups – Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, and the like. Whilst some configuration of…

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The Consumerisation of Enterprise IT Part 1

By James Kahn / March 30, 2011

Yesterday there was an article in the Australian about Suncorp allowing staff to BYO their own computers and tablets. This isn’t an anomaly – it’s part of a growing trend within corporate IT. There is more focus on end user experience and less on rigid control. Enterprise IT is being consumerised.…

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