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For several years, most news articles about a computer, network, or Internet-based compromise have mentioned the phrase "zero day exploit" or "zero day attack," but rarely do these articles define what this is. A zero day exploit is any attack that was previously unknown to the target or security experts in general. Many believe that the term refers to attacks that were just released into the wild or developed by hackers in the current calendar day. This is generally not the case. The "zero day" component of the term refers to the lack of prior knowledge about the attack, highlighting the idea that the victim has zero day's notice of an attack. The main feature of a zero day attack is that since it is an unknown attack, there are no specific defenses or filters for it. Thus, a wide number of targets are vulnerable to the exploit.

Most of us have heard of "oversharing" in the social sense (i.e. giving out too many details of your personal life), but how about "under sharing" in the Windows Server realm? What does that even mean? Well, I sort of just made that up, but it does actually make some sense when you think about it in terms of creating a Windows Share that doesn’t provide enough permissions.

Shortly after being awarded an ITIL® Foundation certification, a recipient’s natural inclination is to ask: “Now what? How do I take the best practices I’ve learned and apply them to my organization?”

If you’re worn out by daily road rage—how many middle fingers can you see in one day—or irked at the prospect of being taxed to death, maybe it’s time for a change. Future job opportunity, salary, cost of living and quality of life are a balancing act. We can’t tell you what to do, but we can let you know where IT professionals are making the highest average salaries in the U.S.

The novel coronavirus has changed many aspects of life for millions of people globally, including where they work. With the increase in remote work, it is important for both individuals and companies to be aware of the added cybersecurity risks. Join us as Paula shares real world examples and tips on how we all can be better prepared.

For women in IT, advancing your career can be a challenge in itself. In the Global Knowledge 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report, only eight percent of senior- and executive-level IT professionals are women. We have pulled data from our research that sheds light on the job roles, skills, challenges, certifications and experience of women in tech who have progressed to the highest levels of an organization.

There are several Wireless LAN Standards, including b, g, and n, which exist in the 2.4 GHz band. These standards need around 20 MHz of radio frequency in order to transmit their signals. In this video, Ben Miller discusses how to pick access points and channels for optimal performance.

New in Windows Server 2012 is the Unified Remote Access (URA) role. In Windows Server 2008 R2, DirectAccess and Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) were two separate roles. In fact, they could not be co-located on the same server. In Windows Server 2012, DirectAccess and RRAS can be co-located, allowing for what is now legacy remote access VPN client connectivity (L2TP/IPsec, PPTP, and SSTP). This means that the Unified Remote Access provides DirectAccess, Remote Access VPN, and site-to-site VPN and can now serve as your complete remote access solution.

In this video, Practice Leader Craig Brown discusses our exclusive Server 2008 course - Configuring, Managing, and Maintaining Server 2008 R2 (M6419). Specifically, the enhancements we've made to this course through Server 2008 R2 supplemental learning materials and custom hands-on labs that enable the student to utilize critical Server 2008 R2 functions after completing the course.

Chief Technical Architect Craig Brown discusses the Windows 7 certification and skills tracks available to Global Knowledge students.

If you are considering career options or have been in the workforce a few years and are seeking a career change, you might want to consider training to become a computer support specialist.

On September 26, 2016, Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Server 2016. We already have a taste of what the user interface looks like from Windows 10. In actuality, there are a few other features that Windows 10 picked up first, such as PowerShell 5.0 and the latest version of Hyper-V, that are also part of Windows Server 2016. Many other heavy-hitting server-only features will be here soon.

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is dead, or at least it should be. It’s too slow to converge when there’s a change, and it causes issues with performance because there is only one forwarding path. It was developed in 1985 by Radia Perlman at Digital Equipment Corporation to allow for redundant paths within a Layer 2 topology, which was great in 1985. In fact, it was huge! So much so, that it was later standardized by the IEEE as 802.1D, and we’ve been living with it ever since.

Are you at a crossroads professionally or looking to start training for a new job? If so, you might want to consider pursuing network administration as a career. Network administrators are responsible for maintaining computer hardware and software systems that make up a computer network, including maintaining and monitoring active data networks, converged infrastructure networks, and related network equipment.

Does your company have a risk management program? In this hour-long webinar, cybersecurity expert and Global Knowledge instructor David Willson will explain why you should. In light of recent breaches at Target, Nieman Marcus, Michaels, Yahoo, and a growing list of others, we're learning that FBI Director Mueller was right when he said getting breached is not a matter of if, but when. While having a risk management program may not prevent a breach, it can certainly lower the risk of one, ensure compliance, and reduce or even eliminate your liability if a breach does occur, enabling you to recover quickly and to protect your reputation. Beyond explaining the importance of a risk management program, David will tell you how to implement one, including conducting a basic risk assessment, policies you'll need, and training your workforce.

The benefit of Private Group Training (PGT), particularly when it comes to high-priority or high-risk skills, is it gathers a group of like colleagues together in front of a subject matter expert. PGT, which can also be referred to as onsite training, coordinates the group, eliminating the disparity between co-worker skill sets.

Watch this recorded webinar as CompTIA’s chief technology evangelist and Global Knowledge’s federal sales director discuss how pentesting has morphed.

Hackers are everywhere, and they have a sophisticated array of tools for cracking your passwords. The primary purpose of this white paper is to help you understand that easy-to-remember passwords are no longer considered a secure form of authentication

For organizations with the willingness to get in shape and regain their corporate vitality, combining and aligning best practice frameworks is a sure way to achieve that goal. Admittedly, it takes work. Combining ITIL® 4 and project management should be high on your list.

The use of public networks is risky. Whether wireless or wired, any public access Internet connection is putting you and your data at risk. It may be convenient to use a hotel, restaurant, or coffee shop Internet link, but the likelihood of attack or compromise is greater than accessing a private network.

Watch this recorded webinar to understand the basics of the Risk Management Framework (prescribed by NIST Standards) and how to begin to apply it.  

Michael Scarborough and Ryan Ballmer, co-authors of Global Knowledge ITIL courseware, discuss why ITIL is important to businesses.

This year, CISSP-certified IT professionals have the third highest global salary ($116,573) and the 10th highest in North America ($123,815). This is nothing new—CISSP has ranked in the top 10 in the U.S. each year since 2015, even coming in first in 2018. CISSP is a top-paying certification year after year. But how has it remained so relevant and valuable?

Instructor-led training (ILT) allows the student to attend a live class taught by a subject matter expert they can interact with. When you need to gain skills that provide a high benefit or pose a critical risk to your business, instructor-led training guarantees your highest chance of success.  

As organizations struggle to balance budgets and prioritize training, skills gaps are growing—75% of North American decision-makers report existing skills shortages. And the impacts are potentially disastrous. With so much on the line, initial and ongoing training are instrumental to project and organizational success.

Cybersecurity is one of the most important fields of work in our world today. It’s an ever-changing discipline that requires ongoing education and adaptability, even for cybersecurity experts.

Examine the evolution from physical servers to VMs to containers and the driving factors behind this change. Also review the available container management solutions on AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. 

This webinar covers the evolution from physical servers to VMs to containers and the driving factors behind this change. We explain why containers are useful in an enterprise environment and why they are so popular with developers and administrators. In addition, we list the available container solutions on AWS (Elastic Container Services – ECS, Elastic Kubernetes Services – EKS, and Fargate), GCP (Google Kubernetes Engine – GKE), and Azure (Azure Container Instances – ACI and Azure Kubernetes Service – AKS).   View the slide deck>

Systems Administrators, or SysAdmins for short, are most often frontline IT staff who are problem-solvers, (metaphorical) fire extinguish-ers, and, simply, doers.

I recently responded to a message on LinkedIn from a regular reader of this blog. He asked several questions which I will answer over the course of several posts. As part of his first question, he described a strategy report that his group is producing. The audience for this strategy report considers ITIL important to the future of their business, and so he must describe which ITIL processes his data center operations group works most closely with.

The short answer (and a common one in our industry): it depends. When comparing Cisco IOS with Juniper Junos, the decision to choose one over the other is difficult and often boils down to cost. Of course, there are other factors to consider.

Kirsten Lora, Global Knowledge Senior Product Director, explains the difference between our Business Analysis Essentials course and Business Process Analysis course.

Discover the top-paying and most popular AWS certifications from the IT Skills and Salary Report. Learn how to get certified and unlock IT career opportunities.

In my last post, we learned that the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a computer networking protocol used by hosts, identified as DHCP clients, to retrieve IP address assignments and other configuration information. DHCP uses a client-server architectur...

The technologies examined reduce operational expenses (OpEx), not capital expenses (CapEx) that has traditionally been the focus of virtualization. Many companies implemented virtualization with the goal of saving money in the form of fewer servers to buy with a side benefit of reducing the footprint of the servers and lowering the required power and cooling. Most of the savings were in capital, but do not expect the same with many of the technologies listed here, because some may even require some additional capital expenditures, at least for software, in order to save on the day-to-day operations of IT. The bigger cost in running an IT department is in the OpEx category anyway, so savings there are recurring.

The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF) provides a structure for describing all transformational work within an enterprise. While TOGAF focuses on the role of an enterprise's architects, it also very much addresses the space in which business analysts (BAs) play. This can lead to role confusion, blurred deliverables, and duplicate work. In this one-hour webinar, business analysis expert and Global Knowledge instructor Adam McClellan will focus on those parts of TOGAF in which the business analyst is typically the most active, and he will outline how the analyst's work contributes to the broader architecture. He will also provide perspective for architects who work with BAs and for BAs interested in the architecture disciplines.

Answer? When it is flagged as a retransmission in Wireshark!

One of the main weapons of organized crime on the Internet is the use of junk email, also called spam. Hackers use spam for a number of purposes such as selling counterfeit products (medicines, particularly) to steal your personal or financial information, or to infect your computer with spyware and malware. This malicious software can then hijack your computer and your Internet connection to help propagate itself.

Everyone has been involved in a learning program or project that has not delivered its intended impact. Across organizations, remarkably similar but preventable missteps are made in needs identification, learning strategies, program development and implementation.  Instructor Tom Gram, Senior Director of Professional Services at Global Knowledge, will present six classic mistakes learning professionals make that reduce chances for success along with evidence-based practices to help prevent them. 

Most of us have been involved with an e-Learning design project that has not delivered its intended impact. Across organizations, remarkably similar but preventable mistakes are made in the design and development of e-Learning that can frustrate learners, reduce effectiveness and ultimately impede success. Small missteps early in the design process can lead to costly problems in the development and implementation stages. This session will present 5 common mistakes e-Learning professionals make. For each mistake, evidence-based best practices will also be shared to help prevent their occurrence in the future. The evidence-based best practices can serve as a design guide for successful e-Learning projects of all types. Finally, approaches will also be discussed to help organizations integrate evidence-based best practices into their e-Learning design efforts.

This is another topic of heated debate, and it changes from network to network, but I found a simple approach that works in most cases. Since I have four queues and four classes of traffic, I need to categorize my important traffic into four classes. Strictly for explanation purposes I took some liberty in defining four categories of traffic that are very effective in both large and small networks. These classes are: Real Time Protocol (RTP), Network Management (NetMgt), Business Critical, and the Default.

It’s common knowledge that earning an AWS certification is a great way to qualify your experience in the eyes of your peers and employer and to increase your organization’s proficiency with AWS-based applications. However, there is another benefit that has not be quantified until now. Results from the 2015 IT Skills and Salary Survey conducted by Global Knowledge and Windows IT Pro revealed that the average pay of four AWS certifications exceeded $100,000. While there is no guarantee that a certification equals a six-figure salary, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

With the advent of video use in our everyday communications, a number of questions commonly surface. One of them is the question of terminology. What's the difference between video conferencing and telepresence? What is meant by immersive technologies? Frankly, there is no one single right answer.

No matter what book or manual you use to study for the CCNA examination, you will see various protocols and processes referencing an RFC. And, although frequently referenced, the RFCs are seldom actually included in the documentation. So, the logical question becomes...

Whether you've already upgraded to Windows 10 or you're interested to learn more, this webinar will help familiarize you with the major updates and features. Join Microsoft instructor, John Panagakos, for an hour-long webinar that will dive into the exciting new features Windows 10 has to offer.

VMware vSphere 8 is the enterprise workload platform that brings the benefits of cloud to on-premises workloads. It supercharges performance with DPU and GPU based acceleration, enhances operational efficiency through the VMware Cloud Console, seamlessly integrates with add-on hybrid cloud services, and accelerates innovation with an enterprise-ready integrated Kubernetes runtime that runs containers alongside VMs.

vSphere 5.5 is now available with myriad small improvements such as a faster Web Client, LACP, Autoscale and higher configuration maximums. In addition, there are changes coming such as VSAN, which may be ground-breaking in regard to VM storage of the future. Since the release of vSphere 5.5, they have not yet announced a change to the blueprint for the test. That being the case, I will say, for now, that the VCP-510 test should remain unchanged as well. My goal here is not to reeducate you on everything that you need to know for the test; instead, it is to point out the few changes that might apply in your company or organization.

CompTIA has raised the bar for Network+ candidates. The new certification exam has significant changes to the five "domains" or knowledge areas with new content related to security, cloud, data-center and operational concerns and troubleshooting. There is also a greater emphasis on wireless networking and VoIP. Use this white paper to help you gain an overview of what's new and what's different.

Avaya introduced IP Office Manager Release 9.1 on December 22, 2014. As we all know from working with IP Office Manager, every new release brings changes to its GUI. Use this white paper to help you prepare to install and administer IP Office Manager 9.1.

Good question! There are lots of networks, so I’m sorry to say that it depends. Let me explain. The smallest computer-based networks are usually PANs or Personal Area Networks. They can connect a wireless keyboard, mouse, or other devices to a computer. You may find them wirelessly linking a printer to your computer. You may have noticed these all include wireless connections. A PAN most often uses wireless technologies like infrared and Bluetooth, so it is really a WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network).

“Twisted Pair” is another way to identify a network cabling solution that’s also called Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) and was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Indoor business telephone applications use them in 25-pair bundles. In homes, they were down to four wires, but in networking we use them in 8-wire cables. By twisting the pairs at different rates (twists per foot), cable manufacturers can reduce the electromagnetic pulses coming from the cable while improving the cable’s ability to reject common electronic noise from the environment.

The most obvious difference is that hubs operate at Layer 1 of the OSI model while bridges and switches work with MAC addresses at Layer 2 of the OSI model. Hubs are really just multi-port repeaters. They ignore the content of an Ethernet frame and simply resend every frame they receive out every interface on the hub. The challenge is that the Ethernet frames will show up at every device attached to a hub instead of just the intended destination (a security gap), and inbound frames often collide with outbound frames (a performance issue).

The Cisco UCS is truly a “unified” architecture that integrates three major datacenter technologies into a single, coherent system: Computing Network Storage Instead of being simply the next generation of blade servers, the Cisco UCS is an innova­tive architecture designed from scratch to be highly scalable, efficient, and powerful with one-third less infrastructure than traditional blade servers.

Modern quality management and project management are complementary. They both emphasize customer satisfaction and the underlying belief that quality leads to customer satisfaction. The main objective in quality management is making sure that the project meets the needs it was originally created to meet—nothing more, nothing less. In other words, to ensure quality, you must meet the needs of the stakeholder.

Multiplexing is the technology that is able to combine multiple communication signals together in order for them to traverse an otherwise single signal communication medium simultaneously. Multiplexing can be applied to both analog and digital signals. A benefit of using multiplexing, or muxing, is reducing the physical hardware cost for expensive dedicated network communication segments, such as copper or fiber cables.

Learn about the five types of area networks.

ITIL describes a service portfolio as a collection of the overall set of services managed by a service provider. A service portfolio describes a service provider’s boundaries and promises across all of the customers and market spaces it serves. I like to think of a service portfolio as describing the past, present, and future collection of services offered by a service provider. The figure below shows a high-level view of a service portfolio.

Now that the network is installed, each switch has a bridge ID number, and the root switch has been elected, the next step is for each switch to perform a calculation to determine the best link to the root switch. Each switch will do this by comparing the path cost for each link based on the speed. For paths that go through one or more other switches, the link costs are added. The switch compares this aggregate value to the other link costs to determine the best path to the root switch.

That depends on their configurations. For example: While it makes very good sense to include redundant physical links in a network, connecting switches in loops, without taking the appropriate measures, will cause havoc on a network. Without the correct measures, a switch floods broadcast frames out all of its ports, causing serious problems for the network devices. The main problem is a broadcast storm where broadcast frames are flooded through every switch until all available bandwidth is used and all network devices have more inbound frames than they can process.

According to Cisco marketing, Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) “will lower capital and operation expenses, simplifies branch communications, reduces deployment complexity, and improves business resiliency.” Okay. But what is it, really, and why should we care?

I’d like to share some best practices for training BI administrators and architects in your organization. Because they will ultimately lead a major BI upgrade, administrators need training before a major project begins, not a few days or weeks before a go-live like other stakeholders. While there are many facets to upgrading your SAP BI system, I’m focusing on the need for BI architects and administrators to understand the BI4 platform’s new tools, new architecture and new monitoring capabilities.

Our IT Skills & Salary Survey revealed the average AWS certified salary was over 100k - how's that for AWS certification value? Read on for more!

The key difference between hubs, switches and bridges is that hubs operate at Layer 1 of the OSI model, while bridges and switches work with MAC addresses at Layer 2 of the OSI model.

What’s the difference between high availability and fault tolerance in VMware vSphere? This article elaborates on first configuring high availability and then layer on the fault tolerance capability. Learn more.

The way Microsoft certifies Azure skills has changed. In this recorded webinar, we’ll cover what these changes mean for your Azure Certification path.

ITIL is generally not prescriptive. In reality, the CSI Register at any given organization might look significantly different than the example given in the CSI book. The fields given in this example are important. 

A career in Cybersecurity means being a lifelong learner. New attacks are constantly being invented, and cybersecurity engineers must respond to them in new ways. This video introduces a new supply chain attack, which provides a fascinating glimpse into the incredible skills of state sponsored professional hackers.

The SolarWinds cyberattack is one of the most sophisticated and broad cyberattacks in history and will likely be studied for years by cybersecurity researchers as a case study for a supply chain attack. 

The advantage--and disadvantage--of IaaS cloud computing is complete control. The user is responsible for sizing, installing, and maintaining operating systems and applications, backing up the systems, etc. This enables the user to configure everything in an optimal way for the workloads that need to be accomplished, but it requires time and effort to determine how it should be set up, secured, etc. With the goal of providing a good place for you to start your IaaS implementation and highlighting some areas that you should plan for and design for, Global Knowledge instructor John Hales provides a review of IaaS, as well as insight into what you need to know before implementing IaaS. He also shares a laundry list of things to consider when implementing IaaS, including questions to ask yourself, your company and your potential cloud provider.

The bad guys just keep getting better! No matter how much patching and tweaking we do, the bad guys' constantly changing tactics and techniques continue harming our networks, stealing and damaging data, and just generally screw things up. What motivates someone to do such terrible things in the first place? How have these hackers changed and improved? What kinds of attacks are popular now and why? In this hour-long webinar, security expert, former hacker and Global Knowledge instructor Phillip D. Shade will provide insight into understanding the latest hacking techniques, what the current threat landscape looks like, and suggested countermeasures to mitigate threats. He will include specific examples of the current threat landscape, including data mining, social engineering cyber threat terminology, man-in-the- middle attacks and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

There are many considerations in deciding on whether to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) to others or whether to become a consumer. This white paper will explore what questions and factors you should keep in mind as you seek to implement SaaS. Considerations include deciding how your application will be accessed, implementing disaster recovery, scheduling platform maintenance and upgrades, handling service outages and creating a security plan. This knowledge can be useful whether you are provider of SaaS applications or are planning to be a consumer using software for activities like accounting or project management.

There are many questions you should ask before selecting your PaaS provider. Learn what you need to know in order to compare and contrast PaaS with the other offerings like IaaS and SaaS, and what they require in terms of setup and configuration. As with any decision involving IT infrastructure there are many variables that should be considered to ensure you find a solution that will fit your current and future needs, budget and support requirements.

The cloud has been around for over a decade, but great cloud engineers are in short supply. What sets a great cloud engineer apart from simply a good one? Experience plays a big part, and the general expectation seems to be that you will become great by putting in your time. However, the truth is that to be a great cloud engineer you do not just slowly grow into your role. You actively aim for ways to improve both your skills and your approach to using technology. Here are three examples of what great cloud engineers do to be highly successful.

Let's start with defining the job of a cloud architect. You are responsible for planning, designing, migrating, and implementing cloud-based infrastructures, but the effectiveness of these specialists is not guaranteed.

To understand the difference between Ethernet II and 802.3, you first must know how Ethernet works. While Ethernet cables transmit data, their role is relatively simple compared to that of the Ethernet card — also referred to as an adapter. It’s within the function of this card that you find the differences between Ethernet II and 802.3.

Organizations that plan for and conduct supplier management according to defined processes and boundaries are more likely to receive predictable, high-quality goods and services from their suppliers in a timely manner.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a solution that will enable your organization to meet the demands of network programmability and automation. The result will be greater network agility to support new applications while complying with increasing security needs.

Project quality management is the process of determining the quality standards that are applicable to a project and devising a way to satisfy them. Learn more here.

Networks are under attack as hackers try to access systems to compromise or steal sensitive data and information. Understand the threats posed by malware, ransomware and social engineering.