Resource Library

Having a breadth and depth of skills -- especially on new and emerging technologies -- can only weigh in your favor.

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?”

Has your company implemented "reasonable security"? If so, you should be able to avoid lawsuits and fines after a breach. But what is "reasonable security," and is there a definition?

A brief introduction to the basics of penetration testing.

The VMware NSX platform combines networking and security functionality directly in the hypervisor and it interoperable with a vast majority of VMware’s products. The platform provides a set of logical networking elements and services, using logical switching, routing, load balancing, VPN, firewall, etc. This product decouples network functionality from the physical devices.

Whether you’re a beginner or intermediate Python developer, you’ll want to keep this guide close to your keyboard and Python editors. In it, you’ll find sample use cases for many of the most common language constructs and tasks that you’ll likely need to perform, such as reading a file or working with a database.

Cyber resilience is becoming a bigger issue for all organizations. But what does “good cyber resilience” look like? And how do you get there?

Discover the most common barriers you will face when implementing knowledge management and how to overcome them, so that your organization changes, over time, into a culture where knowledge sharing and reuse becomes second nature and part of the normal course of activity.

Learn how Docker makes it easy to update, test and debug software with this white paper and gain foundational knowledge about Dockerfile, Docker images and containers.

The recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.1 release offers a range of system-wide improvements. Whether you're new to RHEL or a veteran user, this white paper covers essential new tools and upgrades. Dynamic patching, in-place upgrades, easily configuring new deployments or monitoring entire systems represent some of the more significant changes. This white paper not only explores the significance of these modifications, it also provides useful examples, including diagrams and command lines for executing key tasks. RHEL 7.1 represents the first minor release of RHEL 7, which launched in June 2014 and will be supported for a 10-year life cycle.

Which mainstay certifications should be in your list of credentials? What's the next up-and-coming certification? This article will help you answer both questions by providing a review of the 15 top-paying certifications.

Projects are a social endeavor. Traditional project management approaches have shied away from the social advantages a more agile project environment brings. By nature, we are storytelling, pattern seeking and social people. We need colocation to shine truly in a project environment.

Measurements and metrics provide a view into every aspect of an organization. From resource availability to necessary improvements, measurements are the key to successfully understanding how your organization is performing. This paper will give you guidance on why measuring is important, how to get started, what types of metrics are available, what should be measured, and how to go about initiating improvements.

From the largest to the smallest company, the inescapable truth is that with the click of a few keys or even a simple phone call, intruders can bypass all of your carefully constructed security. According to the Ponemon Institute's 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study, the average total cost of a data breach increased from $3.52 million to $3.79 million in 2014. While a number of major data breaches have made the news, often overlooked are the events and decisions that set the stage for the breach to occur. In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor Phill Shade will walk through a number of key areas in which today's decisions set the stage for tomorrow's breach.

Managing users' access to an organization's resources via portals is convenient with IBM's WebSphere Portal Scripting Interface. Compare tools available to the portal administrator and identify some use cases where IBM's Portal Scripting Interface may be the ideal choice. Review basic commands and find out how to create custom scripts.

A major challenge of problem determination is dealing with unanticipated problems. It is much like detective work: finding clues, making educated guesses, verifying suspicions, and other considerations. An ideal strategy for problem prevention is to monitor the system regularly. Use the strategies outlined in this paper to minimize downtime and detective work so you can maximize performance.

The responsibility for securing organizational data has spread beyond the traditional IT professional. While there are more diverse security solutions, there are more diverse and sophisticated security threats. Security awareness and training is essential for everyone within an organization. Learn how Cisco has continued to evolve its security solutions and training.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but it comes with a price: cybersecurity. Free Web browsers, social media sites and other digital services collect personal information like email addresses, phone numbers, place of employment, buying habits, mortgage data that is shared with advertisers. The availability of this information leaves us vulnerable to hackers. This white paper can help you learn more about what kind of personal data is typically collected, and how to secure your information online.

Red Hat Taste of Training - JB248

Red Hat Taste of Training - JB348

Businesses today are more dependent on technology than ever. And, more than ever, they're looking to IT for ways to improve employee productivity, customer service and innovation. The challenge is that in order to achieve results with technology, IT and the business have to work collaboratively. IT needs to be able to develop the right relationships and communicate with different stakeholders from a business perspective - not a technical one. As a result, the transformation of the IT department has become a top-level priority for many leading organizations. At the same time, business leaders need to strengthen their business technology IQ and play a more significant role in the governance of IT.

Experts agree that as long as there is data, there will be people trying to steal it. For every defense mechanism put in place, there is someone who will find a way to get around it. Constant vigilance, education of the workforce, and management support are all necessary to implement effective security policies. While a well-trained IT staff is key to protecting data, all employees must understand the importance of protecting company assets, including data.

In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge course director Brian Egler will examine key new features of Microsoft SQL Server 2016 that demonstrate how it provides automatic end-to-end security, seamless generation of business analytics and elastic integration of data in the cloud.

With Microsoft SQL Server 2016, you can distribute your data to the cloud using the Stretch Database feature to improve local access while allowing cloud access to large amounts of historical data. You can also provide transparent end-to-end security using Always Encrypted technology and track changes automatically through temporal data. Download this white paper to learn why these features and more make SQL Server 2016 Microsoft's most important release to date.

Discover why healthcare organizations must take an immediate active role in securing their data. It is much more costly, monetarily as well as with regard to reputation, for an organization to react to a breach rather than plan for it.

Despite advances in security, hackers continue to break through network defenses. In this hour-long webinar, network security specialist Catherine Paquet will examine the favorite methods and targets of hackers and will introduce you to the different categories of security technologies. In this foundational presentation, you will learn about the benefits of security solutions such as firewalls, VPNs, IPS, identity services and BYOD.

Change is the order of the day, and if anything, the pace of business and technology change is accelerating. The business and customers are looking to IT service providers to be more responsive, delivering more frequent service changes with higher quality-resulting in services that deliver more value to the business. In order to continue to be relevant and of high value, ITIL must continue to benefit from other complementary best-practices for IT. DevOps, an approach that encourages improved communication, collaboration, and teamwork across development and operations, can have a positive influence in improving ITIL processes across the service life-cycle.

A strong event management process that is able to detect changes of state throughout an organization’s IT environment is a key aspect of a complete suite of service management processes. Event management ultimately helps an organization maintain control through an understanding of the state of things, and how the state of those things changes in an IT environment.

Use cases are an effective and widely used technique for eliciting software requirements. In this hour-long webinar, software development and process improvement expert Karl E. Wiegers will introduce you to a practical and straightforward use cases approach to requirements elicitation. You will learn how to focus on the goals that users have with a system, rather than emphasize system functionality.

Event management, although theoretically different, is fundamentally what most IT organizations refer to as “monitoring.” Monitoring an organization’s environment to determine whether important assets are in the state they should be, and knowing when that state changes, is a very important activity that many organizations spend significant portions of their budget doing.

The network forensics market is set to dramatically expand as increasing numbers of organizations become the victims of malware attacks. Limiting the damage from these incursions, and avoiding potentially crippling losses, are key motivators for businesses of any size. And network forensics offers a powerful set of tools to help companies achieve those goals.

In this paper, we explore the basic usage of PowerShell in the pursuit of automating the management of Hyper-V deployments. This paper is targeted to IT professionals who have been "GUI-bound" to their management interfaces and have been working with or are embarking on the journey of Hyper-V administration. We'll explore the usage of Hyper-V specific cmdlets with the intent of ultimately being able to include multiple cmdlets in a "script" to allow for pushing one button and accomplishing the combined actions of many multiple mouse clicks in the GUI. No more repetitive tasks!

Interested in SharePoint 2013 developer training?  Learn from SharePoint instructor Tracy Wallace, if you're ready and which SharePoint 2013 developer class you should take.

Nowadays, you can read weekly articles about security attacks and stolen data. Even leading companies and organizations are victims of cybercrime. Attacks can include breaches at three levels: the physical level, which includes social engineering, system and network and applications (e.g., web and mobile). In this complimentary webinar, you will discover the benefits of using automated solutions to detect application vulnerabilities, provide steps to remediate them and avoid costly compliance violation.

A Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network (DMVPN) can be used with other networks like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), but streaming multicast is accomplished quite well using "Default" and "Data" Multicast Distribution Trees (MDTs) with MPLS.

Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) is a very popular and powerful solution. Cisco continues to provide updated UCS management options for the full range of data center installations.

Young adults unable to find work, employers unable to fill jobs, a recent GAO study that reported substantial declines in telecommunication expertise — there has been a lot of news about the pervasiveness of skills gaps, their causes, the actual impacts and what to do about them. It’s rather confusing, because the term “skills gaps” has been hijacked to politicize an extremely wide range of issues.

Like it or not, Internet of Things (IoT) is upon us. There are a number of factors that will impact its adoption rate, and the inevitable privacy (or lack of) discussions will likely happen sooner than later. This is going to change the world as we know it, in many cases for the better. But we will need to keep an eye on the extent to which it invades our personal lives if it is going to be the positive force it has the potential to be.

In this hour-long webinar, Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough will share his knowledge and expertise on various aspects of incident management and problem management processes. He will help you understand the difference between incidents and problems and between incident and problem management, providing examples from his own experience to drive the concepts home. Michael will also provide an overview of who performs various incident and problem management activities in an organization.

Mobile payment systems have solid promise to become the dominant means of financial transactions, but there are some hurdles to overcome. Apple Pay might be the dominant force today, but Google Wallet and others are not far behind. The year 2014 was when digital and mobile payment systems became known to a wide range of the general population, while only techno-enthusiasts were aware of the options in the four to five years prior. Thus, mobile payment systems are not new, but customers and merchants are quickly adopting them now that they have become popular. It still remains your responsibility to thoroughly research any mobile payment option before implementing it. It is your money and you have the burden of ensuring that it has the best protection possible.

Learn the ITIL® concepts of accountability, boundaries, and consistency (the ABCs) and discover how ITIL helps establish, manage, and maintain the ABCs.

Discover the ways in which cybercrime occurs in three realms: individual, business, and governmental. Learn what you can do to protect yourself and your organization.

Many security breaches over the last year have taught us new lessons (or clarified ones we should have already learned). This paper reviews these key issues and focuses attention on 10 responses that we all need to adopt in our approach to security in 2015.

Times are changing. Attacks are becoming much more sophisticated and hackers are exploiting human vulnerabilities to gain access to enterprise networks and private information. Employees and end users want to help protect your company's sensitive data, we just need to motivate them as to why they should care. By educating your employees on security best practices and current human vulnerabilities, you can take a step forward to ensuring you're not a part of the many organizations that are breached.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) planning is the process of developing the plans, processes and procedures to respond to the range of incidents. We start with understanding the essential functions of an organization, called Business Impact Analysis (BIA). In life, we set the same priorities: protection of family and friends, shelter, food and water and other life-giving essentials.

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.

You will learn how many organizations approach change management as compared to how best practices dictate that change management should work. Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough will fill you in on the purpose of change management and the difference between change management and change tickets. He will provide a high-level guide for establishing a change management process that uses real-world examples as its basis.

Pen testers beware. Whether you believe you know and understand all the potential legal issues, read on. First of all, a penetration test or “pen test” is a method that’s used to evaluate the security and/or vulnerabilities in a network. This test is normally conducted externally wherein the tester is attempting to hack a network or computer. Breaking into computers and networks is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and depending on your activities and other factors, other federal laws and state laws may be broken.

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.

You are a problem. You are a risk to your employer. The actions you take and the activities you perform at work, online, and even in your personal life put your employer at risk. You need to know how you are a security risk to the organization and what you can do to reduce or eliminate those risks. In this paper, I discuss ten common risky behaviors that typical workers engage in and what you can do to avoid being the weakest link in your company.

Increased interconnectivity via machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, the IoE, and smart systems holds profound implications for how business trends continue to evolve. In terms of M2M growth, key developments in security will be essential, from the design and manufacture of devices to more robust cloud security and ensuring the integrity of wireless data transmissions. Without these safeguards in place, organizations and industries that rely on M2M will continue to place themselves at risk.

Have you ever Googled yourself to see how much of your personal information is online? In many cases it can be pretty scary and include things like your home address, phone number, likes, dislikes, etc. One young man searched for himself and found all of his banking information online. In that case it turned out to be a mistake by a bank employee, exposing the banking information of 86,000 customers.

If you're running SharePoint 2010, learn how SharePoint 2013 is different and what you'll need to learn to deploy it effectively.

In this hour-long webinar by Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough, you will learn how to study for and succeed in passing ITIL Intermediate Exams. You will learn how to approach an ITIL Intermediate exam, the true/false approach and why it works and how to study for the ITIL Intermediate exams.

Problem Solving - Root Cause Analysis using Kepner Tregoe

With Forrester Research declaring "Waterfall processes have become obstacles to speed, quality and predictability," and more than 85% of CIO's surveyed by CIO Magazine using or planning to pursue Agile practices in 2014, this one-hour webinar will explore the basics of Agile and why so many organizations are adopting Agile methods.

With the onset of the Digital Age, IT professionals today are hit with a tsunami of changes! "By 2018, adoption of mobile, social, cloud, analytics will redefine 90% of IT roles" according to IDC 2014 Predictions: CIO Agenda. Large organizations are eliminating silos. Small and medium organizations are outsourcing technology services. Digital natives have entered the workforce. New roles will emerge as new ways of doing business are introduced and as old technology fades away. Today's IT professionals must adapt, and a new set of skills is in order. Join Pranav Shah, Manager of Information Technology and Security at Sony Canada, and Pam Maguire, Business Development Manager, Global Knowledge, for a 60 minute webinar on how to future-proof your IT career in the Digital Age. You will learn about how IT roles are changing, what organizations are looking for, and what you can do now to be ready.

Nasser El-Batal will walk you through the most useful, recognized, and mandated ITSM best practices in the industry: TOGAF, COBIT and ITIL®. He will highlight the benefits of integrating them into a single implementation program to avoid project disaster. Discussions are focused on "Getting Your House in Order" and how to establish your own organization-specific business transformation program, while increasing your organization maturity.

Cloud computing enables development teams to get applications into production faster. IT Service Management (ITSM) leaders must adopt new strategies and change existing processes or risk becoming a barrier to success. Cloud computing requires DevOps-the blending of development and operations with the goal of accelerating time-to-market and reducing time-to-value. The good news is that ITIL® is uniquely positioned to accelerate DevOps, but it requires changes to existing ITSM processes.

Securing corporate information can be a challenge, considering the numerous technologies and platforms that need to be protected. One technology that definitely helps achieve secure data is public key infrastructure (PKI), which enhances the security of data by using advanced access methods and making sure the authenticity of the data flow is preserved.

As an IT professional you deal day in and day out with securing operating systems, patching software, installing and configuring firewall and routers But what about the physical infrastructure? Do you understand how simple techniques can allow theft of your company resources? In this session we will discuss how to reduce the possibility of loss of data and equipment. Physical security may not be part of your job but you should be aware and having discussions with the personnel who are responsible. Or does Physical Security become one of your job responsibilities? Come to this session and learn about one of the most important and yet least thought about areas of security by IT professionals.

Unified asset and service management software provides a common control center for managing business processes for both digital and physical assets. SmartCloud Control Desk is an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®)-compliant software that is accessible through mobile devices and integrates with social media and development tools. Discover how to choose the delivery model you need such as on-premise, software as a service (SaaS), or VM image and seamlessly change it to suit your business needs.

Most organizations quickly realize that knowledge management must be integrated with incident management in order to improve the quality of service and the efficiency of providing assisted service. What is not as quickly recognized is the value of integrating knowledge management with problem management.

Join Microsoft SQL Server expert Brian Egler for an hour-long webinar covering the key features and updates in the upcoming release of Microsoft SQL Server 2014! You will get a thorough review, along with demonstrations, of how SQL Server 2014 provides substantial improvements in performance, manageability, and availability that will make your job easier.

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.

UFFA, which stands for “Use it, Flag it or Fix it, Add it,” is the responsibility of every support professional in the knowledge management process. It comes from the Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) methodology where knowledge management is based on collaboration and a shared ownership of the knowledge base. Let’s break it down.

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?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers increased agility, developer productivity, pay-as-you-go pricing and overall cost savings. But you might wonder where to start, what pitfalls exist and how can you avoid them? How can you best save time and money? Learn what you need to know and where to start before launching an AWS-hosted service.

Your Microsoft SQL Server database often contains the most valuable information in your organization. Get tips for securing it properly and effectively in this free, information-packed webinar with Microsoft SQL Server expert Gidget Pryor. In just an hour, Gidget will demonstrate the layered security approach used by SQL Server. She will step you through the process and best practices of setting up logins, users, roles, schemas, and permissions, and she will review the security model changes that have taken place from SQL Server 2005 through SQL Server 2012. She will also review SQL Server 2012 training and certifications.

Database Management Systems (DBMS) have been monolithic structures with their own dedicated hardware, storage arrays, and consoles. Amazon Web Services (AWS) realized that while each company can use unique methods of collecting and using data, the actual processes of building the management infrastructure are almost always the same. AWS remedies DBMS problems with its Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

Organizations are moving strongly toward Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) access, bringing outsourced activities back in-house, and finding ways to make use of the growing amounts of data flowing in from many new sources such as social media. These factors create an increasing shift in required and desired skills showing up in IT departments. Hiring and salary surveys, such as the 2014 IT Skills and Salary Survey from Global Knowledge and Windows IP Pro, TEKsystems' 2014 Annual IT Forecast, Foote Research Group's 2014 IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index, Computerworld's annual Forecast survey, Robert Half Technology Survey, and information from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Futurestep, Mondo, GovLoop, and Dice have presented a developing picture of the IT skills that will be in demand in 2014. Here, in survey order, are the top 10 major skills and why they made the list.

Agile is a set of principles requiring a significant cultural shift, new paradigms in thinking and team organization. Over the years, Agile has become "productized" or in many cases "institutionalized", creating different flavours and levels of commitment among teams and organizations. Along the way, managers and team members have lost sight of Agile's principles and tried to enforce the use of certain tools and structure where they may not belong. In this one hour webinar, Perry McLeod will explain how tools such as use cases can be successful in an agile environment, provided the principles of agile are always active in the minds of the managers and the team members that are using them. Join Perry to determine whether or not making the cultural shift towards the use case method in an agile environment is the right move for you and your organization.

You have spent money on software and hardware, implemented best practices, and believe you are secure, right? You may have overlooked the weakest link: your employee. Many breaches occur as a result of an employee mistakenly clicking on a link or visiting a site that allows a virus to be unknowingly downloaded, giving hackers access to your network. Today, a well-trained workforce is a necessity and may even be your most important cybersecurity tool. In this webinar, security expert David Willson will discuss how many breaches have occurred and are occurring, the tools and techniques hackers use to trick employees into clicking on links or opening attachments, and how to prevent such behavior.

Constant change in the technology landscape has been mirrored by the steady evolution of information security. The current information system environment is increasingly complex, comprising storage, servers, LANs/WANs, workstations, Unified Communications, Intranet, and Internet connections.

Dell SonicWALL's CSSA (Certified SonicWALL Security Administrator) exam is an open book, online certification exam that certifies a student’s understanding of the SonicOS Unified Threat Management (UTM) operating system. The exam tests a student’s network security knowledge, and their ability to use the GUI menu structure for configuration of standard network security scenarios.

John Barnes, Global Knowledge's Cisco Course Developer, discusses enhancements to our UCS Troubleshooting Boot Camp and suggestions for students in preparation for this course.

Meet Global Knowledge course director and lab topology architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications. Joey will walk you through the benefits of our exclusive Cisco UC lab architecture - a more scalable and stable approach to the all-important labs featured in unified communications courses. Our labs feature upgraded hardware and software including Custom Lenovo T61 PCs, 7965 IP Phones, 3560 Switches and Call Manager 7. With our flexible UC architecture, students are able to view and experience the full lab architecture regardless of which Cisco UC course they are taking or the skill set they are seeking. The lab architecture features a realistic network with redundant environments that are made rich with multiple machines, pre-deployed tools with shortcuts, online documentation that is particular to individual pods, and multiple OS support for all virtual machines (Windows, Linux, VMware).

Global Knowledge instructor Doug Notini discusses the benefits of our FIREWALL 2.0 - Deploying Cisco ASA Firewall Solutions course.

While the last few years have brought about many great advances in IT and network technology security and risk management have a critical point. There is a host of new concerns the IT security manager must be concerned with, including social networking, mobile, cloud, and information sharing. This has unleashed a new wave of change and potential risk. Risk management is required to deal with these emerging technologies and should provide the rationale for all information security activities within the organization. You can think of risk management as the process of ensuring that the impact of threats and exploited vulnerabilities is within acceptable limits at an acceptable cost. Risk management requires the use of countermeasures. Countermeasures can include any process that serves to reduce threats or vulnerabilities.

Global Knowledge Course Director and Lab Topology Architect Joey DeWiele, a specialist in Unified Communications, explains presence.