I’m off to the UK this weekend, for a few commitments next week. One of those is SQL in the City Streamed, which is taking place on Wednesday September 4, 2019.
This is a special broadcast, with some technical content, but some fun as well. This is the 20th birthday party for Redgate Software, and we’re looking forward to celebrating online.
We’ll be talking some DevOps, some products, some tips and tricks, and more, so register today and join me on Wednesday.
Technology has brought some challenges to travel. There is the bomb threat, of which I have no way to gauge how much of a potential problem this is on a daily basis. Certainly security at airports has changed over the years, and there is better scanning technology, but would anyone really be able to detect a bomb in a bag? Do we check all bags? I doubt anyone does, but perhaps I’m wrong. Either way, I hope this isn’t anything I need to worry about in my travels.
I do carry electronics, usually a laptop, though sometimes two, along with the various supporting plugs and wires for charging it and my mobile. There was a time when I thought about getting a BRIX for demos, but with the requirements that security might make me turn it on, I decided not to get one. These days, with all the cloud options, I’m less worried about carrying a large amount of hardware, but I still need a laptop. When I saw a story about laptops being banned from flights, I wondered what I’d do.
In this case, Macbooks are supposedly being banned if they have a certain battery issue. This came about quickly, and it’s likely that there were some business people in the middle of a trip when the ban was announced. That might have prevented them from flying, which would be quite a hassle. I remember when the Note was banned from some flights. I never met anyone that was inconvenienced, and likely plenty of people flew with their devices hidden in bags, so perhaps it wasn’t a big deal.
I wonder about two things here. One, are we building new devices and technology that aren’t designed well from a safety standpoint? Most of us don’t have large servers in our offices anymore, so we might not care, but our other devices, which we use to get work done, perhaps might not be robust. In that case, I hope that businesses might have programs to help employees quickly replace devices if there are issues. Being on call and not having a device would be a nightmare.
The other item is one I wonder about both for software and hardware. Do we make it easy enough to know what version of a device we have? I’ve owned Macbooks, and trying to determine what model you have is a chore. I can’t imagine that TSA or other security agencies could actually a) determine if you had a banned device, and b) know if you’ve had it repaired.
I’d hate to think that companies will just build devices without making it easy to understand which generation of a device you own. This can already be a problem in not only computers, but other products like autos, where changes might be implemented in the middle of a model year. With the move to cloud and other rented software, are we going to have issues here? Azure SQL Database hasn’t changed the version in some time, despite there being changes to the code.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, especially if old features don’t disappear. It does seem like something that we ought to do a better job of tracking, especially as it can be easy for us to have a model, but tag on a version number to easily allow a user to discern one from the other.
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.
There are so many data breaches taking place, that it’s hard to keep track of them. While I rarely find my email in any of the breaches loaded into haveibeenpwned.com, I do see Mr. Hunt regularly loading more data sets into the database. I don’t know how many you’ve been a part of, but I certainly hope you know, and I hope you’ve changed shared passwords and updated accounts.
While we do need to protect data, we also need to ensure that we protect our code, as that might be where the vulnerabilities lie that others might discover. While I’m not a big fan of encrypting or hiding the code in a database from customers, I certainly don’t want that code, or the application code, to be visible to outsiders, especially potential hackers.
While your team might not be are careless as the Boeing research team, I’d hope that you don’t expose your code on the Internet, as they did. Perhaps more importantly, I hope no one does a Black Hat talk about potential issues in your code. A researcher did this to Boeing, talking about potentially being able to jump from a customer network and application to a more privileged one to the command and control network. Boeing denies this is possible, and I’m not worried about my future Dreamliner flights, but I think Boeing should do more publicly here. Let the researcher have a few days on a plane and truly pen test the software.
I’ve seen lots of “hidden” features in software that administrators use to get work done. I’ve seen sloppily written tooling that solves a problem and isn’t intended for general use. I’ve also see far too many of these features “discovered” by ordinary users. Even assuming your internal network is completely free of malicious users is a bad idea. We’ve seen plenty of viruses and trojan software that can be used maliciously.
We don’t want to lock our networks and applications so tightly that we create impediments to work, but we certainly can do better jobs in limiting access, keeping tight privileges, ensuring administrative accounts are protected and more. Those might be hard to get done today, but you certainly can prevent simple things, like securing your VCS. Don’t use public places like GitHub, or ensure you have private repositories that only your organization can see. It’s not perfect, but it does stop the researchers and lazy criminals that are just scanning for easy targets on the Internet.
Steve Jones
Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.
I went to check a network protocol setting for SQL Server the other day on my (newish laptop) and was disappointed.
This is Windows 10 and on this machine, I’d installed SQL Server 2014, 2016, and 2017. I thought that at least SQL Server 2014 had the SQL Server Configuration Manager installed, but it appears not. I know that this has been a tool that sometimes gets hidden in recent versions, but I was sure I’d seen it here.
Either I’m wrong or Windows 10 has changed.
In any case, the Computer Management MMC plugin has it. You can run this in a couple ways. First, hit the Start menu and type “Computer Man”. You’ll get something like this and can run this:
The other choice is to his Win+R (run) and type “compmgmt.msc”. Both will get you here:
If you now expand the Services and Applications, you’ll see the SQL Server Configuration Manager and the various items underneath it. For me, the top one (most recent?) was the SQL Server 2017 version. The others were below as other snap-ins.
The good thing about this is I can also manage local users and see the local logs, things I sometimes need when configurating SQL Server.
An easy post that solves a common problem, and shows I know some tips and tricks. How would you rewrite this post? You could show this knowledge with a quick 10 minutes of your time.
