A Real World Security Reminder

Posted on February 23, 2022 by way0utwest

A saw a tweet from Brent Ozar about USB ports on slot machines to charge your devices. There are also wireless charging pads. Convenient, but also potential security problems, especially for IT workers that hold privileged access to code or data.

Please, don’t use public USB ports for charging a device. You never know if there is any data access taking place. Yes, I know that most phones ask you to approve things, but have you ever hit the wrong button on your UI? Know how to turn it off? How quickly would data move or malware install? Just don’t plug in.

Next, beware of physical security. My wife was using a wireless pad at a Starbucks a few years ago. She was sitting there talking with my daughter, and occasionally checking her phone (she gets LOTS of texts). Someone walked up and started talking with them, pleasantly and unassuming. After a few minutes, they walked away.

A minute or two later my wife realized her phone was gone. They both looked around and then ran outside. They couldn’t find the person, and since this was a trip to visit colleges, she ended up purchasing a new phone. An expensive trip for us all.

That reminds me of a few stories in the past from my former CEO, Simon Galbraith. He wrote a piece in 2005 about the issues of losing backup tapes. That used to be a problem, along with the loss of laptops. He also shared a story internally about finding a USB drive near our HQ. Our IT staff investigated the USB drive on an air-gapped computer since USB drives are sometimes spread around with malware.

In this case, we found that it had been lost by our auditor. No Redgate information was on it, but there was data on it from another client. An accident, but one that could have had severe consequences if someone else found the drive. A good reason to be sure that any data you move around outside of production is masked or anonymized, no matter how secure you think your development laptop or mobile device is in your possession. Mistakes happen.

We also need to be careful with devices. These days, with BYOD and MFA, it’s especially important that we secure devices and limit the disclosure of data on locked screens. Whether for a practical joke or malicious purpose, having someone else get access to our credentials is not something we want to explain to our employer.

Steve Jones

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Daily Coping 23 Feb 2022

Posted on February 23, 2022 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to looking back at the pandemic, what has returned to normal for you in life that you appreciate?

For me, it’s coaching. While 2021 had a lot of things happen, most of the practice and competition days felt strange. We were almost normal at the end of last season in June, but just recently we’ve seen things look normal overall, like 2019 normal, and I really appreciate it.

I think the kids do as well.

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Daily Coping 22 Feb 2022

Posted on February 22, 2022 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Today’s tip is to looking back at the pandemic, what things have changed in how you live your life?

This is an interesting tip to me, as I’ve been thinking about how the last two years has gone as my life is slowly coming out of the pandemic and moving into the endemic phase.

Note: I know not everyone feels this way and that’s fine. This is my view

Travel and work is the biggest change for me. I’ve spent a lot of time on the road, usually 30+ days a year outside of my home country, and attended lots of events (work and personal), meeting and chatting with lots of people.

That changed with the pandemic. One flight in 2020, and a few camping trips, but seeing relatively few people. 2021 was better, with about 10 trips, but mostly personal and seeing few people related to work.

2022 is looking better, but still slower, with less travel.

I cook more now. I got in the habit of spending more time in the evenings cooking, which is relaxing. It’s cheaper and better for me and the family. That has continued, and I’m finding myself making time to cook, rather than “grabbing” something out.

A slower lifestyle. That was the flipside of 2020. Things slowed down and I spent more time with family, and more time not being as busy. That again is changing, and I’m not quite sure how I feel. I like the chaos of being busy, but I also miss the slow times. It ave me a glimpse of what retirement could be, and I enjoyed it.

The last thing is that I’ve put up with video calls for years. Nearly 15 years at this point, though I bet 80% or so of all calls in my life have taken place since March 2020.

I realize how poor video calls are compared with live meetings and how much I hate them. I am really fatigued with Zoom and look to avoid the calls. I’ve considered opening up a weekly call for people that might want to chat, but I can’t find the energy or enthusiasm.

There’s likely more, but those are the things that came to mind today.

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Getting a Day Difference in PowerShell–#SQLNewBlogger

Posted on February 21, 2022 by way0utwest

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

SSMS froze on me the other day. Actually, it lightly responded to some things, but the window wouldn’t redraw and I couldn’t see the query window. I could see the results pane, but couldn’t get the app to respond.

I wanted to get the difference between two dates, and wasn’t sure, so I quickly searched. I tried assigning the date to a variable, but this creates a string:

$start = “2020-03-11”

With a couple searches, I learned I can use Get-Date to get a date variable. In this case, I’d do this: 

$start = Get-Date -Date "2020-03-11"

If I did that with two dates, I could get the difference. Here’s a screen show that shows I get the result in a variety of different time slices.

2022-02-15 10_22_09-E__..._git_fwddemo

If I wanted just days, I could do this:

($end - $start).Days

That returns just the 712.

I also learned I could shortcut this with a TimeSpan type.

New-TimeSpan -Start “2020-03-11” -End (Get-Date)

I get the same spread of time parts as the image above, or I can enclose this all in parenthesis and then call the “Days” property to get that value.

SQL NewBlogger

I hadn’t done much with date and time in PoSh, and after seeing an article from an author, I investigated a bit more. This was a part of what I tried to do, albeit as a response to something not working as expected.

Good to know how to work with dates, as I can see this being a part of many PoSh scripts that might clean up old files or otherwise take action based on time values.

You could write this post in about 10-15 minutes and show how you use PoSh to work with date and times.

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