Category: Security

Veeam Supported Products Reaching End of Life in 2022

After my last post highlighting the Veeam software that reaches end of support in 2022, I wanted to expand this further and discuss software that Veeam works with that will be approaching end of life in 2022. Why does this matter when I’m just trying to protect the data? Times change, and software changes with… Continue reading Veeam Supported Products Reaching End of Life in 2022

Data Protection Best Practice: Encrypting Backups

Today I want to talk about backups, and the importance of encrypting them, everywhere. When people think of encrypted backups, the usual first thoughts are around portable backups such as tape and USB or backups outside of your trust domain such as cloud storage. This is a great starting point, and if you’re not currently… Continue reading Data Protection Best Practice: Encrypting Backups

VMware vCenter Server Appliance: Sequence Wrong Size for a Certificate when replacing SSL Certificates

Hi! Just a quick one today. I was replacing a certificate for a customer’s VCSA today with one from their internal CA when I hit the error “Sequence Wrong Size for a Certificate”. To clarify, I had generated a CSR from the VCSA, requested the certificate from the CA, downloaded this and the certificate chain… Continue reading VMware vCenter Server Appliance: Sequence Wrong Size for a Certificate when replacing SSL Certificates

Workaround: KB5005043 / Security Update August 2021 Won’t Install on Windows Server 2016

I’ve found a lot of clients are having the same issue with their Windows Server 2016 servers and getting KB5005043 to install. It seems that Microsoft might not be identifying this patch correctly as it doesn’t show within Windows Update for most and then downloading the patch manually from the Microsoft Catalog results in the… Continue reading Workaround: KB5005043 / Security Update August 2021 Won’t Install on Windows Server 2016

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010/2013/2016/2019 – Unable to connect to OWA/ECP “protectionCertificates.Length<1"

Microsoft have done it again, with another security update, they’ve broken a lot of environments, I wish there was a better communication method than finding a small footnote on a blog post that a patch was going to potentially break environments. Many organisations have automated patch workflows that end up catching people out when this… Continue reading Microsoft Exchange Server 2010/2013/2016/2019 – Unable to connect to OWA/ECP “protectionCertificates.Length<1"

Troubleshooting Tip: Recovering Access to a MSSQL Database

I was recently helping a customer create a SQL database backup for a support ticket and noticed that they had an interesting SQL Server configuration. There was only a single account with sysadmin rights, the sa account, but this account wasn’t allowed to sign in. The SQL Server was domain joined but there was just… Continue reading Troubleshooting Tip: Recovering Access to a MSSQL Database

Microsoft Azure Sentinel Log Analytics- Not Collecting Syslog

Today I was asked to advise on why a particular firewall was unable to send its syslog data to Azure Sentinel and found something rather interesting I thought would be useful to share. Firstly I validated that the deployment steps had been followed and that the VM Extension for Linux had been attached to the… Continue reading Microsoft Azure Sentinel Log Analytics- Not Collecting Syslog

VMware vSphere 6.5 – End of General Support Changes

Hey everyone! VMware released some unexpected news yesterday regarding the end of support for vSphere & vCenter 6.5 and vSAN 6.5 & 6.6. These were both originally intended to reach End of General Support (EoGS) this year, on the 15th November 2021. VMware are now extending this general support window to the 15th October 2022,… Continue reading VMware vSphere 6.5 – End of General Support Changes

Microsoft Exchange Server KB5000871: Unable to Apply “owaauth.dll”, 400 Bad Request & Server Error in ECP application

Hey, so I’ve been going through all our customers this week that’ve been identified as potentially at risk by the latest Exchange Server vulnerabilities (full details straight from Microsoft here) and as you can expect from a rapid response release, it’s not quite consistent when installing. Please be painfully aware of the Microsoft installation notes… Continue reading Microsoft Exchange Server KB5000871: Unable to Apply “owaauth.dll”, 400 Bad Request & Server Error in ECP application